I know this is an old thread but bether then starting a new just nfor a question. How hight Slight of Hand do you have to have to steal the ring from the witch? And how high Bluff do you have to have to get it from her? I have been trying to steal it and I get many success but I still never get the ring. And I can't get the Bluff option so I guess I'm to low there.
Re: Co8 New Content: Moathouse Respawn How to get more than one item from the witch Ok, here is what I did on the gnarley forest map with the drow party and the witch that gives you a rewarding gift for her rescue. After killing the drow I saved the game. I talked to the witch and explored all the gift options that she has to give by loading the game 4-5 times in order to see all the items. I have a wizard in my party and the ring of resonance is clearly the best item of the rest by a big margin. Now the thing is that, firstly 20K was a lot of cash that I didn't had at the time and I didn't want to sell any of my stuff to get the ring. Secondly, apart from the ring the regenerating amulet as well as the other ring that gives +2 to shield are very nice options indeed. So I thought of a way to get both the ring of resonance and one more item of my choice, all of which without having to give out any money at all. The steps to do this are the following: (the procedure is after you killed the drows and saved your game) 1. You cast a deep slumber on the witch. Its common that you do not succeed at first so load the game until she is asleep. Note: she has 10 HD so sleep won't cut it, but deep slumber is just enough to do the job 2. Then you go to her body and loot the ring of resonance. This is an interesting point because she carries the ring on her, while all the other items can be had only via conversation. Note: I tried to pick pocket her a hundred times with my rogue who has more than enough sleight of hand but to no avail. You will not get anything from her with this way 3. After looting her, save the game into a new save slot. We may do some load-saving on the next steps so this will be needed 4. While she is asleep cast a charm person or a charm monster on her. This is required so that when she wakes up she won't attack us instantly. Again you may not succeed at the first attempt so load the game until she is charmed. After casting the spell she will now be sleeping and charmed. Notice that the "sleeping" text that appears when a monster is sleeping will now be in yellow and not in red meaning she is not a threat. 5. Save the game again. 6. Rest for one hour. This is needed in order for the sleep effect to be dismissed and thus wake the witch up. We don't want to hit her in any way to wake her up because that will make her hostile towards us, so resting is the way to wake her up in "peace". Remember the charm spell lasts for 1 day/level but the deep slumber lasts for 1 min/level so 1 hour of resting is more than enough and minimizes the chance of a random encounter. The save game earlier is needed in order to avoid a random encounter, meaning you will do some game loading until that one hour passes without any hostile incident. 7. Now she is awake, you have the ring and she is neutral towards you because of the charm spell so you can go talk to her normally. By talking to her you can get another ring of resonance if you like (and have the 20K cash on you) or you can get any other of the items that she offers. Personally I went for the other ring with the +2 shield bonus because having one ring of resonance is way overpowered but two of them would be flat-out broken (it's like wearing a ring of wizardry I, II, III and IV all at once and then later on when you will get 5th, 6th or 7th level spells these will double up as well, which in DnD SRD is epic rings of wizardry, so yes this item is broken). As for the amulet of regeneration, this is broken as well, because in SRD a ring of regeneration costs 90K and regenerates 1 hp/hour not 5 hp/round. And in any case while in a battle these 10-20 hp that will be healed are not a great boosting factor, but a +2 to AC on a barbarian with a two-handed weapon is very good, considering the fact that you can't get this shield bonus any other way (you can't cast the shield spell on the barbarian because it is a personal spell and you can't have him wear a buckler because this way he will lose the 1,5 times his strength bonus to damage) If Gaear is watching this thread I would like to suggest some changes about the items that are given by the witch due to the overpowering nature of the current ones. Instead of the ring of resonance give us a ring of wizardry III which would be great, even if I had to pay 20K I would do so gladly. If that ring could be used by any spellcaster not just by wizards that would be awesome, especially in the hands of a sorcerer. As for the amulet, I would suggest something else. Lets say on this case a cloak or a vest that increases the sneak attack damage by +1d6. Speaking of overpowered items, the weapon in the chest of the fiendish minotaur in hickory branch or the unholy double axe are also some cases of way too expensive items for the players at that moment. In my playthough I didn't had any need for these items and still I chose not to sell them but just to store them in the extraplanar chest due to unbalancing the game by giving the party way too much money at the moment. That would mean that when going on into the temple of elemental evil the game would lose interest about the rewards because I would already have too much money for crafting and no real goal. A small notice about a reward that I very much enjoyed was, when I finished the arena of heroes and the guy gave me the tower shield. I never used a tower shield before (not once in the many ToEE playthoughs that I did in the years) because I they give -2 to attack rating as per the SRD (but hey not in ToEE!, well I didn't knew that). And it was a nice and surprising reward for me, mainly because of these 4 points: 1. It can't be bought by any vendor in the game 2. You can't craft it yourself 3. It is not a overwhelming/broken item to give to the PCs 4. It won't be obsolete later in the game (because it's not like a gloves of dex +4 which later on will be sold for gloves of dex +6 and also it can be enhanced further by +2 or +3) Sorry if my post was too big, I started writing about the witch and how you can get more out of her and then I went into writing about items and game balance. Anyway hope you find it useful PS I was using Co8 7.4 NC mod
Re: The Ring of Resonance There are only two bluff options in her dialog. The first is to tell her you tracked the drow to her location, and the second is to blame her sister's death on the drow. Neither directly involves getting the ring, and indeed there are no options to 'bluff' the ring out of her. Odd about the pickpocketing, as there appears to be nothing preventing that.
