Is there any way to have my cake (play through the super-fun new content) but without my party being so ridiculously overpowered that the temple/elemental nodes become laughers (0 hp dmg taken, 1 or 2 round battles)? The extra exp I got from Hickory Branch, Gnarley Forest, and especially Verbobonc (Drow underground, Hextor cells, slave traders) put me at lvl 17 when I got to the fire node, and the Balor died in 1 round without him getting to even act. My ranger/rogue and barbarian/fighter were at lvl 18 at Zuggtmoy. Ended Zuggtmoy midway through the second round, and her only turn was used to summon Vrocks. I really enjoy the new content offered and am very grateful for the hard work the modders have put in. Now my question is this - are there future updates which will scale the final few fights to the difficulty they used to be at, or balance the rewards from the NC? Alternatively, is there any way to use the console to shore up the strength of the fights in the elemental nodes/Zuggtmoy, to counterbalance the extra power a party would get from completing the new content? I'd hate for the solution to simply be "skip some content" or "not craft stuff". I do want the best of both worlds I remember the Balor Guardian being a nightmare, and Zuggtmoy was insanely hard to kill if you didn't go to Burne and use the skull to weaken Zuggtmoy. Now I can prance right in without pre-buffing, without any summons, and roll over Zuggtmoy by virtue of being lvl 17+ and decked out in the best magical gear (and still a million plus gold in reserves).
It has been said that in future releases the NC will be add on after defeating zuggtmoy. In the meantime, just finnish off the temple and nodes before doing verbobonc and HB. When done, don't buff and play through HB with out resting, can be a challenge. Don't use fragarach as it is way too powerful, don't use any holy weapons at all. Another thing is to use first roll, thus having less powerful characters.
Trying that now Am actually trying that now, the weak characters thing. Gosh, 15 is his highest stat and he has 4 stats 11 and below. 15-14-11-10-8-8. His saves are going to be pretty disgusting =( But the main issue is still not resolved. The difficulty level for the early battles right now is insane, but later on, once the wondrous items and magical equipment roll in, and dudes start to reach lvl 10+, I fear it may be the same thing again. Am eagerly awaiting future modpacks! Sounds awesome! Btw is there any way I can modify Zuggtmoy's stats using the console?
I agree with these guys, things are pretty easy when you get to the temple nodes and to zugg Even my level 8 party has finished most quest/maps. Though im not yet finish with verbobonc and the temple.... Difficulty should be increased when it comes to the final battle...
Skip the woundrous items, especially if you buy them with the vast overflow of money. If you craft, your crafters will use exp which will balance a bit as spells are very powerful in the game and they will not level up as fast. And only use holy weapons if nothing else will work, all the extra damage they make is just making the fight too easy. You could try without a cleric/druid and wizard/sorcerer, but i agree, it does get a bit easy in the end.
The long-term plan is to put all the NC after the vanilla ToEE content, yes, and leave vanilla as-is. We really don't want to interfere too much with vanilla scaling, as that's a very subjective thing. (e.g., if we scale the later vanilla material to accomodate the NC, what about people who don't use the NC? Leave it unchanged for them? Now we're talking support for two entirely different play experiences, which we're not going to do.) As it stands right now, your best path is probably to do all the pre-Verbobonc NC as it comes, and finish everything in vanilla as it comes except the Fire Node and Zuggtmoy's lair, then do Verbobonc, and work in the Fire Node somewhere, and do Zuggtmoy last (because the game ends at that point). If you're a skilled player, Z-moy will still be 'easy' at that point, but oh well.
Is there a breakdown of the quests by recommended level? I'd be especially interested to find the dc of the NC, which I guess comes out to NC-DC . Also, is it possible to simply do the NC in lieu of the vanilla quests? I vaguely remember someone asking that before, but I can't remember what thread it was in.
I think gazra discusses progression recommendations in his walkthrough thread. You can't really skip all the vanilla content, as you have to achieve the various story states in order to get the NC unlocked. I guess you could console in the story states if you wanted, but then you'd have to console level yourself as well or you'd be really low level.
I can understand that you take consideration with the vanilla game people but didn't you say somewhere else that the downloads of vanilla game patch are much less than Nc patch downloads. Allthough I still like the game I would love to play a more challenging mod. At the moment my lvl 14 party is on the 3rd tmpl lvl and the fighter can only be hit by a critical hit by most opponents. I would suggest instead of a vanilla patch something like a "big challenge version". This is maybe a naive suggestion, because I really can't judge the effort necessary for that. But wouldn't it be posible to increase, let's say for the tmpl, the attack bonus for all monsters in general by 2-3 ?
I remember reading somewhere here (I think in Gazra's game guide) that you can manually change the percentage of EXP you gain from battles by finding a file in your ToEE directory and editing it. That would work wouldnt it?
It looks like you can change the level cap to anything from 1st to 20th level, in the options menu of the Front-End X.
One thing to keep in mind with this thread is that all of the higher-level (i.e. higher than 10th) content has been added by the modders - the entire Verbobonc setting and all of the quests have been built from the ground up, most of it only becoming available within the last six months or so. My point is that "scaling" that content vs. the Vanilla game isn't really the point - the idea is that you play through vanilla up to the Fire Node or so, then go do everything else, then finish the game. If you want a serious challenge, don't wait until after Verbo to take the Balor on - try to tackle the lower temple and the nodes at level 10! (the entire above paragraph could be read as "what Gaear said." ) My impression is that the Hextorite cell and the Slavers are a taste of things to come for higher-level content; IMHO, the slavers in particular are a perfect gnarly battle for a 15th-ish level party. I'm excited to see what else gets added - more dragon fights? Devils? Slaadi? SHARKS WITH FRICKIN' LASER BEAMS?!
I'd settle for a battle with some suitably ill-tempered sea bass with frickin' laser beams, and some dragons. LOL
I would have embedded this video, but I can't seem to find the "YouTube" button Gaear had mentioned. [YOUTUBE]Bh7bYNAHXxw[/YOUTUBE]
