cvv
Arcane
Btw I have a lot more positive things to say about this mod than negative but imma put off my final thoughts until I finish (assuming I summon enough strength to push through the bosses )
Is there some sort of water walking spell? I keep finding places that I can't reach even with teleports.
Yeah me too, I did every LOG1 puzzle by myself, maybe took a while to think about some of them but I did them all pretty quickly. But LoG2 was too obtuse at parts. Stuff like the rock paper scissors puzzle just annoys me because that is not a game people tend to play in my country and it is not something I associate with a fantasy world either, it is too real life. There were other puzzles too that just bugged me.Is there some sort of water walking spell? I keep finding places that I can't reach even with teleports.
Wasn't that the case with the unmodded game?
I really enjoyed the difficulty on LoG1 puzzles, but in the second one it was a bit too much.
Great thanks, I'm heading there next.anvi there's a Conjure Ice spell, you can find it in the pyramid.
I agree about the boss hp though. I would reduce it by about 15-25% on normal. On normal mobs it is fine but the bosses just take ages to kill. I usually like long fights but there isn't enough interaction in these fights for it to be fun, it is just me sitting in a corner drawing the same few shapes over and over and clicking my attack keys whenever they pop up.
Lol. Hmmm It is tempting to play it again, maybe not right away, but I would like to play hard mode because Medium was quite easy.
After I retrieved the Gloves of Spirituality from the Crystal Mines - the area with the fire troll
After I retrieved the Gloves of Spirituality from the Crystal Mines - the area with the fire troll
I'm only missing 4 secrets, but I don't remember no fire troll.
Tell me more.
I think I got everything but there was one room I could never figure out how to get in. It was in the north of the sewers. There is a grate door but no key and no switches anywhere nearby.
Btw the only puzzle so far I didn't get was the one in the Mines - there's a greem slime behind a grate and a hole with a teleport in front of it.
I think I got everything but there was one room I could never figure out how to get in. It was in the north of the sewers. There is a grate door but no key and no switches anywhere nearby.
Don't get it, where exactly in the sewers do you mean?
And...I'm done. Spent 40 minutes on the Lindworm boss fight (my party was Lvl 25-27 when I started) and I'm not even gonna bother trying again, or contiuning... Your solution is the worst one possible: Jack up his HP without making any other changes.
The dragon boss is easily the most boring fight in the game, as it relies on timing and wasting time on killing minions while waiting for a window of opportunity to open to do damage against the boss. With such MASSIVE HP bloat as is going on here, we're talking about a fight that'll take DAYS in game-time and far too long in normal time. No one wants to slog through this. The dragon fight is broken by default, you only made it worse by making it take much longer. This is a bad design decision on such a scale that it breaks the entire mod. The easiest fix at this point is to drop the shield and have the dragon be a constant factor in the fight, not just something that pops in for a few moments. At least then the HP bloat is justified. If this makes the fight too easy in your opinion, blame the spells you put in the mod.
My verdict for your mod is this: It's too much of everything. Too many spells, too many quick solutions to new problems, too many ways to exploit the spells, etc. It's a great showcase mod and really opens up new possibilities for the game, but it needs balancing work.
I'd second Unkillable Cat for the undead twins boss fight and the rattling boss fight too. The rattling is very easy actually, the minions are dispatched fast enough, it's only those 10 minutes of kiting the cannon rat around the pillar that prolongs it unnecessarily. At that point you can't really lose, the fight is not a challenge anymore, you're just grinding the massive HP pool down, chip by chip. As for the twins, as I said, they have way too much HP on Hard. Sorry but 9000 HP on level 1 (meaning around 15 000 when you actually fight them) is absurd. I put some good crits in Xarant, hurled a few spicy spells, looked up - and his health bar was hardly affected. That is too much, even for Hard.
You probably thought "people can use many powerful spells now" and that's true, god knows the vanilla is shamefully stingy with spells. But the spells are not THAT powerful, it's not like any of them do hundreds of damage. And more importantly, there's just a point where a fun and challenging fight (which the Xarant fight certainly is) becomes a grindy slog. Fights should be fierce, brutal and short. I'd say cut the HP pools in half, remove HP scaling for bosses and increase boss damage. There shouldn't be a boss (maybe except the final one) with more than, say, 4000 HP on Hard.
And yes, I was noticing that spells weren't really doing that much more damage though the "Arcane Bolt" spell may be an exception, but the system for that spell to pay off is way too complicated.
