Grimoire Thread

[Fowyr]

But this was in V1, I don't know if things've changed since.

They definitely changed. I heard that Little Rose was nerfed, and Count Orloch and Codexian Troll that I added to my party in v2, were just right.

 

[Lady Error]

NPC's are there to make it easier for beginners who find the game too hard otherwise. I do like Kroondegraf and the Jester though.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

NPCs are there for people who feel like they are not getting ahead or are unable to cope with current threat level combats. You recruit an NPC you likely get an Ace in the Hole who can turn the tide of a combat even if your regular party members are hurting. I don't care about muh balinse if the NPCs keep the feeling of fun going. Same for exploits. It's all good. I think I used the thermal pineapple one million times in Wiz 7, it was great.

 

[unseeingeye]

Ok, thank you all for your sharing information. I suppose I'll stick with a 7 member party and hire Little Rosy and replace her when encountering others if necessary or interesting.

I'm not a beginner to blobbers but certainly to Grimoire and I'm still familiarizing myself with the details, and since I'd like to try several parties each with a different starting location, I think I'll hire a single NPC at a time on my first full play through. So far I've still not gotten far at all, and I've only tried the Shrine start (that is the one with the owl statue, right?). I thoroughly explored the Shrine and leveled up Scouting a few times, checking every wall or alcove for secrets and I showed the map as 100% so I assumed I found everything. I've gotten to the first real dungeon and haven't had difficulty but this has been where I've started over with a new party composition, becoming aware of shortcomings and so on. I'm not trying to make the perfect party, but basic things like realizing my Drow Bard had no musical instrument, or realizing my Sage has 2 hit points, that kind of thing. I've not been gaming much recently and I was already caught up in replaying Metal Gear Solid V and Kenshi though maybe an hour a day at most. Part of my problem was a lack of space; my family lives in fairly tight quarters and in our bedroom we only had the one desk which my wife uses for work, and which I would use when she didn't need it. But having to pack up my monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers (I have a gaming laptop) and move them off the desk every day was keeping me from even bothering, so this past weekend I got another desk set up in the room and now have a permanent spot for everything.

Using the laptop to play games itself is fine of course, and I would do so from my bed or a chair but certain games just don't work well in any other setup than a proper desk and chair. Grimoire does work on my laptop, it occupies the full screen without mouse floating and everything, but when I set it up with my monitor I get minor floating and side bars no matter what resolution, scaling or other changes I make, whether in-game or to the monitor itself. I know Cleve mentioned in another thread that certain monitors just seem not to display the game with proper full screen, and I suppose mine is just such a one because it is fairly large. Once I figure out the mouse floating though I'll just play it as it is because having the black bars on a monitor that huge isn't really an issue and the game still looks gorgeous at that scale.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

These guys who complain about the exploits would probably be disappointed if they were Bilbo Baggins and suddenly found Gollum's ring of invisibility in the cave.

"I'm too low level of a character to have a ring this powerful ! It will spoil the immersion and balance of my adventure if I use this thing repeatedly when needed!" (Throws it into deepest part of cavern lake when it will never be found again.)

(Back-stabbed by Gollum and killed about ten seconds later)

 

[Fowyr]

These guys who complain about the exploits would probably be disappointed if they were Bilbo Baggins and suddenly found Gollum's ring of invisibility in the cave.

Balance is overrated. Several of my most treasured game memories are about travelling through high-level locations with low-level party and reaping the rewards.
You shouldn't make one of the things too overpowered to become "I win!" button, player should always have a choice in combat, but all these people who whine about Harm in Arcanum and shooting in the eyes in Fallout 2 are weaklings.

 

[Darth Canoli]

These guys who complain about the exploits would probably be disappointed if they were Bilbo Baggins and suddenly found Gollum's ring of invisibility in the cave.

"I'm too low level of a character to have a ring this powerful ! It will spoil the immersion and balance of my adventure if I use this thing repeatedly when needed!" (Throws it into deepest part of cavern lake when it will never be found again.)

(Back-stabbed by Gollum and killed about ten seconds later)

I liked the early version of little Rosy in Grimoire, you don't have to unleash her power every single fight but it's nice to have ace in your sleeve when you get ambushed by the bandits (scripted event) with an underdeveloped party.
It's either this or grinding. Both are fine, I like having the opportunity to choose.

Balance is overrated. Several of my most treasured game memories are about travelling through high-level locations with low-level party and reaping the rewards.
You shouldn't make one of the things too overpowered to become "I win!" button, player should always have a choice in combat, but all these people who whine about Harm in Arcanum and shooting in the eyes in Fallout 2 are weaklings.

The ones complaining about aiming the eyes are also explaining to you how you should play with fast shoot + the -1AP perk and get a gazillion of shots per turn...
Whatever floats your boat.
Me, I like shooting them in the eyes.

