Paladin's Cove beta release, and feedback

I've just started

Spoiler

"Digging up the past"

quest, after fighting a

Spoiler

Green Dragon

. Oh boy, oh boy I'm enjoying this game

 

To everyone who had problems and frustrations.

The "DOCK HUNT" quest should now be a lot easier.

First, to @OLLY613, I know what your particular problem is. It has nothing to do with you dying, per se. It has to do with reloading the game. For some reason when you load a saved gave (in any ToEE version) the NPC's that walk around stop walking their waypoints until you leave the map and then re-enter it. Thts just an existing bug with the game itself. Not just Paladin's Cove, but all versions of ToEE.

So what does that have to do with the turtles, you may ask?

Well, the turtles only turn on if there are no patrolmen nearby. And it depends on the patrolmen leaving the area, AND the party being near the turtles at the same time. But since one particular patrolmen is now frozen in place, right near the turtles after you load the game, the turtles will never turn on. That's why you couldn't find them at that point.

But for now, you can easily recover your current game from your saved game by loading that saved game, and then entering the inn (or some other map), and then going back outside to the turtle area. Don't rest, just enter and come back out. This will put the patrolmen back in motion, and they won't prevent the turtles from turning on.

I have now totally removed the requirement that the patrolmen need to be away at a certain distance, so this won't be a problem anymore. I originally made this a requirement so the party and the turtles wouldn't accidentally hit patrolmen with spells and such, which would drag the patrolmen into combat and create a mess with townsfolk in combat.

This certainly also explains why some people had a hard time finding the turtles at all, even though they sloshed through the same area 10 times. If the patrolmen were near, the turtles would not appear. Again, sorry for making this such a pain, it was not meant to be part of the "fun" for that quest, where you had to wade around for 2 hours until the right patrolmen location happened.

 

Sorry to take so long to reply, hope you didn't give up.

I'm assuming you had the initial conversation where the commanders gave you shit for running around battle field. Then after that, you're trying to ask more questions and get more quests from them?

To progress any further, I just looked, and you either need 4 points of bluff or diplomacy to convince that you can help their army in the battle. I chose those numbers a looong time ago, and haven't really questioned them or updated them since. I usually have those stats for least one member of the party, so I've never run into a problem there.

But, yeah, if you can't get past that point in the dialog, the enormous role-playing part of that quest will come to a grinding halt. Which I hadn't really thought of before.

I can lower or remove entirely those requirements if anyone thinks it should be different. Or I could put a potion of Eagles Splendor lying around in a treasure somewhere. Let me know.

But in the end, either way, if any player isn't into the role-playing/dialog part of that quest, you CAN just do all the combat encounters and not really talk to anyone at all, and then leave the battlefield. That will still successfully complete the quest. You'll lose about half the adventure, and a lot of story.

Finally, the armies aren't really meant to be attacked. That's not really what that quest is about. If you do attack them, I think they run away, or you die.

 

no worries.

I did go back to a previous save from before i traveled there, but i will go back - as it is needed to complete the chapter.

yes, that is correct.

oh, yeah, i'd really need to see if i have any bluff or diplomacy. I may have a couple points on someone, but i rarely take them.

For now, i have reloaded to a save-state from before I went there.

I've been trying to do other quests. If i get to lvl 3, then i can see about increasing a bluff and/or diplomacy stat.

I don't know if that would be too useful without the player knowing that it is to used if they can't progress in the dialogs.

Maybe adding some text into the ReadMe that this is not a simply hack-n-slash module and you will need to use your "roleplaying skills" (hint: skills of bluff, diplomacy, etc, can be very helpful).

I think Ted has a similar warning for KotB for a specific new skill that needs to be used in his module.

Is this why i've not had much success with some of the other quests? or have i not stumbled upon a solution for them, yet?

While i was walking around, i killed all the groups except to the cornfield as that was too much for my lvl2 group. if they need to die when i redo that quest, then i'll really need to do some planning.

 

@marc1967 I believe i have encountered a bug on floor 1 of the Hidden Stronghold.

