5.5.0 After Action Report

I finally completed a full game of 5.5.0, and I wanted to share some notes. This is not a bug report, though I discuss some bugs; I just wanted to give an overall impression of gameplay. SPOILER ALERT: This is mainly intended for people who are already familiar with the game, and I hope it's helpful to the co8 crew, who have been so very ,very helpful to those of us who shelled out for this beautiful but buggy game. Without them it would have been a great disappointment.

I played the NG game with a party of six, who reached level 15 (no multiclass):

CG half-elven bard
CG human fighter
CG elven wizard, evocation specialist
CG elven rogue (two weapon fighting)
NG human cleric of Pelor, Healing and Good domains
NG female druid (used longbow)

I wanted a party that could thoroughly explore the game, making use of most of the spells and options, and attempt as many of the quests as possible. I originally intended to have the cleric and druid serve as crafters. But I found that Spugnoir (with a little help from Meleny and Ronald) could supply all of my crafting needs. The party was designed to make use of the already good weapons and armor found in the game, so I didn't need a ton of crafting.

This crew completed all of the quests they received, except for Fruella and the "Oolgrist for Water" quest, and slaughtered everything they met with little difficulty. (They did not fight Iuz, though, because Hedrack did not live long enough to soil his red union suit.) In short, they over-matched the evil opposition by a considerable amount.

The only NPC I employed extensively throughout the game was Spugnoir, who I took to level 11, crafting his little heart out all the way.

Ease of play:

1. I aborted two earlier games because of the stop-jerk problem in Hommlet. (And even Nulb, once.) This time, once the party moved to Nulb, I was careful to save before traveling to any Hommlet location, either by world map or by exiting a building in Hommlet. If any jerkiness appeared, I quit the game and reverted to the save. This kept Hommlet navigable to the end of the game with only moderate inconvenience.

2. I got some serious lag while moving in the north end of the Greater Temple, and in the nodes (especially fire), and I got a few hard freezes until I got the hang of it; i.e., don't scroll while the party is moving. Again, only minor to moderate inconvenience.

3. In the late game, after reaching the Greater Temple, there were many CTDs when changing maps. I seemed to get a lot of them when trying to ascend from temple level three to level two, for example. So I started to save before any map change, and I relied more on teleport than I would have otherwise.

4. I was careful to avoid looting the bugged kobold at Hickory Branch, and that area was played through without a hitch.

In short, the game is entirely playable - even on Vista - but requires a fair degree of care and patience.

Oddities:

1. At the start of the game the party had a disagreement with Furnok over a card game and they took him to the empty town hall to discuss it, from which he did not emerge alive. How embarrassing that his dead body wound up back at the Inn. Worse, it refused to decay and stayed there for weeks, moving outdoors in the daytime. When it seemed it would never go away, the party used a Raise Dead scroll. Furnok was his old sullen self again, but I never rehired him. He hung out at the Inn for a few months, then disappeared for about a month, and then reappeared at the Inn near the very end of the game.

2. After the battle of Imerdys Run, the bodies of the evil dead never decayed. The party returned to the location many times, weeks and months later, but the bodies remained to the end of the game.

3. In the bandit chamber on temple level 2, there is a phantom female bugbear in the upper right corner, who cannot be attacked or spoken to. In the lower part of the same room there is a bullet on the floor, which is labeled DO NOT USE.

4. It took three attempts to rescue Thrommel. The first time I teleported him to Nulb, where he said farewell, then I traveled to Hommlet and rested for 14 days. When I set out for Nulb again I was met by a reward party, but it was the reward for the elves that I rescued earlier. When I returned to the temple Thrommel was in the tomb again. And again. On the third attempt I teleported directly to the Inn in Hommlet, rested another 14 days, and got the Scather reward on my return to Nulb. It seems that Thrommel must disappear after his farewell speech; if he just stands there after leaving the party, he will go back to the tomb.

5. I rescued the Verbobonc merchants, both at the same time, but their shops never appeared.

6. I rescued Sargen and Jaer from the Earth Node, and had some trouble getting rid of them afterwards (they kept going invisible). After several attempts I got them to leave one at a time, with two trips to the north Hommlet location. I made Jaer throw away his goofy fireballs before leaving the temple. After another crash, I immediately got rid of the fireballs that he left in my inventory. I seem to recall from an earlier patch that Jaer reappears as a merchant in Nulb (?) but I never saw him again. I did get the 5000 gp reward for Sargen.

