User talk:Faalagorn

Hello Faalagorn and welcome to BGwikia!
I replied your post on BD forum on Obe’s training but I find it more appropriated to talk about details on wikia editing here, so here we go.

As you may already know, we can go to “Customize” at bottom of the screen and add “What links here” to “My Tools” to quickly find what links to the current page, then we can edit those pages to reflect new links, then mark the old pages with the “Delete” template for admin to take action.

Although not apparent, the “Appears in” row in all infoboxes is used to store which games they exist. It’s OK to customize the infobox if you have new ideas, but please try to keep using Infobox Builder whenever possible for easy modifications for future contributors, our goal is to make a friendly environment for everybody to edit, including infobox editing, so we don’t need fancy looking infoboxes / templates like some other sites may need to attract more viewers.

(There seems to some strange bugs in Item Infobox that whenever a edit is made, it becomes un-usable via visual editor for the next few days, other infoboxes are fine though)

From my exp in this wikia, ToB, SoD, BP are generally considered separate so we should list them accordingly, but for an item that exists across all companions, such as Ankheg Plate Mail we just use “Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate: EE, Baldur's Gate II and Baldur's Gate II: EE”

The categories in BGwikia are in need of overhaul and are currently openly discuessed, though I’m still waiting for admin’s response on the topic.

Feel free to edit wherever you see fit, Near Infinity and EEkeeper would be of great help.

I see you just started a new saga run, good luck! And when you reach SoD chapters, I hope we can work together to fill more SoD stuff here. But please do keep your own pace and happy gaming! Islandking (talk) 02:35, August 17, 2017 (UTC)

Okay, but please beware that once an infobox template has been edited in source mode, it’s difficult (or nearly impossible) to change back to Infobox Builder mode ever again.

Also, for some reason all previews on IB template pages are failing to represent the newest changes, so if you’re adding an infobox to an article page, you have to view all options by actually going to the template page and pressing the edit button (just remember to press cancel afterwards).

Islandking (talk) 12:30, August 17, 2017 (UTC)

Sadly, according to a wikia staff’s reply on central community forum, IB template saved in source mode, or even when being switched to within Infobox Builder will instill some unnecessary codes, no matter the edits, will make the Builder fail to recognize. It may not happen all the time, but a lot. Worse, "Undo" edits won't work :-(

But there’re some IB on this wikia that are already edited via source:

So feel free to edit the above.
 * Infobox creature
 * Infobox deity
 * Infobox item
 * Infobox spell

If you spot typo, or plan to make some simple edits on other infoboxes, could you please tell me what you’re going to do and I can do it for you?

Thanks.

Islandking (talk) 13:37, August 17, 2017 (UTC)

Hi Faalagorn, a question if I may
I see you’re very skilled with codes, I’ve encountered a minor issue I think I can consult you for an answer:

As you see in the “Table for experience, weapon proficiency points and hitpoints” section of Fighter page, I want content in every cell aligned to center, is there any way other than inputing | style="text-align:center;"| in front of every cell to make it happen, if there is, it’d clean up lots of unnecessary codes.

Thanks.

Islandking (talk) 03:16, August 18, 2017 (UTC) ---

Sure! The "style" attribute can be attached to a table as whole (and also to a rows) in addition to cells, so it's enough to put "style="text-align:center;" just once, after the {| marker. I edited the page, so see if that's what you meant :).

—Faalagorn☎/✓ 10:37, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

About improvements and usage guidelines
Hi Faalagorn,

I saw your edit on Fighter page, thanks I’ll copy the codes the next time I edit those class pages :-)

I’m not sure what you mean, do you suggest we add new IB such as “infobox:weapon” “infobox:gem” “infobox:potion”, “infobox:wands” etc?

From my experience using visual editor, it’s just like scrolling up & down searching for blanks I want to fill in, I don’t need to remove anything, does source mode require removing all unfilled fields?

You mean there’s a way to remove the fillable blank of “name” while still maintaining the article name on top of the IB?

“Other name” should be left intact imo, as there’re a number of items with 2 different names.

Never noticed the “title” thing myself ;-) where is it?

“Area” & “Place” exist long before I know this site, I figured that area is, well, an “area” that contains “places”, I saw some pages just put “Beregost, Candlekeep, Nashkel” in “Area” for items that can be found in various places. And we have the main article to explain the details anyway.

“Appears in” bugs me as well, but as I was editing those IBs, I generally don’t delete or modify the existing fields, because doing that will make the content that already made in those fields disappear and we may accidently delete some good edits by others. What I’m suggest here, is to use "bg", totsc", "bg:sod" "bg2:tob"“bg2ee:tob” etc. in the field, not the full lengthy names. This way we deliver the message while maintaining the existing edits.

What’s on your mind about order sorting?

It’s OK to input lbs. etc on the four templates I listed on your talk page, for using will surely break the Builder. Islandking (talk) 12:28, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

About categories

Yeah you have a point, full name might just do, we just wait for admin opinion :) Islandking (talk) 12:34, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

Oh I see, bear with me with my bad English skills...

The preview and guidelines have been outdated for some time, go ahead and update them, sorry I’m only able to overhaul the IB themselves but I have no knowledge on how to update previews and guidelines, which may already have caused some confusion.

OK but please keep the “name” “other name” changes within the 4 templates I listed for now, not wanting to see the changes break the builder accidentally ;-)

“Title” never seems to appear in VE

Yeah the editors before us just use comma to separate different areas, sometimes with (ARXXX) behind the area names for codes, minor issue, but yes, should be documented.

Will adding “bg = yes, totsc = yes” etc make the IB unnecessarily longer? There are potentially 7 games, 9 if BP are included, yes the section could be collapsed by default, but still… or you know some ways to avoid the problem while maintaining the builder?

Islandking (talk) 13:41, August 18, 2017 (UTC)

Nice update on item IB
Really happy to view item IB in its full glory, haven’t had chance to see it before, feels good to have people with coding skills around.

One more question ;-)

Where can I find color codes that can be used in “style="background:XXXX;color:XXXX;", I want to find some suitable colors for the cells in the spell table in Cleric and Druid  page to reflect some class only spells.

Thanks again.

Islandking (talk) 01:53, August 19, 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Faalagorn, for both the technical and ease of use part, it’s always good to learn something new.

The 0.5 transparent looks great, it’s not too sharp, like other options. I think a gray color, like the spell icon of Chant would serve well as background for cleric spells, and light green for druid, yeah, I’ll poke at it tomorrow :-)  Islandking (talk) 12:28, August 19, 2017 (UTC)

Then I'll not use the transparency, I've actually found 2 candidates: What do you think? Islandking (talk) 15:28, August 19, 2017 (UTC)

Actually, the first one is for Cleric, 2nd is for Druid, I think the separate background color can make some exclusive spells more easily to be identified. Islandking (talk) 16:02, August 19, 2017 (UTC)

Hi, are you sure Jaheira can use Harper's Call in bgee? Islandking (talk) 16:45, August 19, 2017 (UTC)

Hi, as you may already know, retain from using  , things like that in “Appears in” field of the infoboxes, else it breaks the classic editor, because ce can’t handle a template within a template. Yeah, they really need to work harder to improve the coding :-)  Islandking (talk) 17:09, August 19, 2017 (UTC)

In truth, I’ve not used Jaheira in bgee yet but from exp spell slot table she can’t access to lv5 under 161000 cap, she’ll get f(7)/d(8), just one level below to unlock her lv5 slot, which is only possible in SoD thanks to the increased 500000 cap.Islandking (talk) 00:55, August 20, 2017 (UTC)


 * I initially thorught of marking it as "SOD", but I realized there's no template

You don't need to do that, it's already listed in http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Companion#Baldur.27s_Gate:_Siege_of_Dragonspear_companions

Actually, there is,  ;-)

Islandking (talk) 13:37, August 20, 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I just found Abazigal page, so may be it's OK to leave "name" field fillable? Islandking (talk) 02:40, August 21, 2017 (UTC)

And this page as well.

Hello and thank you!
Howdy!

iv been playing lately and making pages, i know i dont know enough coding yet to make solid pages, or that i would never finish this game if i could with how i make pages (when i run into something while playing the game that does not exist in the Wiki)

So please, continue making great content, its much appreciated.

