KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[anvi]

It's not just about luck of RNG, there is plenty of good tactical choices. More than most games really. The Hag battle took me several attempts but it wasn't really luck that won it in the end, more that I learned what works well and what doesn't.

 

[Serus]

Is this game even possible Ironman?

I really doubt you could make it through without it crashing and eating your save. The damn wizards cast alteffore all the time on me. That's what I call the spell that closes the game with no error message.

That's not an issue and not what i asked. You could simply play self-enforced ironman. Save after each battle and in case of crash just replay the last battle.
Also it seems you have a problem, shouldn't crash that often. I had 1 crash total in several hours of play.

 

[AdolfSatan]

No way this can be iron-manned, there are battles like the surprise buttfuck by the minotaur that will take so many attempts you'll go nuts.

Which is quite fitting, on KOTC1 you could get a party wipe on the first encounter of the game, against the elementals.

 

[Jvegi]

The game is great, I'm sure, but the heavy influence of initiative everyone was describing when the game actually came out over a year ago is a good argument for RTWP. You can ironman BG with SCS at any difficulty, no matter how the dice roll, if you're good enough.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

After a couple of hours of attempts at spider queen with this party, I got super lucky

Serious question - do people actually like playing games like that? Wasting *hours* to get lucky?

NEWJACK NEVER WALKED INTO A CASINO, HEH.

 

[Seigneur Locklear]

Yeah, I can't deal with this shit now, I'm too old to have this much patience for games like these. If I wanted to gamble and reload I'd buy a pachinko machine or go to the local betting parlor.

 

[Whisper]

Tutorial is quite fun.

First you are thrown into battles that you will won without using full arsenal.

Than you are "explained" basic functions, without which you would not win battles before.

Speaking about necromancer fight and "5-foot move", for example.

 

[Dickie]

Update Notes for Version 1.29

Fixes the bug with the Moon Crypt puzzle and other puzzles.

What was wrong:
There's a variable called 'Clicked Position' in the script of the puzzles. Normally this variable gets initialised in the earlier parts of the game. However, if the player skips certain parts of the game, it doesn't get initialised, leading to the bug with the Moon Crypt puzzle and elsewhere. That is why only a few people experienced the issue.

How was it fixed:
Now the script will automatically create the missing variable if it doesn't already exit (i.e. if it wasn't declared by a script somewhere). As a result, the game is able to record where the player clicks (what moon, etc).

Thank you jgasser, C4MP3R, Matt (from the Matt Chat Youtube channel) and everyone else in the Steam forum for helping resolve the problem!!

My apologies for this issue! Best regards

 

[Cryomancer]

Guys, Pierre finally fixed the puzzle problem. But anyone has solution to this one? I could find it by reading the letter and easily decipher it but would be so tedious.

sewer puzzle

 

[warcrimes666]

With the extra levels from finchbury now it's not really an initiative simulator. There are many tools to expand that quickly, improved and heroic initiative feats, initiative items plus ability to craft them, advantageous domains and class/subclass choice, and so on. At least one major caster should be boosted this way but not necessary to go all the way for the whole team. Also option to reduce enemy initiative rolls by 25/50/75% or give yourself +4 at first level if one is so inclined. Many save boosting and spell resistence/immunity items and effects to help mitigate. Formation is also quite important, spreading the party out can often influence the ai to cast something single target rather than an aoe in the first round. It's intended to use every advantage you can think of to stay alive, more so than any other d&d based game.

It's unfortunate it was priced out, it deserves to be played by as many prestigious gentlemen as possible.

My party in summary:

strongfist half-giant samurai (killer with any sword you pick up later the crafted scythe skewer strategy is deadly, full plate and boots of striding)
wind mantis gladiator (wind for dex ac and movement speed, two weapon, oversized, and combined fighting style feats, strength items and boots of haste)
hill dwarf cleric (dwarf for high con, domains Mysticism: free spell focus and pen, +2 concentration, +1 bless/bane/prayer cast as move action, and Silence: cures/inflicts with free silent and still, free silent/still/widen feats, increased radius silence, not common domain but has been useful)
moon elf red wizard (moon high wiz for saves, gives major boosts and feats for evocation school, tuned for initiative and aoe ganker)
deep kobold psionicist (high int and nod to Tweed and kobold self-love, small size has a few checks in the game, stomp master and aoe)
lightfoot halfling psionicist (as above but mixing it up, halfing +2 saves, two psionicist with energy sculpting gives very high damage and safe for the martials)

 

[oneself]

After a couple of hours of attempts at spider queen with this party, I got super lucky

Serious question - do people actually like playing games like that? Wasting *hours* to get lucky?

reload for initiative + nuke.

 

[oneself]

What are some of the trap classes? It sounds like Psychic warriors and other buff warrior variants aren't very good here.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Not sure yet, but yeah, seems like self buffing stuff is probably rather weak in KotC 2 due to action economy being king.

 

[Cryomancer]

Serious question - do people actually like playing games like that? Wasting *hours* to get lucky?

