A mod for Baldur's Gate Trilogy-WeiDU, by Anomaly
Baldur's Gate has many NPCs available for recruit (as many as 25), but some of them are very far from the roads or can only join the group really late without real reasons, and because of that they are rarely used ; players already got their well-rounded party when they meet them.
BG1 NPCs at Beginning is a mod for Baldur's Gate Trilogy designed to move many NPCs that are far away from the main road to Nashkel to allow them to join the party at the early stage of the game, except of course NPCs that are prisonners.
The 11 moved NPCs are : Quayle, Kivan, Viconia, Ajantis, Faldorn, Alora, Tiax, Eldoth, Safana, Coran, Shar-Teel.
The mod also takes care of altering the joining dialogue if the original dialogue cannot fit with its new location or the knowledge of the PC at that stage of the game. It also takes care of the timed quests, making sure they are still doable by increasing the allowed delay or pausing the timer until PC seems really on the road to do the quest.
The idea to move the NPCs that are far away is not new, there is already three other mods that do something similar before this one.
BG1 NPCs at Beginning allows you to move many more NPCs than Sword Coast Stratagems and BG1 NPC Project, and set a even more accessible starting location for them.
BG1 NPCs at Beginning is compatible with Level 1 NPCs and with the many components of Sword Coast Stratagems that affects NPCs, except the component that moves them.
BG1 NPCs at Beginning should be compatible with BG1 NPC Project, except the component that moves Alora.
BG1 NPCs at Beginning will refuse to install if it detects that one component that moves NPCs from Sword Coast Stratagems or BG1 NPC Project is already installed. On the other hand, those mods won't check for BG1 NPCs at Beginning if you install them after it (which is logical since BG1 NPCs at Beginning is much more recent), so be careful.
This mod can be installed like any other WeiDU mod.
On Windows, expand the mod archive in the BG2 folder where BGT is already installed, then double-click on the setup-bg1npcbeg.exe file
On Linux, make sure you got WeiDU 231 minimum in the PATH, expand the mod archive in the BG2 folder, then at the console and in this folder, type WeInstall bg1npcbeg
Here are the new locations for the moved NPCs :
May 13th, 2012 : first version.