7. In the fight with Senshock, my bard floored him immediately with Tasha's HL. After a couple of rounds he recovered and announced that he was teleporting away. But he did not teleport away, and he was immediately floored again by another THL from my bard, who is apparently a very funny guy. My elven rogue, who is not funny, then cut Senshock to pieces, but the body disappeared. Senshock showed up as dead in the log book, but I later encountered him alive as a merchant. I'm not sure if this is how it is supposed to work, and I would have liked to have had his nice robe, but ...

8. I saved a nice collection of temple shields as souvenirs, one of each design, but all of them disappeared from the chest in my Nulb house. Nothing else disappeared that I know of.

9. After the fight with the Balor, I had to visit Jaroo to rid four of the characters of permanent spell auras.

10. I had to use the console only once in the game, to get a masterwork maul. I wouldn't have had to do that if I hadn't carelessly sold it earlier.

Overall, very successful. The major elements of the game worked, without any extensive do-overs. The dialogue in Verbobonc could use some work. For adding more content, I would prefer to see it added to some of the empty temple areas rather than to new locations.

I hope this is helpful, and thanks very much to everyone who has worked on the game.

 

Well, I have finished two times until now the 5.5.0 mode until now, with a LG group of paladins and a NE party of, well, villains, and I haven't the number of odd experiences than Groo the Ambler.

I have experienced CTD just a couple of times (I'm able to remember), and have no idea of what is this "stop-jerk" problem Groo report.

I have some serious lag just in the Fire Node - mainly in the area of the Noble Salamanders - and in the Fire Chamber at the 3th level of the temple. The scrool have stop sometimes in the Air temple, but nothing realy serious.

I have looted all the kobold at Hickory Branch, with my actual CN group, and have no idea of which kind of bug is this.

Well, this never hapens to me, but the bodies of Kolbort and Zert have acted as the Furnok corpse - and have staied there. I have took no action about this.

This hapens exactly this way, too, for the two parties that have rescued Thrommel. Sadly, I haven't perceived this in the first time, and the prince becomes a Vampire inside of the temple.

I have a similar experience, though the first group have founded one of the traders in Verbobonc (can't remember wich one).


Finaly, the Brown Bear in Emridy Meadows have asked for mercifulness for my paladin grou (something like "No, please, don't kill me!"), though dont have stoped to attack the party.

I'm runing two groups for now, a NG and a CN, both full of NPCs, and I have not experiencied no oddities until the moment.

 

Understandable, but with level caps removed, characters get so beefed up from Hickory Branch and Verbobonc that the temple encounters become too easy. A few characters like that half-orc commander from HB would put the fear of Nerull back into things.

Just a suggestion. I'm grateful for any new content, wherever you choose to put it.

One thing I forgot to mention is that wilderness encounters seemed absurdly easy at high levels, so that I started to skip them out of boredom. I recall games in earlier patches where ettins seemed as common as jackrabbits, and I would sometimes encounter 2-3 hill giants, not 2 skeletons.

Now my 14th level druid had a very high Survival skill, but I thought Survival only gave you the choice to avoid encounters - does it also reduce the level of encounters? If so, it's undesirable. Maybe I was just "lucky".

 

Ah, talking abouth that. let me ask something:

Survival is usable just for PCs? As Meleny playing the role of the Druid at my party, I have never the chance of avoid my any encounter.

And, well, I encounter Trolls easy as jackrabbits! Two or three each time. Encouters with Trolls are common as with Goblins, or more! I need to use the Save Feat sometimes in the present game, becose my 3th level party was slain by a group of three Trolls when going to the Moathhouse first time! Lucky me I always use Save Feat before to leave a town.

 

I've seen the encounters change back and forth in the same game!?! Mid level group getting nothing but skeletons, gnoll skeletons, and trolls, then suddenly large mixed groups of giants and goblins, goblins and wolves, shadows, a group of owlbears, then my favorite, 20 wolves. Then just as suddenly, back to the same boring encounters.

 

I also have the problem with the merchant shops not appearing, even with version 5.0.5. There are two buildings in the side street where doors could appear, but so far nothing after several attempts in several new games.


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