ToEE: New player

[Xeon]

Yea, That was the post I read.

Sorry Lorica

 

[Lorica]

Just posting something written by Sitra Achara on the Co8 forum, actually. Co8 has put some weird items into the game (and for the most part removed them) over the years, but there's no FF sword.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

The Co8 patches are phenomenal.

 

[Melcar]

All the game needs is rape. Other than that it's great.

 

[King Crispy]

Having a blast with my own fresh run now, thanks to this thread. Running with full Co8 extra content.

My party, all first rolls:

Human M Fighter LN, Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Toughness, Iron Will
ST DX CN IN WI CH
16 15 16 11 14 09

Human M Cleric NG, Toughness, Spell Focus (Divination) <-- For RP purposes
ST DX CN IN WI CH
13 12 15 08 16 09

Elf M Bard NG, Alertness
ST DX CN IN WI CH
09 19 07 12 08 13 (DEX got pushed to 19 from 17 through racial bonus)

Halfling M Rogue NG, Stealthy
ST DX CN IN WI CH
10 17 13 09 08 14 (CHA 14 again for RP-purposes -- yes, I LARP)

Human M Wizard NG, Combat Casting, Spell Focus (Conjuration)
ST DX CN IN WI CH
06 15 14 17 15 11

I think I did pretty good on the rolls, considering. I wanted a Paladin but I didn't feel anyone had high enough stats to pull it off. That 7 CON on the Bard hurt; he started with 4HP! He also only rolled a one when levelling to 2nd, so I need him to do better once I hit 3rd.

Have recruited Elmo (he's essential) and I plan on dragging Rufus and Burne with me once I hit the lower levels of the Temple proper.

 

[fastjack]

As an aside...I've never really finished ToEE but played it a lot. I never NEVER understood or was able to put together the plot or whether I was playing right or if there was another way to do finish a mission. No matter what, it always seems to come down to me having to kill. For example, basement *SPOILER* basement of the moathouse. Is there a way to finish it without killing/fighting Lareth?

Yes. You have to be lawful evil party or something like that. There is a bit of that obscure stuff around the game (especially around the recruitable npcs). Bullshit like the druid girl ending changing if you killed more than 20 gelatinous cubes, or being able to recruit mother streng (sp) if you very carefully monitor your levels of entrance into the inner temple and return to talk to her before going over the upper lv limit.

Is there any truth to this or anything like it? I know the mother Screng thing is in the game, but are there obscure endings for things like that? If so can anyone tell me a little about it/them? I tried googling but nothing worthwhile. Is there a way to see all of the ending slides? I'd really dig it if there were little hidden things in this game I still didn't know about.

 

[Melcar]

Powerplay or bust!

 

[Snufkin]

I always take druid (early summons are amazing distraction, both in the begining and in the end of the game) and rogue who uses bow. He becomes killing machine later on who snipes hardest enemies with sneaks and powerful crafted bow. Just use glitterdust spell with your sorc so his hits will be autosneaks. Also casting web+fireball is great combo. Some guys say that glaive whirlwind fighter is good thing, yes it is but cleric with Scatcher and great cleave is even better. Just cast enlarge person and he will have range just like glaive. For fifth character bard is amazing fill. I took monk once and was not impressed. The miss a lot and dont do much damage, but they are good tanks. They are better then rangers and paladins which are pure crap. Next time i will try fighter with bow to see if they can match rogue bowman.

 

[DemonKing]

There was a huge amount of material there to work with. It's one of the most memorable modules I've ever owned, and it will always hold a special place in my heart. Then again, I don't need a module that holds my hand the entire way, lays out the story and the plot for me in flowery-worded boxed text, and pays more tribute to emo next-gen gay romance and big poofy hair than your classic wizards, plain broadswords and a room full of boring bugbears to kill. I'll take the latter any day.

Brother - back in the 80s when I was a sproglet I thought TOEE was awesome in a "bigger is better" kind of way, but in the cold light of middle age it is a bit ridiculous given that is basically level after level of monsters and factions tightly packed together with no apparent source of subsistance (unless perhaps they ate each other?). If treated as a straight dungeon crawl I'm pretty sure most players would get bored of it and never finish it. The funny thing is in the computer game they did spice things up a bit and give players the chance to join factions and so on but IMO this often led to the game seeming to end prematurely and probably confused a lot of people who were expecting to meet a Foozle and kill it.

