Need a little help completing WotGS (as the Badgers can't)

On my second play through with Co8 NC, first in ten years. I had planned a post with general commentary after completing, however I find I'm at an impasse which previous posts including the excellent "walkthrough" (which isn't precisely a walkthrough, at least regarding the WotGS: Defender quest) cannot resolve. Up until this point, earlier posts/threads including that one in particular, have been supremely helpful. So maybe this one will help someone down the road as well. Speaking of roads, I've just explored all the roads in Hommlet about as thoroughly as during the "Fed Ex" stage of the game, and I'm having a little deja vu, though it's night and my PCs are experiencing unfulfilled blood lust after winning a number of minor skirmishes, but finding any remaining Hextor units elusive. Following the last road skirmish,

Spoiler

alarm, explosions, buildings on fire

have ceased and standard Hommlet music has returned. Ariakas informs me that I have overcome

Spoiler

town defense, CoSC, guard tower, grove and WW attacks; N, SW, S, E road guards; NW, W E patrol

But less helpfully he does not remind me which attacks/units I have not yet succeeded against. Was I supposed to be taking notes prior to the invasion? It seems oddly quiet around the village yet villagers are still in hiding. Hommlet is still a hostile environment apparently as it has the yellow tent icon. Since I can't pass time I click on the tent and immediately have some kapoacinths/sea hags/snakes to deal with. As they are obviously boring by now I return to save and have to fight some lizard men but at least it's morning. I go to say good morning to Ariakas who informs me the Hextor stragglers succeeded in capturing all the villagers by stealth while I was napping.

For clarity, I accepted the WotGS: Defender Quest from Ariakas, proceeded to win all the battles I could find in an order which seemed t0 make sense. I did go in the WW at one point. I wonder if I could have taken too long. Is there a time limit for completing the quest? Is the order of battles important? Have I missed any enemies? Would have been ideal to come across a Badger guard in the road after the final battle saying "we can take it from here" or something. It's a bit like my first time in the Verbo sewers, ie. boring (but not necessarily developers' fault) and given the fact that the normal Hommlet music is back I'm thinking I may have made a mistake or my game has a bug. Given that the walkthrough thread does not explain exactly how to complete this quest, I would have expected it to be fairly obvious.

 

Thank you Shiningted. I'll keep looking for the elusive patrol before I seek out console assistance. Was strange the sound effects stopped, and stranger that Hommlet music returned but I suppose the former was made to over-ride the latter, but to cease once the main sieges are dealt with. Maybe in a future version this could be changed to silence so the player knows it's not safe-old Hommlet, as the standard music has a reassuring effect I found a little out of place during an invasion. Would be great if patrolling units eventually find party and initiate combat, but the only place anything like approaching enemies happens is the AoH so it must not be the easiest type of thing to script in this game. Or if elusive unit is mobile maybe we just keep missing each other in the dark. Good to know it's probably my own observational skills lacking and not PC spot skills in this instance, but wouldn't invisible Hextorites be interesting (with flails of course)?

 

Sure enough the elusive unit was sneaking around in plain sight

Spoiler

at end of E road, 100 feet or so from the bridge to the guard tower, where I made a few sounds earlier

But they were very quiet and I did not know they were there - probably the one bit of road I also never explored during the Fed Ex chapter. Probably happens to many their first time, and now have a little deja vu for real as I think this probably happened the last time I played, in 2012.

On a side note, I tried to increase the difficulty of the battle by spawning some extra monsters using the DM. But almost every one attacked or were engaged by Hextor combatants, even spawned bearded devils fought Hextor bearded devils. Only the spawned Hextor enchantress attacked, ie. aimed spells at, my rogue who was the only PC in range. But when he got charmed he started firing arrows at Hextor fighters not PC party. Even the Hill Giant of Hextor preferred to fight Hextorites. I understand little about factions apart from the fact that these often cause DM-spawned monsters to go against one another or against those already in game. No Hextor fighters/assassins/elementalists in DM monster list. So perhaps limited usefulness in in-game monster spawning at this point, and it seems there is no way to increase the difficulty of the WotGS battles, only to make them longer and easier. I wonder if there has been any discussion about using the spawning feature to raise the difficulty of battles in general, but that is a subject for another post.

 

Hilariously, Hextorites fighting each other is totally in character. They're all rivals to one another, regardless of external opposition.

 

I'm pretty sure the "invasion" was a front to get Wakefield killed. If only he knew I had left the Orb behind in an Extraplanar Chest in the Welcome Wench. Though it was fairly useless for Oerth domination by this point as the gems had been eaten by Ethereal beings.

 

About the DM: if you want your spawns to share the same faction with existing ones, you should specify the added faction in the "Modify" tab.
To see which factions numbers are assigned to existing mobs, right click on them while the DM is active. You can also give them some manual stat boosts if you like...

 

First? I don't like to say never, but not yet I have a recollection of doing what was required for her to join party briefly, but soon anulled the marriage ie. went back in time. My elves found her tall, and not often silent. I'll be juvenile and say had poor Kandric a circlet of discernment at the time, he would have kept running along the east road far enough to know it continued beyond the guard tower. But yes, all well that ends well and Hommlet is saved and party have new friends.

Ah balance, yes that's a thing. Seems to have gone out the window when my party got +6 belts (crafted) and gloves (found), and could enchant to +5 and cast Stoneskin, Holy Word et al. It was fun! PCs can almost forget having been swallowed by frogs once. About to get comeuppance from

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4 Type VI you-know-whats

(that's *all* thankfully, though I've seen the future and know that's not entirely true), so may just bump up the WotGS combats in DM and run again in hopes of levelling up one last time. I'm sure it will be fine though

 

Most impressive, thank you Sitra. This all should have been obvious to me, and finding sub-entry level modding to be a fun if laborious thing to do, now that you and others with knowledge have done the work. No more groups of ogres having fatal arguments around the campfire, and chain devils (incomplete as they are) in my game at last. Clone feature also excellent. I'm curious about AI Type (different snipers etc) but realise that's probably complicated.

 

AI type refers to the entries in strategy.tab. That is of course another can of worms There's a thread on AI in these forums if you're interested how that works.