Co8 5.6.0 BETA Balance

I thought Vanilla was a good challenge. I don't recall many people saying otherwise.

 

It was, but you'd normally hit 9, if not 10 before you even head to the nodes if you do all the quests and clear out the temple... Now, I know nodes are optional, but who'd wanna miss out on all the... lag? :love:

Vanilla was a good challenge, yes, but once you beat the crap out of Hedrack and Senshok it goes downhill; the only node that's any difficult is Fire (and somewhat water but not really); the rest are sort of easy. Co8 did a good job improving the Earth node a bit, and making Hezrou a bit more powerful in water; however, Vrock and Glabrezu are just wimps for a 5-man lvl 10 party, and the Air node is just empty.

Well, will it really be able to provide enough XP for an average party to reach lvl 20? If yes, then NP, I don't really know your guys' plans, but somehow I doubt there will be THAT much content.

 

I finally started playing, 5.6.1.

I just got to Nulb. The issue is: Should the +2, non-enchantable Celtic runes still cost 15000 gold pieces? Seems like 1500 would be more appropriate.

 

Ok, well i dusted off my copy of ToEE and installed the latest Co8 patch and had a go with it. This was the first time I actually beat the game (My previous attempt years ago was abandoned at the trap in the hallway before Hederack before i got frustrated/bored and just moved on to a different game.)

Here's the breakdown of my game that i just finished today:

My party consisted of Two fighters, a Cleric, a Rogue/Ranger, and a Wizard. I ended the game with the Fighters and Rogue/Ranger all at level 14, the Cleric at 13, and the Wizard at 12. (Cleric and Wizard being crafters)

I did every sidequest I could in Hommlet. I cleared the Moathouse and the ambush outside the side entrance. I cleared Emridy Meadows and Imryds run. I did MOST but not all of the Nulb quests, including wiping out everyone in the Hostel and everyone but the bartender in the Bar. I cleared the Tower, scoured every inch of all four levels of the Temple, and also completed all four elemental Nodes. Most random encounters were avoided.

*The Moathouse was very challenging, but fun.
*Emridy Meadows, with a cleric, was a cakewalk. Giant was challenging. (party level 4)
*Imryd's run was definitely a big challenge and required a couple reloads, but was doable.
*The first two levels of the temple were fun and perfectly challenging.
*The third level of the temple was disappointingly easy. Only the wisps were challenging, everything else was pasted in 1-2 rounds.

Now, on level 4 and the Nodes... i found a HUGE gap in difficulty for the bosses, and rather steep difficulty curves.

Senshock, with an insane spell resistance and 3 stoneskin spells seemed ridiculous. At the same time, none of his spells really seemed to threaten my party. Barkinar, however, went down to a single fireball. I couldn't really touch Senshock, so i had to cheeseball it and just web him in place and throw up a cloudkill, then just stood around and waited for him to die as he tossed worthless spells around.

I could have gotten lucky, but I killed Hedarack in one round. Uhm... so this was the big temple leader? The hill giants were harder to take down than him.

Vrock and Glabrezu were perfect challenges.

Hezrou and Balor were unbeatable by my party. I reloaded more saves on those two fights than i did playing the rest of the entire game combined. I even tried resorting to metagaming and looked up every walkthough I could find, and backed out to prepare meticulous anti-Balor and anti-Hezrou spell preparations. Nothing worked. In the end I won both fights by flukes.

My party did about 12 damage total to the Hezrou. In the end the Huge Fire Elemental summoned by the cleric is what killed him. I just pulled everyone out and kept him healed and let him fight while everyone else flailed around helplessly. BTW, my 8 ranger/5 rogue could easily hit the Hezrou with his +3 shocking burst crossbow, but could only do 0 damage. My fighters, with +3 Flaming burst, Shocking burst, Ice burst scimitars and shortsword could do 3 damage on a critical hit.

The Balor was worse. Melee and ranged did 0 damage, so i resorted to using nothing but summons and spells, and even continually reloading just to get past the RIDICULOUS combination of spell resistance and insane saves. The only thing i could scratch it with was magic missles, and only 1 or 2 of those would ever hit. Eventually i hit him with a Hold Monster spell. On the beginning of the new turn, at full health, he mysteriously died. I couldn't hit that save button harder. Unless he died from stat damage from one of my summons who NEVER HIT HIM, i don't see how he died.

Summons used in that fight: Vrock, Hezrou, 2 Glabrezous (i charmed the one he summoned), Huge Earth Elemental, Giant earth, air, and water elemental, Black Widow, Fiendish Dire Wolf, Bearded Devil, spiritual weapon. None of these ever appeared to hurt him.

