Grimoire Thread

[Mech]

Nice, enjoying getting rekted even more often now by 1-hit kills.

 

[PEACH]

Some thoughts / observations on the post Samhain Horror sections of the game upon reaching 50%. Spoilers, naturally, but if I allude to key items or puzzles it'll only be vaguely. Most of what I have to mention is regarding balance / quality of the second act, and things I've noticed along the way. Not a review, but I guess a response to some known problem-aspects and the general question as to whether the game drops off after Samhain or not. Didn't go through and edit so it's really long and probably spotty in places but I just woke up.


Shelach

Spoiler

On my first fight with her she cast a spell that decimated 6/8 of my party members instantly and I was pretty worried. Without any instruments or heavy damage spells due to my party composition I had wondered what I was supposed to do. I cast my armorplate and started again. On the second attempt she didn't open the fight with it and I was able to cast L7 Paralyze and L5 Summon Undead with my Sage and Necromancer respectively which immobilized her pretty quickly. It should be mentioned that I was able to cast L6 Summon Undead but noticed that the Liches would cast fireball and it'd backfire nearly 100% of the time and have since stopped bothering after seeing my party wipe every time they showed up to "help". What I got instead were the bats, which I think are way overtuned because in a single hit I've seen one bat drain upwards of 1000 vitality from enemies which seems... questionable.

After that I spent most of the fight bearing down with physical damage from the rest of my party and at 3% HP (while, I believe, unconscious) she was struck dead with a very redundant critical blow. It's hard to say whether this strategy was fair or not in light of the post about resistances being buggy and the extremity of the bats' vitality sap, so my initial intent of proving it was doable without exploits is up in the air for the time being. That said, from my experience she only has the one AOE spell that seemed to prove deadly if you entered the fight with due preparation and any of her other moves were easily mitigated by healing or a couple stacks of armorplate.

Psychopomp

Spoiler

Could very well be that it's due to my party being nearly entirely physical damage oriented with some offensive support spells / status ailments thrown in the mix, but I found this to be much more difficult. He opened with the blind spell every time I fought him and it was a really really sluggish and irritating battle overall. Doesn't help that his spell animations take a century but thankfully the actual damage he was dealing was insignificant for the most part. Casting Summon Undead here was a waste, as I had to watch my summons get taken out by him every turn as well as fail to hit. Ended up being a battle of attrition that I won with plain auto-attacks and holding Enter for a Lot of turns. Didn't feel anything about him was broken either, but it wasn't a very enjoyable fight (though I did like that it came so suddenly after Shelach)

Insta-Kill Ninjas, Grand Masters & Trogs

Spoiler

Not much to add from what I've said previously about the trogs, save for the fact that armorplate is clearly the intended protocol for the encounters which I'll continue to reiterate as without it you'll certainly lose half your party, and with Cleve saying the stacking is intended, I can't see an argument against keeping 2-3 stacks up nearly constantly in trouble areas such as the ones where all these enemies show up. The Ninjas/Grand Masters were a little more tricky, but despite only starting to raise Speed on my party a few levels in and only being around Level 7~ I somehow was able to get the opening moves on them with a few of my party members which negated a lot of the threat that hadn't already been doused by my armor stacks. Overall I enjoyed all these enemies a lot more than many of the others in the Green Mandarin's pagoda and noticed they seemed significantly rarer than any other encounter in the zone.

General Feelings About Act II

Spoiler

After finishing the Samhain Horror, seeing Argosyre and the Sacred Pools come full circle (however archetypal it may've been) and delved the depths to Samhain, the Deepsink and all that it entailed, I had been extremely happy with my experience with the game thus far and having heard people's opinions on the first act being the most polished and tight of the sections of the game I was ready to be disappointed.

While I was unable to prove my points regarding balance because for every spell I avoided came another which seemed equally as powerful, I did attempt to the best of my ability to avoid the go-to crutches of lethal blow / deep freeze / instruments etc. and made it out unscathed. I didn't anticipate how strong Summon Undead would ultimately be, nor that the high success rate of paralyze may be due to a bug or sloppy design choice in need of redacting, but in the interest of balance I would say that it appears the game is certainly able to be completed up until 50% with just about any characters that aren't complete invalids if you take the smart approach. My party is far from optimized (Bers / Warrior / Ranger / Thief / Templar / Necro / Sage / Open Slot) but each character has proven fully capable of aiding both in and out of combat to a solid extent (excepting the thief who is seemingly terrible (followed by the not-so-good warrior))

I have been enjoying surfing with Kelpy on the great Lochs and toiling in the Megalith for levers, getting destroyed in the ruins of gideon, and turning on Morgana and wiping out as many pagans as I possibly could. So far act II is so broad and (at least for the moment) impossible for me to parse in scope and design. There are dozens of critical items I have that are collecting dust but appear of great pertinence, and dozens more I've used in the escalation of my quest. While it lacks the linear focus of the first act, admittedly, I'm amazed by how much to do there is now that the world has opened up completely, and how enjoyable a great majority of that stuff has been.

