Circle of Eight Modpack 5.9.x/5.9.xNC General Commentary & Discussion Thread

[mmonagle]

Originally Posted by mmonagle

Ok, I went and pulled out a few boxes in my closet to confirm this but I am pretty sure that I have figured out a way that my party of characters can figure out that there are Hextor priests holed up in VB - they are hanging Hextor's symbol up on the wall. His symbol is six red arrows fanned in a downward position. I'm pretty sure that it what is hanging up in this area with those priests (I'm trying not to spoil the location for others). So am I right? If so, do I get a prize of some kind?

I was kind of hoping I could get an answer to this. Is Hextor's symbol there? It is pretty close but I'm not sure if its an exact match so I realize that maybe it is just a coincedence.

[mmonagle]

Originally Posted by Sitra Achara

Re. the Earth Temple, you can artificially trigger the script with the following console code if you want to try what has been done:

[code]
from itt import *
earth_reg()
[code]

The main problem is that I can't get all of the critters to actually engage the party, especially if the players stands back at the corridor bottleneck.

What I'm thinking of doing is changing the scope to a more limited regroup, where Romag gets some reinforcements in his private chambers (Ogre Chief + a couple of the leaders).

I've been thinking about the reactive temple mod a bit:

1) in terms of the air temple, there is a small group of one female bugbear and two goblins that gets left in the room to the west of Kelno. Could the one goblin that does get moved into the air temple's shrine be exchanged with the female bugbear? That would keep the small group of goblins together. I would then wonder if the three of them could be moved to somewhere like the stairwell that leads down to the third level that is within the air temple's area. I would figure that they would be cowering there or even attempting to flee. Perhaps at some later date, they could even dialogue with a party and beg to be let go. (Just a thought).

2) As the earth temple has too many critters to put all in one place at one time, could they have two assembly points instead? Or three? I understand about getting the tougher ones together but the rest are left in small groups. It would be cool if the rest congregated as well. Maybe even the assistant earth temple priest could be in charge of the second group.

3) I believe that there is enough room in the earth temple that the creatures who assemble there could be placed at the far end of the entrance area. I just thought that this might help avoid the bottlenecking issue - a party would actually have to enter the area to engage anything there and hopefully would thus draw the other creatures into the battle.

Again, these are just thoughts and I have to confess that I'm not aware of all the difficulties that putting this package together entails. It is a good addition to the game no matter how it all turns out.

[Gaear]

Originally Posted by mmonagle

I was kind of hoping I could get an answer to this. Is Hextor's symbol there? It is pretty close but I'm not sure if its an exact match so I realize that maybe it is just a coincedence.

Yes, it's Hextor's symbol. That map is the LE vignette Temple of Hextor map.

Originally Posted by mmonagle

1) in terms of the air temple, there is a small group of one female bugbear and two goblins that gets left in the room to the west of Kelno.

I believe Sitra said this was intentional. That's the kitchen, and somebody's still got to cook and clean. Sounds reasonable to me.

[gazra_1971]

Nothing changed there from 5.8.1 to 5.9.1. Heartbeat functions don't always work for whatever reason, so you may get flukey results from time to time with prebuffing and whatnot. He's not scripted to auto-talk at all though initially, so I have no idea how that happened. What did he say?

Thanks for the information. You are right - Lareth never initiates dialogue with your party when your party enters his room.

The brown bear was not changed. I don't think it's ever been flagged KOS, but it shares the giant's faction, so if they are near together they should both join against you.

Thank you for that valuable information. In my runthrough of 5.9.1 NC, I was just lucky that I encountered the hill giant when he was quite a distance away from the brown bear.

Somebody reported recently that their healer was able to cast healing spells at a greater range than touch. Well, my cleric has to move over to touching distance when casting healing spells on most occasions. But he was casting healing spells at LONG distances away from his targets when I fought the hill giant at Emridy Meadows. My cleric was about 20 feet north of the hill giant, and yet my cleric was able to cast Cure ..... Wounds spells at a target on the other side of the hill giant!

The Ivory Chest in the tower outside the moathouse keeps relocking whenever the party leaves the map.

While playing 5.9.1 NC, when I exited the Church of St. Cuthbert, I heard a weird sound effect or music that lasted for a few seconds that I have never heard before or since! (i.e. it only happened once). The screen was black for an unusually long time during the transition to the Hommlet map as a result of the sound/music. It was as if the game was trying to play a video cutscene but the video wasn't playing correctly.