I would have liked to see them use the TOEE module as inspiration and either produce something new or moved the story timeline along a bit ala the Return to the TOEE module. The problem is that they stuck so closely to the original module that they ended up constrining themselves and the design a bit too much. It's a real shame because the basic combat engine was sweet but the encounter design itself was poorly balanced due to the limitations of the source material.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I'm also currently replaying it, trying that "final" Co8 modpack v8. That game is great as far as combat goes and the modpack improves the rest as best as it can, I tried many previous versions so I don't think I'll find that much new stuff but we'll see...
In the meantime I wanted to bitch about the pathfinding. I usually don't, even in IE games, but here it is very irritating. This is a really tactical game, so you need your tanks frontlining and your weaklings backseating. There is a nice formation option to do just that but it means shit because bad pathfinding cancels it more often than not.
Typical example :

I walk in this area, five of my party members are holding a perfect academic formation, but wait... who's that blue chick frontlining and taking the ambush damage ? Oh, yeah, my wizard. Nice.

 

[King Crispy]

Vazdru, try this:

First off, when in a dungeon with tight corridors, change your party's formation to the one that's a straight line. Make sure your fighters are first in line and your squishies last.

Next, and this is critical, when *ever* (actually, before) you're in a potential combat situation, put all your characters into Sneak mode, even if they don't have any points/levels in Sneak. The default way to do this is to choose Sneak from the radial menu, but you can assign a hotkey to it by holding CTRL and pressing a key. I always choose 'Z'. Now, I'll admit it is a huge pain in the ass to have to go through each of your characters before combat and hit 'Z' every time, but the huge advantage (and a way to circumvent the retarded pathfinding) is that they'll move so slowly that you'll have time to reclick and re-approach before they get into any actual combat range.

This will save your ass, multiple times.

Edit: Oh, one other tip: After killing Lareth, be on your guard. :D

 

[King Crispy]

The problem is that they stuck so closely to the original module that they ended up constrining themselves and the design a bit too much.

Alright, I will concede that ToEE never was a very sophisticated module and a little more narrative provided by Gary could have gone a long way.

That being said, as you even pointed out yourself, Troika did what it could with the material to spice it up a bit. Given the infamous history behind the making of this game (look it up), I think it's safe to say that if they had more time and more budget, they could have added much more of their own creativity to the Temple and to its continuity/clarity of purpose and function.

I still feel, however, that Hommlet itself and the moathouse as is are perfect. I love straightforward adventuring areas because I feel that they reflect a more "realistic" scenario than your ridiculous other examples like some of BioWare's later works, etc. They make me fucking puke.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Vazdru, try this:

First off, when in a dungeon with tight corridors, change your party's formation to the one that's a straight line. Make sure your fighters are first in line and your squishies last.

Next, and this is critical, when *ever* (actually, before) you're in a potential combat situation, put all your characters into Sneak mode, even if they don't have any points/levels in Sneak. The default way to do this is to choose Sneak from the radial menu, but you can assign a hotkey to it by holding CTRL and pressing a key. I always choose 'Z'. Now, I'll admit it is a huge pain in the ass to have to go through each of your characters before combat and hit 'Z' every time, but the huge advantage (and a way to circumvent the retarded pathfinding) is that they'll move so slowly that you'll have time to reclick and re-approach before they get into any actual combat range.

This will save your ass, multiple times.

Edit: Oh, one other tip: After killing Lareth, be on your guard. :D

I'm not sneaking. No way. I'll die proud before I die crouching.
The shitty pathfinding doesn't make these situations really hard or dangerous anyway (particularly when you know the game), just annoying. That giant crayfish died in one round just the same for instance, the bad pathfinding just permited him to scratch one of my charcaters before dying.
As for Lareth last call to Lolth (or was that a vanilla feature ?), or the moathouse exit ambush, I know. As I said I played Co8 previous versions multiple times, but thanks anyway.

About the source material, I also think the original module is pretty much to blame for many of the game weak points, like the temple being a very improbable collection of competing monsters and factions living in close quarters.
What pisses me off is Troika sticking close to it to the point of wasting time and resources to create sprites and animations for lousy creatures like the giant tick (of which there is a grand total of one in the whole game) instead of, for instance, making one more bugbear sprite to diversify the 7000 bugbears a bit.
Same with the hydra, the lamias and other shit... if they really wished to waste time on "monsters that appear in only one or two exemplaries" they could have added creatures that weren't in the original module (gasp, the audacity !) but that would actually mean something more than just some shit that die in two clicks and that you forget as soon as you enter the next monster filled room.

 

[Shadenuat]

I went for single rolls. I want this to be like a real D&D campaign.

