Just finished

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Gorgon Rider
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Just finished

Post by Gorgon Rider »

Wow, what a lot of fun this game was. Just want to express my appreciation for this gem of a game. I bought it back on May 4th and started playing a few days later.

I ran an Elementalist Mage through and had a blast (no pun intended).

Thought it was a cool twist what happens to your character when you finish the game. Also got a cool Destroyer ending when I tested out what would happen if I attacked Chancellor Malcolm.

Very cool game.

My only minor whine is those bloody Tauraxes and their resistances. Seemed every time I ran into a group of three, one of them would resist half of the spells I tossed at him. Ended up having to rest and use a lot of mana potions when engaging with those buggers. Ah, the trials of being a mage.

Anyway, thanks for a great game. Now, off to buy Book II!
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Re: Just finished

Post by Evnissyen »

Gorgon Rider wrote:My only minor whine is those bloody Tauraxes and their resistances. Seemed every time I ran into a group of three, one of them would resist half of the spells I tossed at him. Ended up having to rest and use a lot of mana potions when engaging with those buggers. Ah, the trials of being a mage.
Yeah . . . playing a dedicated mage would not exactly be among my recommendations for first play-through, it's tougher than being a dedicated fighter.

Play through again as a fighter, you'll see what I mean.
Certainty: a character-driven, literary, turn-based mini-CRPG in which Vasek, legendary "Wandering Philosopher", seeks certainties in a cryptically insular, organic, critically layered city.
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Kreador Freeaxe
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Re: Just finished

Post by Kreador Freeaxe »

Also, Compress Atmosphere works much better on those tauraxes. ;-)
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Re: Just finished

Post by Evnissyen »

Kreador Freeaxe wrote:Also, Compress Atmosphere works much better on those tauraxes. ;-)
Too late now, he's already wiped them off the face of Eastern Thaermore.
Certainty: a character-driven, literary, turn-based mini-CRPG in which Vasek, legendary "Wandering Philosopher", seeks certainties in a cryptically insular, organic, critically layered city.
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Re: Just finished

Post by JHe »

Completed Book I here too! This game simply rocks your socks off, AYEE! \o/
Its time for Book II 8)
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Re: Just finished

Post by SpottedShroom »

I played through as a pure mage in Book II before doing it in Book I, and boy was I spoiled. Not only is mana regeneration way slower, the best spell that can't be resisted is Compress Atmosphere. The only way I made it through is with Portal. I mark the square next to the well in Blackwater, then when I need to charge up I make a second mark and recall the Blackwater one. I don't know if that's technically cheating, but I don't know how I would have got through otherwise. Even with 300+ MP, I don't have enough to take down two tauraxes.

I noticed another strange way to refill MP that's probably a bug. I had a stack of 12 healing potions, and control-right clicked on them when I was at full health. I got 12 "you are at max HP" messages, and 12 game rounds passed. You could presumably get even more and use that trick to pass time quickly, getting the same benefit as camping but able to do it anywhere and without the risk of encounters.
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Re: Just finished

Post by Evnissyen »

SpottedShroom wrote:The only way I made it through is with Portal. I mark the square next to the well in Blackwater, then when I need to charge up I make a second mark and recall the Blackwater one. I don't know if that's technically cheating, but I don't know how I would have got through otherwise.
Nah, that's not cheating, it's strategy. The well is there to be used, after all. If BW didn't want you to use it he wouldn't've put it there. Right? Right? Eh? :|

Seriously, though: Eschalon's a dangerous, challenging place. You do what you can to survive. Being creative pays off.
Even with 300+ MP, I don't have enough to take down two tauraxes.
Aw, hell, Shroom... you're not about to tell me you were only 2/3 through the game at this point, are you? When I played a mage (my last playthrough), I finished with precisely 198 mana. I feel so pathetic.

And my HP was a whopping 116.

Look at me! Look at the jerk!

Hell, I hate myself.

Well, doesn't matter. I finished the game and made Destroyer, not that that's so difficult, but... it's the object of the game, after all... that's all that matters, right? Please say yes? :(
I noticed another strange way to refill MP that's probably a bug. I had a stack of 12 healing potions, and control-right clicked on them when I was at full health. I got 12 "you are at max HP" messages, and 12 game rounds passed. You could presumably get even more and use that trick to pass time quickly, getting the same benefit as camping but able to do it anywhere and without the risk of encounters.
Doesn't exactly sound like a 'bug' to me, more like just an exploit... but... it is interesting. Why weren't you around to tell me about this a year ago? Damn you!