WindOfTheUnwrittenLaw (talk) 21:35, August 27, 2017 (UTC)

Re:Dialogues
Hello Faalagorn, it’d be nice to have a template for dialog trees to fit in, as of now people can only use indent to build multi conversation options, which is a pain to watch & edit.Islandking (talk) 03:29, August 29, 2017 (UTC)

Hello Faalagorn, I just saw your edits one Haer'Dalis page, one question, what's the difference between and < br / > ? Islandking (talk) 01:22, August 30, 2017 (UTC)


 * for the time being I'll be closing the tags just in case

I think I'll do that from now on, one thing I learned from using wiki is to compromise as much as I can for other people's sake. Islandking (talk) 01:55, August 30, 2017 (UTC)

Re: About one of your recent edits
You brought up a good topic. But let me clarify a bit first: the shorty races upper cases were there before I edit :-) but I did made “s” into the yellowed colored links and I did it purely for aesthetic's sake, so it’s not auto-correction, feel free to change it if you find it otherwise, but I do notice the [could happen] sometimes, like the spaces in style=background lines.

Now the case issue is indeed annoying when trying to find the correct one to make links, which is why I always search and open a page, copy the page name from the article to fill the link field. As for the standard, can’t say much as I have little knowledge of it, but I think words like “from” “to” “in” “of” should be lower cases.

Islandking (talk) 01:58, August 31, 2017 (UTC)

World Map snapshot
Hi Faalagorn, not sure if your BG2EE is unmoded, but if it is, could you snap soa and tob map with area codes like the sod map in World Map page using NearInfinity? Thanks.

Islandking (talk) 04:15, September 1, 2017 (UTC)

More about BG2EE World Map snapshot
From what I know, the only way to have a map with areas in it is to screenshot using a 3rd party software, directly exporting the map file to PNG will not yield any areas, only plain maps, and the area codes shown in NearInfinity is on by default, which is good, so a snapshot will make it just like the SoD map in the World Map page.

Aside from the BGEE map in that page, Dudleyville also present some very good example names for BG1 you may like to check.

It’d great if you can dig up SoD area names, which would be extremely helpful for future walkthroughs  :-D

Thanks in advance, I wish I could do the snapshot myself, but my game is too heavily modded to do that, just take some thoughts where the " red dot " you'd like to place :-)

Islandking (talk) 13:20, September 1, 2017 (UTC)

Good job on the SoD area codes!
Didn't check the page before, that'd be a great reference for NearInfinity. Though be careful not to step on to too many spoilers as I heard you've just brought SoD, after all, enjoying the game is more important :)  Islandking (talk) 15:07, September 1, 2017 (UTC)

Good to know :-), and there isn't much SoD stuff here anyway, but still think should remind you that the sod companions pages have their personal quest there (should be moved to separate page gradually) :-) Islandking (talk) 15:21, September 1, 2017 (UTC)

Hi Faalagorn

Just a thought, maybe we should name spells such as Protection From Fire to Protection From Fire (priest) considering there're Protection From Fire (mage) and the recently Protection From Fire (scroll)?

Islandking (talk) 14:08, September 3, 2017 (UTC)

Spell name (priest) & spell name (wizard)
Not sure about the technical stuff you mentioned but it seems you've already successfully moved all history of “Protection from Fire” to “Protection From Fire”, or are you referring that the renamed page can’t be renamed again?

Also, no matter if we were to rename it to “Protection From Fire (priest)”, I think “Protection From Fire (wizard)” would be a more appropriated name than “Protection From Fire (mage)” considering it’s a spell from wizard spellbook and not only mage, but sorcerer, bards may also cast it.

I noticed a recent activity of Thomaslove92, you may try talking with him.

Islandking (talk) 14:32, September 3, 2017 (UTC)

Admin Rights
Hello Faalagorn and IslandKing. I've sent the same message to both of you - please reply on my talk page.

You've both proposed a bunch of admin tasks to Dutchman and have both contributed huge amount of information to this wiki. As you know, I've not been active for a long time, so I've not had the pleasure of getting to know you both. From what I can see on your talk pages and your contributions, you are both polite, and hardworking members of this community so I would like to promote you both to admin. If you are both happy for this to go forward, please let me know. If one or either of you would prefer not to have the responsibility of an admin, I can grant you rollback rights or leave your right as they are.

Please continue the excellent communication with each other. Do not make wiki-changing decisions on your own. If you cannot agree or reach a compromise, ask other users or simply don't make the changes. You two appear to get on well and speak often about ideas so I'm sure you'll both do great.

I have reviewed the other admins and removed Tommy2215 and Ioulaum from the admin list (due to them being inactive for over a year). This is no reflection on their ability/dedication to the wiki but it's good practice to keep the number admins of any given wiki at a manageable level.

Hope to hear from you both soon, so we can discuss this further. -Thomas Love http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/jackass/images/5/5f/Star_tiny.png [ talk ] 20:24, September 5, 2017 (UTC)


 * Hi Faalagorn. Thanks for getting back to me, it's great to hear from you and get to know your wiki background. I've now made you and Islandking Admins on this wiki. Feel free to add Template:Admin or Template:User admin to your userpage (I saw that youve nominated one of them for deletion, if neither you or Islandking end up using it, by all means delete it).


 * I don't really have any rules or wisdom for you but I encourage you to continue with the excellent communication. As an admin you'll be able to implement (or remove) many interesting features. Considering the excellent communication between you and Islandking, you might want to add the IM chat feature to the Wiki. I'll leave that with you and Islandking as you both know the community on here better than me. Good luck and thank you for your continued efforts on this Wiki. It's great to see that its still growing and improving. -Thomas Love http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/jackass/images/5/5f/Star_tiny.png [ talk ] 20:06, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

Axe of the Unyielding
Hi Faalagorn,

I just browsed Axe of the Unyielding page, in which says "10% chance to decapitate with a successful attack", but I recall that there should be a save vs. death at +4 penality neg, since my game is heaviliy modded, could u open EEk or NI to fact check it? Thanks.

Islandking (talk) 14:33, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

Alright, not sure if it's an EE behavior but I edit it anyway, probably will rework the page later :-) Islandking (talk) 15:08, September 6, 2017 (UTC)

Congrats on the admin rights which means more work needs to be done :-)
With the tools in our hands, it’s time to rework the current category tree this wikia’s long due.

After giving more thoughts on the topic:

1, Abbreviation or full name. A tough choice, while full name does give aesthetic looks, it’s hard to represent Shadows of Amn & Throne of Bhaal campaign in EE2; abbreviations such as "Quests (BG II: EE: SoA)" or "Quests (BG II: EE: ToB)" may sound confusing for casual users at first glance, but it’s still very easy to identify which is which by looking into the category page itself where it states “Quests that appear in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition Shadows of Amn campaign.” etc. in the very first sentence, example.

When it comes to category, my opinion is that practicality takes priority over aesthetics, so maybe it’s still better to stick to abbreviations?

2, As mentioned on 23dutch45man’s talk page,

“Weapons” “Armor” seem redundant, it’s be more convenient for users to just search for “Items” — “Items (campaign name)” --- “Daggers (campaign name)”, instead of adding a “Weapons (campaign name)” in between, plus, that’s the way how EEkeeper handles items.

Category:Abilities is both redundant and confusing as well.

3, New categories:

Instead of using “Characters”, we should divide “Creatures” into “Companions”, “NPCs” and “Enemies” to better distinguish hostile and non-hostile creatures, just like the way the game indicates, Companions-green circle, NPCs-blue, Enemies-red.

Instead of using such as Category:Evocation_spells, we should separate wizard or priest spells from it, otherwise the category would be of no use if users want to check spells school specialist mages may or may not access to. Same goes for druid and cleric spells, which need be separated as well.

5. Corrections such as from “Baldur’s Gate (games) ” to “Baldur’s Gate (game)”

4, A few things I’m not sure of:

The exact spells category naming as mentioned above;

The naming of “Lawful Good”, or should it be “Lawful Good alignment”;or should it still need to be separated for creatures and deities...

Do we really need to have “Side quests” “Main quests” sub categories? My opinion is that “Quests” alone is fine, considering there’re few main quests and they’re already documented in Chapters pages. Of course, “Unmarked quests” is still needed, but should add campaign names added them.

The above are just for important categories, ideas for minor ones yet to come.

What’s your opinion, any new thoughts on it :-) ?

After the category overhaul (which will take a LONG time), the top navigation needs to be reorganized as well, plus the achievements system.

Islandking (talk) 05:55, September 7, 2017 (UTC)

Forum tree
What do you think about the current forum structure, I think it could use some improvements & reorganizations:

New Members Welcome Area

New to Baldur’s Gate Wiki? Introduce yourself here and share your impressions about this BG fan site!

News on Baldur’s Gate Wiki

As a constantly improving wiki, here’s the board for breaking news and hot notices!

