Introduction for Enhanced Edition
Improved Anvil is a mod for Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition. It was designed and developed by Sikret for many years and eventually became quite popular and controversial in its interpretation of the game's challenges. The mod writes its own rule book and doesn't play well with the other mods. There is a good reason for that. The sheer amount of changes is huge and touches many aspects of the game. The whole play-through from beginning to end at a moderate pace will take a couple of months, at the very least.
The main focus of the mod is combat. Pretty much every encounter in the game is a tactical challenge. All of them are crafted by hand to provide a unique experience. The game is strict and imposes many rules for honest playing. You will find that many tactics and approaches that'd worked in the original game are now useless and ineffective. This is a part of the original mod's philosophy as it was designed by Sikret and explained further in this document. If you want to play the mod, you will have to take it or leave it.
I was a long-term player of IA. Eventually, I joined the testing team and assisted in development and testing of the 6th version of the mod. This was the last version that Sikret himself had worked on. For personal reasons, Sikret could not continue his work, and I took over the maintenance and looking after the forum. Eventually, since we promised to many players that we will publish a new 7th version, I decided to continue development.
Sikret's main guidance, when he designed IA, was his personal vision of the mod that would be fun for him to play. When I had started working on the new versions, I have adopted the same philosophy. Although I try to preserve the spirit of the original Improved Anvil, I realize that many of my design decisions aren't compatible with Sikret's vision and personal views on IA and modding in general.
The IAv6EE is a separate mod that uses original Improved Anvil as a platform. If you desire to play the last version developed by Sikret, it is published and available for free at Black Wyrm Lair.
I hope that you will have fun playing Improved Anvil. I would like to thank Sikret for making IA. I hope that I have succeeded in upholding the mod's legacy.
Cheers,
critto