First playthrough: comments & questions

Hi, i'm playing TOEE w/ Co8 5.5.0. I started with a solo general wizard who is now lvl 10 and encountered some strange stuff on my way. Here are some remarks/comments/questions: (Perhaps ignore things that are discussed before, i read a lot here but not everything)

1. The Cloak animation is problematic. Its "melting" with the robe anim. (Could be my Graphic Setting/-Card dunno)
2. Summons regularly stop attacking, and stop doing anything. Sometimes monsters in front of them do the same. I checked if their paralyzed or anything but they aren't.
3. If i'm in a fight and change places/rooms etc. to target other enemies my summons regularly stand behind and i see no possibility to get them to come with me. Outside of fights its possible to command them.
4. It's almost impossible to coup de grace sleeping stirges and other small monsters, since the red target circle is very difficult to find.
5. The Craft Rod Feat is unlike P&P a bad joke for Wizards. I couldn't craft a single rod, since they all involved Craft Magic Arms and Divine magic as i remember. No Metamagic rods and the like.
6. It's not possible to see how many charges in a wand remains. Also crafted wands are supposed to have 50 charges in P&P not 20, but i suppose its deliberate. (Toneing down wizards/crafting? -oh well)
7. I did the Orc quest for the village elderly one time and went later to see the "TOEE" w/ Lareth, but there was obviously nothing. No comment from Lareth or anything.
I tried taking him there w/o killing the cave Orcs before, and he didn't betray me, in fact he helped me. No comment again.
8. Are there any other magic scroll shops ecept Burne and the measly supply in the one Nulb tavern? It's not a advantage being a generalist wizard w/o many spells.
9. My game crashes often entering the Burne/Rufus Tower.
10. There is no profit for shops in identifying.
11. The "Agent of Evil" bugfix should be stickied.
12. I read one quest can only be finished, if you search the missing item on a random encounter swamp map, i had endless random encounters but no luck finding the item. Or is it one-time-only and i missed it? [Edit: It's answered in the FAQ]

13. Regarding the FAQ: i wondered if there's a straight Bertram in Vanilla TOEE?

I really like the engine in it's core. Normally i like a good story and good strategy possibilities (BG Series), TOEE has only the latter imo but i'm ok with it. I feel the quests are generally bad designed (not all), the Questlog is just terrible, the NPCs are kind of flat or nonexistant characters (didn't test all). But it's great fun even though.
I really prefer the engine to Aurora [Infinity i'm not 100% sure]. The 3.5 rules also are mostly excellent integrated. And i'm sure the modpack fixed many stuff. So great thanks to you mods for your effort!!

 

1. Cloak Animation - Yes, I see that too. just do not wear robes and cloak I suppose...

5. Too small variety of rods - design additional rods as per PnP (or d20 SRD) and submit them here. (I think someone of the Circle of Eight should say this, not me.) Actually, it is not that simple to design properly working content for ToEE.

 

Yep, the cloak and robe cloth animations dont mesh well together, and some of the armors etc have addmesh bits that poke through them. Animations are currently effectively un-moddable, so until the animation system is cracked, we wont be seeing any changes to animations at all. Also, really, as Sergio mentioned, its simply a matter of not wearing them together .

As a side note, black cloak + robe works kind of ok

I'm not sure if this issue is reported in the bug thread... but i think i've seen it happen before - when you 'aggro' a monster, but your animal companion doesnt seem to 'see' them properly, despite all your characters attacking the monster.

If you try to move your animal companions in at the front of the group, it may serve to alleviate the issue somewhat.

If im correct in my understanding of point 2, then 3 is just a mid-combat example of the same thing. If you can avoid this kind of thing, do so, but if you cant, you could always lure the enemies into your room rather than charging into theirs

That sounds engine based, so would probably be a nightmare to fix, unfortunately.

While metamagic rods are ridiculously useful, they represent a complicated mechanic (that being, replace an existing memorised spell with the metamagic-modified version on the fly) so it doesnt surprise me that they arent there.

I've actually seldom used metamagic feats, which is a real oversight on my part - so it would be interesting to see if the structures in place for sorcerer metamagic (even if they are engine based) could be used in some manner to mimic a proper metamagic rod?

Wands are meant to have 50 charges on being crafted according to RAW, that's correct.
(ref PHB 245)

So far as i know, there is not necessarily meant to be a way to recognise remaining charge amount in a wand (maybe some spells?) i think the only way to be sure is keep track manually for ones you've crafted.

Can't comment on this one personally! i'll let someone else handle it

Yes, there should be one in Verbobonc (the additional co8 mod area) although one of the vendors there is bugged in the current release... could be the scroll one

Can't comment! Someone else

Ha! you're correct, although cheap identifies does keep a variety of magical goods available for the vendor to acquire, and the identifies are funded by the seller (ie, your party) so one might be able to argue that the identifying-npc does get something out of the deal in a way.

100gp identifies has been a pretty standard thing in d&d crpgs before, so its just the thing to do i suppose

good point tho :evilgrin:


The rest i cant comment on, so im not going to list them

 

I never had any targeting troubles that weren't water related

 

First off, thank you for your answers.

You should try casting sleep on the stirges near the moathouse entrance and killing them with coup the grace, i find it nearly impossible, because of the floor/door/small room/the human avatar. But it's not a big deal.

Uncool.

Thats right, i saw the bug thread after my post.

I don't think that helps very much, but luring the monster should work.



Another question: There are some very small spots on the floor where TAB lights blue, but i'm not able to click on them. Is there a purpose behind them?

 

Hey all, I've been doing a new run through with the 5.5.0 beta (great mod by the way!!), I did a quick search and it didn't come up with the same issue, but when my sorcerer miscast's his spell he loses 2 charges, is this correct? Again sorry if this has been mentioned before!

 

Wow! And I thought I had problems with Scotch! :scratchhe

Seriously, does anyone know how to loot in the middle of the river?

 

Its generally doable, but its a pain in the ass, because you just basically have to spam-click the area covered by the corpse and hope the game registers it correctly.

If you can see the corpse sort of, you should be able to get it done eventually

 

It's a wonderful little pixel hunt!! :roll:

If you've ever played any adventure/mystery games where you had to click around the entire screen just to find the right item (read: pixel), you know what I'm talking about.

Strangely enough, it sort of makes a little RL sense.... I seriously doubt any party, fighting in those areas, is going to come across a crystal clear body of water. Even if they did, it would be muddied from the battle.

Ever try fishing a golf ball out of a murky pond in a miniature golf course?

 

I had some luck changing the optic settings, the transparency, but you have to change it back after the fight. After a few levels the 10-20 SP the lizard men carry aren't worth the effort. The only time I really used it was when I fought the other adventure party near the river and one of them ran into the water to get around a blockage to fight me and my jackal companion took him out there. Didn't want to leave that much good stuff all wet.

 

I always found it strange that your party ends up in a river about 15 feet from a road.

 

Maybe the party "navigator" was born under a water sign. oke:

 

Done it in the real world. You walk around, in a search pattern, until your foot hits something. Then you reach down, grab it and drag it to the shallows. All the equipment keeps the the body from washing away. This won't work in deep water. Doing it in cold water (60F-) REALLY sucks.