Issues Options

[The Bigg]

I've just finished playing through the mod (well, I've kept the book and killed Tian... I'm half-waiting for some surpise ambush after this act).

The good:
- The movie was absolutely cool.
- Gameplay in general 'felt' well balanced, challenging enough without forcing too many reloads.
- The plot was okay, as well as the writing.

The maybe:
- The Servant, Astral Shard Guardian, and Tian 'felt' slightly hard to me (and I had about 2M XP per character, so I was over the suggested level). This must surely be because I generally suck at tactics. However, in the case of the Astral Shard Guardian, I've taken a peek at the creature file, and IMHO for lesser skilled/patient players the AC and regeneration rate could use a mild decrement (say, AC -5 and no regeneration, but higher HPs to compensate). At the suggested level (13th) your fighters will have a thac0 in the 2-5 range, so you'll likely hit only 1 time per round per fighter (assuming 3 attacks per round and 1/3 chance of hitting), meaning that you are doing little more than keeping up with the regeneration... even without throwing in the various Stone Skins or PFMW's.
- The Chain Lightning Machine could be slightly slowed down as well.
- Most of the loot you get is already identified.
- Balaor seriously looks like a typo, you might want to change to something else (and the creature is even called va#balor)

The bad:
- The va#spy* creatures for checking fire damage are a bit tricky to get right - I caster Agannazar's both against the dryads (making sure I hit both of them) and against the Astral Shard to no avail. While in the latter case enough hints are thrown in that you must use Fireball, in the Dryad's case it isn't so obvious (especially after Agannazar's proves to be useless).
- Install is not nice for people using a Mac, Linux, or WeInstall/WeiGUI (in particular the biffing of the MVE). I had already posted code to fix this.

WeiDU.log and similar stuff are available from my master playthrough thread. In particular, I installed just the 'main' component, none of the 'improved' ones.

This post has been edited by The Bigg: May 22 2008, 04:21 PM

[The Bigg]

Raz: It must mean then that I really can't read, since I just kept on casting Breach on the Servant's PFMW "by tradition"

Also, to clarify, to me hard means "I can't beat it in two tries, with an unbuffed and slightly wounded party", and "worth whining" means that two tries with a fully healed and decently buffed party still aren't enough...
Once I allowed buffing (esp. traps, Skeletal Warriors & True Sight), the Servant went down easily (I think that using Shapechanging worked to his downfall given he still has a Wizard's THAC0, but I'm not 100% sure). Tian was challenging because I came battered from fighting the Guardian and without time to rest, or the willingness of trying again the Guardian (since there's no save between killing the Guardian and talking to Tian again, unless you remember to save before talking to the boatman). I wouldn't have mentioned them if it was not for the Guardian.
It was just the Guardian whom I couldn't beat legally after about five or six tries (it's a battle of attrition of your party vs. his PFMW, StoneSkin and regeneration, and if you lose your mage each of them is almost an Heal spell).

Bar: I think that even those who resent having to reload a battle thirty times (or have spent years honing their knowledge of the spell system) should have the opportunity to enjoy the contents of a mod (especially a quest mod).
Besides, GC contains a lite version of battles. Wasn't it was added after players' whining too?


Daul: suspected as much - which is why I said it looks like a typo (vs. that it is one) and added a smiley

[Daulmakan]

Daul: suspected as much - which is why I said it looks like a typo (vs. that it is one) and added a smiley