If you play smart, you don't need to get "lucky". Anyway, I really liked this game. About the puzzle, used the editor to skip it.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

The difficulty gives the module longevity IMO. The scenario builder will keep on giving.

 

[Darth Canoli]

What's the default difficulty setting for the number of feats per level? I've changed it to one per level from what I thought was 2 per level, but now I'm not sure.

1 every 3 level, I think, which is not much when you look at all the juicy feats the game offers but that's how we used to play it.

So far I made myself a Half-Giant Gladiator, I'm not sure if the +4dex -2con is better or worse than the basic half giant.
People praise them so a Psionicist can have a place in the team. Also Dark Sun again.
For the rest, not sure. The traditional wisdom calls for a pure arcane caster (only Wizard in this game afaik) and a pure divine caster, which means a Cleric.
I'll probably take a simple Fighter.
Which leaves only one slot for something more fancy. Perhaps a Mantis Samurai? A Bard? Death Knight looks tasty. Not sure yet.
I am tempted to not take a Cleric but someone else with access to Cleric spells instead. Sorcerer?

Sorcerer is one of the worse casting class because spell slots are shared between cleric and wiz and way less interesting feats than wiz but I think you can still get an attunement.
On the other hand, Warlock has PP + spell slots.
You get one of both as companions later.

I really doubt you could make it through without it crashing and eating your save. The damn wizards cast alteffore all the time on me. That's what I call the spell that closes the game with no error message.

The game doesn't crash much anymore, even not at all for me since last summer, the only crashes I ever had were with the frogs swallow and entering the room after the gob king in chapter 2.

Ironman is certainly possible, just don't do the optional fights, skip the Spider Queen and the Death Snare and you're fine, mostly.

 

[Darth Roxor]

have fun ironmanning the castle party in chapter 4 lmao

or even just the moon crypt

 

[Darth Canoli]

have fun ironmanning the castle party in chapter 4 lmao

or even just the moon crypt

You can get help from an "old friend" from KotC 1, not that he's really useful but he can tank and now, you can get even more help through dialog choices outside and again inside when facing the black dragon.

So yes, it's possible, surely, even if you don't have a Druid, you saved one acorn of earthquake to use it inside the castle?

Also, you'd need initiative perks, all of them and initiative equipment and familiar, there's +6 ini boots and the lizard gives +2, I think.

 

[Tacgnol]

After a couple of hours of attempts at spider queen with this party, I got super lucky

Serious question - do people actually like playing games like that? Wasting *hours* to get lucky?

The spider queen isn't really reflective of the rest of the game, being one of the optional hard encounters. After having beaten it when it was even more bullshit at release, I wasn't giving up on the easier setting.

Edit: Thinking about it more carefully, is there actually any way of surviving the Spider Queen casting prismatic void on her first turn if you don't manage to either kill her or disable her? My usual tactic which worked in the past was always to throw all the martials and strong summons into trying to grapple her.

 

[Whisper]

What classes are "trap options" and what classes are actually nice?

Good party builds?

 

[Whisper]

Also creator is trolling us, have fight in Tutorial (!) where enemy start with surprise round and 2 mages just use grease and push you back to stairs. You *slowly* fall on stairs, cant skip animation and die from fall.

 

[NJClaw]

What classes are "trap options" and what classes are actually nice?

Good party builds?

Wizard, Cleric, Psion, Druid, and two martial classes (Fighter, Gladiator, Death Knight, Samurai) make for an excellent party.

 

[Serus]

The game is great, I'm sure, but the heavy influence of initiative everyone was describing when the game actually came out over a year ago is a good argument for RTWP. You can ironman BG with SCS at any difficulty, no matter how the dice roll, if you're good enough.

No. You can ironman TB games with initiative systems. Even some D&D(-likes). Just, apparently, not this one. If it is an argument against anything it is against Pierre's encounter design, not and argument for rtwp.


Edit: In addition, iirc, there are DIFFICULTY settings to lower enemy initiative. Why people are so afraid of lowering difficulty. Is it the: "i'm a genius, if i can't do beat the game at highest difficulty the game is crap!" approach? Well, the highest difficulty in this game is the default one and anything above are for true connoisseurs in masochism. Which is ok in my book.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

What classes are "trap options" and what classes are actually nice?

Good party builds?

I had an amazing time with 6 red wizards.
A little buttfuckery on low lvls, but when they start going, they dont stop.

 

[Tacgnol]

The game is great, I'm sure, but the heavy influence of initiative everyone was describing when the game actually came out over a year ago is a good argument for RTWP. You can ironman BG with SCS at any difficulty, no matter how the dice roll, if you're good enough.

No. You can ironman TB games with initiative systems. Even some D&D(-likes). Just, apparently, not this one. If it is an argument against anything it is against Pierre's encounter design, not and argument for rtwp.

If you're playing on the normal mode, you don't need to win initiative for most encounters to be doable. Optional fights like spider queen are an exception as it seems they are hardcoded to cast high level save or dies on their first round.