I don't think anyone will get to the bottom of the V1 Balance debate, but I don't think anything is impossible so far or requires known exploits to do. I even wish I had a save ready so I could try Shelach again to see if it can be done not only without known exploits, but without Paralysis or Summon Undead as well, because I'm certain it could be. And in that sense, I'm very happy with the way everything has gone. Rarely is anything frustratingly obtuse like the Museum of Magic's Cosmic Egg puzzle, rarely is the combat down to one-shot vs. one-shot. It may not be elegantly refined or balanced to perfection but I can safely say 53h in that the game exceeds my expectation in just about every way and while I would be the first to point out bugs, broken stats/broken spells (hell, I've seen broken safe-havens) none of it ever made me feel like anything was bullshit, or down to luck or cheesy strategies. You may have to reload a lot here and there, but that's the worst I can say about it.

Looking forward to seeing what the second 50% is like

 

[GandGolf]

The last update was version 1.2.0.25 around August 18th, but since then, nothing! Are we to assume that there will be no new updates until the next major release with the merge tables or manual is ready?

 

[Rpguy]

The last update was version 1.2.0.25 around August 18th, but since then, nothing! Are we to assume that there will be no new updates until the next major release with the merge tables or manual is ready?

Next update comes with the manual and loads of changes. Until then nothing it seems.

 

[Baff]

GOLDEN ERA GAMES [developer] 2 minutes ago

cANe:
Does this also mean that you have fixed the issue with the resistances for the player because it suffers from the same bug

Yes, players apply the same logic in their chain of SAVE VS resistance going the other way, so fewer monster spells will affect the player and they will save regularly. Now MUH BALINSE is much closer to what is intended for both players and monsters. I have edited this code so many times my brain is numb tweaking it and I made this change after many crybabies complained that magic is teh hard in the Superdemo - and promptly forgot about it.

 

[Tarrant]

The last update was version 1.2.0.25 around August 18th, but since then, nothing! Are we to assume that there will be no new updates until the next major release with the merge tables or manual is ready?

Per Cleveland, the manual should be released on Friday.

 

[buru5]

The last update was version 1.2.0.25 around August 18th, but since then, nothing! Are we to assume that there will be no new updates until the next major release with the merge tables or manual is ready?

Per Cleveland, the manual should be released Next Friday.

ftfy

 

[jfunk]

I just want to say that I don't care about Grimoire. I just keep reading and posting on virtually every page of this thread to prove how little I care. I used to have a part time job at the Sizzler, but I quit so I could spend enough time proving I don't care about this topic. You don't even want to see what I'm like on topics about which I give a shit.

 

[ThisNameIsFree]

GOLDEN ERA GAMES [developer] 2 minutes ago

cANe:
Does this also mean that you have fixed the issue with the resistances for the player because it suffers from the same bug

Yes, players apply the same logic in their chain of SAVE VS resistance going the other way, so fewer monster spells will affect the player and they will save regularly. Now MUH BALINSE is much closer to what is intended for both players and monsters. I have edited this code so many times my brain is numb tweaking it and I made this change after many crybabies complained that magic is teh hard in the Superdemo - and promptly forgot about it.

As always it's someone else who at fault, classic.

 

[Zep Zepo]

My Dearest Cleveland Mark Blakemore ,

I hope this correspondence finds ye well and ye have recovered from ye recent bout of the vapors.

If ye have not, get ye to a doctor and have swamp leeches applied forthwith! Or perhaps a Galen Apple is in order.

Love Always,
Zep--

p.s. Grimoire is shit.

 

[buru5]

My Dearest Cleveland Mark Blakemore ,

I hope this correspondence finds ye well and ye have recovered from ye recent bout of the vapors.

If ye have not, get ye to a doctor and have swamp leeches applied forthwith! Or perhaps a Galen Apple is in order.

Love Always,
Zep--

p.s. Grimoire is shit.

Grimoire is shit? Yet you ride the coattails of its creator, a fucking legend and greater man than you will ever be, no one would even know who the fuck you are if it wasn't for Cleve's masterpiece. 15 minutes of fame on a forum due to Cleveland Mark Blakemore. You're a pathetic retard you tiny dick fuck.

 

[kintake]

The animosity in this thread has gotten the better of me. I just finished an entire carton of Ben and Jerrys ice cream and I now feel fat and unloved.