Improvements and Suggestions on Baldur’s Gate Wiki

Built by the fans, built for the fans, what do you have in mind about what we can do together to make it a better place for all BG fans?

General Discussion on Baldur’s Gate Game

Talk about everything about this amazing series!

Multiplayer

Find your comrades in arms and ring your deeds across the Sword Coast!

Modding

Mod recommendations, suggestions, techniques, new mods? You can discuss them here!

Off-Topic

Shares your ales and gossips about everything else not related to the game or the site!

Yeah, pretty much the BDforum tree, which I find well organized and people from there will find it familiar here.

Open for suggestions, for better wording and organizing. Islandking (talk) 12:08, September 7, 2017 (UTC)

Category tree (1)
For now I think I’ll focus on the category rework task :-)

(1) abbreviation or full name

There’s a reason why people call it Baldur's Gate Trilogy (not counting SoD here), not four, because Totsc is integrated into BG1 and you can access to its content any time and venture back to Beregost, but it’s not true for SoA and ToB, where the transcension is irreversible  (with the exception of WK), eg. if one miss an item that can only be obtained or upgraded during SoA, you lose it forever, vice versa, you may not obtain ToB items in SoA, which, may be the main reason we need to separate the two campaigns.

With that in mind, the current BGII, BGIIEE templates, especially the latter, need some rework too, they need to tell players which campaigns exactly it stands for, or we have to add lines to make it like BGIIEE (SoA) or BGIIEE(ToB) every time we use it.

About the naming, as I originally suggested on 23dutch45man’s talk page, if we were to put “Baldur’s Gate XXXX” in front of every name, we will end up with too many, which would be frustrating for viewers to skip the front “Baldur’s Gate” for the words behind it for answers. Plus, when editing in VE, it will only show a limited number of results beginning with “Baldur’s Gate”, VE users will have to type in full for the right result, and even if that’s done, if the category is in the right side, which happens at 50% present chance, the space will be so limited for full name to show up, every word behind “Baldur’s Gate” will be “…….”

In the end, names beginning with content, such as “Items (xxx)” will serve better in both editing and the presentation in the category pages, else we end up with tons of “Baldur’s Gate xxxx” showing up in the “B”, imagine that…

Now the exclusive items in EE or in certain campaigns, we can set up a separated category for that, or, as I linked before, Items (BG II: EE: SoA), already have “For new remarkable items in BG II: EE, refer to New items in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition.” And we can always make pages listing all EE exclusive quests, items, etc just as New items in Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition. Since those content are of much smaller number which can be fitted in pages instead of larger number between SoA and ToB which need to be listed in categories.

The listing of all items that BG2EE holds isn’t redundant even if BG2 may already has most of them, because we have to keep in mind that there’’re new players who havn’t played original BG2, and to them, it makes no differences and it’s convenient for them to have a Items BG2EE category which hold all items in BG2EE.

Reply ends here for now, as the topic is of most importance, other discursion can wait and what’s more, I agree with you on your following opinions most of time and I haven’t yet come up with a better idea of where to show News, but preferably on Mainpage, as you’ve suggested, and good job on protecting the widgets :-)  Islandking (talk) 14:09, September 7, 2017 (UTC)

Category tree (2)
Shank, Carbos should generally be considered as enemies as of no dialogue options can make them friendly, therefore they’re Enemies (bg1). But as they’ve showed up in Bridge area as well (not sure if that’s a UB thing, but still), then they’re NPCs (bg2soa)

The rat isn’t an issue as all friendly NPCs will end up blowing with you should you attack them and we can’t category tutorial monks into Enemies just because of that.

I specially mentioned Baldur’s Gate (games) because it’s very confusing for new comers, as they may think that’s for all Baldur’s Gate games instead of BG1

Lawful still matters as some items, classes’ req. checked these titles, not only Good or evil  Islandking (talk) 14:28, September 7, 2017 (UTC)

Category tree (1) – 2
So here’s the rough idea of the tree

Items [this one is of mandatory because of the infobox] > Items in BG: SoD [or Items in SoD]> Daggers in BG: SoD [or Daggers in SoD]

The reason I retain from using "Items in SoD" is because we “may” have a “Baldur’s Gate III Search of Dorn” here so “BG:SoD” may be a better choice as we can always do a “BGIII:SoD” to solve that issue while maintaining uniformity in naming.

And if search by the game titles, we go as:

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear > Items in BG: SoD > Daggers in BG: SoD

And if search by item types:

Items > Daggers >  Daggers in BG: SoD

The problem User:YoDsanklai mentioned: I think the category eg. Dagger +1 will have both Daggers in BG and Daggers in BG: EE which already refect the fact that Dagger +1 appear in both BG1 and BG1EE. and for EE only items, well, no BG1 category, problem already solved :-)

I’m aware of the sort key, question: does the sort key need to be renamed every time we add the category? Islandking (talk) 15:19, September 7, 2017 (UTC)

Category tree (2) -2
Adding to previous (2) -1, what I meant to say is Rat may still fitted in a single NPCs category (Non-playable-creatures), or even a dedicated Animals. And for some NPCs that may turn hostile in some quest outcome, we add both NPCs and Enemies.

Though I’m not sure about quest tree either, keep in mind that the chapter page already host main quests, and only the main quests, for people who want to rush through the game.

Stronghold quests need to be named as "Stronghold quests in game title" as well for the same reason to reserve places for BG3, same as Unmarked quests, companion quests.

If we are to use Lawful good/Good creatures, we’ll have to add Lawful good/Good deities too. We may want to add Lawful good/Good creatures in BG: SoD as you’ve suggested. Not sure about how to sort “Troubles in the Region” yet, have to think about it :-)  Islandking (talk) 16:03, September 7, 2017 (UTC)

Category tree (1) - 1 ps.
I may not make my point clear in preious post Category ​tree (1), so allow me do it again here:

About full name, in addition to the space issue in VE or tablets, it won’t separate the 2 campaigns in EE2 as there’s no proper way to fully name that, except we go extreme such as “Items in Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition: Shadows of Amn”… Islandking (talk) 16:33, September 7, 2017 (UTC)

Category tree (1) – 3
Might category the FF troops in both NPCs and Enemies, not so sure about furious NPCs you mentioned, need more thoughts. May take the creatures’ intentions and fighting capabilities into considerations, like is it hunting you? ex. the Orge in Blushing Mermaid should be an enemy as he’s typically hunting the Ward even if you can “talk” out of trouble, and he’s surely capable of fighting.

About BP, how should we name them, “BP”, “BP1”, “BP2” “BP II: GoT”? or “BG: EE: BP”, “BG II: EE: BP II: GoT”?

Yeah, the Tutorial indeed, be sure to mention the level differences as they come at a pleasant surpise :-)

Still needs to separate EE and original, same as we documented Class name (Baldur’s Gate), EE is gradually becoming a different game from the original, rather than upgrade, with many strategies not functioning any more, the gameplay gap is becoming huge, which is not to everybody’s liking. There’re also people who like classic BG1 more than classic BG2, if we were to build a BG site, we have to take elements all in, and do well to separate them for different needs. Islandking (talk) 01:45, September 8, 2017 (UTC)

Re: About "Abilities"
We can’t always abide the game rule, as kai is even shown as a spell in NI, but we know that’s for development’s sake rather than the actual play, in which all legit spells are dispellable, but kai is not, it’s innate.

But I haven’t given much thought about the solutions, what I have in mind now is that we continue to use the “Ability” infobox template, and use the automatically added “Ability” as a hosting category for subs such as HLA, class abilities, creature specific abilities, etc. Spells like Comet should have both HLA and lv10 spells.

The only thing I'm sure of now is that Character Ability Scores be categoried into Game mechanic Islandking (talk) 01:45, September 8, 2017 (UTC)

Misc. stuff
About the TotSC items/quests/areas you mentioned, I'm planing to create “New items in [game titles]” to identify newly added items in Totsc, BGEE, SoD and BG2EE (and BP2 if any), after that, in all of those category pages, I’ll add “New items in [game titles]” link to the corresponding article like “New items in Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear”

About the forum and mainpage:

My idea is to use

“News on Baldur’s Gate Wiki  

As a constantly improving wiki, here’s the board for breaking news and hot notices!

Keep in mind that this board is generally reserved for admins to post site events only”

as announcements for BGwiki going-ons only, while adding a module for Mainpage to display the news/updates related to games, may as well replace the mainpage polls or even clean up other stuff there for clear views, haven't given much thought here. Top nav menu should be done after the categoy tree is strong enough to stand on its own, but in the maintime, feel free to mod other modules on Mainpage, leaving it to you :-)

Did you get the help from wikia staff? I have a few contacts here that will work, they’re all paid employees who only work on weekdays.

