Sword Coast Customs
===================

About
-----

Baldur's Gate has two powerful weapons with elemental damage enchantments: the longsword Varscona and the war
hammer Ashideena. That makes long swords and war hammers two of the best proficiencies in the game, and makes
it difficult to justify choosing other weapon proficiencies. The goal of this mod is to open up a wider range
of weapon choices without breaking the difficulty curve of the game. It does that by allowing the player to
commission a weapon from Taerom Fuiruim, at the Thunderhammer Smithy, and then to have that weapon imbued with
elemental damage by Thalantyr, at the High Hedge, and Halbazzer, at Sorcerous Sundries. This will allow the
player to create a halberd that does frost damage, or a ninja-to with acid damage, for example. There is an
additional component that is optional, but highly recommended to remove or relocate Ashideena and Varscona, so
that the additional of another elemental damaage weapon doesn't unbalance the game.

Installation
------------

Sword Coast Customs makes use of Weidu for installation, and there is an excellent overview on the Baldur's
Gate forums for how to install mods into Baldur's Gate:

  https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/82840/a-new-player-s-guide-to-installing-and-playing-mods

Compatibility
-------------

This mod has only been tested with Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition 2.6.6 in a vanilla installation. I have made
every attempt to keep the installation minimally invasive, but it is likely that the mod will not work
correctly for non-EE versions of the game.

There is no content in this mod for Baldur's Gate II or Throne of Bhaal.

Components
----------

1. Core Component

The core component makes these modifications:

  1. Taerom Fuiruim, at the Thunderhammer Smithy in Beregost, will offer to craft the player a masterwork
     weapon after they have suitably impressed him.
  2. Thalantyr, at the High Hedge west of Beregost, will be able to imbue the masterwork weapon with elemental
     damage (a +1 enchantment bonus).
  3. Halbazzer Drin, at Sorcerous Sundries in Baldur's Gate, will be able to enhance the weapon (a +2
     enchantment bonus).

Taerom will only craft melee weapons, so slings, short bows, long bows, crossbows and darts are not available.
The mod will install new artwork for the weapons (18 masterwork weapons, 4 of each at +1 enchantment, 4 of
each at +2 enchantment, so 162 total weapons).

2. Remove or relocate Ashideena

This optional (but recommended) component will either remove Ashideena from the game, or relocate it to a
more suitable place later in the game. Bassilus will have a War Hammer +1 instead of Ashideena in either case.

3. Remove or relocate Varscona

The same as the previous component, but for Varscona. This was kept separate so players can choose to retain
one or the other of the existing elemental damage weapons alongside the custom item that can be created
with this mod.

Acknowledgements
----------------

The artwork for the items in the game was created by hephaestusart:

  https://www.fiverr.com/hephaestusart

The items were created using NearInfinity:

  https://github.com/Argent77/NearInfinity

The installation is done by Weidu:

  https://weidu.org/~thebigg/README-WeiDU.html

Some of the dialog was generated by ChatGPT:

  https://chat.openai.com

I would also like to thank all the people who have contributed to the various Baldur's Gate forums over the years! This
mod wouldn't be possible without all the questions and patient answers on those forums.

Change Log
----------

[v0.1b] 2023-04-24

The initial beta version of the mod.