The new A.I of the Ogre Shaman at Hickory Branch is excellent. When I fought him, the spells that I identified that he cast included Bane, Bless, and Sound Burst. The Sound Burst spell was very effective (it stunned 2 of my characters). I've always had a problem with the D&D monsters "Ogre Mage" and "Ogre Shaman" - to me, it seems totally illogical that a monster that big and strong would cast spells instead of smashing foes with mighty blows wielding a greatclub. My only criticism of the A.I. of the Hickory Branch Ogre Shaman is that I wish that he would switch to melee attacks once the enemy has gotten within melee range of him. But he's your creation, so it's up to you how you want him to behave. My second run through of Hickory Branch is so much easier than my first - I've found all of the combats that I've fought outside so far extremely easy (my party hardly loses any HP, except for the Ogres who hit hard!) except for the Orc Trainer and his Dire Wolves (which has always been a challenging combat for me).

[Necroticpus]

Wouldn't Hedrack craft wands of Heroes Feast and give one to each temple? Or does the temple have a trade agreement with someone in Hommlett for supplies? What would they eat? They couldn't cannibalize their own troops to feed everyone, there wouldn't be anyone left. I don't think they would eat human food. Maybe the temple has a garden out back? I don't think Zuggtmoy would appreciate everyone eating mushrooms. There has to be a huge source of meat somewhere. Temple stockyards with an aggressive breeding program! Hundreds of unicorns penned up and fed and slaughtered daily.

[cezmail]

Originally Posted by Necroticpus

Wouldn't Hedrack craft wands of Heroes Feast and give one to each temple? Or does the temple have a trade agreement with someone in Hommlett for supplies? What would they eat? They couldn't cannibalize their own troops to feed everyone, there wouldn't be anyone left. I don't think they would eat human food. Maybe the temple has a garden out back? I don't think Zuggtmoy would appreciate everyone eating mushrooms. There has to be a huge source of meat somewhere. Temple stockyards with an aggressive breeding program! Hundreds of unicorns penned up and fed and slaughtered daily.

So would Hedrack and Co use virgin slaves to be the herders of those Unicorns or would it be the sacrificial victims to the Fungus Fanny use last duty would be to feed those ravaging beasties?

[mmonagle]

Originally Posted by Gaear

Yes, it's Hextor's symbol. That map is the LE vignette Temple of Hextor map.

Thanks. Obviously I haven't played a LE party before. I just have can't stand to use the law for evil ends. I'm just proud that I figured it out (but being from the vignette I suppose dimishes that a bit).

[General Ghoul]

Originally Posted by Necroticpus

Wouldn't Hedrack craft wands of Heroes Feast and give one to each temple? Or does the temple have a trade agreement with someone in Hommlett for supplies? What would they eat? They couldn't cannibalize their own troops to feed everyone, there wouldn't be anyone left. I don't think they would eat human food. Maybe the temple has a garden out back? I don't think Zuggtmoy would appreciate everyone eating mushrooms. There has to be a huge source of meat somewhere. Temple stockyards with an aggressive breeding program! Hundreds of unicorns penned up and fed and slaughtered daily.

Two words: troll legs.

[Sitra Achara]

Gaear, would you mind posting the 5.9.2 files for the Viscount? I'd like to give it a once-over.

[zebrainz]

Playing LE in 5.9.1 (sorry if I'm spoiling too much)

1. The new & improved slavers encounter is great. Played through it several times trying diffferent things. One way, I recieved dialog and the encounter was very similar to 5.9.0. The main difference was only one undead appeared to break the "charisma spell" (or whatever it is) and return my free will. 2 of blue bikini girl's gigalos still went over to fight it instead of the party though. I did notice one new prebuff for girlie, her cleric and her main squeeze... Pentagrams and such. Another way, I encountered no dialog screen at all, just some banter and standing around until I initiated melee. "If that's the way you want it..." (banter balloon) Nice touch! There is a far enough point at which they don't dectect prebuffs, but it's far enough away that the short term ones run out before you get there. In my case, the same person died either way most of the time (she saved a couple of times in combat). I played this thing through about 8 times with a party of 5 at level 12. If I hadn't bought Mother Screng's Staff of Life, I would probably have lost this encounter more than I won it. As it was I got the skeleton with a sword through his chest movie twice.

When I think of new and challenging content, this is exactly it.

Note: The Constable Captain in Verb. still gives dialog like you brought the kids back the next time you encounter him, even if they all died. The game did not insta-teleport me back like it does when they live though. I forgot that Order's Wrath would effect them as well as the bad guys.