Say... maybe it'll work in Book 2?

Well, doesn't matter: I'm not playing a mage this time... or a Fighter, for that matter. As a Ranger I never have to worry about mana (the only two spells I use (GFlame & Predator) take up so little of it) . . . HP is a little more than sometimes a concern, but not often enough to make me fret and look for exploits or creative options, although... well... I suppose I probably ought to.
Certainty: a character-driven, literary, turn-based mini-CRPG in which Vasek, legendary "Wandering Philosopher", seeks certainties in a cryptically insular, organic, critically layered city.
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Re: Just finished

Post by SpottedShroom »

Evnissyen wrote:
SpottedShroom wrote:The only way I made it through is with Portal. I mark the square next to the well in Blackwater, then when I need to charge up I make a second mark and recall the Blackwater one. I don't know if that's technically cheating, but I don't know how I would have got through otherwise.
Nah, that's not cheating, it's strategy. The well is there to be used, after all. If BW didn't want you to use it he wouldn't've put it there. Right? Right? Eh? :|
The fact that it gets you (only) 4 MP per turn makes it seem a little less bad. I mean, you can get more per turn than that just hanging around in Book II if you have enough perception/meditation. Using portal to escape from a fight and camp is legit, I think - this just speeds it up.
Evnissyen wrote:
SpottedShroom wrote:Even with 300+ MP, I don't have enough to take down two tauraxes.
Aw, hell, Shroom... you're not about to tell me you were only 2/3 through the game at this point, are you? When I played a mage (my last playthrough), I finished with precisely 198 mana. I feel so pathetic.

Well, doesn't matter. I finished the game and made Destroyer, not that that's so difficult, but... it's the object of the game, after all... that's all that matters, right? Please say yes? :(
No, that was at the end, and that's counting two rings and one amulet with +20 MP. I don't think I boosted any stats besides Perception once I had the Intelligence and Wisdom to learn tier-3 spells.

And an extra 100 MP in Book I is really just the difference between poor mage and a slightly less poor one. Other builds are still going to run circles around us.
Evnissyen wrote:
I noticed another strange way to refill MP that's probably a bug. I had a stack of 12 healing potions, and control-right clicked on them when I was at full health. I got 12 "you are at max HP" messages, and 12 game rounds passed. You could presumably get even more and use that trick to pass time quickly, getting the same benefit as camping but able to do it anywhere and without the risk of encounters.
Doesn't exactly sound like a 'bug' to me, more like just an exploit... but... it is interesting. Why weren't you around to tell me about this a year ago? Damn you!

Say... maybe it'll work in Book 2?
Confirmed - it does work in Book II. A few more interesting notes: it's not tied to the number of items in the stack, but rather to how long you hold down the right mouse button (!). I suppose this is an artifact of ctrl-click simulating right-click for Mac users. So even a single potion is good enough for this effect. AND - It lets you take multiple turns in combat!

Here's Crush, my bludgeoning specialist, mobbed by dragonels:
exploit.png
exploit.png (117.45 KiB) Viewed 7163 times
If I hit space, she would get hit by 8 dragonel attacks. But as you see, I get 5 potion-turns between just two attacks!
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Re: Just finished

Post by Evnissyen »

SpottedShroom wrote:The fact that it gets you (only) 4 MP per turn makes it seem a little less bad.
I just tested it with my mage at lvl 18 (because that was the last save I made at Blackwater, although he ended the game at lvl 20) . . . and he was getting 4 hp and 5 mana every time he drank out of the well.

I mean... you do exploit the well more than once, right? Right?
SpottedShroom wrote:an extra 100 MP in Book I is really just the difference between poor mage and a slightly less poor one.
Well... more like the difference between a lame build (mine) and a decent one (yours).

I mean, we're talking a whole 50%+ additional mana, here. That counts a lot. Imagine how I felt, with my spells running down my mana so quickly? I complained an awful lot about it, on this board. "Waa! Mages are underpowered!" That sort of thing.

