Fewer enemies in BG:EE (WILL BE FIXED NEXT PATCH)

catfish

Cleared the firewine bridge dungeons the other night and it was way easier than i remember.Seemed to be far less kobold commandos.In another forum a poster mentioned the game has far fewer enemies and that this may be a bug.Any truth to this rumour?


edit by @Nathan: check my post on the last page for more info.

PyroPat

There seems to be a bit few monsters throughout the dungeons and wilderness areas such as firewind bridge, ulcaster ruins and so on. There seems to be monster pools missing at some points and too few monsters in other points.

Expected behavior: Monsters where they should be in the right amount.

I do not know if this is actually a bug or a bug fix from the old game, just thought i should mention it. In Ulcaster ruins i am used to meet around 4 groups of dire wolves and dread wolves if i remember correctly and usualy between 2 and 6 of each type. When i played through it now i met 1 dread wolf. (i met the other monsters as it should be - slimes, spiders and vampiric wolf)

xxxsmb1987xxx

I noticed that as well fewer enemies as has another user.

Avenger_teambg

Enemies are scaled by party level.

Tanthalas

Well, two things here:

- Although BGEE's random encounters do scale with level as in BG1, the behavior is not exactly the same so there will be differences between the two.

- Did you guys last play BG1 using either TuTu or BGT? Their scaling system causes a lot more monsters to appear.

xxxsmb1987xxx

@Tanthalas my last playthrough was with TUTU installed I havent played the original in years lol

PyroPat

I have no idea if my last playthrough was with tutu or bgt, i dont realy know what it means :P but i played it through with the original a long time ago and a year or so ago with "BG the original saga" - a relaunch or so i guess.

I realise that the random monsters are scaled to party level, but so are they in the older versions too, and i met a lot more monsters

Im not complaining, just wondering if it is a bug or if this is how it is suposed to be?

It felt good to run through firewine with almost no kobold encounters :P last time i was there i had to hurl fireballs and sneak attack around every corner. Not sure if i miss it or not :P

ChrisYui

I've played both BG1 and Tutu, the monsters are definitely not spawning at the same rates as vanilla BG1. It was a -very- rare occurrence to see one gibberling, one wolf, one wild dog, one kobold, or one xvart. Through my runs of BG:EE, this happens almost as the rule rather than the exception. Often times on the second map you would be assaulted by 4-6+ gibberlings in a pack, as per their description. Same with xvarts - they attack in packs and it makes sense that there would be a lot of them. A single gibberling or xvart makes little to no sense. Why would they be wandering around alone?

One of my favorite things about Baldur's Gate and D&D in general is that things tend to make sense due to lore, rather than game convenience or player convenience.

typo_tilly

I've almost exclusively played vanilla and even then the monster 'groups' seems quite small. Running into 1 wolf or 1 xvart has felt a bit odd. I could have sworn they attacked in packs most of the time.

Jason_Silverain

Yes I've noticed this too, the gnoll fortress is usually wall to wall filled with gnolls. In my current game there were 3 pairs of gnolls with 2 groups of 4 at the end, hardly any compared to the original.

Shandyr

I can confirm this for "Peldvale". In original BG1 there used to be groups of 4 - FOUR - blacktalon elites.
Now these groups consist of only ONE blacktalon elite.

PyroPat

would it perhaps be possible to make the difficulty level reflect on how many monsters there are around the world?
I kinda feel like i am playing in easy mode even thogh my slider is set to core rules (i take a lot of damage when hit thogh)

Shandyr

My slider is set on INSANE (far right), yet I experience this as well.

Son_of_Imoen

Glad I'm not the only one who got annoyed by it. I've only been to Nashkel thus far, I thought it was a feature of the first map only, but it was really easy to survive going to Nashkel. I would have to reload to save my hide several times before getting to Nashkel in Tutu. Only 1 gibberling, xvart or bandit feels real cheesy. The only group of substance I've met thus far are the hobgoblins at the campfire by the road north of Nashkel, nowhere else was there any danger.

Avenger_teambg

Yeah, i guess the solution would be to tune the engine a bit and toughten up for insane difficulty.
The levels were tuned for normal/casual play, but i guess anyone playing on highest difficulty will expect some tough battles.

Shandyr

Okay next one: Firewine Bridge Ruins Catacombs: There was a room which was filled in original BG1 with lots of Kobold Commandos - that number was reduced to TWO kobold commandos.

And all in all there are less of them anyway than in original BG 1.

ChrisYui

Avenger_teambg said:

Yeah, i guess the solution would be to tune the engine a bit and toughten up for insane difficulty.
The levels were tuned for normal/casual play, but i guess anyone playing on highest difficulty will expect some tough battles.

Hey wait really? So you're saying this was an intentional tune? I have to object - there was no problem with the original difficulty of the game. I can't really see anywhere on the forums or feature requests where someone asked for an easier BG. In fact, most players defended the original difficulty as far as I could tell.

Also, the changes to spawn rates aren't making sense. It's not as if fighting a huge pack of gibberlings or xvarts at level 1 or 2 is hard - they're chumps. It doesn't make sense because -why- would a gibberling or xvart attack you alone - if they came upon a party of adventurers solo -they- would run away.