Spell school names:

“Wizard conjuration spells” or “Conjuration spells for wizards”?

"Baldur's Gate II‏‎ ", "Baldur's Gate: EE‏‎", "Baldur's Gate: SoD‏‎" etc should be replaced with full names too, which require bot to get it done, luckily bot only need to remove the categories from the affected article pages :-)

Plus many stuffs I had in mind but can’t think of for now, so many things to do (lol)   Islandking (talk) 01:45, September 8, 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I remembered one thing I need to mention, what do u think about Area S of High Hedge‏‎  kiind of stuff, is it really needed? imo, it's hard to define creatures by locations, there're creatures all over the areas, Islandking (talk) 02:13, September 8, 2017 (UTC)

Misc. stuff (2)
The three “New items” article series are not complete list, they’re just notable equipment, don’t have keys, misc. etc yet, so I’ll probably add “New items in xxxx” categories anyway, xxxx being totsc, tob, sod, ee1 and ee2, for more complete lists, not sure whether should create sub within them, probably not. Leaving “New items in xxxx” article links there, in case someone like to fill totsc,tob gaps.

I already created full name game title categories, under Category:Games, and requested bot to remove all current short named ones, but since we have “Baldur's Gate (game) ” and “Baldur's Gate (city) ” articles, it’s safe to stick to “Baldur's Gate (game)‎” category instead of plain “Baldur's Gate”.

I saw some wiki’ve been using “Game Mechanics” or “Gameplay elements” in fact, haven’t seen one with plain “Mechanics”, but “Lore” sounds good to me :-)

Ah yes, the Baldur’s Gate III, that’d make this place lively for sure :-), and I don’t care if it’s 5e, or 3.5e, (probably still IE engine though) just bring it out already :-D   Islandking (talk) 11:26, September 8, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that’s pretty much the idea for “New items in ………” articles & categories, we’ll see how it fares, which I think would be good :-)

Yes the disambiguation in Baldur’s Gate is not needed, but I see no need for “confuse” template as "Baldur's Gate (city)", "Baldur's Gate (game)" already stand out for themselves, so are "Kylee's Dagger", "Kylee's Dagger (quest)" etc, they’re clear (or may be Kylee's Dagger (item)? not sure, your call). But I guess you add “confuse” to link the two pages together? Shouldn’t need it as it’s listed in Related quest below, just maybe rename the name under Related quest to Kylee's Dagger (quest) and everything should be fine. I’ve also removed “confuse” in Xan page, and add Xan (quest) under Related quest sub header. :-)

Ah ha, I played them, both :-D, and in first title I choose Fighter where Mage shines, and in the second title I choose Mage where Fighter shines, just my luck ;-). There’s a pcsx2 PS2 simulator where you can get on hands free provided you have the games.

Sadly, BD can’t access to IWD2 engine, really sad since IWD2 uses a more advanced edition.

SoD is an improved IE which BG3 will probably use, bad marketing though, to delay tablet users this long, but can’t really blame them for their company size to testing & coding among massive tablet hardware specs.

Bug fixes are always welcome, if they don’t block the exploits left by the original creators (stackable bard song, no save poison weapon….) would be better, there’s a hate going on due to these utterly unnessessarary changes, which limit gameplay freedom :-{

Hopefully, BD've realized their mistakes, (everyone does mistakes) and make a better, free-in-style BG3. Islandking (talk) 13:02, September 8, 2017 (UTC)

Anyways, the forum is ready, feel free to roam it and check & move threads & typo. Islandking (talk) 13:07, September 8, 2017 (UTC)

Hi there, sorry another fact check comes up, could u take a look at the schools of Wish and Limited Wish ? Thanks.

Islandking (talk) 15:00, September 8, 2017 (UTC)

Re: Big World Setup cleanup
Good job on the page, though I think Features should be the first sub-heading instead of the second since that's how they write on their program page.

Mentioned SCS because of its popularity and the need for BW fix pack to get it working on EE :-), but yes, you've sorted it in a better way.

In Time system page, you said in histroy that The Roll of Years is mostly copied, from where? It might be good to restore the section since it tells us how names of year are written.

Actually, that’s how most software present themselves, take https://www.siegeofdragonspear.com/  as an example, first we should let users know what the program is about, plunked their interest, then proceed to tell them specs, supported platforms/games where the software may be used. In BWS’s first paragraph, it first states its mod-manager feature(what they are), then IE(where they are used), which is the same order of the below sub-headings of now.

About SCS in that thread, I think you already did a good job by separating it into See also, SCS bug report thread link shouldn’t be shown in that page, you’re right about this. And I comment the need for fix pack in comments.

Well, let’s just copy what they say about supported games and proceed to adding contents to this wiki, which should be our focus, after all, BWS isn’t our program and we’ve already linked the feedback thread.

Both may be wrong, the journal and the page, even Sarevok’s diary has flawed time, it’s good that you’ve found the original source, and since I couldn’t find any copyright info on that site, I assume it allows for fair use, what I suggest is that we restore the section in Time system page and move it under the Calendar page, then credit the source in External links below, as always.

Also, do you have time the check Wish and Limited Wish spell schools? Thanks.

Islandking (talk) 01:37, September 9, 2017 (UTC)

It seems Wish can be learnt by any mage while Limited Wish is off-limit for Diviner and Enchanter.

Oh you confused me about the installation, specially the NI bookmark part. No intention to do it for now in lest it messed up with something as my modding list is incrediblely long ;-)  Islandking (talk) 03:00, September 9, 2017 (UTC)

Priest sphere category
I'm thinking of removing all related categories for they seem to have no practical use in game, or do you have any knowledge of them?

Islandking (talk) 15:20, September 9, 2017 (UTC)

I see you're adding quest names from journal, great! Remember to keep side notices on which quest these names stand for.Islandking (talk) 15:26, September 9, 2017 (UTC)

Baldur's Gate (city) ?
Hi there, not sure but maybe Baldur's Gate (city) is better? There're some ways to separate the game and the area, if you don't like the disambiguation page, then we should use Baldur's Gate for the game instead, for that seems to be a more important name rightfully for the game itself. But imo, the solution before is better than the current one, right now the three pages - Baldur's Gate (disambiguation), Baldur's Gate (game) and the plain Baldur's Gate which is for the city don't fit to each other and it's confusing for the naming stardard.

Islandking (talk) 14:40, September 10, 2017 (UTC)

About the three Baldur's Gate pages
Sorry I haven’t paid much attention to the issue before.

For other sites, one possible reason I can think of is that some names look clear what they indicate at first glance, which is why editors choose the name to have no (xxxx) behind. But for Baldur’s Gate, the name doesn’t seem to apply anything directly, for people who don’t know much about this game but want to know more about it, they may even think it’s a gate... which is why I think (city) is needed to tell people that this page is about a city, as well as the (game), so that the search results are pretty clear and everybody won't accidentally open a non-desired page, now I reckon the best solution may be to have (disambiguation) as well, and redirect Baldur’s Gate to it.

So:

Baldur’s Gate redirect to Baldur's Gate (disambiguation)

Baldur’s Gate (city)

Baldur’s Gate (game)

Thoughts?

Islandking (talk) 15:19, September 10, 2017 (UTC)

It may be so that many people here are looking for the city page, but what we should do, considering what both  Wikipedia and FRW have been doing, in which both are viewing matters from their own standing points for which Baldur’s Gate, the city, or the game should take the crown, and unfortunately resulting in conflicts in the end, which is understandable but to not to repeat or worsen the issue, the better way of thinking for us is to embrace all, which is to hatnote every type to eliminate all possible confusions without presuming anything what various readers really want, even if the number of people who’re looking for the game title info is small, we can’t neglect that, or we might as well delete the (game) page by assuming it’s of no interest to anybody.

As for the convenience sake, the search result will bring (city) atop of the (game) due to alphabet order.

More importantly, let’s set up a unified naming standard for this wiki, following the more apparent and general logic that lets Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate (disambiguation) both serve as a portal to teleport users to pages they want, at the same time distinguish every possible name for clarity.

And whatever Baldur’s Gate series page will be named, the above standard will only serve it better.

Islandking (talk) 16:24, September 10, 2017 (UTC)

Long sentence means my sleepy head needs asleep :-D

Anyways,

1, The Wikipedia and FRW examples you showed are actually perfect examples why we should hatnote wherever possible. Wikipedia editors weigh the game over the city, while for FRW editors the city matters more than the game, and this difference of thinking from their own standing point ends in the conflict we see now. Their behaviors are understandable, but we’d better not meddle with the issue further in here.