I still think they were underpowered. Well... not underpowered, but crippled... quite notably crippled by costly spells. (Supernova, I admit, was an awesome spell.) Hence:
Other builds are still going to run circles around us.
That's what it felt like to me. Perhaps in Book 2 they'll prove less crippled, since I'm likely to try it next run through.

I know I've said this already, on these forums, not long ago, and I've said it a bunch of times before: but I've never, ever understood the AD&D-type rules that RPG's have adopted for spellcasters. (Yes, I admit it, I played the game when I was a kid. I was 11, okay? ...Alright... so then I was 12 and then I was 13 and then I was 14 and then I was 15, so what? So I'm familiar, yes I am. Not that I mean to say that there's anything wrong with 25-year-olds playing AD&D... just... aw, screw it. I was sidetracked, okay? I became an artist and started noticing girls, and was embarrassed with my prior computer-programming / AD&D-playing / module-creating geekiness. Can you blame me? Really? :? )

What I mean to say, before I insult people any further, is that the idea that you can only cast, say, 10 spells a day, and then you're left defenseless except for maybe a little club that you're allowed to use because for some reason spellcasters aren't allowed to wield better weapons . . . or wear armor, for that matter: never understood that restriction.

(At any rate: when I played it with my friends, we'd always cheat. We hated those damn rules. We wanted to play it our own way.)

(And we always, always double-classed. And started our characters at level 15, because starting at level 1 with few abilities was no fun.)
Confirmed - it does work in Book II. A few more interesting notes: it's not tied to the number of items in the stack, but rather to how long you hold down the right mouse button (!). I suppose this is an artifact of ctrl-click simulating right-click for Mac users. So even a single potion is good enough for this effect. AND - It lets you take multiple turns in combat!
Strange: I just tested this and it only raised my mana 1 pt. per click and each one took 1 turn. (That's how fast my mana regenerated per turn passed... at lvl 18.)

¿Why won't it work for me? Why? :cry:

You said control + right-click, right? (I'm playing on a Mac, too, by the way.)

As for the dragonels: All I can say is: I don't wanna be swarmed by that many dragonels unless I'm a mage who has high-level Supernova at his/her disposal.

Maybe, in Book 3, there should be a Leap option for people who are really dexterous, for situations like that.
Certainty: a character-driven, literary, turn-based mini-CRPG in which Vasek, legendary "Wandering Philosopher", seeks certainties in a cryptically insular, organic, critically layered city.
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Re: Just finished

Post by SpottedShroom »

Evnissyen wrote: I know I've said this already, on these forums, not long ago, and I've said it a bunch of times before: but I've never, ever understood the AD&D-type rules that RPG's have adopted for spellcasters. (Yes, I admit it, I played the game when I was a kid. I was 11, okay? ...Alright... so then I was 12 and then I was 13 and then I was 14 and then I was 15, so what? So I'm familiar, yes I am. Not that I mean to say that there's anything wrong with 25-year-olds playing AD&D... just... aw, screw it. I was sidetracked, okay? I became an artist and started noticing girls, and was embarrassed with my prior computer-programming / AD&D-playing / module-creating geekiness. Can you blame me? Really? :? )

What I mean to say, before I insult people any further, is that the idea that you can only cast, say, 10 spells a day, and then you're left defenseless except for maybe a little club that you're allowed to use because for some reason spellcasters aren't allowed to wield better weapons . . . or wear armor, for that matter: never understood that restriction.
D&D 4th edition "fixed" that problem. All classes now work the same way, whether you're a wizard, fighter, rogue, whatever. You have at-will powers that aren't very strong - firing an arrow, whacking with a club, zapping with weak magic - and then stronger powers that are once per encounter or once per day. I still like it old-school better, though :)
Evnissyen wrote: Strange: I just tested this and it only raised my mana 1 pt. per click and each one took 1 turn. (That's how fast my mana regenerated per turn passed... at lvl 18.)
So to be clear, you hold down control, then click and hold the right mouse button. You did that and only one round passed?

All I can think is that I'm on Linux instead of Mac. Since I suspect weirdness around a Mac-specific feature, it wouldn't surprise me if it worked differently there. We should ask a Windows user to try it and let us know if it works there.
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