Chain Lightening Frakkus

[SkullKnight]

Hmm, I usually keep my mods well organized to avoid the "omg what mod is doing this!?" problem lol. Keeping each mod in its own folder under override is also a good idea to keep things easy to find and sort. Its a lesson I learned the hard way from oblivion. I couldnt remember which files I had overwritten with which other files, and I had to reinstall to clean up the mess (the file structure has to be preserved when modding oblivion, so that makes things more complex than just dragging stuff into an override).

 

You can always start sorting any new mods you install now. Files in the "override" directory seem to load first, then files in each of the folders load based on alphabetical order. Files that load later take precedence (if you have 2 versions of the same file in different folders). So, if you want a particular file to always win conflicts, stick it in a folder called ZZZZZ lol. Hope that helps!

[usprivateer]

Yep. I'm familiar with the load order and organization trials with Oblivion. I think I had around 60 mods loaded in my game.

In this case I think it was a part of a mod that had it's own executable, and was one of the options. Just can't seem to find it now.

Oh well. I'm pretty happy here, just burned down the Revenant in the forest on hard setting with only 2 lesser health potions. That's good for me.

[Kaerar]

List your mods, it's easier to diagnose the problem then ;)

[SkullKnight]

Yep. I'm familiar with the load order and organization trials with Oblivion. I think I had around 60 mods loaded in my game.

In this case I think it was a part of a mod that had it's own executable, and was one of the options. Just can't seem to find it now.

Oh well. I'm pretty happy here, just burned down the Revenant in the forest on hard setting with only 2 lesser health potions. That's good for me.

 

60 oblivion mods should be too many to handle, especially with BOSS to deal with load order. I have 118 active plugins and quite a few more merged or imported into the bashed patch (Wrye Bash = badass).

 

Yeah, personally I dont like exe installers, as I prefer handling the installation myself and configuring it exactly how I want it. Im glad stuff is still working out even with that elusive chain lightning mod. I just defeated the Archdemon a few minutes ago. Ive got to say, it was a pushover on normal difficulty. I ended up using only 4 regular health poultices. Afterward, I still had around 40 heals in my inventory and ~100 troops left over unused. I think I need to start setting the difficulty up lol.

[usprivateer]

Yep. I remember BOSS. Load order was tough. Did you ever get the ship? Well, going off topic here. Dang that was fun. Not as fun as Morrowind tho...

[SkullKnight]

Get the ship? The masterlist for BOSS contained all of my installed mods, so everything worked out ok with that. Incompatibilities were still sometimes problematic, but there was always TES4Edit to edit minor things. I wish there was a tool like that for DAO, instead of needing to install that cumbersome toolset -.-. I might use it if they patch it some more, but the whole database thing pisses me off, even when it does work. I think it ought to just be able to read game resources just like the game does, but its probably set up the way it is for a reason.

 

On another note, 1.04 is being released soon, and Im probably most glad for the memory leak fixes. Most of my crashes these days are due to running out of RAM. I was going to start my warrior in Awakening today, but I think Ill wait until the patch is released tomorrow. Ill probably end up waiting longer than that to see if other people are having issues with mod compatibilities or not.

[usprivateer]

Hmmm. According to the unofficial patch, chain lightening has a bug where it doesn't scale to the caster's level. No wonder my relatively low level toons got burned down. I don't have much problem with crashes in 1.03. Maybe 4 in around 70 hours of play. I'm using a tweaked version of XP though.

 

OT: In OB, there was a sailing ship you could install. I used it as my base. Was fantastic.

 

One other question; do you use the tactics much?

[SkullKnight]

Hmmm. According to the unofficial patch, chain lightening has a bug where it doesn't scale to the caster's level. No wonder my relatively low level toons got burned down. I don't have much problem with crashes in 1.03. Maybe 4 in around 70 hours of play. I'm using a tweaked version of XP though.

 

OT: In OB, there was a sailing ship you could install. I used it as my base. Was fantastic.

 

One other question; do you use the tactics much?

 

Crash frequencies often vary depending on how long each session of play is. With a bad memory leak, playing for more than a few hours at a time will cause a crash. DAO already gets me a lot fewer crashes than fallout 3 or oblivion, but any improvement would be welcome (unless it conflicts with my mods, in which case it would not be welcome :P). Im going to try a RAM upgrade and messing with some boot settings to see if I can improve it a bit, but with a 32 bit OS, RAM will always be a problem (4 GB max).

 

About the tactics...my playstyle involves playing mostly as my main char and letting the AI handle my party members, so I guess I rely on the tactics a lot. I kept putting points into combat tactics, but I think now Ill just install a mod for additional tactical slots. I dont really do any big, fancy setups if thats what you mean. The preset tactics (Defender, Scrapper, Archer, Healer, Damager, etc.) handle most of the basic stuff as long as enough slots are present. I do find it necessary to change the behavior section sometimes. Setting archers and mages to "Ranged" will keep them out of the fray most of the time. I change the conditions/actions also when Im not satisfied with how the AI is working. The presets dont handle all possible character builds, and dont make use of all types of talents/spells. For example, the AI doesnt use Morrigan's shapeshifter abilities, it only picks one of Shale's combat modes, and doesnt use health poultices or lyrium potions when needed. Configuring an AI to switch combat modes (i.e. shapeshift, melee/ranged, shale's modes) uses up a LOT of tactical slots. Configuring the AI to use heals is very helpful in boss battles, but can sometimes be wasteful otherwise, so I turn it off unless I get into a tough fight.

 

A lot of it is experimentation, and I still havent explored most of the available conditions/actions yet.

[usprivateer]

On tactics I guess I was referring to custom stuff people had found to be effective. For example in my game everyone's tactics except the pc's key off the tank. They frag the tanks target. Burns them down fast. Healing is a no brainer.

Also fun stuff having your mages cast horror against any sleeping enemy, or throwing auto crit moves on frozen enemies. Good for some yuks; I tell ya, damn funny to watch Wynne shatter hassles with stonefist, or Alistair shatter the random frozen baddie.

I'm using the 25 tactics mod. Seemed stupid to me that it was so limited. So, just wondering if others had come up with anything interesting.

[SkullKnight]

Whoa that sounds complicated. I just hack-n-slash'd my way through the game, letting my allies do pretty much w/e (I mean, who needs traps and poisons and backstabs? XD). Needless to say, I didnt unlock any of the spell combo codexes. I expect if I set the difficulty to hard or nightmare, Im gonna have to start paying more attention to these things :P. I might have to take a look at some of your tactical settings for some inspiration lol.