The Hezrou and Balor fights are ridiculous, in my opinion. Perhaps if i had more similar fights leading up in challenging them so I could work out kinks in strategy I'd be better able to handle them. As it was, I passed them after well over 70 or so reloads by a fluke.

I don't have that Scather sword btw, nor do I have holy weapons. I rescued the guy instead of killing him (good party) and never recieved the replica sword (?), and cannot craft Holy weapons due to the god I chose for my cleric.

 

You only seem to get the Scather sword if one of your guys is chaotic good i was told.
If you see something like 0 damage in the rolls window you should click on the link to view the damage roll. You'll see that the Hezrou has a massive damage reduction/Holy.
So killing him is easy with holy weapons. Without you should just keep him busy with summons and mow him down with magic missiles (greater spell penetration will pay off).

I think the Balor also has DR, but this can be overcome if you deal massive enough blows. Like with a Cleric under Righteous Might effect.
My Sorc was lvl14 and had Greater Spell Penetration & Finger of Death. Therefor the Balor & Hezrou dropped quickly.

 

Not really, no. You can still get Scather, it just takes a while. Those kinds of events are just really difficult to trigger it seems :bored:

 

Hezrou - a fully buffed up 2H Battle Cleric should do the trick. Balor was always the toughest fight in the game.

 

trust me I played LN party and got nothing but the money and a potion for everyone, last time I played CG and got everything, also the knight symbols etc incl. Scather.

 

Co8 v 5.6 Beta vs "Vanilla"

Hi Folks
As a result of this discussion on the "Balance" (or theoretical lack thereof) of Co8 5.6, I activated Vanilla and did a complete playthrough to see what the balance used to be (It's been a long time since I last played Vanilla). Here are a few observations from the runthrough that I completed last night.

1.) Clerics with the "War" Domain selected (Hextor, Heironeous, Corellon Larethian, Erythnul, and Gruumsh) start with their Domain Weapon (i.e. Longsword for Heironeous and Corellon Larethian) just as Fighters with the Weapon Focus Feat do.

2.) Thieves start with a set of lockpicks.

3.) Maybe it's a matter of perception, but it seemed to me that the "dots" seemed to move faster on the World Map in Vanilla than in Co8.

4.) One surprise: about 40% of the Gnolls (both in the Moathouse and the Temple) have Damage Reduction !! I think this is a good idea (it's DR 5/Bludgeoning) which will make sure that your "tanks" will carry more than one type of weapon.

5.) I had Melony level up as a Monk for her 2nd and 3rd Levels. At 3rd Level (2nd Level Monk) as was unable to select "Deflect Arrows" as a feat.

I will add my observations as to the relative balance between Co8 and Vanilla in another post

The Royal Canadian

 

The problem with the Hezrou DR was that I wasn't aware I couldn't craft Holy weapons until i realized I chose the wrong domain for my cleric. (I mistakenly thought any cleric could craft Holy weapons). That left me with only the Holy warhammer you find in the game, which I declined to use since my fighters were already specialized in Scimitars and shortsword.

I also realized that Spell Penetration is pretty much required specifically for the 4th level of the temple. Before then it's useless, so I never bothered taking it.

 

Hi Ravenot
There are actually four Holy Weapons available in the game. You can get a Holy +1 longsword from Meleny's father. You can purchase a +1 Holy Mace at the Church of St. Cuthbert. In addition to the Warhammer there is a Holy Great Axe to be found in the nodes.
I confess that I always run good parties that include either a Lawful Good Cleric of Heironeous or a Chaotic Good Cleric of Corellon Larethian with the "War" and "Good" Domains. In addition to allowing you to damage the Hezrou, Holy weapons do extra damage to any evil creature you hit. That's why I always have a "Good" domain cleric: The majority of the monsters you fight in the game are Evil of one form or another. I usually try to have a Wizard with Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration.
The Royal Canadian

 

There is also a holy 'spiked chains of love' on the 3rd level. It is in a chest next to some undead scag thing.

 

Hi Ranth
D'oh !!:doh: Not only did I forget about the "Twisted Chains of Love" (+1 Spiked Chains), which as you state are on Level 3 of the Temple (in the Banshees room), I also forgot about the +1 Holy Ransur on Level 2 in a secret room off the Air Temple. Either way there are a fair number of holy weapons kicking around.
The Royal Canadian

 

Play Balance "Vanilla" vs Co8

Hi Folks
As promised, here is my take on play balance between Vanilla and Co8.
I think that Co8 is as balanced as Vanilla. My party of 5 PCs plus Elmo and Meleny all ended up at 10th Level at the end of the Water Node. They should have been 11th Level going into the final fight, but the game stopped giving them experience points after they had 54,999 Exp.