2, Yes, we both see the need for hatnotes. And I agree with you that “confuse” isn’t suitable for the job, while “about” is perfect. But I’m still not very sure about where to use “about” once you build it, because to me, if we hatnote everything there’s no confusion any more. But I guess “about” is still good as it serves as a mini “disambiguation” to provide links to other related pages.

3, Not acutually meant it, just throwing an example that’s very unlikely to happen

4, Which is why we should leave Baldur’s Gate redirect to Baldur’s Gate (disambiguation)

5, I actually backing up the FRW idea in this case, but that’s of no urgent need for this discussion as of now

Yes, the preferred way is not to have disambiguation page at all, like the Farsight (priest) Farsight (wizard) etc spells I just renamed, and as you’ve mentioned, only having (city) and (game) is another possible solution, but is it technically possible to merge 4 pages into 2? And if the changes are too much of burden, maybe we should just stick to the disambiguation idea and not to change too radically, after all, we should focus more on adding info instead of dwelling in things like that. You may try posting on BD forum, but for people who know not so much about the BGwiki structure, I doubt the responses will perfectly fit this wiki. Islandking (talk) 01:35, September 11, 2017 (UTC)

That is GREAT ;-) Will try it later.  Islandking (talk) 11:39, September 11, 2017 (UTC)

Oh and I just added "  " line to creature infobox so you can add reputation info there as well.

Plus the row in spells & abilities infoboxes to identify if they will aggro friendly NPCs :-)

Islandking (talk) 11:43, September 11, 2017 (UTC)

Reputation in creature infobox
Sorry I haven't thought that through but should it be Reputation loss if killed or in other names? I originally typed change  just becaue I thought maybe in BG3 there'll be creatures who actually increase rep if killed. Not sure, thoughts?

Islandking (talk) 12:50, September 11, 2017 (UTC)

-

Alright, loss it is then, feel free to change that label but please leave data source="reputation if killed" in that  row intact, in case BG3 is still using IE and future editors still use this template, this way they may change the label name anytime safely to preserve any edits done before in that row.

Islandking (talk) 14:50, September 11, 2017 (UTC)

Berserker, Rage
It seems that in EE the two abilites have the same name, see the fighter page #berserker&Barbarian, so may be we should rename them as Rage (berserker) and Rage (barbarian) accordingly, and have Berserk (minsc) as a separate page?

Islandking (talk) 00:00, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

Can access to the links due to regional internet blocking :-[, could you upload them here?

Anyways, here's what I see, must be an undocumented mod thing, as I can't find the change in any mod readmes (for now)



Islandking (talk) 00:36, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

That is a most interesting case :-) as I was looking at the the class description while you're seeing from the special abilities menu, I bet it's not the mod thing, most likely a oversight for this inconsistency. :-D Islandking (talk) 00:58, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

There's also a Bestiary page
Topic, in case you haven't seen it, since you're revamping the Creatures page, leave them separate or merge them, your call. :-)

Islandking (talk) 00:40, September 13, 2017 (UTC)

Then do it. ;-)

P.S Talk page seems have no link in most pages except infobox pages etc. because previous admins have enabled Article Comments, so you may as well leave message in comments too.

Islandking (talk) 01:01, September 13, 2017 (UTC)

Re: About the change to Creatures and rages
I guess that happens to all edits from VE or even CE’s visual mode, we don’t have time to correct all edits by other users, may as well leave that, plus I don’t know whether further edits in VE will auto-”correct” the unnecessary space you’ve removed.

Sorry, I was in a hurry, didn’t read through it, thought it was about the naming inconsistency between class description shown in character generation and in Record menu  I’ve corrected my mistakes, see if you like the solution. :-P

Consistency depends, I think, I notice many quest pages have mostly freely named subheaders, which I actually find it creative and necessary in some way, but for some pages such as class, spells, or companions, consistency is preferred to deliver messages efficiently. Islandking (talk) 11:13, September 13, 2017 (UTC)

Rework the achievements
Hi Faalagorn, I’m thinking of improving the achievements in the next few days, as discussed before, I’ll remove the tracks from “Weapons”, “Characters” categories which are prompted for deletion. I’m replacing them with “Items”, “Creatures” category tracks for wider rewarding zone, do you have any thoughts on this matter, such as should we add “Areas” etc tracks as well? Islandking (talk) 14:56, September 14, 2017 (UTC)

Rework the achievements (2)
Then I’ll track areas as well, but for now I retain from adding spells, abilities into the list, because 1, there’s not much to edit anymore in those pages except of course the Gameplay section, which favors quality over quantity. 2, We should think carefully when adding new tracks as from what I heard from central forum, there’s no way we can delete (only disable) the added tracks and the achievement customization page is already too long.

There’s another thing how to category all creatures’ classes, especially for multi-dual-classers. For example Imoen, who belongs to Thieves in BG1, but dual to mage from SoD, and yeah the multi-dual-class naming is a headache as well. Islandking (talk) 03:26, September 15, 2017 (UTC)

Feel free to correct the typo rhen, I just saw your edit and it seems to be done while I was uploading & updating the edit number track thus got overwrittern ;-), no edit conflict check there it seems, so you have to do it again.

The overhaul isn't complete through, probably will change some pic as there're some icons that look alike each other because of the similar background color, so any feedback is welcome, as well as your source of new pic ;-)

For the next few days I'll focus on the category on spell pages, setting them in place.

Islandking (talk) 16:47, September 15, 2017 (UTC)

-

Oh, one more thing, is it possible to remove the "Building" category from infobox building without breaking the Infobox Builder? Because imo, "Areas" is enough.

Islandking (talk) 16:51, September 15, 2017 (UTC)

Areas, Buildings, Temples infoboxes
Some possible solutions available:

1, Only setting category of the three to “Areas”. Pros: save time for other stuff, no need to expand area infobox just use other two for some exclusive fields. Cons: redundant, causing confusions which to use

2, Delete Buildings & Temples and merge them into one and only “Areas”. Pros: clarity for editors which to use. Cons: a LOT of work replacing the infoboxes from old pages, have to expand Area infobox possibly resulting in a very long list.

Not sure about if every area code should get a page, as places such as Feldepost's Inn could always use infoboxes to separate each floor, just like how Flail of Ages page separates +3 and +5, or even merge the info into one infobox. This way readers can get an overview for the inn and don’t have to click new pages for each floor.

Small caves such as those in Gnoll Stronghold could also use the same idea.

But for large dungeon floors such as Irenicus' Dungeon, separation is surely better.

So my opinion on this matters is that it depends.

PS. Why my talk page is marked for deletion and I can’t seem to find a way to remove the category? :-{ Islandking (talk) 01:21, September 16, 2017 (UTC)

Area infoboxes and separation
Hmm, a lot to think upon, I’ve one proposal though, is it possible for NI to make map images like Gambanshee’s (mirror spoilers here :-), but with numbers 1,2,3,4,etc, this way future editor can just use # and type info like “Missable” areas are like the SoD ones, as well as Underdark, or even City of Caverns (actually its map has numbers like what I mentioned above) which can be skipped without knowing, all those should be identified in “Missable” field, filled with the accessible time period and/or the warning how to access them.
 * ok
 * ok
 * ok
 * ok
 * 1) gundam launched

“Remarkable” are like Map Notes, which probably should be renamed

“Layout” is the structure of the area, and you’re right maybe we don’t really need them, but I left them there just in case. Other fields like "Creatures", "Items" have the same issue, those are already there when I got here, I need more time to think upon, after all, remember that companion IB also have a lot of fields that are present in main articles as well. But whatever you do, keep in mind that as I said before, removing existing fields removes edits in them too, this way we might accidently destroy some good info, even worse, some editors before us may even use IB as main source to add info instead of to the article.

It is as I said before, if we are to merge all three into one “Areas” IB, we have to include all info such as "Goods and Services", because Primary Functions, Secondary Functions. Drinks, Room Offers are needed for a quick glance for inns, or even stores, which otherwise would be a mass if put into article. “Authority” is also needed for city, or even some outdoor area such as areas around Nashkel where are governed by Amn. “Requirements” is a must for some previously locked areas such as Bodhi’s lair. So, we will have a long list for “Areas” IB, just like “Items” IB, but in a good way, I guess.

It’s not a personal preference matter, nor is how we should NearInfinity-lize everything on this site just for game folder structures’ sake, it’s to find ways to deliver info properly and efficiently from gameplay experience as well as for conveniences and readabilities of our readers who are mostly fans and gameplayers.

