Hello hello! I am new and just got "BG2 complete" here, which I'll start playing pretty soon. I finished BG2 a few times before (without mods) till the cds got smashed, so I am used to the game mechanics.

The problems is that I want to keep the game difficulty slider thing on Core, since raising or lowering it feels like the computer is (or I am) cheating. So the question is, are there any mods you'd recommend out there that increase the game difficulty by making the computer opponents more intelligent (making better target choices, smarter ability usage, etc) / numerous / higher level / better equipped?

Any input would be appreciated...

I can wholeheartedly recommend Sword Coast Stratagems, both for BG 1 and 2.
It makes enemies smarter and more resourceful.
One of my all time favourite mod for any game.

Stay away from Tactics - it just makes enemies ridiclously overpowered instead of making them smarter. But try it if you are a masochist or are using hacked/cheated characters.

Thanks for the info. I'll find them both and see what they do. I'm open to masochist level stuff but not if all the mod does is to multiply enemy damage and things like that.

That depnds on how you men. From what I understand of some of the tactics stuff, it involves having the duergar at the beginning beefed up to the level of being able to summon balors.

Heh thanks for the warning. That is a bit too much by the sound of it. Is that even beatable with a new party with non magical weapons and such?

It is hard to explain without giving an example I guess. I don't remember enemies using breach on my mages or dispelling my fighters' buffs or trying to interrupt my casting enough and things like that. It felt like they weren't using all their potential. Am I making sense? So an AI tweak or something is what I'm mainly looking for (without encounters with things like +500% damage/-100AC/+300HP boost for enemies or mages somehow casting 20 defensive spells at once the second they see me if possible).

The higher level/better equipped improvement I am looking for is mostly for ToB, where I felt like a god tearing through everything (which although fun at first got somewhat boring after a while). I ran into a mod called Ascension that sounded very promising to up the difficulty of ToB. Gonna try that as well.

Tactics is beatable, but it requires cheesing the AI, having min-maxed characters and other such things that most players looking for a challenge wouldn't want to deal with.
It does feature some AI changes, but most of the added difficulty comes from making some specific enemies much more powerful and adding more stuff to fight.

Tactics' other problem, imo, is that it only modifies some of the encounters in the game, which means you get difficulty spikes all over the place.


Sword Coast Stratagems, OTOH, is mostly AI changes, especially to casters, although you do have options for making some types of enemies (like dragons or demons stronger).

It does things like giving a few potions to most humanoid enemies, allowing casters to pre-buff before fighting you, forcing monsters to make smarter use of their abilities and spells, etc...
It's very modular, so you can pick which options you like and leave the rest off.


And Ascension does work very well to make ToB harder, although it's mostly the fights against the other Children of Bhaal that are changed (except the drow for some reason), but SCS can pick up the slack for the rest of the encounters.
Be warned that the final battle is extremely hard, especially if you don't know what's coming.

Thanks a lot for the info. SCS sounds like what I'm looking for (not a big fan of cheesing/min-maxing... kills the rp "mood" for me). I'll add Ascension to that, along with maybe a new companion mod or two, and see where that goes once I'm done with IWD2.

Off-topic: I wonder if there are any mods that add new locations similar to the Watcher's Keep? That place is insane fun.