2. Overall the Verb Guards responded better. Here's what specifically happened to me in Framework for Murder. I finally managed to get a guard alone. Dead in one round, but it activated combat with one (not two) citizen around the corner. Killed him, too. I'm cruising along, walking around by other guards and citizens, whistling like I'm innocent and have done nothing wrong until I go to the world map and return to the Verb square to use the signpost. The two guards at the entrance give me dialog choices of attack or surrender. I attacked, they went down. The you killed guards rep activates in my logbook. I go about my business, rest for 2 days, visit Darlia, rest for 2 more days, see a vendor or two, etc. When I go back to the square, two new guards are in the square itself (no longer by the door to the palace). They are benign as well. I have a "Hey y'all, watch this!" moment (translation for those who don't live in the southeastern US, "Let's try something really stupid."). I go into the constable heatquarters, nothing. I go downstairs and here comes the lawyer. I'm feeling 10 feet tall, magic missle proof and have suddenly grown large adamantium testicles. Well, if there were any men in the party they would have felt that way after surviving the slavers. Anyway, I tell the lawyer, sure, go ahead, execute me. You can't kill me. Well... Hmm. If I used hotkeys, I might have gotten out of it. There's one dialog choice that causes a break before starting up again. I managed to get the radial menu up over a witness and was moving the highlight toward single attack when the dialog kicked back in. Maybe I'll go back and try just pressing "C". Not all dialog choices give you that break though. Nice effects. Anyway, I hit power relaod, went back down there (even though I had no real reason to), and paid the man, it umm, got much smoother after that. Reps in the logbook cleared, etc.
I never got the choice to attack or surrender after that one time when I was confronted by the guards at the palace entrance. Not sure if that's right. I did notice that Darlia wouldn't give me the Removing Wilfrick quest until I cleared my rep. I think. I came back in "a couple of days" several times (at least 5 days had passed), but he didn't give the quest until after my rep cleared. That part actually feels right.

3. After much deliberation, my party voted and decided the world would be a better place if Lerrick was running Verbonc instead of Wilfrick, so they took the Removing Wilfrick quest. They were almost at level 14 (one experience point away) after the slavers, so a level 14 party faced Wilfrick's square (except for my recently resurrected tank still at L12). Nothing changed about the encounter that I could see. My opinion? As is, it is a 8th to 10th level encounter. I still say they should be prebuffed a lot better since they are already in a fight with the Scarlett Brotherhood when the party shows up. Add twin archers (ftr/rogue, min ftr level for wep spec, the rest rogue for sneak attack) with point blank, manyshot, precise shot, longbow wep foc, longbow wep spec plus greater invisibility (when the party comes in range), cat's grace and bull strength. Give them composite LBs and Bracers of Archery. Just sayin. Make those low AC PC mages hunt a hole. Or a sphere. Or something. Apologies, I know I'm repeating myself. I blame my grown and gone kids. That's where I picked up the habit.

4. I managed to finish the entire Under Surveilance thing. I think. I did finally get a dialog choice to confront Darlia and have him admit it (In an earlier dialog he kind of denied it). He wouldn't admit if it was him, or if he was hired to do it though. Se la vie.
Side note: I can't help but feel I'm missing something with Lerrick. I simply cannot ever get him to respond with anything other than neo-political babble after the first time I talk to him. I'm trying to use the "who cares about gnomes" responses, too. IDK, maybe he's just doing the plausible deniability thing. I supported his ascent to power. He should respond. Weaksauce. Makes me want to take him to the Moathouse torture chamber and have an "inquisition" with him until he comes clean. Mealy mouthed son of a.. ah well, I guess it's a frog and scorpion thing (his nature - politician).

5. While I was having my "Hey, y'all, watch this." moment, I decided to cast Dominate Person on Holly. Not a good idea. She shows as in the party and under the effects of the spell until you change maps. Then she immediately leaves the party and yells out "Criminals!". When you hover over her with the mouse, she shows as still under the effects of the spell, but she attacks the party anyway. I finished the fight she started, re-dominated her before I had to kill her and she dialogs what seems to be the completion of her drow in the tunnels thing. She did that on every map change. I'll probably never activate that one becuase I've always treated the drow tunnels as a suicide run with preps of scribing and crafting to finish what I started. Just habit I guess because the vanilla pathing from the tutorial was so bad it was a PITA to move the party around. It was designed for 1-2 PCs originally, not 4-8. It's not that way anymore, don't know if someone fixed it (kudos if so) or if my new laptop's better processor is the reason. I'm still going straight through those tunnels without stopping.

