Getting my ass handed to me

Hi all.

This is the first time I am playing Temple of Elemental Evil, and someone recommended me to install CO8 because it fixes alot of critical things, so I complied.

Anyway, with almost no previous D&D experience (only NWN and Baldurs Gate :shy I am obviously finding this game to be very, very hard, I can't even finish the Moathouse without constantly going back and forth between the town to rest up my HP and spells, and my characters do miss awful lot. Is this how it is supposed to be for a newbie? Or did I mess up my characters? Or does CO8 increase the difficulty for veterans? I am not complaining as I like challenge in games.

I am merely wondering so I didn't mess up my gaming experience.

Thank you for your time.

 

I have the same background experience and I am doing ok. However, I have started over several times for one reason or another, so I am getting a lot of "practice." I think I have some fairly good characters. They did miss a lot in the early stages, but are doing better (still missing some, but so are the bad guys). I also went back and forth between the town and the moathouse at first, but then just started using the spider tower (rest w/o monster interruptions).

Recruiting Elmo is a big help. There are threads on building good parties...at least one that I read and must be more...do a search if you think you need help with your character building.

This game is somewhat harder than BG, but I like it better. Not as much traveling, for one thing.

I didn't go to the moathouse until I got some practice at the Deklo Grove and messed around some at E. Meadow...to learn how to use my characters and level up some. I didn't try to do the Rainbow Rock or Hill Giant, though. Not until later. Don't give up. Have fun and good luck.

 

What kind of party setup do you have and what kind of stats? Your first time out I'd reccomend at least two healers. I'd bring along Ronald or Melany and create a cleric.

Do all the teadius little errand quests to get a level up in hommlet. Make sure at least one of your characters has good diplamacy to smooth things along on that. Do the deko grove and emridy meadows for extra experience, (save the giant for later). If your good you can use the sneak ability to take the loot the giant is gaurding and even charm the bear next to him for an extra advantage.

 

I have a Barbarian, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer and Cleric, and then I have a Rogue henchmen and a Wizard henchmen. I don't remember what stats exactly I put them but they should be okay I hope. I rolled on half of the chars and used the buy system on the other half, I have no idea why I mixed them up like that.

I noticed I missed alot of quest in Hommlet so I am going back to complete a few quests and perhaps gain a level or so.

It's a very fun game though, expected nothing less from a Troika game, ToEE is the only game from them I haven't completed. Oh well, I'll learn eventually and it's going to be one fun ride, I'm sure of that.

 

A good strategy during the whole game is to have meat shields to take up damage that your characters normally would. Summon Monster (X), Nature's Ally (X), Animate Dead, Charm Person/Monster are all great and available to most casters. Now the summoned allies only last a few rounds, if they survive that long, but the charmed ones last until you rest, unless they fail their save again, then until the next rest stop. I've taken some charmed monsters back to town without any problem, even had Terjon heal them up for me.

Suddenly find yourself in a giant battle, like when you first enter the moathouse, throw out a couple of summoned monsters toward the back of the battle, especially near any shooters. When enemies try to get off a bow shot or a spell, it creates an attack of opportunity for anyone next to them. Its hard to make it through a crowd to take them out early (unless your a monk) so summon something near them. Remember even that 1st level small spider with 8 hps is a great meat shield, the enemies will still hit it after its unconscious.

Go after the hill giant for some BIG XPs early, sneak (skill) up on him, he's in the middle of the map (circle around first and take out all the undead, rest then go for it) then have a druid charm the bear, great meat shield. I like to Entangle him, or use Web, to keep him from clubbing you to death. Then pelt him with missile weapons until he is dead. If he escapes, or you couldn't charm the bear, throw some summons at him before he reaches you. Him clubbing that spider is a lot better than him clubbing you. Keep him at bay, web him and the summons if you have too, who cares what happens to them. If you have a bard, get charm person early, you can use it the whole game, as you come across human enemies the whole time. Go into the moathouse, or rest outside it until you meet pirates/ lizard men, or brigands, charm as many as you can (leave a few alive while fighting, they don't do much damge when they hit) then take them to the meadow and send them in against the giant. Don't forget to pick up their stuff after he kills them. You do lose a few XPs if they die in battle, but later on when you throw a few fireballs on top of them and whatever you are fighting, you get XPs when they die in your "service".

Go to a spot you are not having too much trouble (like outside the moathouse, Dekko grove, or the starting spot of the Meadows) and rest frequently for the random encounters. Its great practice, good time to try out all those cleric or druid spells, develop some tactics that work for you, and most importantly, earn some XPs. The accumulated treasure doesn't hurt either. Figure out who pays more for what (leather worker pays more for leather goods, jeweler buys gems, etc) ant take all you can early, as every dime helps. Buy everyone good armor (not necessarily the best available, you have to figure weight vs DEX max bonuses, its complicated, but isn't that what makes this game great!), a good (masterwork if you can afford it) weapon, and do make sure everyone has a missile weapon. Anyone using a sling should buy bullets every time you see the blacksmith, as no monster drops them as treasure. Arrows and bullets are plentiful, but buy a few for everyone at the start, the weigh nothing, so don't worry about piling on. Later on, money will be plentiful, but I still pick up some stuff because I get a good price for them, and I still spend quite a bit while crafting.

Hope this helps.

 

I'm currently having my butt handed to me in the moathouse. I used to mop up the gnolls there effectivily, but I'm having trouble this time. Maybe its my party or level. I have 5 level 3's in there. If I get killed again I'll bring Elmo.

