I've been working my way through the issues in order to try to play TOEE again (played it in the old days on a regular PC). I tried installing it into Parallels 7 but that gave me a crash to the desktop when i tried to run the game (now with the Co8 mod). Then I created a boot camp partition with Windows 7 x86 (seemed safer) and installed the Atari version of the game, patch 1 and 2 and then the Co8 mod (but the instructio80ns didn't say to do it in admin so that failed). I did it again in admin and it worked. I tried to set the options in the front end, but there were no real instructions on what any of the options meant which was a problem. Then I clicked play and it went through the startup but then wouldn't listen to the mouse. I had to ctrl-alt-del and restarted and this time it seemed to be ok. Then I tried creating a character and when I got to height, I lost everything on the display and nothing I could do could restore it. I'm maybe guessing that the screen timeout was at issue? Not sure but I disabled that and got back in and created 2 characters. That went OK. I set resolution to 1680x1050 even though I'm really 1920x1200. Not sure what the best choice here is. The startup screens look ok, but haven't tried playing the game yet. Could someone explain the startup options, what resolution I should use (before I start playing and have to abandon any gameplay) and what my problems so far might mean. Thanks.
Ok, a little additional information. I set max HP per level (for my characters) and I set the level cap to 20 (no idea whether that will work since I see in the forum posts of people who never seem to get that to work). I equipped myself and started adventuring and it worked so far anyway. I even had a movie show and still didn't self destruct (again). I suspect I don't have the right party. I have 2 fighters, a rogue, a wizard, and a cleric. That's pretty much how we approached the module originally. My plan is to take one of the fighters and cross class them into Paladin. I plan to cross class the rogue to be a druid. That gives me one fighter with all the perks that will make him heck on wheels. One cleric who will get all the spells, including raise dead. One wizard who can enchant (eventually) and who can be the artillery (maybe not as well as a sorcerer). It looks like there is not much thief work in the dungeon anyway. My initial thought was instead of the pure fighter to take in a fighter/sorcerer but I just couldn't envision him standing up to anything big hand to hand. It seemed like a bad idea. I do need some feedback here. I don't want to get way into the game only to find out I'm doing something monumentally stupid.
So far my party is only level 7, but it seems to be working. At the moment my party is a Fighter/Rogue, Cleric, Monk, Ranger/Barbarian and Wizard. NPC wise I have a Bard (Zaxis), Barbarian/Fighter/Ranger/Rogue (Rania) and a Barbarian/Fighter (Elmo). So its pretty melee heavy group right now. Next time I am not sure I would keep the Monk, she did very well at low levels, but seems to be falling behind now (Mind, giving her Con 11 did her no favours). TBH, I think Abilitie Scores are far more indicative of party power than class make-up.
I usually go for one melee type (Fighter/Barbarian) and arm everyone else with composite bows. By 20th level, the Wizard has 12 levels of Fighter (for the +16 BAB), the Cleric has 8 (to attain Greater Weapon Focus), and the Rogue and 2 Rangers have 10 Fighter levels each (for Weapon Specialization). Relying on bows means I'm not so dependent on spells and can go for days between rests (thank you, bugbear potions of healing). Being able to craft Periapts of Wound Closure helps too.
You can craft that helm at level one? My cleric and or wizard can cast read magic at level one. It's also nice to have my cleric cast "Bless Water" and then sell the bottles for easy gold early on.
Not level 1, no. I think it takes level 3 or 4. I didn't realize we were talking about only 1 level of arcane caster, as carbon_dragon mentioned having a pure wizard (expressly for crafting) in addition to his potentially multi-classed fighter/sorcerer.
My classes are (nowhere near done) F9, F2P7, Rog2Dru7, C9, and Wiz9. So far I'm doing OK. I do get occasional crashes to desktop (CTD) which is annoying because I have to Ctrl-alt-del before I can get control of the cursor so I can kill the game and restart. I've had one trying to travel, several trying to get Jaroo to fix a spell permanency problem and a few in other situations. I know the endgame in the nodes makes spells nearly useless because of spell resistance so I've tried to give all my characters some fighting ability in melee. The fighter and Paladin are great at that. The Druid is pretty good too and the Cleric is too. Even the mage can do pretty good damage with Lareth's Staff of Striking. I've played this game before but I don't know how this party will do in the endgame.