I don't believe this is a change back that is necessary for just the insane difficulty, but the normal difficulty of the game as well.

Shandyr

Uhm actually I think single Blacktalon Elites standing in Peldvale alone dont make any sense either...
They're supposed to be in small groups...

Icallhimlecobra

@Shandyr I'm playing on BG1 core difficulty and I have encountered single Blacktalon Elites.

I remember these guys being tough with their magic arrows (lost many a mage to those) when you encountered 3 of them. I was a little dissapointed that I came across only single elites as I was able to concentrate all my attacks and kill them before they got more than one or two shots off.

Strangely though on the other hand I came across a dire wolf on the map where Gorion dies. It swifly killed me btw lol. I'm pretty certain you would never meet a dire wolf here in vanilla BG1.

Plus did anyone else think that the xvart village seemed a lot less populated than usual.

Shandyr

Yes much less Xvarts in the village.

And I agree with what you said about the Blacktalons Elite.
I play on INSANE and they are a joke because there is always only 1 of them, whereas a group of them would prove a challenge even on normal difficulty in original BG1.

typo_tilly

@Shandyr
From what you've said, I've gone and mapped out Peldvale enemies. I too remember blacktalon elites messing up my party there so much that I had to rest mid-way through the map sometimes.

Peldvale on Core difficult

Red = 1 blacktalon elite (6 total for the entire map!)
Light blue = 3 gibberlings
Purple = 1 bear (2 total)
Yellow = 2 bandits
Green = 1 huge spider

Something must have happened with enemy number reduction. Six blacktalon elites for the entire map of Peldvale just feels wrong. From memory of BG1 vanilla, there were probably 12 to 16 blacktalons before... they were in groups of 3 or 4.


@ChrisYui
At first I didn't think anything about coming across the first 1 or 2 solo xvarts, but after a few times it just felt strange.


@Icallhimlecobra
Hey I met a dire wolf outside of Candlekeep too! Made me jump. :D I managed to kill it because blindness is the best spell ever. :)

junk11

I check the area file in both BGEE and BG1..
they have the same maximum spawned creatures in each spawn point
eg. normally Diseased Gibberling, wolves in ARE2800 should have maximum spawned creatures of 4~6
(the map south of Friendly Arm Inn)

there is a difference value between two files, encounter difficulty, many of the spawn scripts have 60 in new BGEE as to single digit value in BG, but i doubt that's the problem..

my guess is that the spawn script is not reading "maximum spawned creature" value correctly
hmm..need to dig deeper than this :/

UPDATE: the game did read the maximum spawned value correctly :P

PyroPat

I think basicaly all areas have ben a bit "nerfed" wether this is intentional or not i cannot tell. But i notce that random encounters between maps have fewer monsters too, and in cloakwood when you wove to the mines and encounter 2 wyverns, didnt there use to be 3 or 4 etercaps there too?

I notce that the non-random enemies that always are there, are as they should be - like the baby wyverns, bears, spiders and so on. But I encounter fewer places on each map with mosters compared to the original bg1.
I did however notce that Talsoi or what they are called seemed to spawn correctly in groups of 6-8 in the cloakwood

I think that adjusting the number of spawned monsters to the difficulty slider would be a good way to go, this way players that just want to breeze through the game could set it to easy, and people that wants lots of fighting can set it to insane

junk11

I did more experiments...
and ye.. i think they intentionally tone down the spawn number in lower level..
or should i say they fixed it?
the number of spawn monsters in one location does increase with you party level as well as rest encounter
(up to the max spawn value of that location)

Avenger_teambg

Yes, the tone down was intentional. But i think it could be raised for very hard difficulty.

BollywoodHero

Avenger_teambg said:

Yes, the tone down was intentional

baldurs gate: lame edition. haha. but seriously, this is just going to make @davidw job more difficult with SCS. overhaul, wtf?

Sese79

It is very not good for the balance. You will have 1/3 of the XP as you reach the final bosses... :(
We noticed this too very quickly: we used to meet 3x more Bears in the beginning. At Assault Site and Lion's Road we met more monsters before. There are few monsters for multiplayer games too. My wife said that she loves that, but I loved more fights, and don't want to loose any XP. ;)
Please redo it. Thanks.

Sese79

The overall gaming time reduces too. Just retone up a little, please. You will remember more on the Areas, if you had to fight for it. Thanks.

sazaland

Avenger_teambg said:

Yes, the tone down was intentional. But i think it could be raised for very hard difficulty.

What? I don't want double damage rolls, I just want the spawn density. If it's really unacceptable to make everyone go through original spawns then just make it a separate checkbox like Icewind Dale's Heart of Fury mode.

Also, scaling the spawn density based on level isn't how it worked in BG1: it was based on party size. So that you wouldn't get swarmed running out with just Imoen to grab Viconia or Shar-Teel or something.

junk11

@sazaland
Sorry, I should have said the number of spawn is based on level "and" party size,
the effect of party and level take larger part in the calculation in BGEE,
which mean you should have same difficulty around mid~high level with full party,
just not low levels like 1~3

however, due to my poor skill, i cannot give u the correct formula on how the game calculate it :/

Sese79

The monsters were cut out because of cost efficiency reasons? ;)