Circle of Eight Modpack v7 / v7 NC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

Thanks Big G, I needed the "dig". Absolutely no offense taken

I did a search, which usually works, but did not read each troubleshooting thread, as I thought the search would narrow down where I had to look.

I will figure it out from here, with your expert guidance. :thumbsup:

 

Reactivated 7.0 in TFE-X, the roof of the CotL is there (another level to go through to get to the teleporters situated in the guardhouse that was on the roof in 7.0). That is what has been eliminated. Note that there is a ladder icon from CotL level 2 to the teleportation room in 7.4, while the icon for entrance/exit of the teleporter room is a door. To me, this elimination of the castle roof was a major improvement, as it was almost too big of a PitA to use them in the original configuration. Ergonomics, graphics, playability are much improved all around, the teleporters were just one of many examples I could have listed. Verbobonc has lost almost all of its unfinished vanilla feel and reacts much more like a professional, finished product. Exceeds expectations by leaps and bounds. That's all I was trying to say. Kudos.

 

If I may, let me detail my current adventure: running a NE party and just defeated Terjon w/o talking him to him first so the NE Opening Quest still shows up as blue. I attacked Calmert in the lobby, who then summoned Terjon. A Stinking Cloud shut him up while Summon Monster, Grease, Charm Person, Spiritual Weapon, Melf's Acid Arrows and a Hasted Enlarged fighter wore him down. Aside from Calmert and one other junior cleric (that I charmed) no one else reacted. Is that how it should work?

In Nulb I used my buffed NE fighter to beat Toulb but he KO him. After he eventually recovered my rogue still talked him out of Bertram but Toulb acted as if the fight had never occurred, so when I fought him again he accused my fighter of cheating, which prompted my guys to wipe the floor with him and his crew. Will this affect any other dealings in Nulb? Also, my LG party- which included a monk and a paladin- couldn't even engage Toulb in the brawl contest w/o being accused of cheating, which they weren't (no buffs or wondrous items used). Is it by design that Toulb have that reaction vs. LG parties?

Also let me mention using evil clerics- I love that they can command the Undead but I've had a couple of CTD due I believe in part because they were commanding upwards of a dozen undead at once- I think I overwhelmed the scripts doing that :thumbsup:. On the plus side, no permanent damage was done and they make excellent cannon fodder when fighting the hill giant or doing Grud's fishing chore but is there any way to include a 'Dismiss' command to get rid of them all at once? Thanks for greatly improving the vanilla TOEE- it's more like my favorite flavor of ice cream now (Breyer's Natural Strawberry if you want to know) :thumbsup:

 

Regarding the Fear of Ghost quest:

I occasionally find that the quest goes smoothly in 7.4.0 but is bugged in 7.4.1.

I used one saved game for testing: the party encountered the ambush at Moathouse cave exit. They've just finished the third fight in arena and are ready for Verbobonc.

For testing, I went straight to Verbobonc, purchased the castle, waited until night and entered the castle.
1) in 7.4.0, no tent icon inside castle, only pass time option. One and only one ghost on second floor. Attacking him properly initiated the quest.
2) in 7.4.1, yellow tent icon. There were one ghost on the second floor and another one on B1 floor. They would vanish as soon as their turns come if attacked.


Some other glitches are listed as well:

1) The splitting puddings are cool, but why the new ones are at full heath even the original one is injured? According to SRD the total current HP should hold constant before and after the splitting, e.g. a 40HP black pudding would split into two 20HP ones. Is this an engine limitation?

2) A two-hander or dual-wielder wearing a buckler properly loses shield AC bonus until his/her next round if he/she attacks. However, if the buckler is a crafted one (say a buckler +3), the enchantment AC bonus of the buckler always applies.

3) The first time I visiting Hickory Branch, there is no blockage in front of the cave. After eliminating all orcs outside of the cave, I left the map and revisited it later. Then the blockage showed up. Is this intended behavior?
PS: the blockage is subjected to sneak attack and has no damage reduction (since it is made of stone, like earth elementals), which is somehow strange.

 

I have 7.4.1 installed and previously had the problem with the ghost not showing. After installing the patch, the ghost reappears but apparently using a different model, and was skulking outside of the original room he was found in. The quest otherwise works though, and I was able to complete it.

 

Any suggestion on the best utility to unzip the patch with? I haven't gotten that far but when I do I'd like to be prepared...