There’s no unified standard for all things, it depends on the info type.

More likely than not, we enter caves in Gnoll Stronghold and back in seconds and continue our exploration in the big map; but we spend hours on each Durlag Tower floors. We can’t treat them equally, even if technically they’re treated equally in NI, plus as I said before, we can always merge info into one infobox, ex. In Gnoll Stronghold’s “Area Code” and/or "Places" fields we put all cave codes with different names in it..

“Fist”, or “Unarmed Attacks” is a special case, as players only access to 2 different type of fists, with non-monks being more general, so your solution is preferred, in which “Monk's Fist” actually serves like “See also”. Don’t need to include any other creature’s fists (such as Golems) into it because that belongs to the creature’s page.

Actually, that does bring up another long-lasting debate, how creatures of the same type, ex. Spiders, be made into pages…  My opinion is to disambiguation Spider, and separate each creature type. – another example of “Separation? Well, it depends.” :-) Islandking (talk) 05:13, September 16, 2017 (UTC)

NI image exportation
Just experimented area files in NI, it’s indeed as you mentioned, better to export plain .png then add number notes to them later, but the highlighted chests etc, could be of some use, and we can always use screensnap software such as snagit or faststone capture to catch the map with whatever notes/effects we want, just like how I get the SoD maps in World Map page. Will poke more later, and speaking of which, don’t forget about the BG2EE world maps I requested  ;-)

I think if things go right, searching area codes will show all pages that has the texts in them, most likely the Area Codes page (which we can link small areas to the big area they belong to), then the big area page since their IB have the codes in them.

Took a peek at https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Ninagauth%27s_Death_Ray

Not sure about the differences in infobox you mentioned, could you tell me what we can improve our IB by referring to PoEwiki’s IB?

Both Spider ways will do, I'm not sure, your call ;-), actually more concerned with whether to have the “Spiders” category, and if yes, its relation with the disambiguation page…

Btw, as you may already have noticed, my newly registered bot account has already removed some categories such as “Lawful characters” “Good characters” etc, so that we can finally start using “Lawful Good creatures” as discussed before. Islandking (talk) 14:26, September 16, 2017 (UTC)

About NI image exportation and Area pages
I’d like to say the same thing, but there seems to be an image size limit of 10mb for uploading :-{, but I guess it’s for the good of page loading speed, anyways, most likely we will have to reduce the image size, like this one, http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/File:BD2000_90%25.jpg

I’ve changed from ,png to jpg then nerfed to 90% of image quality to finally fit.

Yes, such request should be discussed in NI, not sure which person to be contacted though, might leave a message in the github page.

Some screen capture softwares will let you scroll the caption area for large images, and if you set screen resolution to a very high value, sometimes the scroll won’t even be needed.

WK is in my SoA EE map.

I’ll sure play PoE someday :-)

Sadly the whole wikia thing wasn’t there when BG first come out, otherwise we could have had a much larger & better BGwikia community, the wikia actually benefits morden games more, where they can easily find a place to get all thoughts, while the info of old games like BG are scattered across internet, gamefaqs, sorcerer’s palace, dudleyville, mike’s RPG center, etc, due to many years of not having a unified place such as wikia. I guess the situation would be much better if BD were to use a 3d engine to build BG3 to capture new players’ attention so that new blood will flood into BG commiity, just like Diablo, which is a game as old as BG but have a much larger wikia thanks to the morden release of Diablo 3. One last thing to notice is that, while page number is an indicator of how a wikia fares, it won’t reflect the page quality of a wikia, I saw less than 200 lettters in many pages in some 10000+ wikia, but I guess those pages are still needed given the different characteristics of each game, ex. Card games.

About Area pages, I think your idea of making dedicated pages are still very good in cases such as Gnoll Stronghold, we can make those pages like this:

Map notes Header Name  Other Header Name
 * Cave A in the SE
 * Cave B north of Cave A
 * Cave C just south of Cave B – this is where you get Tome of Leadership and Influence
 * Dynaheir can be found in the pits next to the stairs

Just add Cave ABC maps and codes to IB as well for quick references

Or, better yet, if we can have number notes on maps, it would be like this:

Map notes Header Name

Other Header Name
 * 1) Cave A
 * 2) Cave B
 * 3) Cave C – this is where you get Tome of Leadership and Influence
 * 4) Dynaheir can be found here

As for places like multi floored inns, I stick to my previous opinion, due to the floor swapping, integral overview of the building, plus the little awkwardness what to put into “Services” field of IB of the dedicated second floor, because the Friendly Arm’s services is only availabe on the ground floor.

So the page could roughly be like this:

First floor Header Name & Infobox to the right

Map notes Subheader Name Other Subheader Name
 * 1) marker  A
 * 2) marker  B
 * 3) marker  C
 * 4) marker  D

Second floor Header Name & Infobox to the right

Map notes Subheader Name

Other Subheader Name
 * 1) marker  A
 * 2) marker  B
 * 3) marker  C
 * 4) marker  D

You can add captions to World Map page once done. Islandking (talk) 01:41, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

Also, give me some time to merge Buildings & Temples into Areas IB via IBBuilder, it will take a while.Islandking (talk) 01:57, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

---

Hi Faalagorn, Right now I’m using Faststone Image Viewer. There’re a lot more free softwares which are up to the job, however the headache comes not from the compression but from the caption.

It seemed I posted the wrong place and got closed, https://github.com/NearInfinityBrowser/NearInfinity/pull/86

but I’ve already posted similar stuff in BDforum and got responses, https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/30593/new-versions-of-nearinfinity-available/p18

I guess the names are OK :-)

And I tried the sementic wiki search, it’s excellent! That’s a clever way to utilize categories as flags for the desired search results, sadly we don’t have such features here :-{  so all we can do is to cover the most possible searching interests in categories, which unfortunately resulting in messy category trees (and the naming) inevitably. Islandking (talk) 13:16, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

Hey there,

Good work on EEsoa map, when you finish both, please post them to World Map page.

PS. What happened to Iron Throne page? It seems some of the bot edits messed up something... Islandking (talk) 13:31, September 17, 2017 (UTC)

Re: Various categories discussions
I think both the default name and sort key will do, either leave them together under “N”, or according to its game title, now that you’ve already decided to do the latter, let’s leave it for now and see how it fares.

Yep, “New Areas in XXX” will always be smaller than “Areas in XXX” since it’s a part of it.

You mean this “Category:Areas_from_the_world_map “?, well that did stir up another doubt I have in mind, I’ve thought of only have “Companions” category, no “Companions in XXX” since we’ve already cover that in Companion article page, plus the first sentence with etc templates in every companion's page to tell reader which campaign this companion may be used. Same goes for “Category:Areas_from_the_world_map” (whatever it’d be called), no “Areas from Wrold Map in XXXX” because readers can always refer to the world map page, otherwise it’d be a hell of long list of categories, think about the categories for “Minsc” in that way…

But I’ve planned to make exceptions for items, to make categories like “Category:Headgear in XXX” because no such info can be find elsewhere, plus the “Category: Quests in XXX”, yeah, I've decided to go with plain Quests and don’t create “Category:Main quests” or "“Category:Side quests” as we already have all main quests outlined in each Chapter article with “Category:Storylines” in every one of them. But “Category:Companion quests in XXXX” & “Category:Stronghold quests in XXXX” are still needed.

Are you sure you want to categorize “Category:Spells” into “Category:Abilities” ? I don’t know much about the more recent 5th ruleset which BG3 will probably use, but for now Spells and Abilities differ in almost every way in in-game class kit description and the actual in-game play even though they are technically all .spl in NI… Or, care to share your knowledge about how 5th rule handle spells and abilities?

So for now, I oppose the IB merge idea, same reason: spells and abilities be separated.

As you mentioned, “Category:Character abilities‎” should be renamed to “Category:Ability Scores”/ “Category:Ability socres” and be categorized into “Game mechanics”

Imo, Guard, Stealth, Thieving, Find Traps / Detect Illusion, Backstab, Turn Undead etc be categorized into “Category:Class abilities”. “Kai” “Offensive Spin” etc into “Category:Class kit abilities”. Or we just merge all of them into “Category:Class abilities”.

Maybe “Category:Companion specific abilities” and ““Category:Enemy specific abilities” should be created, but that’s of minor add-on and could be easily done anytime, plus many ability articles haven’t been created yet.