There is a trap that when you disable it force shuts down the game. Its in the room left side lower part of the map with some spiders. I dont know how to hide/spoiler this so i dont want to reveal too much.

 

I'll try and post a screenshot (or short video) later, but on the first level of the Hidden Stronghold, a few of my guys walked through a solid wall along the long entry hallway.

 

If this occurs on the right side of the long entry hall, and it's about half way up on the right side inside one of the alcoves...

Spoiler

That's a secret door there, that someone in your party spotted.
Sometimes you can miss the "secret door spotted" float message.
And sometimes, the party can pass through it without the door itself actually sliding open and making that stone-on-stone grinding sound.
But yeah, it's supposed to be there.

 

Yes, that's it. Thanks.

I was walking those 3 members of my party around, only 2 of those 3 walked thru there. The other guy just stood there staring at the wall.

I did not actively search in that area, but it was just odd that 2 of the 3 guys walked thru as if it was normal.

 

Since the Crossroads quest is one of the 3 large quests in chapter one, I may completely remove the requirements to have Diplomacy or Bluff at 4. Especially since there are about 8 sub-quests after those dialogs. My thinking was, that the commanders aren't just going to hire on any random passers by in the middle of a battle without them (you, the party) talking their way into it with a little social finesse.

That said, ALL of the larger quests CAN be completed without having any social skills. But if your skills are low, you will miss out on some things (like the intrigue at the crossroads, sub-quests, treasure, lore, inside connections, etc.). Or the quest may become more challenging and you'll have to brute-fore your way thru some of it.

The smaller quests, however, in some cases MAY depend on you having some reasonable social skills for your level, if you are to complete it. But it usually requires low ranks, like 2, 3, or 4. Very rarely more than 6, until you get to higher levels. So keep buying those point as you level up.

I will duplicate what Ted did with KoTB, good idea, and mention this in the ReadMe.

Keep in mind most encounters in the whole game will toughen up as you enter maps, depending on your parties level. This is to keep things challenging. So as an example, a certain encounter when your party is level 2 my have 3 gnolls. At level 3 the encounter may add a gnoll leader. Then when you are level 4-5, that encounter may have 5 gnolls, a leader, a berserker, and a shaman.

 

So happy you're having fun.
I'm also pleased that someone made it to chapter 2 without a game-ending bug.
That's great to hear.

 

Oops. It sounds like you set off a trap while trying to deactivate it, and some bug within the scripting caused a game crash.

Before trying to track down the problem, it may have just been a one-and-done freak crash that isn't repeatable. If you reload, does it crash every time when you try to disable it?

Since most of the monsters and treasure is randomized in that quest, that particular chest could be any number of 56 different chests that could get spawned there. So it will be very helpful to know exactly which chest it is. Specifically, I need to know the proto number for it.

If you are able to do this, it would help greatly...

1. Load the saved game to before you disabled the trap.
2. Put the first PC in the group (as they appear in the line at the bottom) right next to the chest as close as possible.
3. Bring up the console with SHIFT-tilde.
4. Then type this:

Code:

from ed import *
olvcon(7)[0].name

I need to know what number it returns.

You can hide spoiler text by putting the word "SPOILER" in square brackets before the text and "/SPOILER" in square brackets after the text you want to hide. In the example below, just replace the word "SOILER" with "SPOILER":

[SOILER]
Any text in here will be hidden in a spoiler box.
[/SOILER]

 

OK, today i was walking in that area with my entire party (all 5 of us), and I clicked from one hallway to the other. The entire party walked up to that wall and stopped against it.

So the party tried to go thru the secret door that was closed. Again, previously i did not search for it.

Now I did a "search", and the secret door was found and opened automatically.

Is there a way to prevent the pathway/waypoints from going through a not-found secret door?

 

Thanks, Ted.

 

@marc1967 Thanks, i legit didnt know about the spoilers queue.

The crash happened 3 times after loading so i gave up on looting the chest. I can try and get you the proto number next time i play. (Next couple of days or so i am sure).

Spoiler

The chest in question is actually a rock that says it is locked and trapped once searched. My thief was the in the third character slot if that matters. But i will get the proto.