Paladin's Cove beta release, and feedback

KotC1: Once I understood how the game worked, going Human Cleric x2 and Half-Elf Wizard x2 got me through. I was doing well on Hardcore (single save) difficulty having barely played the game before until I finished the Orc fort in a way not intended at the time by the game maker. I was soft locked and reported the bug. I went back to the normal difficulty after.

Crafting, especially scrolls, weapons, armor, and wondrous items, helped our party succeed. Farming random encounters for EXP helped.

As for Paladin's Cove, I haven't yet played it since I wanted to ensure Temple+ was compatible with it and PC (the Cove) had a new public release with the bug fixes since its launch.

Thankee!

 

Two things have come up for me. First, and the reason I quoted the above, is that when I try to go to the vineyard, my game slows to something like 1 frame per 5 seconds. It appears to happen as I encounter the rows of crops that wave in the wind; the more of those waving crops on the screen, the slower the game goes. It's not a huge deal, since it isn't a quest that would prevent me from progressing, but having read some of the other posts on the elderly couple who live there, I am intrigued.

Second, I have somehow managed to screw up the Snow Sisters quest. I can't recall exactly, but after I

Spoiler

got the assignment from the church and talked to the beast master, I think I didn't go to the monastery immediately. Whether I did or didn't, the reaction at the door was the same as before - the woman who comes to the door won't let me in and I have no options to progress. I did find the exit from the hidden fortress to the outside of the monastery, and I thought there might be another entrance but if there is, I can't find it.

When that happened, I just decided to complete other quests, but now I've done everything in chapter 1 and can't figure out how to start Snow Sisters. Am I missing something, or am I pretty well screwed?

 

Based on feedback here, I have already toned down the stats a wee bit for the Stone Berserkers. A little less DR, a little less Spell Resistance, a little less AC, etc. I've also reduced the total number of bonus creatures from 7 to 5. There shouldn't be encounters where you have to reload 25 times till you get lucky with rolls and finally defeat them. That was never my intent. The "bonus" creatures are not super-dangerous in and of themselves, but the make for a crowded chaotic scene, where you can't 5-foot step away from the enemy, or maneuver for your own flanking, or cast many area-effect spells. They also give the stone guys flanking themselves. Like they needed another +2 to hit.

But I too struggle with that encounter. I just replayed it from a saved game, and the whole party was killed except for a halfling wizard backed into a corner with Mirror Image, casting his last remaining Lighting Bolt scrolls. He did it, but had only 2 HP left lol. It makes for a nice challenge.

Keep in mind, if you stumble upon it when you're not at your healthiest, there is always the option to flee. Then you can heal, buff up and re-enter.

I usually buff up fully (while still keeping my personal 3-buff max rule). Depending on the type of spellcasters you have, there are the usual protections like Barkskin, Shield of Faith, Shield, Mage Armor, etc. But I find Mirror Image indispensable, and recast from scroll when it runs out during the fight. If you've found any "special" potions or mushrooms, that are particulaarly powerful, now's the time to break them out and use them. Potion of Greater Invisibility, Potion of Stoneskin, Potion of Mirror Image, etc. You my or may not have these, so that's optional.

As for an attack plan, with the current group I have, here's what I found works best:

First, focus only on the the stone berzerkers.

Wizard and Bard (bring many scrolls)

- Bard Inspire Couraage.
- Haste, once
- Glitterdust, till their blind. Cut's their offensive effectiveness in half.
- Sound Burst. Minor damage, but stalls their turn.
- Lightning Bolt, or Fireball. Requires some maneuvering.
- Finish with Magic Missiles, or Scorching Ray.​

Druid

- Dump endless Dire Wolves, from Summon Monster III. (again, bring scrolls)
(This is so strong. They get thru with some decent damage,
distract a turn of attack away from the berzerkers,
take enough damage to last a few turns, and provide flanking.)​

Fighter and Paladin:

- Pound away. ​

Mop up the bonus creatures after the 3 Berzerkers are dead.

 

I actually took a slightly different approach. I pre-buffed with bull's strength on my paladin, fighter and cleric - the latter wasn't all that helpful, but hey - and cat's grace on my rogue with weapon finesse. Wizard with 20 dex and improved initiative cast haste as first action and my cleric cast prayer (which didn't affect enemies but ...) and then I just focused on the berserkers with anyone who could attack them; the oozes almost never hit my characters, so I only attacked them when a character couldn't reasonably damage a berserker until they were all that was left.

I think I managed it on my 5th try and it was very rewarding to get out of that fight with only one character dead. It was my rogue, who'd already been raised once, and I thought about reloading to try again and see if I could get through with no deaths, but I figured of the five characters I could afford to let him lag behind a bit on the next level-up.