 

I use WinRAR to extract .rar files. It works great and is free (although it states that it is an evaluation copy, you can just close the pop-up warning and use the tool indefinitely).

I just finished 7.2.0 NC playing with a "good" party. Here are some observations that I'd like to mention:

My party of 8 characters reached level 20 just before the 'Demons & Demigods' fight (my party had done everything in the game except that I forgot to do the last 2 fights in the Arena of Heroes, I never encountered the Gremlich, I didn't do any of the evil quests, and I only did the significant encounters/combats within the Temple of Elemental Evil (not every room and every monster)). Just giving you an idea of the XP progression for an 8 character party in case you want to tweak the XP rewards for Co8-created mobs any further.

I personally would move the 'War of the Golden Skull' to another map other than Hommlet in order to get rid of jerkstop during 'The War of the Golden Skull' once and for all!

I found all of the other combats after the combat against Wakefield during the 'War of the Golden Skull' incredibly boring because the combats were SO repetitive and unchallenging! Just giving you my honest feedback/opinion - please don't take any offense. I immensely appreciate, respect and admire all of the great work that has gone in to the Co8 mod. If I was not dumb and not lazy, then I'd contribute my own material for inclusion in the Co8 modpack (and I would then read and possibly heed any criticisms made by other players regarding my mod).

I'm sad to learn that work will cease on the Circle of Eight modpack within a year. I have always been hoping that work would continue on the Circle of Eight Modpack indefinitely because The Temple of Elemental Evil remains the best turn-based squad-based tactical combat computer game (maybe rivalled by Fallout Tactics, UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-COM: UFO Defense), and Helherron) to this day (which is an amazing feat considering that this computer game is a whopping 9 years old!).

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To my surprise, the most XP that I got from a single combat was against King Battlehammer and his posse. I found that combat way too easy, whereas the Slave Traders and the 4 Balor Guardians were MUCH tougher combats for me! I think that XP rewards should be proportional to the difficulty of the quest and/or combat.

I was SO disappointed at how pathetic Robin of Locksley's bow is! I was expecting the bow to be awesome and I recommend making his bow significantly more powerful!

I actually don't think that any of the new content needs to be moved to post-Zuggtmoy content in future. The Modpack is pretty good the way it is now because it allows the player to do the new content instead of clearing out all of the Temple of Elemental Evil, and if all of the new content (excluding Welkwood Bog) was made post-Zuggtmoy, then the new content would no longer be as balanced as it is now because there'd be too much high-level content and not as much low-level content as there is currently (I like the way the modpack is currently because it gives the player choice in which low-level content to do based on personal preference).

I strongly recommend getting rid of Fragarach and Scather from the game (or at least significantly nerfing them) because they make the game WAY too easy!

 

For some reason I'm starting to have a lot of CTD while playing- it's been happening while traveling on the map but has happened while transitioning between indoors and outdoor maps and the last time during combat. Would a large number of saved games affect this, as the only things the games have in common is that I'm either close to or doing the moathouse respawn (the parties involved are CE, LE and NG, if that helps).

 

Hey, I guess it wasn't just me, no matter what she said.

Installed the patch from the quoted post above, worked fine with one exception. CotL grounds remain full of ghosts after quest completion. Occured with significant time passage in both game and real time. Rested in my newly available castle until midday the next day, still full outside. Took a real time break with PCs just standing outside the CotL among the ghosts, 25 minutes away from computer total, grounds still full of ghosts. I attacked one, it disappeared on its combat turn and combat ended, the rest remained.

FoG green in Logbook, green tent resting available on completion of quest. Didn't really notice the status of the tent/stopwatch area icon until exiting to view the panorama. However, it was at that point the logbook flashed yellow and when viewed, the quest showed completed green.

This was from a save made upon arrival in Verbobonc. Didn't even go see Wilfrick before saving, went straight to Castle purchase and FoG quest after downloading patch. Previously, the ghost wasn't even showing up.

 

I did go back inside the CotL before waiting for them to disappear. On replay, they disappeared after 30 sec real time.

edit** Note that on LE playthrough, CotL FoG, resting, etc, behaved as it should (or at least as heralded in the 7.4.1 change notice). All before most recent FoG fix/patch. Also, on two different playthroughs, two different alignments, 2 out of 4 baylors surveyed had a fire node gem on implosion (not a big deal, what are you really gonna do with them at that point?). The south and southwest ones (bottom of screen), in both encounters.