I love TOEE, BG1&2, IWD1&2, and D&D to the extreme. 2 questions for you folks.... 1) In TOEE (I have the most recent release, bought 1 year ago), how is it possible to flee or exit combat, and run away (escape) ? 2) In the opening town, I seem to run out of map pins, trying to label every building and home. It only allows me to label half of the buildings, and then it stops letting me label them (on the map). Any solutions or patches ? Sorry if these questions are elementary, but these issues have me totally stumped.
There is a flee combat option in the radial menu. If it isn't highlighted, then it isn't an option your party can utilize in whatever their current situation may be. It is generally only useful if they descended some stairs to get where they are, as that gives them a rallying point for their flight from battle. Nope. But, there is a labeled map out there somewhere which you can study. I'd suggest saving the pins for important stuff if you're having too much trouble remembering. And, you can always write notes.
I've had the 'flee' option shown as green on a couple of occasions when I've tried to flee, but have never managed to do so.:dead: EDIT: you said highlighted... hmm, have to look into it a bit more sometime.
One time, I had [I believe] a level-2 party extra low on hit points and was able to successfully flee from Emridy Meadows. The cleric was able to turn some undead and make a couple of others take off from the fight. It took a few rounds after that of the party running back and away from the location on the game map where the fighting had been taking place. Eventually, the combat stopped and the game let the party escape using the world map.
I've found it easier to flee when very close to an exit from the map. The pins thing confused me too when I first started to play the game. Nowhere near enough. Although, in honesty you quickly get to know where everything is. The labelled map is in the ToEE folder along with the pdf manual.
You have to have actually used a set of stairs in order for it to work; and not have saved since you used them. One place that always was tough to get out of was the Air Elemental chamber - the octagonal room - at the base of the secret spiral stairs down from the first floor of the temple throne room. If you "flee combat", it'll put you back on the secret spiral stairs, even without a visible means of egress. If you choose the option from level two, it'll put you back at the top of the stairs you took down to get to level 2; not necessarily the nearest ones if you've found a second (or third) set...unless you hop up them real quick. Not a bad idea if you plan to save before e fight & don't want to slog your way back across the dungeon to use the stairs so you'll be able to flee if you want to.
Just to clarify something here, you can also use it if a blue door is close by (not sure whether you have had to use it or not) - I've fled the spider in the moathouse tower on occasions...
Thanks for all the great responses. It seems like TOEE designers wanted to make fleeing combat improbable (hard) but not impossible. Seems better than in games like NWN where enemies often weren't able to follow out a doorway when you fled (which is rather lame) ! As for the map pins... maybe those things are like thumbtacks, and the programmers ran out ? ;-]