Circle of Eight Modpack v6 / v6 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

So, I just made it through the moathouse with my elven rescue party. I noticed two peculiarities:

The ivory chest in the tower with the spider is trapped. However, when my rogue searched for traps there, the game didn't even roll, as the rolls window shows, and no trap was found. I tried Disable Device on the chest, but again, no rolls were made. I opened the lock (rolls correctly shown), and when I opened the chest, the trap hit me. Is this a random glitch? I may have seen similar phenomena in other locations, but never checked with the rolls window before.

The final battle with Lareth is interesting, but bugged quite a bit after Lareth joined. Lareths speech bubble kept popping up when my characters were trying to do things, and sometimes that would mangle the order of actions as if the battle was somehow reset. The most annoying one was when Spugnoir had greased the ground and downed five baddies and a spider, then Lareth exclaimed "You have earned my wrath!", the spell effect disappeared, all hostiles stood up, and Spugnoir had another full round action, but the spell was used up. Then I couldn't access his radial menu anymore, but that of another party member (I didn't dare to click anything in there), but Spugnoir could still shoot a bolt or move around. Then Lareth exclaimed ... and then some people acted seemingly out of turn, and that happened several times during the battle. First I thought Lareth was dispelling the Greases, but I used up about five scrolls, so I doubt he had that many Dispel Magics ready (and it still wouldn't explain the reordering of actions).

And finally, after I'd made it out of the moathouse and back to Hommlet, I realized that I had forgotten to open the ghoul's chest, which I couldn't open before the level-up. If I go back now, will I run into the Moathouse Respawn already, or can I still get to the chest?

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Hi
I have a few bugs to report.
1.) Halfway through the "Big Three" ambush, the game restarted the dialogue sequence ("You see Kobort, Toruko, and Zert ...... " ) but the combat continued .
2.) Upon arriving in Nulb I spkoe with Preston and accepted the "Tooth of Pain" quest. I then spoke with Mona about getting her Crystal Ball back. Seeing that I had two hours of gametime to kill, I went to the Waterside Hostel to wait for Mickey. I sent the Rogue in first ( with his Spot skill of 11) and he readily caught Dala picking his pocket. Rentsch of course said to "Leave my girl alone", whereupon I opted for the combat option ( I confess I was looking for the "free" experience points ). Three Nulb Villagers immediately bailed out, but Rentsch and crew just stood around (with the regular Nulb Tavern background noise) doing nothing for about 3 minutes of real time, until I moved my party by accident. After the fight (and gathering the loot) I went upstairs to pass the time (2 hours of gametime) until Mickey would show up. While I was upstairs I dumped all the weapons and armor from Rentsch and Company into the magic chest. After passing the 2 hours (until evening) I clicked on the stairs to go downstairs to talk to Mickey and the game crashed to the desktop.
The Royal Canadian

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Did you put your cursor on the chest, then click for the radial menu? Otherwise you search the spot you are standing on and try to disable a device there.


You can go back for the chest, you won't see the respawn for a while yet.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Did something change with the 'good witch' portion of the moathouse respawn? I cleared the moathouse respawn, and collect the witch's map. But when I read it, and look on the back it tells me there is a map pointing to an area east of the moathouse. Unfortunately I get no option to 'go there' when I read the 'bad witch's' map, the only option is to put the map away.

I read the release notes and I didn't see anything suggesting it had changed. I've been to the Temple, I've done most of Nulb except for the brothel quests, I've done the Arena, Emridy, etc. Any suggestions? I must be missing something, but I've never had to do anything other than read the map before and 'go there'.

Thanks
g22

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Nope, no AoE. I just start hackin' and Wat scoots over and plunks the poor unsuspecting Nulb village woman. Oh well, chalk it up to ToEE.

Thanks, I will use the map properly then. Thanks!

g22

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

I'll look into it in the weekend...
Some questions:
I gather you tried casting grease multiple times, and they all got botched this way - is that the case?
Was it always with a text bubble, or did the spell just fizzle quietly after the first one?
Were there any successful castings?
Can you elaborate on the acting out of turn part?
Do you have a savegame from that fight?