6. Checked out Necro's Hero Tower Sheild thing. Weirdness ensued. Different than his, but still weird. I consoled in a MW Metal Tower sheild, Ted's old Curved Heater and a standard +1 sheild. I already had the Hero's sheld. I could not use any of these sheilds with a two handed weapon no matter what I tried, however I could activate them with a two weapon fighter and two weapon rogue. If the sheild slot was empty, the sheilds would not go in, but if a buckler was already in place, the sheild would swap into the buckler's slot by using right click. It worked for all the sheilds listed above. They behaved normally in combat with one exception. No penalties for anyone with sheild proficiency. The off hand -1 penalty for using a buckler two handed or two weapon did not show up in the PC "hits" NPC section on the second and fourth off hand attacks. It did show up for the buckler when it was in there instead. This is not the first time I've seen this. I'm thinking the first time I saw it was 5.5 or earlier. It's not something I would normally do anyway because of the armor check penalties. I like to travel light with 30' movement and craft AC into an acceptable range for the party.

7. As I said, LE party. I don't know if this one is a 5.9 issue either. I have had a persistent ctd when trying to enter the Welcome Wench at night since I killed Lareth and exited the Moathouse. No welcoming party on leaving the Moathouse, pretty sure that's the way it's supposed to be. From that point on, I can go into the Inn during the day, rest for days if I want because the characters inside don't change until I change maps, correct? If I try to enter during the night, it takes awhile trying to load (normal for my game since so much is added there now) and it shows a flash of the inside before it crashes. The best I can tell, everyone is there except Toruko, Zert and his big friend. If I'm inside during the day or have rested until night with no map change, when I try to go upstairs, it also crashes. I even tried the sandalwood box to "Just take me home." Didn't work. I couldn't get to the last criminal. . The only thing I have not done that I can think of is take Fragratch to the not-Hextor preist in Verb. He used to accept the sword without Toruko present back when he was a not-not Hextor preist. I don't think that will work either though. I can't remember when, but I think someone else had this issue at least once. First occurance for me.

8. Speaking of the Criminals (not me!), the first 2 turned on me in a wilderness encounter between Nulb and Hommett. Again, same as 5.9.0. The encounter initiated without an "avoid" choice both times. I would not have been able to get all three together in one place even if I didn't have issues with the Hommett Inn. No Ranger, Druid or Barbarian, but I did have a fighter and cleric maxed on survival. It was in the 6-7 range at the time.

[The Royal Canadian]

Hi Gaear
I assume that the "Hextor Priests Pretending to be Priests of Pelor" scenario hasn't been fully fleshed out? The reason I am asking is that:
A.) My Cleric of Heironeous didn't have a dialogue option of "If you are Priests of Pelor, why do you have symbols of Hextor on the walls ?". Seeing as Heironeous and Hextor are enemies, a Cleric of Heironeous should know what the symbol of Hextor looks like.
B.) There is no dialogue option to ask the REAL Priests of Pelor what is going on in their former temple (or for that matter, how it was destroyed in the first place).
I also have a bug to report. I took the "Frozen Assets" quest and cleaned out the Gnome Tunnels and killed the dragons. When I reported to Wilfrick I first told him that the Gnomes were correct about the Drow in the tunnels. I then reported that I had killed all the Drow in the tunnels. He then replied "So the Gnomes were telling the truth after all......." .
One of my dialogue options was "I've been ordered to kill you" even though I had not spoken with Darlia, and the advisor wouldn't give me the time of day the one time I spoke with him.
The Royal Canadian

Originally Posted by Gaear

Yes, it's Hextor's symbol. That map is the LE vignette Temple of Hextor map.

[Gaear]

Just a heads-up - the 5.9.2 mods are on the server at ModDB, once again awaiting authorization. They have been there for several hours, so I imagine they'll be available before too long. Keep an eye out.

Originally Posted by SA

Gaear, would you mind posting the 5.9.2 files for the Viscount? I'd like to give it a once-over.

The mods will probably be available at ModDB before I'll be able to post the files (later today).

[Necroticpus]

Originally Posted by Gaear

The mods will probably be available at ModDB before I'll be able to post the files (later today).

Optimistic today, are we? That's good. Hope is a good thing.

[Sitra Achara]

Originally Posted by zebrainz

Playing LE in 5.9.1 (sorry if I'm spoiling too much)

Another way, I encountered no dialog screen at all, just some banter and standing around until I initiated melee. "If that's the way you want it..." (banter balloon) Nice touch!

Really? Haven't encountered that. I don't see anything in the scripting that should do this either.