The gnolls are all using barb rage and taking me apart. I have no mage, just my bard casting greese to slow them down but its not enough.

 

Druid? Entangle will keep them off you. Bard and cleric try sound blast, it will stun them. Summon in some allies/ meat shields.

 

To all having Problems at the lower level areas..

Yes- Get a good sized and good levelled party- I usually have Fruella with me at least when hitting the Moathouse- she is an Excellent fighter, if annoying. I also marry Meleny (the little hottie) and level her duridness to help- 7 people is better than 5 - especially another good fighter and someone who can summon meat shields (animals or elementals in Meleny's case,) and if you can't get it with level 3s get to level 4!

ALSO- I cannot stress how important CHARM PERSON is in that Gnoll battle- especially if you can get the leader and any other "enraged" ones working FOR YOU, then kill them one at a time afterwards.. especially when they are fatigued after the enrage Your BARD should be a great charmer- use it each round...

 

Keeping your ass in good hands

A tactic that I have used (very successfully I might add) is to pick off the enemy one-by-one (whenever possible). One way to do this is with ranged weapons, (especially if the enemy is also using ranged weapons); because (in most cases) if you're characters are out of line of sight they won't be attacked by anyone who doesn't see them.

I have used my Elven Rogue/Ranger and Halfling Rogue as effectively as possible whenever surprise was an option. In many cases, both those characters are placed in position such that my wizard can fire off a sleep spell (which the Elf is immune) and any enemy character that saves is then attacked from behind, and if necessary from in front by my 1/2 Orc Barbarian.

All my characters start with 18 intelligence, two 17's (in their primary stats if other than intelligence) and three 16's; thanks to a little progam I found that allows me to modify them. The program also allows you to modify hit points and other stuff, but it has glitches and I found it safest just to set the initial stats (and adjusting hit points just spoils some of the fun).

The reason they all have 18 intelligence is in order to maximize their initial skills. This is done by (re)rolling until at least one 18 shows up, then creating the character from there. I don't remember whether I found the progam in the modding section here or somewhere else (when I was searching for a walkthrough), but the 18/17/17/16/16/16 gives me just enough of an edge to make the game FUN.

I'd like to find a walkthrough that includes all the Co8 changes, but (with any luck) by the time all the changes are in place a walkthrough won't really be necessary.

In any case, use your brain as much as your brawn and you'll get through just fine. One thing that's a bit counter intuitive, though: when you find the extraplanar chest; use the radial menu to operate it (trying to "use item" from within your inventory doesn't work).

Stohrm

 

Wait til you see the Bugbears! OUCH!! :chainsaw::dead:

 

Another trick on the Gnoll Battle is to blockade them at the doorway that goes back into the cave area; that way only one can hit you at a time. If you do it just right, you can have your two best fighters dealing with one of the Gnolls at a time.

Depending on whether the one is patrolling or not (preferably he is), you can take two of the gnolls out (the patroller and the one in the corner) even without a mage; although a mage is extremely useful.

That's also the trick with the Bugbears; because if you don't take out the one in the doorway to the anti-chamber then he will run in and warn the others. Block the doorway and he can't get in there and they won't know you're out there.

As for the Ogre: Tasha's Hideous Laughter almost always does the trick for me. So, you'll want to concider getting a mage.

Strategize and save before the battle (during the battle too, if it's going extremely well and you'd like to keep it that way). It's a game after all, not real life and if first you don't succeed you can try try again...

Enjoy.

Stohrm

 

I managed it now. I didn't realize I had 3rd level spells, that helped.

Unfortunately summons last a turn or two and were gone too quickly. I did manage to charm the gnoll leader with my bard and the leader delayed and eventually killed two of his minions. That bought me time to polish off his other minions, and I used him to kill some other soldiers afterwords and he eventually died against the giant lobster creature.

 

Re: Keeping your ass in good hands

FYI, there's a bug that lets you do essentially that in-game. If you roll stats, and then switch to point buy, you'll be able to drag the rolled stats to and from the point buy (despite the former being invisible), and can spend points to pump them up. You can do so multiple times, even, by dragging the numbers back to the rolled stats boxes, switching back to rolling, and back to point buy again (the points will all be back).

There's an even worse bug, too, where if you double-click on the rolled stat while doing this, it will be set to the number of rolls. So you can even get a single stat higher than 18 in such a way (it only works one time, as it gets exchanged with the rolled number, I believe).

You can also use to to roll some stats and then even them out a bit via the point buy costs. So, if you roll a bunch of odd numbers, you could shift things around so that they're mostly even (since odd numbers are fairly worthless).

Anyhow, this is all clearly cheating of the highest order (not that I don't do it a bit myself), but if you're going to cheat, it's probably easier to do so in-game than to fool around with an extra program.

 

The first method is the terrible secret I've been trying to keep, since I've never seen it mentioned since I've been here. I didn't know about the second one.

Which bring s up a question, since rolling and point buying can easily be circumvented, at least up to 18:

1. Is 72 or 73 (average stat 12) maximum sum reasonable?

2. If not, what IS a good maximum sum?

When we played in the '70's, we just got 90 points (average stat 15) to distribute as we wanted. When I played BG1 or IWD1, I kept rollling until I beat that, or got an 18.00 Str.

 

I roll until I get 90. Takes a long time, sometimes. Maybe when I get really good at playing, I'll do it with whatever I get. By then, I might think that was a challenge instead of suicide.