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Not sure if it's a bug or just something I'm not doing right, but I tried getting past Lubash in the Moathouse using the special cloaks found in the chest near the stairs, and while my rogue managed to bluff him successfully into letting him through, he still initiated combat right after. I tried giving each party member a cloak, I tried leaving them out in the hall, I tried using diplomacy instead (successfully), but he keeps on initiating combat.

Anyone else get that?

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Yes,except for the first, which I cast before Lareth showed up and which worked well for a while. Then Lareth joined and his normal dialogue came somehow interspersed with combat actions (I guessed that was how it was supposed to be.) Some rounds later I refused his offer and the fight resumed with his spiders dropping in, and him exclaiming "You have earned ...". Then I cast Grease again to keep them away, then his speech bubble popped up again, the Grease disappeared etc., as described above. Never worked again from that point on. And I cast a lot because I had five or so Grease scrolls.

Good question. I seem to remember a strong connection to the text bubble, but I wouldn't swear that it was there every single time. Also, the spell never *fizzled*, it always correctly greased the ground, the baddies tripped, and when the action should have changed to the next guy, the spell effect just disappeared (just as it does at the end of a fight), the baddies stood up, and Spugnoir had his action bar full yellow-green again.

I cast other stuff like magic missiles. I can't swear that there was no text bubble and reset, but since the effect is immediate and lasting, it was at least less annoying.

I got the feeling that the initiative order was not observed, i.e. chars that should have come after Spugnoir were somehow jumped. It was exactly like it restarted the battle and rerolled initiative after Spugnoir's casting, but with Spugnoir always coming out on top and the sequence of pictures shown on the top of the screen not updated (specifically, Spugnoir was somewhere in the middle and stayed there.) (That might also explain the spell effect disappearing and the speech bubble showing up.) So the observed order of actions was wrong in that it didn't match the sequence of the pictures.

Unfortunately not, all overwritten now. Apparently I'm saving too often.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Just encountered the assassin on my way to Emridy Meadows after selling Lareth's plate boots to the shady traders. He nearly took out Spugnoir with a strength-crippling 17 hp hit, but it turns out that tripping him and standing over him with four melee characters is a very viable strategy here. Though it was my rogue who finally offed him in round three with a well-placed longbow shot.

I'm glad I finally ran into him alone. This guy created problems to no end when he showed up in Nulb together with the revenge party in my 5.9.2 run.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

I actually found this sequence refreshing and well designed. It was nice to have Lareth talk it out in the middle of battle (even though I was picking his forces apart little by little).

Also, has anything been done to the crossbow guards? they seemed to be a little more efficient in dealing damage to my party than usual. Or were they just luckier than usual?

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Went to have a discussion with Rannos and Gremag about ethics, which somehow escalated into senseless (well, not quite, because I got some nifty stuff out of it) violence. They run away a little too fast IMO. I think it would be nicer if the party (lvl 4) had a fair chance to take out at least one of them. It took me some tries to hand to the fat pig what he had coming (and it would actually be funny if he dropped some ham besides his other stuff.)

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

I used to take them out at first level for the CR 10 XP (until I realized I needed them for some later quest/encounters)! Just arrange your party around the 2 main guys and don't worry about the man-at-arms until the end. Tasha's Laughter, tripping, Hold Person all work well against them.

 

Re: Circle of Eight Modpack 6.0.0 / 6.0.0 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

I think that Imryds Run is actually the hardest battle at the level where my party usually gets there, because getting assaulted by the Sea Hag and the Behemoth Kingfrog at the same time, which always happens to me, tends to create serious tactical problems. Both have the potential to take out even a strong and well-protected fighter in one or two rounds.

Anyway, it looked to me like the frogs were going after Spugnoir on purpose. The Behemoth guy even ignored three other closer characters, two of whom had already attacked him, and jumped in a circle just to get him. Was this just bad luck, or is it what their combat AI tells them to do? If the latter, I'm not so sure that this behavior is reasonable. After all, frogs are pretty dumb and not evil, but simply out for a snack. Realistic behavior would IMO be that they go without delay at the nearest party member. Conceivably, the smaller frog could also try the smallest party member (if this info is available), but in any case, they should act without any tactical insight on simple visual cues only.