That's noble of you
I played BG and IWD with party I rolled by AD&D rules, it suits the games a lot. Makes you appreciate potions and spells like potion of Strength, Dexterity, Defense and appreciate magical items more.
Although maybe I am in decline, but ToEE would probably felt very difficult to me without minmaxed party, particularly in the end, at elemental nodes and, most of all, that final boss... damn those spaws and that boss, it's like it was almost invulnerable to anything but super always-hitting sword.

 

[King Crispy]

That endgame is precisely why I don't mind having the max levels pushed up to 20 with Co8 enabled. Trying with level 10 characters who've been "gimped" from the beginning would be an exercise in futility.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Browsing through some Co8 threads, I found this incredible one :

http://www.co8.org/forum/showthread.php?t=9628

Pretty cool.

 

[Ebonsword]

Alright, I will concede that ToEE never was a very sophisticated module and a little more narrative provided by Gary could have gone a long way.

Gygax didn't write most of ToEE, I believe, which is probably why it seems inferior to his best work.

 

[King Crispy]

The module was published by TSR, Inc. in 1985 for the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules. It was written by Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer, and is an expansion of an earlier Gygax module, The Village of Hommlet (TSR, 1979).

The Temple of Elemental Evil was originally intended to bear the module code T2 and serve as a true sequel to The Village of Hommlet. Gygax began writing T2 soon after the publication of T1, but often stopped to work on other products, such as The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (Gygax 1981).

It took so long to finish that I'm sure Mentzer did a good portion of the work, but I wouldn't say it's fair to give him most of the credit. Do you have a source?

 

[DemonKing]

It took so long to finish that I'm sure Mentzer did a good portion of the work, but I wouldn't say it's fair to give him most of the credit. Do you have a source?

"The Village of Hommlet" was entirely the creation of Gary Gygax. He also gave Frank Mentzer what has been described as "200-300 pages of notes" on the Temple; from that source, Mentzer created the finished adventure.

Source: http://www.dndclassics.com/product/17068/T1-4-Temple-of-Elemental-Evil-(1e)?src=designers-dragons&it=1

Interesting to read that the Temple was initially generated out of Gygax's experiments into random Dungeon generation - making it even more absurd that it would be a good blueprint for anything outside of a Diablo-style CRPG.

 

[King Crispy]

:hat tip:

 

[Melcar]

I went for single rolls. I want this to be like a real D&D campaign.

That's noble of you
I played BG and IWD with party I rolled by AD&D rules, it suits the games a lot. Makes you appreciate potions and spells like potion of Strength, Dexterity, Defense and appreciate magical items more.
Although maybe I am in decline, but ToEE would probably felt very difficult to me without minmaxed party, particularly in the end, at elemental nodes and, most of all, that final boss... damn those spaws and that boss, it's like it was almost invulnerable to anything but super always-hitting sword.

The only way I could finish the game was with a munchkin party. And even then, I only bothered finishing it 4 times, from the 30 odd replays I have dedicated to that game.

 

[King Crispy]

Anyone who's played through with Co8, I could use a little help.

I've arrived in Nulb, and usually the first thing I do when getting there is to talk to Otis the blacksmith and then to Preston Wetz about buying one of his houses.

This being my first Co8 playthrough, I'm puzzled because he's not offering that to me. No matter who in my party I have try, the option to purchase his house from him doesn't show up, nor does any mention of his toothache, either. he just keeps telling me to leave him alone.

Do I simply need to continue talking to the other NPC's in town (such as the dentist) and/or let more time pass before that option opens up for me?

Incidentally, the highest CHA any of my characters has is 14, and the highest Diplomacy any of them has (the Bard) is a measly 3.

 

[fastjack]

Anyone who's played through with Co8, I could use a little help.

I've arrived in Nulb, and usually the first thing I do when getting there is to talk to Otis the blacksmith and then to Preston Wetz about buying one of his houses.

This being my first Co8 playthrough, I'm puzzled because he's not offering that to me. No matter who in my party I have try, the option to purchase his house from him doesn't show up, nor does any mention of his toothache, either. he just keeps telling me to leave him alone.

Do I simply need to continue talking to the other NPC's in town (such as the dentist) and/or let more time pass before that option opens up for me?

Incidentally, the highest CHA any of my characters has is 14, and the highest Diplomacy any of them has (the Bard) is a measly 3.

I'm sure someone will come along with better advice, but until then here's what I remember.

I think it was something to do with some debts, someone wants to collect from preston but he won't pay while his tooth hurts or something. I think it may be a quest for the fortune teller or gypsy or whoremonger. Sorry that it's so vague, but it has been a while since I played it.

 

[King Crispy]

No, that does make sense. I could pay for that girl's freedom and that might trigger the dialog I'm looking for. Thanks.

 

[Melcar]

Just kill everyone.