I think my characters were level 6-7 (paladin and rogue were 6, the paladin having been raised once too). It was a really hard encounter, but also really satisfying when I won. I think you're probably right to tone it down a bit, but I wouldn't go too far. I suspect that most people who get to play Paladin's Cove are pretty experienced with ToEE and even if they're not all that good, like me, will figure out how to get past tough encounters after a few tries. I would suggest adding silver weapons to one of the vendors to address the lycanthropes as others have suggested.

On the other issue I was facing, I reloaded from a save when my characters were level 1, before I took the Snow Sisters quest, and fortunately when I checked the rust monster, the glyph was there. I'm enjoying the game enough that having to go back to level 1 is somewhere between a mild annoyance and a blessing.

Also, on the "new" run I realized there were lootable cabinets in the temple of Rao attic and found a scroll of summon monster IV, only to then be forced to use it on the turtles. The good news from that encounter was that the "witch" was rendered unconscious, so I managed to convince her to quit adventuring without having to leave town. On my prior run, she'd leveled up a couple of times and didn't want to quit, but neither she nor any of the other NPCs seemed to actually benefit in any way from gaining a level. She was still stuck with the same spells and spell slots as she was when I first recruited her. Is that intended?

On the slowdown issue FDR and I experienced near the vineyard, it did also start happening in the cornfields on the crossroads map, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad. I am planning to twiddle with the settings to see if changing anything has an effect at the vineyard, and will report back when I can.

It occurred to me today that if this game was released on Steam it would be my pick for game of the year for the last ... I don't know how many years. And I've only "completed" chapter 1 at this point. I recognize that am predisposed to like it, because ToEE is one of my favorite games, but it's really amazing that you created this yourself and for a beta it's incredibly polished.

 

Sorry I took so long to reply.

Some people get that problem, and some don't. I'm still working on it. Very frustrating. For most of my play-throughs it's not there, but sometimes it is. as you said, if you can't get there it's OK, it's strictly a role-playing dialog. And the money for the book is already given to you by the book dealer. So it won't stop the story.

Did you bring the 2 pack beasts into your party after you talked to Merdu, the beast tender? And are they still alive when you knock on the door? There is no timing requirement with that quest, so that's not the problem. You just need to have the beasts in your party.

If that's not the problem, I would need to check the value of a few global flags. Just to see where you're at.

From the console (press and keep holding the SHIFT key down, then press the tilde key "~"):

Code:

game.global_flags[89]
game.global_flags[90]
game.global_flags[91]

 

This was implemented shorty after release (July 2024), and will be included for the beta 1.1, coming hopefully by March at the latest. There won't, however, just be a vendor with an array of silver weapons. I'm making it a little secretive and a bit of a challenge, but nothing too hard or time-consuming. When you talk to Tosh during the were-rat quest, he'll give you some places where you can pursue silver weapons from various other vendors.

Always check them cabinets.

Kaleela's processing has been totally overhauled for beta 1.1. There should be no more confusing situations like that.

As far as the leveling up goes, she starts at level 3, and when you level her up the first time to level 4 she will get second level spells, more Hit Points, etc. Did you level her up in the right class? This is not really a spoiler, but:

Spoiler

She's actually a bard, but she doesn't know it. Did you level her up as Sorcerer or a Wizard, or some other class instead of Bard? That would explain why she didn't get new spells.

Thanks for saying this. But I have looooong way to go to make this a complete game yet. Maybe someday.

 

No need to apologize, Marc, this is a hobby for all of us and I bet I speak for everyone who's played Paladin's Cove when I say thank you.

On the Snow Sisters quest: Oh man, no, I did not add the pack beasts to the party. They're still hanging out in Paladin's Cove. That's good news.

I like the idea of making players work for the silver weapons. I was actually going to suggest some sort of side-quest, but then I figured that would detract from the rest of the work you're doing for something that's not all that big a deal.

I haven't actually had the opportunity to level up an NPC at all, as far as I can remember, and definitely not Kaleela. I got at least two notices that she'd leveled up, but there was never a little, gold "+" sign in her portrait. I'll see if I can try again and let you know.

 

I found some Bugs in Chapter 3:
1. unlimited Attack of Opportunity by NPC, keep hitting until my PC unconscious
2. Evasion bugs: Chapter 3, in crypt, my Rogue have evasion get full dmg from Noble Salamander's Fireball, while my paladin and bard get a bit dmg without Evasion feat.
3. Hasted Spell get stack? That is unreal, while bard song (feat) can not stack with Bless (spell) or other buff attack roll.
4. Bodak's gaze can kill my paladin while saving successful
5. Beholder so very, very power. It can can many spells per round (3-4 spells like as: sorching ray, flesh to stone, bestow cursed) with many DC 17, 19, 24; he deals to many tagets, many random dmg: force dmg, negative dmg, nonlethal dmg (my bard get 1 hit 534 nonlethal dmg), finger of death can kill many targets...
6. Summon hit unfriendly to ally. Summon still alive when the master was dead.