But anyway, back to the boss fights. Adding more HP only works so far before the boss fights become ridiculous. But then having the HP scale to the party's level? Absolutely absurd. Everything has to scale together, and once a Grimrock party reaches Lvl 16+ the party weapons and spells just don't keep up. So, "fixing" the boss fights seems to be a simple case of just giving them a higher HP amount, but one that isn't absurd to begin with and doesn't scale to anyone's level.
# Where's the documentation? Except for a list of changes available on Nexusmods, it's all in-game, and not always in the best possible form. If you're planning on making this a mod for other modders to use, having proper readmes is the first thing that needs to be fixed.
# The Firearms fix of eliminating jams right at Lvl 2 is a good one. It should never have been there to begin with and this is a good workaround.
# Having the Aura and Strong Mind traits have such a huge impact upon the spells is not good game design. It's not that having a trait improves the power level of a spell, but the double combo of it being these two traits and how powerful some spells become as a result. Instead of these two traits now being viable options to consider they are now the ONLY options to consider. NOT taking them now is stupid.
# On that note, I'd suggest looking into other ways to make the Traits useful, or determine the power levels of the spells.
# The spell selection in Grimrock was scarce, but now it's overflowing. In my books every spell that deals multiple types of damage (or protects against multiple types of damage) is redundant. Have one for each type, then one more that covers all the types, and be done with it.
# Likewise the 'Detect' spells are detrimental to the game. Previously you had to look for secret buttons and items to find them, now you just cast a spell and they're readily visible, even through walls! I don't mind that there are Detection spells in the game, but the three provided in the mod are pretty bad. The purple-eyed one is OK due to its restricted detection fields, but the green-eyed and blue-eyed ones are totally OP. If there is to be a Detection-esque spell in the game, make it detect something useful, but not game-breaking elements like secret buttons and items!
# Daemonic Pact is a very cleverly designed spell that starts out useful but becomes dangerous later on due to its increased duration. I think it's the best spell out of the whole bunch.
# The Transfer, Swap, Magic Bridge and Conjure Ice spells open up a whole new dimension to the game. Unfortunately they also break it in various places, so they must be handled with care. Case in point: On the castle roof, stand on the square just before entering the "arena". Cast Transfer. Wait. Enter portal to end game. Fuck you, dragon!
# One thing I didn't get is the Darkbolt spell: If there are so many spells available for all kinds of situations, then how come there couldn't just be a Lightbolt spell to counter the Darkbolt one?
# I'm not sure it's a good idea to have spells that do the same things as potions and crystals do. Just saying.
# Changing the Medusa so that one melee attack equals at least one petrified party member makes them very dangerous, but at the same time the best protection is a spell with a monstrously long duration. Once I found it I only needed to cast it once before I had cleared the pyramid of Medusas. I would cut down the duration on that spell considerably so that Medusa still remain dangerous.
# Bombs are useless now. They weren't much to talk about to begin with, but at least Frost Bombs could buy some time against tough opponents. Now all the bosses (and most monsters) are immune to being frozen.
# The new weapons are a hit-and-miss affair. Every gun type in the game now has a "manabound" variant (yes, even the cannon!) and they are just OP. I would change them so either they don't need ammo but have an Energy cost instead, or that they use ammo just like regular guns. Some of the weapons I discovered in the castle would have been much more useful at earlier stages in the game.
The second one is on the third level of the castle, the floor where the Cursed Compass is needed. There's a square on the East side where an item can be seen through the wall, but I can't find a way to get to it.
Yeah, about that boss. Andak Raïnor, my man, I've been fighting that dude for over 15 minutes now. I must've dealt at least 15000 damage to him. At this point I don't know if he's bugged or he has like 100 000 HP or some such because my head is spinning from all the strafing. Night and day changed during the fight and I starved twice. I'm giving up on the mod too for now, until you have a look at some of the balance issues. Btw when I said the HP pools are waaaaay too big I meant just bosses. So far I found HP and damage of all regular mobs just perfect for Hard (the fights in the spider infested mines were pretty epic). But the bosses should be taken care of - no HP scaling, no HP bigger than 4k. Damage balance is ok.
As for other feedback - pretty much seconding what Unkillable Cat wrote. The traits - I'd suggest removing the Aura and Strong Will bonuses altogether, they're way too strong right now and I don't think your spells even need boosts like this.