I previously ran a CG group through the same "route" in Co8 5.6 that ended up at 12th and 13th Levels ( crafters and non-crafters respectively). There are several reasons why I feel the group I used in Co8 5.6 ended up a level or 2 higher than this group did in Vanilla.
1.) The group I ran in Co8 had several random encounters, the vanilla group didn't have any.
2.) Admittedly this is minor, but there are more traps in Co8 than there are in Vanilla, and every time you deactivate a trap, you gain experience points. In the moathouse alone there are five traps (worth something like 70 exp apiece per character) that were added in Co8.
3.) There are several quests or encounters in Co8, that do not exist in Vanilla. For starters you don't have the "Big 3 Ambush" as you exit the Moathouse after killing Lareth (in my runthrough Lareth didn't summon the 5 spiders either). In Emridy Meadow you don't have the "Skeleton Force" by the Rainbow Rock. You also don't have the Assassin or "Retribution" fights that you can get into with the Traders. There are also some quests in Nulb (in the brothel) that are not found in Vanilla. I am going to start a Co8 game (hopefully using the characters from my Vanilla runthrough) that I will play exactly the same way as I did this Vanilla runthrough (completing the exact same quests and no others, avoiding all random encounters, etc...) to see if there is any real difference in play balance.

Here is the really interesting part: How challanging is it ?? There are some aspects of Co8 that are harder (Giants and Bugbears breaking free of Entangle and web spells) and some that are easier (the tendency of most monsters to attack "Spiritual Weapons"). The biggest surprise I had during my Vanilla run, was the tendency for the monsters (of all types) to ignore "Spiritual Weapons") In fact, the only time I would see a monster attack a Spiritual Weapon, was when the monster was webbed and couldn't attack anything else. I don't know how many times I saw monsters run, fly or hop past a Spiritual Weapon. The other thing I noticed was that the monsters with crossbows never charged my party. They wouldn't always take a 5 foot step to move away from PCs who got into striking distance, but they never charged my party.

The hard fights in (in chronological order)
The Moathouse Bugbears (harder in Co8 because they always seem to break out of webs)
Lareth's Guards (harder in Vanilla because the crossbows don't charge)
Lareth (harder in Co8 because he calls in the spiders and uses his spells better)
"Terjon's Artifact" (harder in Co8 due to the "skeleton force" at the rainbow rock)
"Grud's Fish Story" (hard either way, but slightly harder in Co8 because of monsters tendency to slip out of webs and entangles
The Fire Temple: I actually had a harder time in Vanilla. In Co8 I would send my rogue forward to scout, drop multiple Ice Storms on the Salamanders and mop up the rest. The Salamanders would throw Fireball after Fireball at the Rogue who would dodge them all. In Vanilla, the Salamanders throw their Fireballs at the biggest group of people, usually doing severe damage to the wizards, clerics, and druids who aren't so good at dodging fireballs
The Water Temple: Again Vanilla was harder. I don't know why but it was.
Falrinth and Sigomal Redhand: Co8 is definately harder now that these two actually think.
Senshock: Co8 is harder. Unless you get lucky, he's going to get away, making the next fight (Hedrack) harder.
The Guardians of the Gates (all Nodes): Co8 is harder because the demons use their abilities and summonings better.
Earth Node: Galeb Duhrs: I found the Galeb Duhrs more difficult in Vanilla. If your "tanks" don't have +3 Weapons with both Shocking Burst and Icy Burst, it's going to be a Loooooooooong day in the dungeon. I played this twice in Vanilla; once with a party whose weapons were +3 Holy, Shocking Burst , and once with a party that also had Icy Burst on their weapons. At the end of the first (shock only) fight, the fighters were fairly bloody, the wizards and cleric were out of spells, and the wizards wand of "Chain Lightning" was almost completely used up. After reloading and adding Icy burst to all the weapons I could, this fight went easier. I think part of the reason I found this more difficult in Vanilla is that the Wizard and Meleny only had non-magical Crossbows. In my last Co8 run, everyone had a +3 Holy, Shocking Burst, Icy Burst weapon, making this fight a lot easier. By the way, I just read up on magic weapons on d20SRD. It turns out that the Bursts (Icy,Shocking, Flaming) only do 1D6 on a regular hit but do 1 to 3 D10 (depending on the Critical Hit multiplier of the weapon) extra damage on a critical hit.
Zuggtmoy: Co8 is definately harder. She has more hit points (or at least it seems like she does) and she seems to "fight" smarter.

The Royal Canadian