The “Bashing” name alone is fine, that with Talk, Attack, Stop, Quick Formation,and Fist etc could use a dedicated “Category:Basic commands” or something like that and listed into “Game machinecs” instead.

Abilities category tree in my mind:
 * Abilities
 * Class abilities
 * Class kit abilities
 * High-level class abilities
 * Companion specific abilities
 * Enemy specific abilities
 * Bhaalspawn abilities

Thanks for merging Baldur’s Gate city grids into the area grids in World Map, don’t know how to do it myself. lol

“Areas” article would be a nice replacement of the current “Area Code”(be sure to credit the main contributors along the way), and it’s integrated well with your “Items”article and “Creatures” article project, and fits into “Category:Lists”, so I currently see no reason to move contents from “World Map” which contains mostly pictures.

And I’m also here for another technical lesson :-)  I’ve noticed that some wikis have much more advanced VE than here, their VE is able to make sortable tables plus many other features VE here doesn’t have, does it have something to do with the MediaWiki version you mentioned? Luckily, we also have a unique CE here which is rich-texts based, and it can handle almost everything VE here can’t do. Islandking (talk) 02:56, September 18, 2017 (UTC)

Moving Black Pits II Walkthrough to a separate page
Hi Faalagorn!

Congratulations to becoming an admin here!

You and Islandking are in charge of the categories.

It's totally fine if you want to move the Black Pits II Walkthrough to a separate page in the way you suggested:

"I saw that you spend a great hunk of time doing a walkthrough for The Black Pits II! I saw that you discussed that with User:Islandking before, but I saw it grew a lot since. I was thinking about moving it to a separate page, similar how someone handled Durlag's Tower Walkthrough that is linked now on Durlag's Tower page. The current "Walkthrough" section on The Black Pits II: Gladiators of Thay is marked as "section stub", but below is your detailed walkthrough, so I think that section could be safely merged with your guide and removed I guess :).

Anyway, since you are the one editing the page mostly, I thought I'll ask you personally before moving it – basically we could give your guide a separate page (similar to the one at Durlag's Tower) and link your guide there and the link to your guide would replace the "Walkthrough" section entirely. That would give the benefit of both having a short page with a general info about the BP2 and a shorter page solely with your walk through (without the regular BP2 content), as it seems that your walkthrough made this page the longest on wiki :D."

I didn't know that this Walkthrough page has become the longest one here! I'm just adding and adding stuff but soon I'll be done when I will have finished my Fighter Mage Solo Walkthrough on level Insane. Maybe I'll try to make some progress on the Sorcerers higher difficult levels as well but I don't know yet. Although I enjoyed Black Pits II a lot I'm looking forward to playing BG II, EE again.

Feel free and welcome editing the stuff! I can just edit a little bit. I'm just glad that meanwhile the edited stuff stays like I edited. In the beginning it changed like crazy after editing and saving. I was a little bit frustrated. Now it's really much better.

My plan is to edit and improve the Walkthrough step by step until the end of September...just small changes regarding spelling, syntax, bold/not bold etc...I have problems with gaps on this Walkthrough page. No gaps regarding content but gaps regarding space. I don't know how to delete certain gaps there...

You are very skilled and fast in editing! I'm totally surprised how fast you work! Regarding all the achievement points you're nr. 6 here already! Wow!

Gejadus

Gejadus (talk) 03:12, September 18, 2017 (UTC)

Infobox area
It seems I've completed the draft of it. lol  Feedbacks welcome :-)

"Areas within" can be used to put small caves' names & codes, and create the separated for them if you like.

Islandking (talk) 04:01, September 18, 2017 (UTC)

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Also thinking of creating IB Organization, but that's not in a hurry ;-) Islandking (talk) 04:08, September 18, 2017 (UTC)

Various categories discussions (2)
I’d say " in XXX" is 50% 50% from us both :-), for originally I voted for " (XXX)" which is not a proper name then I stick with the “in” formation you’ve suggested, teamwork I say.

The great grandfather is too general I reckon, bet even they can’t handle “Items in XXX” as well as we did :-D

I’m not so sure about Category:Unmarked quests, you could merge pages like “Golden Pantaloon Decision” into “Nobleman (Golden Pantaloons)” if you decide to do so I guess, but the category itself had better stay on in case something we missed or in future that really fits into it.

Dynaheir's Slow Poison, Paladin's special abilities and Ranger's Charm Animal are generally spells cast as abilities, they’re still spells (though should be categorized into abilities) which are different from abilities such as Kai, Offensive Spin which literally don’t have a casting time, and can’t be interrupted, and they’re class specific, while all spells can be interrupted and are shared by many classes.

I think dream abilities such as Lay on Hands have different codes from paladin’s, plus you can always create a “Abilities” article page.

The main reason we need to separate those two is because the spell category is for spellcasters classes – mages, shamans, while abilities are for non-spellcasters who trend towards physical rather than magic. This way, users who’re looking for mage info would probably end up in spells, rather than got mixed up with physical dealers. I haven’t seen one BG site or walkthough yet to merge them into one, your suggestion is a very dangerous move :-{

Again it’s not about the perspectives such as where to select something, if this is your standard on this matter, then spells and abilities are to be separated because they come from different menus… I intent to separate class kit abilities and class abilities because a lot of kit abilities are unique to kits, but I haven’t been entirely sure about the separation since there’re so many exceptions in both sides, eg. Swashbuckler is a thief but don’t have backstab class ability. And now you also prompted the merge, then that might as well do.

Yeah, I took a peek at Final Fantasy wikia, and

http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Enemy_abilities

so let’s go for it.

Lastly “Ability Scores” or “Ability scores” ?14:01, September 18, 2017 (UTC)Islandking (talk)

Various categories discussions (3)
That depends on how you want to build the “Spells” article, as of now “Spells (Baldur's Gate II)” serves as a quick reference to spell effects by providing their general descriptions, if your goal is just to make a quick list of spell codes, then maybe it’s better to rename the page to Spell Codes, same for Area Codes, or Creature Codes, etc.

The fastest casting time of any spell is 1, which is 10% of 1 round, 6 sec, so even with Magic Missile, you still risk being interrupted, you can test easily it by pausing the game, issue Magic Missile command, do a VERY quick unpause >pause, direct the caster to do something else. You’ll see that your spell is cancelled. But that won’t happen to Kai, etc, no matter how fast you unpause > pause. Even sequencers have casting time of 1, not 0. Of course, you can always equip THAT robe to reduce casting time to 0 and become uninterruptable. See details on Robe of Vecna I edited.

There’re spells that bypass MR too, but here’s another significant difference between the two, all spells can be dispelled or removed by another spell, while abilities can’t.

And in ruleset, arcane, divine come from weave, abilities don’t need that, even if it’s like a fire spell such as breath from a red dragon because it’s an innate ability.

But as I said before, the main reason to separate isn’t about casting time, nor how NI handles .spl. etc…

Yes, the article title casing is different from category title, and since I’ve no professional knowledge of it, I always try to abide the current tendency to keep the integrity of this site, I choose “Lawful Good creatures” because lawful and good are equally treated when it comes to alignment.

Other inconsistency is headache, but luckily with bot account and AWB software, we can easily rename those affected categories should we decide to change in future.

For now I’ll go with FFwikia standard and set “Ability scores” for the category name while keeping “Ability Scores” article title, and possibly proceed to change all other inconsistencies.

For some reason I can’t activate console, so I have to EEk everything. And no matter where I add a spell, the spell always end up in the right place, eg. choose to add Kai in wizard menu will add Kai to Innate.

And “01 level wizard spells” is indeed something. Lol Islandking (talk) 15:39, September 18, 2017 (UTC)

Semantic MediaWiki and other features request
Hello Faalagorn,

I’ve been receiving responses & help from a warmhearted fandom staff for some time, and this time he asked me what features other than the advanced search in Semantic MediaWiki would I want to make use of? It seems to me that they’re taking this matter seriously this time, since you’re (a lot) more technician than me :-), I’d like to hear your words on this matter, what’s your insights? Please be formal but don’t limit your thoughts on only the Semantic stuff, anything you want to say to fandom staffs I’ll forward to him :-) Islandking (talk) 10:23, September 19, 2017 (UTC)

Re: Re: Semantic MediaWiki and other features request
Well actually I was asking you about the features & feedbacks of all wikia site experience, not specific to our site so that they may consider our opinions and implement them into every fandom site (such as the advanced search), then we can benefit from them in return.

But you have a point that you may also contact fandom staffs directly yourself and get quick responses, so unless you have some opinions about the topic I’ll file mine to him myself.

