Crucible
Crucible features a continuation of the story once the player closes their pocket plane in ToB. Instead of immediately beginning the final fight at the Throne of Blood, the player will find themself in Gehenna outside of Bhaal's kingdom. From here, the player will need to assault Bhaal's kingdom and fight to the Throne. This mod includes about a dozen new areas, created by Acifer, and delves into the lore surrounding Bhaal while offering many new and challenging opponents and tactical encounters. The player should expect the mod to add about 1 to 3 hours to the game.
Versioning
Version 2.3
June 3, 2024
Updated door transitions.
Updated item image.
Components
The player has the option to install the mod with or without ai generated voices for the NPCs. Please note: even if the player chooses to install without ai for npcs, the opening scrawl will still be voiced by ai.
Difficulty for this mod is heavily tied to the difficulty slider to include the numbers and types of enemies encountered along with the abilities they choose to use. Insane and LoB difficulties are going to be in line with Tactics/Ascension level difficulty while anything less will be much more approachable to users who avoid difficulty increasing mods.
Compatibility
This mod is for Enhanced Edition ONLY and is compatible with Ascension and mods that add IWD spells into Baldur's Gate. In both instances, Crucible needs to be installed after these mods.
I have not tested Crucible to see if it works with Wheels of Prophecy, but I'm guessing there will be an incompatibility.
This is one I have gone back and forth on, but I'm deciding to make this mod incompatible with MiH - EQ. Prior to my departure from G3, I expressed a number of concerns I have with making Crucible compatible due to the many technical issues with MiH - EQ but I ultimately erred on the side of not stirring up a can of worms. Now that I have control over my work, I am restricting compatibility. MiH - EQ and its author has zero concerns or regards for other mods and issues that may arise with the changes MiH - EQ makes. Those changes are broad and ill described in regards to either what is being changed and how it is being changed. Further compounding the issue is the author's decision to hide everything being done behind SFO. This leads to multiple downstream impacts that I've found along with a number of crashes to desktop (again, I've found and left unreported due to the author's hostile attitude). In an abundance of caution, I do not want to have to deal with bug reports in something going haywire in Crucible due to MiH - EQ.
Emerging Technology
This mod uses ai voice acting for net new characters courtesy of Replica Studios and ElevenLabs.io. Any characters with prior voice work, such as NPCs, do NOT have voice acting for any new lines of dialog.
Reviews
"It is, genuinely, one of the best mods I’ve ever played." - Llewren @ https://smolderingmodsbar.com/crucible-bg2ee/