The IWD2 NPC Project

A Gibberlings Three Mod
Author: Domi
On the web: Home page, discussion forum, gallery, and Discord

Version: v7
Languages: English and Russian
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux
Github: Gibberlings3/IWD2_NPC_Project

The IWD2 NPC Project is a fan-made modification put together for fun, and not for profit. So, don't try to sell it. Two games in particular provided the major source of inspiration for this mod: Baldur's Gate II and Knights of the Old Republic. BioWare developed both of those excellent games.

The main goal of IWD2 NPC is to give an IWD2 player the opportunity to play with joinable NPCs that are not silent.

The mod is rated M, for coarse language and adult situations. You can go to T rating if you exclude Salomeya and Sir Wind Nord from the party and tell the eligible characters that you are not interested in their romantic advances.

Mods which extend material presented here (new NPCs for IWD2 who banter with IWD2 NPCs, or romance for one of the IWD2 NPCs) are welcome as separate modifications, with the appropriate credit given to the authors. If you want something to become a direct part of this mod, you will need to contact G3.

There are a few things you need to know before plunging into your Northern adventure with your new companions by your side. IWD2 was never built for conventional NPCs so some design trade-offs had to be made. The IWD2 NPC Project should be fully compatible with Tweaks Anthology, IWD2EE, IWD2 Ease of Use, and other IWD2 mods.

First, don't forget to patch your game with the official Patch 2.01. This may not be needed depending on where you get your game, e.g. installing IWD2 from GOG will already include the v2.01 patch.

There are two ways to play with the new NPCs:

If you want the party members to recognize a character as the main character, like the main PC in BG or BG2, and banter with him/her you will need to:

• Create him or her first.
• Keep him or her in the first, leader's slot.
• Have him or her as the only custom-created (i.e. not supplied by the mod) character.
• Fill the other slots with the new NPCs

These limitations are the direct effect of the difference between the BG2 and IWD2 engines. If you don't do this, the IWD2 NPCs will banter between one another and comment on the events in the game, but will not talk to the leader.

Otherwise you can play with a party of (up to) six of the NPCs, either by importing the NPCs into the party slots or starting with the premade 'Sir Nord's Company' party and customize from there.

Other things to keep in mind are:

• The game displays only one portrait during each dialogue in the dialogue window: the portrait of the character talked to.
• So far, the mod is not able to fix the quiet murmur of the characters that fight unarmed.
• The PC's biography cannot be put into the designated spot, so the generic IWD2 biography will still show there. Your PC's background introduced by the mod, and to which the NPCs will refer to, will be written in your journal early in the game.
• If any NPC was petrified, and then restored to life via Stone to Flesh, it will interfere with the character's file, and will eventually cause the game to crash when the character is called upon to say anything. You will need to either re-load and avoid the petrification, or import a new copy of the character via the Character Arbitration screen.

A note about NPCs in IWD2EE and future development

IWD2EE adds the ability to have regular, BG- or BG2-style NPCs that can wait to be recruited, join, leave, hang around after being kicked out, etc. IWD2 NPC currently does not work this way, and is unlikely to change. Converting the current NPCs to the IWD2EE style would require a fair bit of writing and design work, and the original author is gone. In the same vein, crossmod content with the NPCs added by IWD2EE (or other, future mods) is also unlikely.

If you should encounter any bugs, please report them to the authors at The IWD2 NPC Project forum. In addition, The IWD2 NPC Project is available on GitHub, so fixes and changes can be submitted by the community.

First time installing a mod? Check out G3's comprehensive tutorial: A New Player’s Guide to Installing and Playing Mods.

Windows
The IWD2 NPC Project for Windows is distributed as a self-extracting archive and includes a WeiDU installer. To install, simply double-click the archive and follow the instructions on screen.

Alternatively, the files can be extracted into your game directory using 7zip or WinRAR. When properly extracted, your game directory will contain setup-iwd2npc.exe and the folder iwd2npc. To install, double-click setup-iwd2npc.exe and follow the instructions on screen.

You can run setup-iwd2npc.exe in your game folder to reinstall, uninstall or otherwise change components.

macOS
The IWD2 NPC Project for macOS is distributed as a compressed tarball and includes a WeiDU installer.

First, extract the files from the tarball into your game directory. When properly extracted, your game directory will contain setup-iwd2npc, setup-iwd2npc.command, and the folder iwd2npc. To install, double-click setup-iwd2npc.command and follow the instructions on screen.

You can run setup-iwd2npc.command in your game folder to reinstall, uninstall or otherwise change components.