 

[unseeingeye]

Yea it doesn't bother me much either. I get where some people are coming from but for me it doesn't determine whether or not a game is worth playing nor my estimation of its quality. I think running straight to Navarro in Fallout 2 is stupid and I've never done it, but I don't loose any sleep over the fact that it can be done and if I were in the mood to mess around within the game it is even nice to know that such an option is available.

Most of the time I tend to play games with a semi-immersive approach where I'll either project myself into a character and behave in a manner approximating how I anticipate myself reacting to such and such environments given the tools, abilities and physical condition of the player character, or I will develop an imagined persona and role play but rarely with full dedication. In such games I don't use cheats but I will make use of certain kinds of exploits as I most likely would do so if a similar opportunity arose in my real life, dependent on the consequences. I really appreciate it when a game offers within an options menu the means to alter the general hostility and consequent difficulty, or the condition of the internal economy. Stalker: Anomaly for instance, a mod (or rather, an enhanced version of what is ultimately an amalgam of several overhaul and feature mods) of Stalker: Call of Pripyat, has an options menu that is incredibly open to customization in an almost overwhelming amount of areas. Everything from the average aiming skill of enemies to the frequency with which opponents of each kind will spawn including how many of them, and everything in between: the rate of deterioration on items, weapons, clothing and armor, the exchange rate in different areas for bartering, whether or not the many factions are reactive in their hostility (meaning that they will fight for territory, which can dramatically alter the state of the game world), toggleable fast travel and something like 6 or possibly more conditions under which fast travel is to be enabled (so weight carried, under attack, etc.), and so on. This to me is ideal but I don't fault a game for not offering this kind of depth to tailoring your own experience, after all it is a mod.

An actual game that offers a similar access to world state settings prior to beginning (though not nearly as comprehensive) is the game I mentioned that I've been playing off and on recently, Kenshi. You can determine to within two decimal points of a percentage how often factions will attack on raids, and the ease of losing your characters limbs as well as removing them from opponents, the amount of bandit camps and creature nests that spawn, the rate of your hunger meter, whether or not bandits and such like will loot you or your squads unconscious or dead bodies, and a bunch of other fine tuning options via sliders. Granted the game is an open-world sandbox type experience that has innate mod support and comes with a modding toolkit, so it was clearly designed with this degree of player agency in mind, where other games might be highly restricted in these matters because the intent is for a narrative experience resembling a movie.

Finding and using exploits in a game is a nice option to have and I appreciate certain games where such exploits are clearly intentional, like in the recent Elden Ring game at the cliff site starting grace where Mohgwyn Palace may be seen from far below the ground. As you turn from the grace site and approach the trail along the cliffs there are dozens of creatures (Albinaurics) there literally just sitting there doing nothing, most of them have their eyes closed or are gazing out over the cliffs. These are normally hostile creatures on-site but in this instance they totally ignore you unless you hit them, in which case they will then stand up and defend themselves. There is a patrolling unit of 4 red Albinaurics who do attack you and if surrounded genuinely pose a threat, but when anticipated are easily dispatched during the routine killing spree of their dormant fellows, all of whom respawn. This is supposed to be a relatively end-game area because it is physically accessible only by a hole in the ground up in one of the frozen far northern territories, so by this point if you were thorough in your exploration you should have found a talisman that will given a bonus multiplier to the runes (the in-game 'currency' and leveling material, like souls in the other games) that you collect from defeating enemies. Plus there is an on-use consumable that you can craft or find while exploring that functions similarly. So you put on your talisman, pop a consumable, and go on a killing spree all within 10 to maybe 50 feet from the site of grace where you spawn at, each of these creatures drops over 2,000 runes (!) and when you've killed them all you simply run back to the site of grace (or fast travel from the map, though depending on your loading times it will take longer) to instantly respawn them. This process is infinitely repeatable and upwards of millions and millions of runes can be gained in an hour at most farming these things. To top even that off, there is a bird enemy if you look out over the cliffs on a plateau down below, that walks back and forth from the blood lake to the edge of the cliff, and if you stand to the right side of your own cliffs and fire an arrow or bolt at it, it will run towards you to fight but its AI gets messed up at the cliffs edge so instead of flying or pathfinding its way around to you it simply leaps right off the cliff and plummets to death.