It could be nice to have it, though.
Say, raise a flag if the dialogue sequence fires off as intended.
In Tarah's san_enter_combat script, add a check for the flag. If the flag is 0, raise an appropriate float. Or even better, do the "child teleport" thing.

Also, another bug I found - LE (or CN for that matter) parties who haven't spoken to Kent will have the dialogue sequence cut off when Tarah orders you to kill the child. That's because the LE/CN followup dialogue node checks for flag 801 for some reason. If the flag is not set, you just get to say "goodbye" and the sequence ends, letting you attack as usual.

Another thing, I think Death Ward doesn't actually work.

Lastly, a comment about the encounter's difficulty:
With all the new spell casting in the game, there is finally good reason to memorize / learn anti-spellcaster spells. Like Silence, and Feeblemind, for instance. What can I say, it's not that hard when Tarah can't cast spells But kudos for forcing the player to make that effort.


Regarding the Viscount encounter, I enjoyed that too, even though it wasn't that hard either. They may have major rings of fire resistance, but they got nothing against Cone of Cold. Or Cloudkill, for that matter.

But I suppose it's inherent to high level D&D. You have to worry about all sorts of buff / debilitate scenarios. I guess that's what demons with 400 HP and resistances to most of everything are meant for.

[Gaear]

Originally Posted by gazra

My second run through of Hickory Branch is so much easier than my first -

Is this because you're familiar with it now, or are you higher level, etc.? Nothing was dumbed down or reduced there.

Originally Posted by zebrains

The main difference was only one undead appeared to break the "charisma spell" (or whatever it is) and return my free will.

I changed that so that only one survives ... there are still 5 (I think) spawned, but Abaddon destroys 4 of them. This is so the slavers don't spend all day fighting them. It just so happens that the rogue hates undead more than death itself, so he will go after them relentlessly. This may be a welcome reprieve for less skilled players in that you get 1 or 2 rounds before he comes back and starts backstabbing everybody, but he's not good at fighting skeletons ironically, so if they are around it takes him a long time to kill them, which effectively removes him from the battle, which is no good.

Originally Posted by zebrains

Another way, I encountered no dialog screen at all,

I have no idea how that happened either. And what do you mean by 'banter' ... float lines? There are none of those scripted to fire iirc, so if you're getting other dialog, it must be in the form of regular dialog boxes.

Originally Posted by zebrains

Note: The Constable Captain in Verb. still gives dialog like you brought the kids back the next time you encounter him, even if they all died. The game did not insta-teleport me back like it does when they live though. I forgot that Order's Wrath would effect them as well as the bad guys.

Thanks, that will have to be fixed.

Re: killing the guards, very simply, no one should confront you until you have a killer rep, which you get after killing 2 guards or 2 citizens. If that's not happening reliably (or is happening despite not having the rep), I'll have to look it all over again. When you get the guard rep, more guards go on post in Verbo, as it says in the rep. That's why the new guys you see are around. And the attorney isn't supposed to show up and talk to you unless you're in jail.

Originally Posted by zebrains

Not sure if that's right. I did notice that Darlia wouldn't give me the Removing Wilfrick quest until I cleared my rep. I think. I came back in "a couple of days" several times (at least 5 days had passed), but he didn't give the quest until after my rep cleared. That part actually feels right.

I take it that after all this time, no one has yet dared to see Darlia after not getting the constabulary job done right? In general, these plots have been written with a single playthrough in mind (not endless reloading until you get it right). You ... may be missing out on some things ... by reloading/playing to perfection all the time. Personally I hate having to reload in games in order to get some single event 'right,' so it would be kind of sadistic and self-loathing of me to force players to do that in these mods.

Originally Posted by zebrains

Wilfrick's square ... Nothing changed about the encounter that I could see.

It's a bit different in 5.9.2.

Originally Posted by zebrains

Side note: I can't help but feel I'm missing something with Lerrick.

Lerrick will talk to you about:

• Your initial inquiries (Zook, the Drow)
• Being followed, if you are
• An intruder in your private room(s), if there was one
• The outcome of killing Wilfrick, if you have

He will also have some contextual remarks in these conversations if Holly happens to be in the party. He could stand to be expanded, sure, but so could everybody in Verbobonc at this point.

Originally Posted by zebrains

While I was having my "Hey, y'all, watch this." moment, I decided to cast Dominate Person on Holly.

I guess that will have to be looked at. The things you describe are normal - if she's in the party by normal means, she'll leave after the drow are dealt with. She also will not participate in any murders or unjustified attacks, which is probably why she's objecting to being dominated, technically.