I also think the number of spells is unnecessary. Definitelly all the shield spells, completely redundant. I actually like all the combined bolt spells, very handy on Hard, but not having them would be fine too.
I'm very torn about Oracle and Water Breathing. Oracle does eliminate the hunt for secrets, then again I was never too excited about checking every single wall manually. Plus the item reveal feature is awesome, many of the items are too tiny and blend with the ground too much. I for one vote for keeping Oracle, maybe with some clever adjustments. Definitely keep the item reveal. Water Breathing is great, I've always thought the holding breath period is too short but it also completely eliminates any tension under water. I'd probably scrap it and extend the time you can hold your breath. Teleport is very nice but Transfer and Magic Bridge break the game at places. I absolutely love the idea of Transfer, unfortunately it's basically console cheating. Same for Magic Bridge.
Yes, bombs are useless now. Maybe it'd be a good idea to make them a little bit more scarce but MUCH more powerful. They could be your ace up your sleeve against bosses or the "oh shit" button, capable of one-shotting most mobs.
The new areas and puzzles are very nice, I like the idea of subtle hints (although some are maybe too subtle - like there are 3 puzzles with the Balance rune but Dispel works only on one; I "cheated" the other two with Transfer). The new armors are fantastic, love the design. Some of them render old powerful armors like the Meteor Set obsolete, not sure if they're not too OP (the Life Set for example).
Btw a possible bug report - the "Power me up" puzzle in the mines can be activated only by Shock, Lightning Bolt doesn't work (I think it did in vanilla).
Btw have you done something to the respawn mechanics? Somehow I thought monsters don't respawn in Grimrocks but they do here. Not a problem, just asking.
Absolutely love the smoothed levelling curve, the fact you can go up to lvl 25 or higher is amazing. Overall great job, thanks for putting in all the effort and good luck with the rebalances
I disagree about aura and strong will, I like the boost they give and healing each character individually would be a PITA. I thought it wasn't very good that you need those traits at the start though without any warning beforehand. I was lucky I had them. Oracle is vital to me. The thing that pisses me off about wall buttons is that there are so many in the game, and if you play as a completionist, it means you have to look at every-single-wall-in-the-damn-game. It drove me insane like OCD when I first played, but this time I just use Oracle. I still have to remember to do it and then look for the blue glow, so at least I am doing something, not much harder than just looking for buttons.
I agree about the boss hp though. I would reduce it by about 15-25% on normal. On normal mobs it is fine but the bosses just take ages to kill. I usually like long fights but there isn't enough interaction in these fights for it to be fun, it is just me sitting in a corner drawing the same few shapes over and over and clicking my attack keys whenever they pop up.
On Hard you can't really sit and tank bosses so the fights CAN be fun. But bosses having tens of thousands of HP is clearly ridiculous. Btw 15% reduction would not solve anything at all on Hard. The boss HP pools don't need reduction but a complete rework.
I think just a reduction would work on medium. It still wouldn't be interesting to fight a boss but at least it wouldn't drag on so much. I dread to think how long it lasts on hard. I kinda think that the only way to make boss fights work with this mod would be to redesign the bosses so they do more, like pick up the party and throw it around so you can't hide in the corner or pin the boss, and you can't just out regen the boss, and have them use some of the new spells, etc. But that is probably beyond the scope of this mod.
Some very interesting feedback here!
It's great, no... -inspiring- to see the enthusiasm you folk have for Grimrock mods
Andak's Spell Pack (Magic of Grimrock) has been a massive project & is continually being polished and improved
Glad to see your Project making waves buddy!
(....coz, lets face it, we ALL wanted a lot more Spells :D )
I just completed the game Sad times. It was a great play through, some of the most fun I've had in an RPG. The mod transformed the game for me. The hp was big on the end bosses but some of the spells are so crazy powerful and the better gear, they weren't too hard to kill, I was kicking so much ass late game, doing 2000+ damage hits regularly with just my warrior. Dragon boss took me about 15 minutes to kill because he keeps flying away which is annoying, but the trickster took about 5 minutes and the final boss Island Master only took about 5 minutes to kill as well.
I used almost all of the spells regularly, except for the shielding spells (I only used 2 shield spells). Some of the spells work together with a sneaky synergy that is very powerful. Not sure if it was intended but I could tank anything and barely take a scratch, but I had to keep on top of the spell rotations or I would die.
I wish I could play more :/