[Lava]

Welcome to The Ink Gallery: a new Athkatlan establishment, and a place of many wonderful books. Read them, and let the tomes present you with epic battles and deadly struggles. Become the main hero/heroine of these books, even if only for a short moment, and face powerful enemies. Test your mettle and learn how to become even stronger than you already are. Remember, however, that there is a fee to be paid.
You may find The Ink Gallery behind the Council of Six building -- it may be reached either through its halls, or from outside, through the covered pathway right below the newly opened section of the area.
The mod is one of the Athkatlan Grounds mods, which is a series of smaller fan expansions created to make the main city of Baldur's Gate II even more interesting.

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[p6kocka]

Hello. Isn't the download link broken?

[Lava]

Should be fixed now! Cheers!

[Raphenox]

Hello Lava, 

I'm doing a mega mod build and really looking forward to playing your mods. I was wondering if the Ink Gallery is viable in EET? I remember having a lot of gold left over with nothing to do with it so this interests me. 

Thank you.

[Lava]

Hi! I have not tested it on EET, but I can't think of anything that would require special treatment. There are no chapter checks, no companions, the area is part of the government district, so... I think it should work fine? If you decide to give it a try, and everything works fine, let me know and I'll add EET tag on my downloads site.

[Raphenox]

Sure thing! It'll be awhile, I'm including a lot of mods and it'll take me the whole summer to finish the campaign provided it doesn't break. I'm thinking of doing reviews of all the mods I install like Sergio,  xiaoleiwen, and Thom Merrilin. We'll see in 2 months, cross my fingers.

[Lava]

Good luck!

[Raphenox]

Not sure where I should be asking this, but how much exp does each mod have? Like, if I'm doing Ink Gallery, how much exp should I expect. I'm planning to complete all the mods that don't seem to mainly focus on an NPC like Foundling, (about 15 quests). I'm trying to figure out how much to adjust the exp. As a reference, all characters will be double multiclass with level cap removed. I don't care if I reach level 50, but I just don't want it happening in chapter 2 which is where I imagine most of these quests will take place.

[Lava]

There are 12 fights here. The enemies provide somewhere between 10 000 and 25 000 XP per battle (17 500 would be the average, then). After each battle, one character may get an extra 5 000 XP. So like 270 000 in total + a little something for completing all the battles. However, remember that's divided between your characters. For comparison:

Completing Planar Sphere gives you 45 500 XP per character (x6 is 273 000 XP), and that's just the final XP, without each individual XP gain for killing enemies, demons. According to the Wiki, during the Planar Sphere quest, you also get:

Tot Group XP includes:

• 17,500 Activate Sphere
  
• 23,500 Finish Golem
  
• 24,500 Rune Puzzle
  
• 28,750 Defeat Lavok
  
• 10,000 Demon Heart
  
• 45,500 Restore Engine
  

So like another 149 750 XP. Now add XP for killing all the lesser enemies. 

During my quests in general, you will always get a bit less XP than for major Act 2 and Act 3 quests.

It may be worth noting that you most likely won't get to fight all the battles right in the beginning, because you need to pay some gold for each test, and so over 40 000 in total (IIRC). The quest is supposed to be a new way of spending your gold.

[Lumorus]

Hi Lava,

I'm always impressed by how well the new locations fit into the original game!

A gallery where you can enter books and boost certain stats by fighting is really a great feature.
I gave it a quick try using keyboard cheats to check it out—and realized that I should really only do this once my party is much more experienced and has much better gear. 

It was good to see that the repetitive dialogue with the gallery director has also been successfully fixed when Yoshimo is in the party.

What I’ve been wondering is whether wearing the comfortable shoes in the gallery has any effect—so far, it doesn’t seem to have had any consequences when I haven’t worn them.

[Lava]

Thanks! There was a bug with Aerie/Yoshimo in the dialogue, but it's not fixed (the check was for the wrong companion). 

Remember that some fights may be easier than others; it all depends on who's in your party or on the approach. 

As for the slippers -- nope. I just thought that since the owner says there are slippers available for the customers, I should add them, even if for fun. 

Cheers!

[Lumorus]

You're welcome! In version 1.3, I didn't have any more trouble with Yoshimo.

Even when both Yoshimo and Aerie were in the party, everything went smoothly.

That’s right, thanks for pointing that out—I think the three Devas are more suited for the slightly more advanced battles.

All right, thanks! I thought the idea with the slippers was really cute; maybe I’ll put them on just for fun.

[Lava]

Even when both Yoshimo and Aerie were in the party, everything went smoothly.

Actually, the problem happened when only one of the was in the party, and the other one is missing, but--doesn't matter. It's fixed now.

Cheers! Have fun during your run!