I have a feeling I could spend the rest of my life trying to allow for every possibility under the sun.

Originally Posted by zebrains

I have had a persistent ctd when trying to enter the Welcome Wench at night since I killed Lareth and exited the Moathouse.

That sounds like it definitely has something to do with the big three. They're upstairs by day at the WW, downstairs by night, and something is interfering with them being there or not.

Originally Posted by zebrains

Speaking of the Criminals (not me!), the first 2 turned on me in a wilderness encounter between Nulb and Hommett.

That's fixed in 5.9.2.

Originally Posted by TRC

I assume that the "Hextor Priests Pretending to be Priests of Pelor" scenario hasn't been fully fleshed out?

That's correct.

Originally Posted by SA

Also, another bug I found - LE (or CN for that matter) parties who haven't spoken to Kent will have the dialogue sequence cut off when Tarah orders you to kill the child. That's because the LE/CN followup dialogue node checks for flag 801 for some reason. If the flag is not set, you just get to say "goodbye" and the sequence ends, letting you attack as usual.

Yeah, that shouldn't be there. Will fix.

Originally Posted by SA

Another thing, I think Death Ward doesn't actually work.

Strange ... @Necro, didn't you say it foiled some of your insta-death attempts?

Originally Posted by SA

Lastly, a comment about the encounter's difficulty:
With all the new spell casting in the game, there is finally good reason to memorize / learn anti-spellcaster spells. Like Silence, and Feeblemind, for instance. What can I say, it's not that hard when Tarah can't cast spells But kudos for forcing the player to make that effort.

Regarding the Viscount encounter, I enjoyed that too, even though it wasn't that hard either. They may have major rings of fire resistance, but they got nothing against Cone of Cold. Or Cloudkill, for that matter.

But I suppose it's inherent to high level D&D. You have to worry about all sorts of buff / debilitate scenarios. I guess that's what demons with 400 HP and resistances to most of everything are meant for.

They get cold resistance rings too in 5.9.2 ... but this leads to your other point. We could give them resistance to everything, but why would they be resistant to everything? A balor, sure, but guards (or even the slavers really) shouldn't have access to all that stuff. You might think that guys like the Circle of Eight would, but they are the elite.

I tend to look at this stuff largely from a 'realistic' perspective (which may be kind of silly since this is fantasy D&D, but I've never much been into the high fantasy thing anyway), and in that context, even the slavers having all this uber gear and being generally uber is a big stretch. If they really existed, they would probably be among the single greatest threats to Greyhawk itself anywhere, next to gods like Iuz and demons like Zugg and whatnot ... certainly worse than anything the ToEE has to offer. And yet they're out there running around kidnapping children. So in order to compensate, we make them somewhat vulnerable ... which in turn makes uber god-like parties (which shouldn't exist either, rationally) able to handle them with less difficulty. As you say, the perils of high levl D&D.

Maybe a bunch of balors would be better, lol, but you'd probably need to shift the locations to 'astral planes' and the like, where gods battle it out above the notice of mortals.

[Necroticpus]

Originally Posted by Gaear

Strange ... @Necro, didn't you say it foiled some of your insta-death attempts?

Yes, I did. It does work because I've also used it many times dealing with bodacks in the fire node.

[gazra_1971]

Nothing changed there from 5.8.1 to 5.9.1. Heartbeat functions don't always work for whatever reason, so you may get flukey results from time to time with prebuffing and whatnot. He's not scripted to auto-talk at all though initially, so I have no idea how that happened. What did he say?

Thanks for the information. You are right - Lareth never initiates dialogue with your party when your party enters his room. Sorry, my bad.

Playing LE party. No welcoming party on leaving the Moathouse, pretty sure that's the way it's supposed to be.

I read somewhere in this forum that a Lawful Evil party alignment will not trigger the moathouse ambush.

My second run through of Hickory Branch is so much easier than my first.

Is this because you're familiar with it now, or are you higher level, etc.? Nothing was dumbed down or reduced there.

My party entered Hickory Branch when they were all level 4 both on my first and second runthrough. The reasons why it is so much easier on my second runthrough are:
a. I know exactly where everything is on the map and what I am about to fight;
b. I've mastered combat tactics for the game now;
c. My party is using reach weapons this time around (none of my characters were using reach weapons on my first runthrough);
d. My party picked better feats this time around (especially Cleave!).

[Oakheart]

Blind-Fight does not seem to be working correctly, as I am not seeing my re-rolls against concealment 'ala invisibility, obscuring mist etc. Is this a known bug?