Linux
The IWD2 NPC Project for Linux is distributed as a compressed tarball and does not include a WeiDU installer. Linux users will need to do a one-time install of WeiDU (and a few other adjustments) as described in this great writeup.

To install, run 'WeInstall iwd2npc' in your game folder.

Note for Complete Uninstallation
In addition to the methods above for removing individual components, you can completely uninstall the mod using setup-iwd2npc --uninstall at the command line to remove all components without wading through prompts.

The IWD2 NPC Project has three separate components:

Install joinable NPCs for IWD2

This is the main component and will make 10 joinable NPCs available. More information is provided in the following sections

Female Gnome Avatars

This component lets you select a different avatar for female gnomes:

• Use Female Mage Elf Avatars for Female Mage Gnome Avatars
• Use Female Thief Halfling Avatars for Female Mage Gnome Avatars
• Use Male Mage Dwarf Avatars for Female Mage Gnome Avatars (Game default)

Use Alternate NWN-Style Portraits for All NPCs

This component will swap the default, IWD2-style portraits of the ten NPCs with an alternative, NWN-style set of portraits. You can view the original IWD2-style portraits side-by-side with the NWN-style portraits in the IWD2 NPC gallery.

There are currently 10 joinable NPCs available to choose from (full information is available in the included appendix)

• Diriel, a Neutral Evil Elven Druid Male (A Romantic Option for an Elven Female PC)
• Hildury, a Chaotic Good Half-Orc Barbarian Female
• Jaemal, a Neutral Good Aasimar Sorcerer Male (A Romantic Option for a Male or Female PC)
• Nikosh Bracegirdle, a True Neutral Halfling Rogue Male
• (Sir) Wind Nord, a Lawful Good Human Paladin Male
• Peony, a Chaotic Neutral Gnome Wizard-Illusionist Female (A Romantic Option for a Male PC)
• Prachi, a Lawful Neutral Human Monk Female
• Rizdaer, a Lawful Evil Drow Fighter Male (A Romantic Option for a Female PC)
• Salomeya, a Chaotic Evil Half-Elven Bard Female (A Romantic Option for a Male PC)
• Valeero, a Neutral Good Human Priestess of Lathander Female

At the start of the game, you will have two options – either importing the full pre-created party of 6 NPCs which will appear in your party selection menu as "Nord's Company" or you can select "New Party", create your Protagonist and add 5 NPCs. You will handle NPC joining and removal via Import/Export.

Each NPC can be imported at different levels. Sir Nord, Salomeya, Jaemal, Diriel, Valeero and Rizdaer lend themselves more easily to having higher levels at party creation than the PC, Hildury, Peony, Prachi and Nikosh. Suggested levels are:

• Level 6: Sir Nord and Valeero
• Level 3: Diriel, Jaemal, Salomeya and Rizdaer
• Level 1: Hildury, Nikosh, Peony and Prachi

When you are creating the character it is up to you if you want to use the portraits, colors and soundsets that are provided by the mod. Keeping each NPC's name as it was given by the mod will save you a bit of confusion when you start seeing the banter.

PCs will also have some low-power items equipped on them. Your PC will get a small gift as well in the very beginning of the game from Sir Nord (he does not have to be in the party for that).

There are five basic types of banter in the mod.

• Scenery banter: Scenery banter includes interjections into the game texts and short commentary on what's going on.
• Player-initiated dialogues: Player-initiated dialogues (PID) can be accessed via the "P" button at any time, but its use is mostly utilitarian, allowing you to see a dialogue with an NPC earlier. The option to 'push' the next available banter will only help for those scripted to happen in that particular chapter. In two special cases a PID is used to unlock some extra content. It will show an additional option for Diriel in Fell Forest , and one more for Sir Nord in Chapter 4 if you don't have Salomeya in the party.
• NPC-NPC banter: NPCs will talk to one another. These banters are distributed throughout the game and cannot be advanced using the Ctrl+I cheat. You can however press "P" and select one of the options to see if you can 'push' the next available banter. It will only help for banter that is scripted to happen in that particular chapter. Banters scripted to come later will come later.
• Friendship sequences: All NPCs will have two types of banter with your main character (providing you followed the guidelines for main character creation in the "Quirks" section): sequential and event-related. Expect to see roughly one or two sequential dialogues per chapter, and one "long" event related dialogue per chapter. You can press "P" and select one of the options to see if you can 'push' the next available banter with the NPC. It will only help for banter that is scripted to happen in that particular chapter. Banters scripted to come later will come later.
• Romantic Banter: Five NPCs have additional romantic love-talks with the PC. Expect roughly two love-talks per chapter. You can press "P" and select one of the options to see if you can 'push' the next available banter with the NPC. It will only help for banter that is scripted to happen in that particular chapter. The love-talks scripted to come later will come later. Flirts are a special type of the romantic banter. The NPC-initiated flirts will occur independently, increasing in frequency as your romance progresses. PC-initiated flirts can be accessed at any time when you are far enough in the romance via hitting the "P" button and selecting the appropriate option.