If you need technical help from fandom staffs, I know that

http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User:JoePlay

is assigned to help admins with their requests and he’s taking care of most of communities’ requests

User:23dutch45man was actually getting help from him when building Body Armor, Companion and Baldur's Gate series templates.

You may also contact Joe about twitter function, community merging and other technical stuff you have in mind, sorry I couldn’t be much of help regarding to this matter.

Yes I noticed empty lines too, could you download

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser

And show me how to make settings to avoid the issue?

Yes, no subcategory of spells and abilities each other.

There seems to be one problem with "Enemy abilities" though, as there’re some enemy specific spells too, or even special passive effects such as detect invisibility :-{

Category:[area name] is on the deletion list, but I’ll leave them for now in case we change our minds.

User:Sycamirage was in charge of the Status Effects page and has planned to create each status effect page, s/he’s active in BD forum, so I guess it’s likely s/he will come back one day to continue his/her project :-) Let’s keep the Category:Status effects then, and Free Action is generally considered beneficial with minor drawbacks, same goes for Defensive spin which roots blade in ground. Usually harmful status only negatively affect the receivers, so there’s still a distinct line between those two. However, exceptions do exist, such as Blindness, which thieves can actually benefit from it situationally, but cases like that are rare at best.

Here comes the major headache, how to name item types :-D Islandking (talk) 14:22, September 19, 2017 (UTC)

Re: Main category layout
Hi there,

I guess we could use that, even if we already have a fully customized header always on top, but yes, people have different browsing preferences and the header isn’t able to hold that many categories.

The Naming doesn’t need to be set in stone now as we can change them easily without consequences, much unlike the article associated categories, and some of your ideas may prove to be beneficial in a long term.

Consulting FFwikia might be better, considering we’re both based on the same platform(fandom), and they have MUCH more & complicated game lists than us,

So

Under Category:Main category:

Baldur’s Gate series – include Category: Games, Category:Areas, Category:Lists, etc

Baldur’s Gate wiki – site related

Media

There seems to be Category:Terminology to hold FR world setting and BG story related lore.

I’ve not finished yet, there’ll be “Enemies in XXX”. :-)

??? why, Quarterstaff is the in-game name

Hmm, like Summon Cows the big red hat uses :-) ? Enemy spells & abilities are origined from players’, but with different specs such as making previously save-able spells to no-save, or in Elminster’s case, he can cast cows from Wild Surge table at will. There’re also unique passive, always-on effects which are fitted into neither spells nor abilities, I’m thinking of a dedicated Category:Enemy powers (not final name) and list it under Category:Main category, along with Category spells, abilities which players have access to.

Item types are (much) more complicated than it looks, will get to it later.

PS. What do you mean by Fallout, WoW have been moved to Gamepedia? Their wikia are still there and growing. Islandking (talk) 02:50, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

Re: 2.0, Legacy of Bhaal difficulty and physical version
Hello Faalagorn,

thank your for you message.

First my problem:

I'm playing a Black Pits II Solo Assassin (pure) Walkthrough right now and have to say that he easily managed the first 10 Battles so far. I'm also playing an Assassin (level 14) - Fighter (Dual Class; human) and he's incredibly strong! He defeated the Drows and Vampires easily!

I would like to start 2 NEW Solo Walkthroughs: 3.5 Assassin and 3.6 Assassin (level 14) - Fighter (Dual-class). I'm already playing them and it's nice just to be able to write results immediately down in the Walkthrough itself istead of writing it on paper etc and transferring the stuff later. I habe NO access to these categories. '''Please either give me access for editig this contents box on the Gejadus Walkthrough or just add 3.5 Assassin and 3.6 Assassin (level 14) - Fighter (Dual-class) yourself. '''

Thank you so much!

I also addressed to Islandking about it.

I'm just surprised what you and Islandking all know! You have both so much background information! Yes, I went to the Beamblog/Beamdog Client page. Hm. If I have to download a huger file I can't really do it right now because I'm not in Germany but abroad. I would have to wait until I'm back in Germany. '''When I'm back in Germany I'll buy Siege of Dragonspear! - So I would have automatically LoB with it?'''

Baldur's Gate I,II, Thron of Bhaal EE and the Black Pits is so amazingly huge. Look, I'm just playing some Solo Walkthroughs in the Black Pits II and it's lots of fun but also here it's nearly endless. I could play so many more Solo Protagonists. Probably I will also play a Bounty Hunter and get more into these traps. I looks quite good when a trap 'explodes'. Unfortunaetly 3x my computer crashed as well ;-) when such traps exploded! (I had to restart the computer again! ;-)) I'm playing this game on a Dell Latitude computer ...it's not the newest...my other newer Dell I use for working.

Ok.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Gejadus (talk) 05:46, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

Main category layout (2)
The tree on my mind is roughly like this:

Category:Baldur’s Gate series -> Categroy:Games -> Category:Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition‎ ‎ -> Items in BG II: EE: SoA‎

Category:Baldur’s Gate series -> Categroy:Items -> Items in BG II: EE: SoA‎

So as you see, my train of thoughts is to let readers of different approaches, either from game name, or from type of info they want to search, to achieve what they're looking for within minimum route clicks.

Yes you’re right about the Category:Terminology renaming, I didn’t mean to keep the current name ;-), just wanted to remind you to put everything into it then my bot will rename it according to what you see fit.

Could you tell me where the game mention as quarterstaves, sorry I have fuzzy memories. :-)

I’ll probably do this:

Category:Non-player powers

Powers specific assigned to friendly non-player creatures, enemies and summons, which include, but not limited to spells, activable abilities, passive effects that are off-limits to player generated characters or companions.

Category:Companion powers

Powers unique to companions, which include, but not limited to spells, activable abilities, passive effects that are off-limits to player generated characters.

Maybe someday we’ll host a BG site in Gamepedia as well :-) But I myself like the idea of having BGwikia and BGgamepedia both because this will only benefit BGfans more, after all, we’re just contributors, personally I don’t want to meddle with the company competition affairs, and we can survive in both environment, be it fandom or gamepedia. Islandking (talk) 12:41, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

Main category layout (3) - really? still this title? lol
Did a search on adventures guide, in two-handed weapon style: “Two-handed swords, halberds, spears, and quarterstaves all benefit from the Two-Handed Weapon Style.” and no quarterstaffs.

So there’s no argument :-)

Interesting. With curse and wikia. Inc covering both games, there’ll be competition, inevitably, for games at least :-) My view on this matter is although the total number of contributors is important, the core contributors, whose numbers are (very) few, are (much) more important to a wiki’s growth, and wiki growth will attract more viewer, majority of whom will remain viewers, which is why even for popular wikis such as fallout, core number is still few, forum is still cold, people trend to trade ideas on real forums/social apps more.

Downside of the competition is the community split you mentioned, same thing as I’ve mentioned before in BG’s case - info are shattered across internet in a much wider scheme than nowaday games, and for a different reason: there was no gamewiki thing before to gather people, so some set up their own sites and eventually stopped updating, leaving BG fan sites here and there, some of which are strong in maps while others are good at walkthoughs… sigh, if all those info were to put into one place someday, it’d be hell of encyclopaedia for BG already, Unfortunately, even if there’re already fewer routes nowadays for games (wikia and gamepedia), splitting still and will persist, which is why it’s better to cover them both as viewers with different tastes can have their choices, even if they’re all fans of the same franchises. Islandking (talk) 14:59, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

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Already did :-D Islandking (talk) 15:11, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

Poking at item types
Currently it’s Category:Scimitars & Wakizashi's & Ninja-to's‎, which is surely to be changed, lol, but to what?

Generally there’re 2 approaches in item type naming:

1, the safe way – split every type, such as buckler, small shield, medium shields, large shields.

2, the function way – split according to class usage, such as buclker (for thief and bards), shields (have small, medium, large shields for cleric, fighter, etc)

Pro and cons:

1, Pros: safe and may be potentially better for BG3 where even mages can were full metal plate.

Cons: messy, especially if “XXX shields in XXX” are added

2. Pros: better if “XXX shields in XXX” are added, good for current BG games to group item usage based on class

Cons: may be potentially worse for BG3 where class equipment restrictions are fewer to none. :D  Islandking (talk) 15:38, September 20, 2017 (UTC)

Hi Faalgorn,

thank your for your help again!

I managed to create my own 'title' for the content of the overview box at the top of the page.

3.5 Blackguard

I'm not a native speaker, so sometimes it's hard to express myself with the right suitable vocabulary, terms and idioms.Sorry! Still learning English!

Gejadus (talk) 23:00, September 20, 2017 (UTC)