Also, when using the 'full attack option' so that I can spread my attacks around multiple targets, I notice sometimes I lose attacks, especially if I try to inject things such as 'smite evil' or 'improved trip' into the attack routine, though it occurs with just normal attacks as well, this happens with both melee attacks and ranged attacks.

There seems to be a bug where if things die while under the influence of Holy Word effects, I see my screen still full of their attempted saving throws even after they are dead, and the combat is over.

I am aware that I usually only post things that don't seem to be working, but I wanted to say that I really appreciate the hard work you all do, it provides me with hours of fun, and every new patch release is just like Christmas, and a wonderful excuse for a new game!

[Oakheart]

Originally Posted by gazra_1971

Thanks for the information. You are right - Lareth never initiates dialogue with your party when your party enters his room. Sorry, my bad.


I read somewhere in this forum that a Lawful Evil party alignment will not trigger the moathouse ambush.


My party entered Hickory Branch when they were all level 4 both on my first and second runthrough. The reasons why it is so much easier on my second runthrough are:
a. I know exactly where everything is on the map and what I am about to fight;
b. I've mastered combat tactics for the game now;
c. My party is using reach weapons this time around (none of my characters were using reach weapons on my first runthrough);
d. My party picked better feats this time around (especially Cleave!).

Just wanted to point out in regards to item 'c' that reach weapons in the game are something of an exploit as they are not penalized against adjacent targets. Not to say that this is not fun at times, but its worth mentioning that if your looking for a more 'authentic' experience, reach weapons should be skipped.

[Sitra Achara]

Death Ward doesn't protect against Weird and Phantasmal Killer.
It does protect against Finger of Death.

It seems the former two use the script obj.critter_kill(), whereas the latter uses obj.critter_kill_by_effect().

On the one hand, this appears to be bugged.
On the other hand, I think critter_kill_by_effect() fails to execute sometimes. Tarah seems to be using this, and it doesn't always work.

Edit:
Actually, it seems critter_kill() fails to work on my party as well. Very strange. Might be related to spell permanency problems I'm having.

Also, re. Lareth, I submitted a while ago an improved prebuff script for him that had him cast Magic Circle Against Good when you opened the door. What happened with that?
Here's the thread:
http://www.co8.org/forum/showthread.php?t=8117

[gazra_1971]

I'm fed up with SecuROM preventing me from running my legitimate game CD that I bought when this game was released.

Could someone please send me a Private Message with a link to a no-cd crack that I can download?

Does the no-cd crack work without any problems with the Circle of Eight Modpack?

Wouldn't the cracked version of the TOEE.EXE file undo the changes made by the Circle of Eight Modpack?

The error message below prevented me from running the game. I am not using any virtual drive emulation software. SecuROM has prevented me from running the game on a few previous occasions as well (without reporting any error - it just refused to load the game CD). The only way that I was able to get the game to run whenever that started happening was to freaking reboot my computer! My CD drive brand/model is a Pioneer BDC-S02BK. My OS is Windows XP SP3.

[Gaear]

As long as you use the correct no-cd (patch 2, 33kb uncompressed / 17 kb compressed), you will have no problems using it with the modpack. It's almost as though it was meant to be. I put away my game CD long ago and have never used it since except for the occasional re-install.

The Co8 modpack does not alter the executable, so using the correct no-cd doesn't affect anything. However, the wrong no-cd contains the file temple.dll inside it, which the Co8 mod does alter, so that will cause problems.

Just use the correct no-cd. I'm sure someone will PM a link shortly, or just Google 'ToEE no-cd.'

[cezmail]

Originally Posted by gazra_1971

I'm fed up with SecuROM preventing me from running my legitimate game CD that I bought when this game was released.

Could someone please send me a Private Message with a link to a no-cd crack that I can download?

Does the no-cd crack work without any problems with the Circle of Eight Modpack?

Wouldn't the cracked version of the TOEE.EXE file undo the changes made by the Circle of Eight Modpack?

The error message below prevented me from running the game. I am not using any virtual drive emulation software. SecuROM has prevented me from running the game on a few previous occasions as well (without reporting any error - it just refused to load the game CD). The only way that I was able to get the game to run whenever that started happening was to freaking reboot my computer! My CD drive brand/model is a Pioneer BDC-S02BK. My OS is Windows XP SP3.

@Gazra, sent you the link you asked about. It does work with the Co8 mod pack and I have had no changes with it installed.

Hope this allows you to have fun with the game and not have these Snafus.