 

This has been "fixed" for the upcoming release. It's an existing ToEE bug, not specific to Paladin's Cove. The problem is caused by the enemy having Improved Invisibility. Whenever it takes an A-O-O, it immediately checks for another one. So the attacks become infinite, and they pummel your guy to unconsciousness. I've stopped any enemies in the game from buffing with Improved Invisibility. There were only a few.

Look into the option to "Cast Defensively", to avoid this and other Attacks of Opportunity when you cast spells.

Evasion only helps if you actually make a successful saving throw.
Your rogue probably missed his saving throw, so he took full damages.
And your Paladin probably MADE his saving throw, so he only took half damages.

Bless and a Bard's Inspire Courage are both MORALE BONUSES, hence they don't stack together. But the Haste spell gives a generic +1 attack bonus, so it always stacks with any other bonus.

Another ToEE oddity, that can be very confusing when it happens. You most likely rolled a one, which is an automatic miss on your saving throw. It gets confusing because the game actually tells you that your saving throw was successfully, and the numbers verify this fact.

Let's say your Paladin has a +17 bonus to his saving throw, and he rolls a 1 on the dice, and the DC to save is 15. The game will show that your saving throw roll was an 18 (1+17) and it beats the DC of 15. It even tells you in the display area that your save was successful. But since the roll on the dice was a "1", you automatically fail, and you die.

This is all internal stuff that I can't change. Maybe Temple+ fixed this confusion.

Noted. Others have commented too. I'll just say this, that I've never really had a problem with them in my testing. So I found it surprising that people did. But I do tend to run fighter heavy groups (3 fighter types, a bard or sorcerer, and another random tag-along). So I usually beat it to death in the first or second round before it can cause much trouble. It definitely a fight you want to end quickly, you can't get creative and prolong the fight by pecking away and healing up.

Oh, and the massive non-lethal damage is how I handled the turn-to-stone ray. Since ToEE has no real effect like that.

Could you rephrase that more clearly. I'm not sure whose summon, and whose ally.

Thanks!

 

Could you explain as explicitly as possible what you mean by "I got at least two notices that she'd leveled up". That is confusing to me. Nowhere in the game do NPC's level up by themselves. It should always be manual level up with the yellow "+" sign. I've very curious about this. Thanks.

 

I'm going from memory, but I believe the message was in the combat roll text? Regardless, she definitely gained enough experience to level up, but there was no "+" in her portrait and remembering the issue with doors/portals disappearing, I just clicked on that area anyway with no effect.

Edit to add: I know some people commented on the difficulty spike at the start of level two, and boy howdy! I think I'm handicapped by having my paladin one and my rogue two levels lower than the rest of the party (6 and 5 respectively, as opposed to my fighter, wizard and cleric, who are all level 7). I got stomped by the

Spoiler

toll collector combat (the second part) and by the goblin ambush, though I managed to win that one on my third attempt with almost no damage taken. I've also only beaten the pirate combat at Rivermist once, and my paladin died again, so I'm going to do that one over.

For the last combat described in my spoiler, I put stoneskin on everybody, gave my melee characters bull's strength, my finesse rogue popped cat's grace, and I think I cast mirror image and divine power just before entering and starting combat. Some of the sneak attacks still got through, leading to my paladin's death. Going to try that one again today and add heroism to the pre-buffs.

 

Marc, quick question: Will the next release be compatible with previous saves/current games? Pondering whether to start a new game or wait

 

when I encounter Salamanders - starting explore crypt (chapter 3), those Salamander summon random: Larger Fire elemental, Fire Toad, hound,... they attacked each other.
Plus one, I can not command charmed enemy, he even not automatically fight.
Spell Hero's Feast bugs: no effect immu poison, permanent duration.
My ranger can not use spell by fatigued (by Rage - bug non stop), I found Barkskin spell in memoried lv2, lv3 at same time .

 

You can always use a higher level slot to prepare a spell, so a level 3 slot for Barkskin (which is level 2).

One situation you might want this (per the actual rules) is if you have a character with only 12 wisdom, you might have 3rd level spell slots, but not be able to cast third level spells. So you can fill your 3rd level slots with the 2nd level spells you can actually cast. I think the game is not good at enforcing the limitation, though.

I don't know if this is Temple+ only, but sometimes it seems like if you're right clicking on the spell to add it to the prepared list, the game will automatically stick it in a higher level slot if no lower level one is available. It doesn't always do this though, and I don't know what makes the difference.

 

You won't be able to use saves in the current 1.0 with the upcoming 1.1.
Too much has changed for it to be compatible.