Incidentally, I split the above post by beholder off from the Moathouse sticky thread (as well as Crusader's from the old thread he posted in because it was coincidentally topical) because it probably deserves its own discussion and because it's an excellent example of how to get my attention in a positive way: be polite, be helpful, be thorough, and make a compelling case for yourself. :thumbsup: I will address some of the issues you bring up in the days to come. I can say right off that I like the idea of reducing treasure ... there was definitely a phase that Co8 went through where we seemed to want to give away the world, and we're still feeling the effects of that to this day. In the meantime, anyone else should feel free to discuss.
Great post, although a spoiler tag would have been nice. On the tower shield, I'm pretty sure you can get a MW tower shield from the cabinet maker after he has the deklo wood.
MW Metal Tower Shields can be bought by Brother Smyth after you give him the head of the Emridy Meadows Hill Giant. The Cabinet Maker only sells Wooden ones.
N,o the ones the wooden tower shields the Cabinet Maker sells are MW. You're not mistaken don't worry
I'm not sure about the need to reduce the overall amount of treasure, as I'm able to spend just about every single copper. Timing may need to be adjusted in some cases, but overall, I think the total amount is about right.
Continuing beholder's superb discussion about items that unbalance the game, from my personal experiences of playing the game, I consider Fragarach, Scather and the Periapt of Wound Closure to be WAY overpowered because using them makes the game WAY too easy! The player can craft a Periapt of Wound Closure for each of his/her characters (which further unbalances the game because the player's characters can no longer die from damage attrition during combat! (except from fire or acid damage, but the only opponents that would be likely to do enough fire damage to kill a player character would be Noble Salamanders lobbing Fireballs)). If I was leader of the Circle of Eight modders, then I would remove these 3 items from the game. I agree with beholder that the Ring of Resonance is overpowered (it's especially useful during the 'War of the Golden Skull: Defender' quest!), and I would also argue that the Masterwork Great Cleaver is also overpowered, but, in my opinion, both of these items can remain in the game because they don't affect game balance too much. In my last playthrough of the game, I mucked around with crafting the most powerful weapon that I could. I ended up enchanting weapons to +3 enhancement and then added the following enchantments to them: Holy, Axiomatic, Flaming Burst, Icy Burst, Shocking Burst. To my amazement, when my characters struck opponents while wielding these weapons, the weapons conferred ALL of the damage bonuses of ALL of the enchantments with each hit! This made these weapons INSANELY overpowered because the weapons would deal approximately 45 HP damage with each hit! If I was leader of the Circle of Eight modders, then I would remove the ability to craft such heavily enchanted weapons from the game because using such heavily enchanted weapons makes the game WAY too easy!
Okay, first of all, @beholder - thanks for the methodology above. We will be sure to close those loopholes. I like that idea. According to the SRD though, it wouldn't cost 20k gp. It would cost 70k gp. Even better. :twisted: Also a good idea. We'll see. Bear in mind that the NC will be moving to > level 10, so some of this stuff may become more appropriate/less overpowered at that stage. If it's completely not legit, that's another story. Yes surplus money is already a big issue in the game. Trouble is, there's not much way to get rid of it aside from eliminating treasure. We don't want to eliminate all treasure, because that's one of the intrinsic elements of 'adventuring.' I suspect that at some point over the next year, a good hard look will be taken at minimizing the stuff we've added and contributed to the bloat. Glad you liked the tower shield ... I specifically tried to be restrained with that. I'd be willing to look at the periapt, but Scather and Fragrock are too iconic to go. I don't really have any intention of fiddling with crafting. It's always been there, and it's always had the potential to bork the game. Some players love it and some players hate it. It's just one of those things. The only thing you can be sure of is that if we arbitrarily nerfed it, we would catch hell.
I'd vote in favour of leaving crafting alone- it isn't compulsory and it gives the option of creating some other weapons than those found as loot. I've never felt the need to go beyond holy flaming +3, partly because I'd rather use the XP for levelling. I've not used a periapt of wound closure before- are they that good? Certainly it is possible to cheat (yourself) by contriving to get both Fragarach and Scather, and equip all PCs with +6 bonuses to all stats, but surely that gets tedious? I tend to craft a primary weapon for my main combatants, wear the best armour I find, and only boost abilities that would matter to the character (who has to persuade the crafter..) anything beyond that is too much like logistics- who wants to spend hours minmaxing. In general I think it's pretty clear that consoling in loot/XP/ finding ways to get extra rewards is going to alter the balance of the game in your favour and in the end rob you of some of the challenge.
Speaking from brutal personal experience, crafting Periapts of Wound Closure for all your characters is still insufficient to beat Demons and Demigods. If you don't like them, don't craft them. I can't see how them affecting your enjoyment of the game should affect mine, so I suppose that puts me in the "giving hell if crafting is nerfed" column.
I've got to agree with that as well, especially if it's something that was available for crating in vanilla TOEE. I guess I don't understand why you'd want to mess around with removing items from the original game.