[Necroticpus]

www.moddb.com are still on break over there because 5.9.2 is not up yet. I'm going to try that with my next job. If they ask me to do something, I'm just going to blow it off until the next day.

[Gaear]

Originally Posted by SA

Also, re. Lareth, I submitted a while ago an improved prebuff script for him that had him cast Magic Circle Against Good when you opened the door. What happened with that?

Sorry, that seems to have not made it in somehow. I'll have to add it next time.

Also, it looks like Necro was right and Counter-Strike is running long over at ModDB, so the Wilfrick files are attached below.

Lastly, here is the changelog for 5.9.2 to thrill to while we wait some more:

General

- Fixed Armario masterwork delivery.
- Tweaked Thrommel Scather delivery scenario to good-aligned PCs.
- Fixed and standardized barter inventory refreshing for all merchants.
- Fixed tile blocking issue on Temple Entrance map.
- Fixed locations where it is registered that Otis has been to temple with you.
- Removed extra longspears from skeleton guards at Emridy Meadows.
- Bulletproofed scripting in Skole goons encounter so you don't have to revisit Boatmens Tavern for it to fire.
- Removed last of undead amulets from Emridy Meadows zombies.
- Faded edges of Moathouse Exterior map that became exposed due to expanding map limts.
- Lowered escaped Lareth reward payout amount.
- Removed DO NOT USE arrow from Water Node.
- Removed DO NOT USE bullets from Moathouse Dungeon.
- Fixed dialog bug where Kelno wouldn't take you to the Greater Temple.
- Simplified area descriptions in saved games.
- Mobbed in Moathouse Ambush.

Hickory Branch

- Hopefully re-bulletproofed Noblig so he doesn't reappear at Hickory Branch entrance anymore (NC modpack only).
- Fixed heartbeat bug where Hungous would sometimes stop combat and do his speech again (NC modpack only).
- Changed Hickory Branch orc archers to use five foot step, not rage, and carry only shortbows (NC modpack only).

Moathouse Respawn

- Mobbed in Moathouse Respawn (NC modpack only).
- Upped constitution of Moathouse Respawn witch (NC modpack only).

Verbobonc

- Fixed various flag and scripting issues with Senshock in Verbobonc (NC modpack only).
- Bulletproofed Verbobonc banker's dialog so he can't offer to sell you castle a second time (NC modpack only).
- Bulletproofed the Verbobonc fugitives' disband and attack routines (NC modpack only).
- Beefed up Wilfrick entourage mildly and added two archers (NC modpack only).
- Changed Wilfrick's dialog so you can talk to him about assassination topics during the day at city hall (NC modpack only).
- Bulletproffed Wilfrick's dialog further to stop him mentioning assassination job if you haven't got it, avoid loops, and nullify it if Darlia is dead (NC modpack only).

[mmonagle]

They just updated the pictures and description on moddb. The files are not up yet but it looks like it is about to happen.

[cezmail]

Originally Posted by mmonagle

They just updated the pictures and description on moddb. The files are not up yet but it looks like it is about to happen.

I will hope so. as it will give me something to look forward to when I get off in 5 hours.

[cezmail]

Thanks Gaear for the update on what will be coming out in the new mod pack. I appreciate all the hard work you and the others have done to tweak this version for us.

Now lets get 6.0 out and running!

.... just joking. :D

[gazra_1971]

The encounter initiated without an "avoid" choice both times. No Ranger, Druid or Barbarian, but I did have a fighter and cleric maxed on survival.

The following quote is from the Circle of Eight Modpack 5.9.2 NC - Release Notes.txt file:

Reworked avoidability of random encounters to depend on randomly rolled Listen, Spot, and Survival checks for both the party and the enemies.

If you buy the Spyglass from Rannos Davl or Gremag (in their trading post in Hommlet), then you have twice the chance of spotting a random encounter.

I've got great news for those who don't already know! Atari and Cryptic Studios are making a computer game called Neverwinter RPG which is planned for release in Q4 2011. The game is set in Neverwinter City. The game's story is by the guy who created the character Drizzt Do'Urdin.

[Euangelion]

I'm back.
Playing 5.91. Wow! Awesome!! The game keeps getting better!!! Keep up the good work!!!! All that...
I've seen most of the issues I've had with 5.91 mentioned here, except one:
I was given the option of mentioning to Lerrick both the being followed thing and the guy in the room thing before they actually happened. In fact, I've never seen a guy in my room.
But I'm guessing it's too late to fix them for 5.92, if that is actually broken.