There are five NPCs that you can romance. A male PC can romance Jaemal, Salomeya and Peony, while a female PC can romance Diriel (elf only), Rizdaer and Jaemal. You can stop each NPC from romancing you at any time via the PID menu. Additionally, most of the other characters have options in their friendship paths to flirt with them a little. Sometimes they are limited by the PC's race (i.e. you can flirt with Hildury if you are a half-orc). That flirting does not result in a 'full' romance, but will be reflected in the epilogues if you didn't pursue one of the main romances.

The mod determines whether or not the NPC will romance you based on your character's build and what you say. None of the build parameters is prohibitive (except in Salomeya's case as she will not romance bards), but instead they decrease or increase your chances to romance the character. For example, if your PC sports an exotic race (a Drow, Tiefling or Aasimar), it will increase his chances to romance Peony. The match will be determined after your character has the three first talks with the NPC (unless she or he indicates earlier that the romance is undesirable.).

While each character will take some abuse and insults, especially if s/he can't resist the character you've built, they might eventually lose interest in your PC if what you say is not to their taste.

Other NPCs can have romantic designs of their own on either your PC or on the romanced NPC, or a romanced NPC might just have troubles choosing between the PC and an NPC. They will express their feelings via romantic conflicts. There are two types of romantic conflicts: the interjections into the early romantic dialogues, and separate banters. The 'main' conflicts (shown in bold for each romance below) will have additional banter and interjections; the 'secondary' conflicts will have interjections only.

The Conflicts:

• Diriel: Jaemal, Rizdaer, Salomeya, Nord, Valeero, Prachi
• Jaemal: Rizdaer, Salomeya, Diriel (elf), Nikosh (halfling or gnome)
• Rizdaer: Jaemal, Peony, Diriel (elf), Nikosh (halfling or gnome)
• Peony: Rizdaer, Salomeya, Hildury (half-orc), Prachi
• Salomeya: Jaemal, Peony, Hildury (half-orc), Prachi
• Jaemal: Peony, Salomeya, Hildury (half-orc), Prachi

The mod comes with two sets of portraits, an IWD2-style set of portraits by Dani, and an alternative, NWN-style set of portraits. The IWD2 portraits are used by default, but can be swapped to the NWN-style portraits with the Use Alternate NWN-Style Portraits for All NPCs component.

Regardless, both sets are installed to the portraits folder in your game and will be available in the custom portrait selection during character creation. Whichever set is selected for use by the NPCs will be named after the NPCs (e.g. diriell and diriels, hilduryl and hildurys, etc.) and the set not being used by the NPCs will be named starting with "p#" (e.g. p#diril and p#diris, p#hildl and p#hilds, etc.) If you want to mix-and-match between the two sets, you can customize the portrait for each NPC any time you wish during the game via Customize Appearance option.

A couple of powerful +5 weapons (a bastard sword and a war hammer) can be summoned via CLUAConsole using the item codes P#RIZBAS and P#RIZHAM. Originally they were intended as a gift from Sneaky Riki in the Severed Hand to Rizdaer, to help you defeat the avatar of Xvym, but as the title implies they are cheesy overpowered pieces of work.

Domi created this mod. You can find out more about The IWD2 NPC Project by visiting the forum or her project page. Visit the Gibberlings Three Forums for information on this and any other Gibberlings Three mods on which we may be working.