 

[PEACH]

Cleve is working on a patch to add an inventory screen, fix multiclassing, fix resistances, fix (m)any issues with stats, complete the manual, and so forth. If it's dead it's dead only in the advent of the next update.

Hype and fervor has died down for sure but that can only be a good thing for anyone who is more interested in the game than meta-discussions and shitposting anyway.

 

[Rick]

Cleve is working on a patch to add an inventory screen, fix multiclassing, fix resistances, fix (m)any issues with stats, complete the manual, and so forth. If it's dead it's dead only in the advent of the next update.

That's a lot of stuff. I won't even begin to guess an ETA. Just say "Next Friday" and that should suffice.

 

[kintake]

I guess the show's over.

I've only loosely been paying attention, but I seem to remember there being some sort of self-fellating video in the works by someone on this very site. I'd be hard pressed to call it curtains until the final act has occured.

 

[hello friend]

I somehow get the feeling that Grimoire is not relevant anymore. After the initial wave of sales and lots of shit posting things just kinda.... died out.

I guess the show's over, the game's been released and played to completion. There's literally nothing else to see here. We can all go home now.

Nonsense. I've been waiting for GOG release, but the waiting is making me consider buying it twice.

I'm sure I'm not alone. This will be a game with a long tail.

 

[buru5]

I guess the show's over.

I've only loosely been paying attention, but I seem to remember there being some sort of self-fellating video in the works by someone on this very site. I'd be hard pressed to call it curtains until the final act has occured.

Yeah, where's the damn video??

 

[SymbolicFrank]

Well, at least it's a lot better than much hyped games like RimWorld. And I don't know which of those two devs have the biggest ego...

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The Codex languish'd in Decline's dark night;
Cleve said "Let Grimoire be!" and all was light!

 

[Tarrant]

Well, at least it's a lot better than much hyped games like RimWorld.

:::adjusts monocle:::

mmmm yes, I concur wholeheartedly, what with Rimworld having its utterly *absurd* 97% approval rating across almost 12,000 votes. Casuals, the whole lot, as any right thinking person would agree. Isn't it absolutely *dreadful* that we're forced to share the internet with them? To endure the ghastly sight of their putrescent postings? :::fans self::: Why, I can almost *hear* the clickety-clack of their filthy, clubbed fingers racing across their keyboards as they upvote shitposts and downvote genius with terrifying retard efficiency, as is their unified wont. Surely a mere *glimpse* of Grimoire's glory would save them, but then we mustn't toss our pearls before the swine.

Now if you'll pardon me, I *must* attend to Cleveland, who has summoned me to his masturbatorium.

:::climbs into chariot carried by brown people:::

 

[Biggus]

Cleve is working on a patch to add an inventory screen, fix multiclassing, fix resistances, fix (m)any issues with stats, complete the manual, and so forth. If it's dead it's dead only in the advent of the next update.

Hype and fervor has died down for sure but that can only be a good thing for anyone who is more interested in the game than meta-discussions and shitposting anyway.

Is that the inventory that Clive said was a good idea and works well and didn't need to be changed? As for the rest... well, he has been working on them for a quarter of a century, and we have all seen the result of that

Oh, it's dead alright, it's only that fat dropkick dev that keeps the interest up. Wonder how it feels to spend the majority of your life to come up with a game that is a like a bad joke.

Everyone here is interested in the game, trouble is, we don't have a game, we have an idea, a very good idea, and a broken pile of what could have been.

 

[PEACH]

Not sure why you haunt the thread with bullshit day in and out but I guess everyone needs a hobby of some kind.

To humour you though, yes, that inventory. He still, as far as I can tell, believes it's fine and is merely changing it to meet the player base half way.

As for the rest, he's been working on it on and off and lately has been more productive than ever in recent memory. It's pretty dumb to suggest he slaved away at the game endlessly for years and put out some garbage RPG. It was clearly on the back burner for quite some time and mostly finished for perhaps even longer.

It's true though, we've seen the result of his work and it's pretty wonderful and stands on its own two legs. 7 tablets in I assume I'm a greater authority on the subject than you despite your very prestigious beta testing a millennium ago. Spare me the sneering.

Grimoire has tons of issues, clearly. Even the biggest fans know that. Treating it as irredeemablely broken is dead wrong though ( even the codex review has largely been debunked of many of its worst criticisms) and you'd have to be incredibly bitter not to see the heart and soul it has in spades. Things that are irreplaceable.

 

[Lady_Error]

Biggus Does your water have flouride in it? Asking for scientific purposes.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Biggus Does your water have flouride in it? Asking for scientific purposes.

This is why I drink only rain-water and pure grain alcohol, to preserve the purity of essence of our precious bodily fluids.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]