War of the Golden Skull Release: General Commentary and Discussion

I would first like to thank everyone at Co8 who helped me make this mod. In particular I would like to thank ShiningTed, Gaear, Allyx, Agetian, and BigLittleBoy who made outstanding maps for the castle. Without all of you, and your advice and answers to my endless questions, this would not be possible.

This mod is designed for high level parties. I do not suggest attempting it if your party is not level 12 or higher. I am sad to say not everything I planned on putting in this expansion made the final cut. There are most likely many typos, errors, and other problems I was not able to fix by my self imposed deadline. I did my best to focus on making the mod functional before focusing on many of the missed details. I have done my best to find and fix every major error that would stop gameplay before my deadline but I may have missed a few. The main problems that exist is no townmaps for hommlet with the castle or the castle maps, and you are currently unable to access the worldmap from the new hommlet (you will need to teleport out). I just did not have time to fix these issues.

Furthermore, I will not have time to refine or edit the mod until at least next summer, or ever since I am starting a grad program that demands 60-80 hours of work a week tomorrow. Therefore, if anyone wants to add, edit, fix, or polish the mod, feel free. I give you full rights to do whatever you desire. If you want to learn more about the mod what my future plans were for it, check out the readme file.

This mod is designed to add-on to Co8 version 5.5.0. Since War of the Golden Skull is considered high level content, it may be possible to play it with your exsisting games. I make no guarantees to this though. To begin the content, you need to have the golden skull in your possession and give it to Burne or speak to the cleric of Hextor in Verb.

That being said, you can download the the file here

1. Unzip the archive into the root Temple of Elemental Evil Folder (This should create an Addon folder)
2. Open up TFE-X
3. Click "Add-on Packs"
4. Select War of the Golden Skull and click Install
5. Be very patient, it takes a while to install because of the many new maps
6. TFE-X will let you know when installed. Then just play the 5.5.0 module and the new content is available.

I hope you all enjoy the mod. It was a lot of fun to make, and I am glad I was able to find a way to release it. And if you want to add onto it or fix it, modding cant be that hard if I was able to do it.

 

I'll be loading this right after work. I've mastered all aspects of Co8's modpack and seen everything a group of 20th level killers can see.

I want the first quest to be raiding a nearby beholder's hive to retrieve all of their floaty glands or something, and then go after Vecna.

I want to be slinging 9th level spells all over the place just to try to get some breathing room to think how to save my life!

 

Ranthman, you rock!!

Thanks for all your hard work for this great mod. Best wishes to you in your studies. Stop by when you have time to deal with us.

 

Dat's what we likes to see now!

I like it. I like it a lot. The quarry fight is what it's all about. There's nothing like fighting 50 dwarves that each have 150 hit points and are almost immune to fireballs, lol.

I liked seeing all the familiar names from fantasy and whatnot.

I like the castle.

The only thing that disturbed me is that the world map could not be accessed after you get the castle but I'm sure Co8 will work that one right out of there. I have the utmost confidence in them, heh.

All in all, a good little quick ending mod. I used my party of 3 characters of 20th level. They didn't really get scratched until the quarry, and then just by sheer numbers, the dwarves zerged them and couldn't help but get hit. A lot.

I blew through it but I wasn't expecting anything more when using 20th level dudes. I'd hate to have to do the quarry fight though with anything less than 15th - 17th level. I'd say you definately want a necromancer with greater necromancy focus, as well as greater evocation focus along with a few meta feats, like quicken spell.

*edit*
Drizz't Do'urden is a major league puss! :evilgrin:

 

Thanks for the thoughts Necro. I am sure it was easy for level 20's. I thought it would be more difficult for 12-14 range. If I ever have time to work on it I have a lot more ideas incorporating the castle, defending it, and other quest chains. Increasing the difficulty is not that hard to balance it with TotWC when released.

Did you try invading Hommlet or did you defend it? Considering that the drow ranger got to attack seven times a round, I thought you would consider him a bit harder haha.

 

I defended Hommlett. As soon as I taked to Burne, he took the skull and we were told to scout the road from Hommlett to Nulb. We went to scout and encountered an evil man who started attacking us on the road because he smelled that we had the skull but didn't have it no more. We didn't tell him about the skull so he started combat with us. I threw a finger of death and he died before he could do anything. Then a man runs up and says you got to come back and help us in Hommlet. I go to Hommlett, where the evil Hextor guys kill all of the towns toughest guys, all at once, like Terjon, Calmert, Jaroo, Rufus and Burne and Black Jay. Then they start that crap with us. Bad mistake. I murdered all of them except the big guy with Weird, but the 2 fighters killed him in 1 round.

We went and saw Ariakas who sent us to the deklo grove where we gave all of the bandits a good old fashioned ass whipping. Then he took 100,000 gold from us and sent us to the quarry. It took us about 5 or 6 rounds to clear the quarry. Went back to see him and he sent us to check out the castle and that was it, unless I missed something. I may try attacking Hommlet but the good guys don't have anyone tough like my party, lol. They would be easier to kill than the bad guys.

Was still a great series of fights. They would definitely challenge, if not completely murder, a party of 12th-14th level guys.

*EDIT*
Weird is easily the best spell in the game, without question.

*EDIT the deuce*
If you started this unfortunate series of events at 12th level and were to somehow survive through all of it, I am confident that you would be close to level 20 just from these 3 huge fights alone.

 

The combo of Jaroo and Terjon is tougher than you may think, but it would still be easy for your level 20. If you want to try the fight go talk to the cleric of Hextor in Verb.

 

Hmm. I hope he wasn't in the old warehouse because if he was, I already killed him, along with everybody on the second floor of the Verbobonc bar, lol. The scarlet brotherhood, as it were. And the tight lipped assassin that wouldn't tell me what he was about. That's what he gets!

 

Did you find Hextor's basement hideaway?

 

What program are you entering?

 

PhD in Management. I loved teaching courses during my masters degree so after working in corporate America I decided to follow my passion. Wish me luck.

 

Ok, I give up. I've looked for it for 2 days now. I think you're pulling my leg. I've looked through every building in Verbobonc and Hommlet and I didn't find diddley. Are you sure you added something like that to the mod?

 

Necroticpus,

Did you find the Hextor cleric and his monk friends? They can be found in Verbobonc. If I remember, try the basement with the strange looking man dressed in white armor (who serves Hextor).

 

I have beggined the War of the Golden Skull add-on with a CN party, and after to read the Necrotcpus post and Ranth answear I have delete the party and beggined a NE one. But a question come to me: With a N party - nor good or evil - I will be able to decide if I wish to rule Hommlet by tirany or freedon? This is a alignmented choose, or make no diference, just the choosen recipient - either the tower guys or the Hextor clerics - it's wich defines if we will fight the Hommlet defenders or defend Hommlet for the invaders?

As a little observation, I have noted than, after to install the WotGS add-on, the secound "wave" of animal companions - I believe that after ya reach 4th or 5th level - have a broken entry. I have no idea of wich animal companion it's broked, or if really have any one, or if it's just a broken new entry (the radial menu of the animal companions shows a entry like "NULL_SUBJECT_NOT_..." or something.

 

Well, that makes perfect sense why I didn't find him. I had already killed him because he wouldn't talk to me, just like the assassin.

If I ask you a question, you had BEST answer, lol.

Also, major big thing here. I opened the game up after a day of not playing it and you know what happened? I had access to the world map even with the castle maps explored. Giggity-giggity-giggity-goo. Awwwright.

I fixed the bug. I don't know what I did to fix it but I did! Maybe I was sleep-modding?