As always, the mod would not have been possible without the friendly gang of Gibberlings and friends. May we gibber for years to come! It's difficult to express just how much help and encouragement I received with this project from the following people:

Scripting Know-How:

• Avenger
• the bigg
• CamDawg
• cirerrek

Voice Actors:

• Diriel: Matt
• Hildury: Aleta Overton
• Jaemal: Omahdon AKA Edwyn Tiong
• Nikosh: David Henderson
• Sir Nord Wind: Matt
• Peony: Noctalys AKA Caitlin
• Prachi: Berelinde
• Rizdaer: TheWizard AKA Robert Dupuis
• Salomeya: Meg Stutzman
• Valeero: Brittney Hudson AKA kalakitsune

Soundset Editing:

• Ascension64

Artwork:

• IWD style character portraits by Dani AKA MrsCake
• NWN portraits by BioWare
• Music themes by BioWare

Custom Items:

• Avenger

QA/QC Team

• Berelinde
• Raven Song
• Twani
• Ycvflute
• Noctalys
• Evilyn
• Gorilym
• Kaeloree
• Shieara

Tools Used in Creation

• WeiDU by Wes Weimer, the bigg, and Wisp
• Near Infinity by Jon Olav Hauglid, FredSRichardson, and argent77 and the special IWD2EE fork from OlvynChuru
• DLTCEP by Avenger
• IESDP maintained by igi and lynx
• Notepad++, by the Notepad++ team
• WeiDU Notepad++ Highlighters by cmorgan, updated by argent77
• ConTEXT Text Editor by Eden Kirin
• WeiDU ConTEXT Highlighters by Idobek, updated by cmorgan

The modding community for the Infinity Engine has been going strong for more than 15 years now, and is the culmination of thousands of unpaid modding hours by fellow fans of the game. Modders produce their best work and players get the best, well-supported mods when we all work together.

There are two big ways to upset this harmony. One is to claim someone else's work as your own. The second is to host and redistribute a mod without permission from the author(s).

Be kind to your fellow players and modders. Don't do either.

Version 7 - January 26, 2025

• IWD2EE now has a 'core' component that is used for detection rather than the config file

Version: Test Build for v7 - November 12, 2023

• Should be fully compatible with IWD2EE
• Hildury only had her correct bio if she started at level 1
• Valeero's Decorated Helmet had an undocumented +1 armor bonus that has been removed
• Valeero's Decorated Helmet only came with one charge of Sunscorch, despite having a max of 25 charges. It will now start with 25 charges; feedback as to whether this imbalances the early part of the game is appreciated
• Items which cast spells now invoke the underlying spells instead of copying their effects; this allows the items to reflect changes made to the spells by other mods (e.g. IWD2EE)
• Salomeya's Garrote wasn't working well and has been revised. Using Salomeya's Garrote will now create a garrote (once per day) in the magical weapon slot (like Black Blade of Disaster). You then attack your target like a normal melee weapon and the garrote will disappear after a single hit or ten rounds, whichever happens first.
• The language-specific parts of the character and biography files are now derived from the translation files instead of maintaining (literal) scores of redundant files
• Worked on making the alternative avatars for Peony more reliable; previously they were inconsistent about updating the avatar on the inventory screen
• Minor typos in some banter scripting could have been preventing a few banters
• IWD2 NPC was assuming a few dialogues and scripts didn't exist and was creating them without checking; this could potentially overwrite changes from other mods
• For compatibility, more items are copied from current items and altered instead of being created from static files
• Added a new component to select the alternative NWN-style portraits for the NPCs
• Bug fix from paladin84 where one branch of a dialogue was not creating the item it was supposed to
• Updated Russian translation, courtesy of paladin84
• NPC soundsets will now play during character creation. thanks paladin84
• Typo fixes
• Overall modernization of the package: added hooks for Project Infinity, updated readme and appendix (lots of old, broken links), many internal optimizations, removed unused files

Version 6 - September 24, 2021, by p_zombie, packed by jastey

• Russian version by p_zombie.
• Fixed repeating dialogue in JAEMB.D.
• Removed duplicated line in P#NIKOB.D.
• Removed loop in P#PRACB.D.
• Fixed Rizdaer/Prachi dialogue mixup in P#RIZDB.D.
• Party.txt moved from IWD2NPC to directories IWD2NPC\English and IWD2NPC\Russian, as it requires translation.
• The IWD2NPC\chr directory has been moved to the IWD2NPC\English and IWD2NPC\Russian directories, as it requires translation.
• Setup-IWD2NPC.TP2 - added Russian language. Further everywhere in the original added /%LANGUAGE%/.
• WeiDU version updated to v246.
• Updated readme (by jastey).

Version 5 - September 25, 2014

• Streamlined audio decompression
• Fixed a dialogue loop in a Rizdaer-Diriel banter

Version 4 - April 30, 2010

• Updated to WeiDU v216

Version 3 - March 2, 2010

• Removed setup.bat
• Updated to WeiDU v213

Version 2 - December 31, 2007

• Added Diriel's Romance
• Fixed the messages for the romances
• Fixed Hildury's subplot
• Fixed typos

Version 1 - September 18, 2007

• Initial release