At a certain point I'd amassed a decent amount of those consumables and although its been awhile to where I can't recall the timing, I think it was under a minute but definitely under two, I would spawn in, pop the consumable and in rapid succession get off a weapon-skill buff and a miracle buff to maximize my damage output (I think Flame Grant Me Strength and some Divine something or other, its been a few months), all while walking up to the nearest Albinauric so that by the time I was within sword reach length of him I had the consumable and two buffs triggered, immediately start smashing them up by going down to the left and circling back around. Making this circle goes incredibly quickly when you have these buffs at a high level and kill the Albinaurics in a single hit, then tap the button to switch my right hand weapon to a bow (which was prepared to be accessible by equipping it in the second right-hand slot) while approaching the cliff, hit the bird, watch it reach the cliff and turn to run back to the site of grace. Just as I'm reaching the site of grace the runes acquisition is finishing from the bird dying and I rest at the grace site to respawn everything. Now I didn't do this until after I'd beaten the game, but it is so obvious that the developers intentionally designed this spot to be like shooting fish in a barrel, most likely for players who find they are incapable of defeating the end game bosses in order to level up enough without having to wonder around looking for runes. I was already at a high enough level by the time I encountered this spot so that it wasn't necessary, but I absolutely went back and farmed the shit out of it before going into new game plus, both to get a super high level (it was somewhere around 223) and to have over a million runes so that I could stock up on the materials needed for enhancing weapons, of which there are two varieties. I understand that in a recent patch they changed things so that the bell bearings (the things you give to an NPC in the hub area to purchase unlimited numbers of these materials) you've collected transfer over along with all of your non-story related items into new game plus, but it isn't retroactive and anyway it wasn't the case when I finished the game, so you best believe after all that effort I was going to farm runes and have enough materials to max out my favorite weapons. Then I took something like 80 or so of each into new game plus in case I became interested in a weapon I'd not tried.

Anyway I like Little Rosy very much and plan to keep her in my party for now unless I encounter an NPC who seems cooler, and it doesn't bother me if she makes the game a bit easier. If my guys aren't leveling skills because I find her killing everything too quickly I'll just keep her idle in defending or something, that should work, right? I like having the option to gain access to more powerful allies should I find myself struggling, there is no sufficient reason I can think of for not including such an option when there exists the alternative of simply ignoring them if you feel they are overpowered or trivialize other content.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yea it doesn't bother me much either. I get where some people are coming from but for me it doesn't determine whether or not a game is worth playing nor my estimation of its quality. I think running straight to Navarro in Fallout 2 is stupid and I've never done it, but I don't loose any sleep over the fact that it can be done and if I were in the mood to mess around within the game it is even nice to know that such an option is available.

Most of the time I tend to play games with a semi-immersive approach where I'll either project myself into a character and behave in a manner approximating how I anticipate myself reacting to such and such environments given the tools, abilities and physical condition of the player character, or I will develop an imagined persona and role play but rarely with full dedication. In such games I don't use cheats but I will make use of certain kinds of exploits as I most likely would do so if a similar opportunity arose in my real life, dependent on the consequences. I really appreciate it when a game offers within an options menu the means to alter the general hostility and consequent difficulty, or the condition of the internal economy. Stalker: Anomaly for instance, a mod (or rather, an enhanced version of what is ultimately an amalgam of several overhaul and feature mods) of Stalker: Call of Pripyat, has an options menu that is incredibly open to customization in an almost overwhelming amount of areas. Everything from the average aiming skill of enemies to the frequency with which opponents of each kind will spawn including how many of them, and everything in between: the rate of deterioration on items, weapons, clothing and armor, the exchange rate in different areas for bartering, whether or not the many factions are reactive in their hostility (meaning that they will fight for territory, which can dramatically alter the state of the game world), toggleable fast travel and something like 6 or possibly more conditions under which fast travel is to be enabled (so weight carried, under attack, etc.), and so on. This to me is ideal but I don't fault a game for not offering this kind of depth to tailoring your own experience, after all it is a mod.

An actual game that offers a similar access to world state settings prior to beginning (though not nearly as comprehensive) is the game I mentioned that I've been playing off and on recently, Kenshi. You can determine to within two decimal points of a percentage how often factions will attack on raids, and the ease of losing your characters limbs as well as removing them from opponents, the amount of bandit camps and creature nests that spawn, the rate of your hunger meter, whether or not bandits and such like will loot you or your squads unconscious or dead bodies, and a bunch of other fine tuning options via sliders. Granted the game is an open-world sandbox type experience that has innate mod support and comes with a modding toolkit, so it was clearly designed with this degree of player agency in mind, where other games might be highly restricted in these matters because the intent is for a narrative experience resembling a movie.

Finding and using exploits in a game is a nice option to have and I appreciate certain games where such exploits are clearly intentional, like in the recent Elden Ring game at the cliff site starting grace where Mohgwyn Palace may be seen from far below the ground. As you turn from the grace site and approach the trail along the cliffs there are dozens of creatures (Albinaurics) there literally just sitting there doing nothing, most of them have their eyes closed or are gazing out over the cliffs. These are normally hostile creatures on-site but in this instance they totally ignore you unless you hit them, in which case they will then stand up and defend themselves. There is a patrolling unit of 4 red Albinaurics who do attack you and if surrounded genuinely pose a threat, but when anticipated are easily dispatched during the routine killing spree of their dormant fellows, all of whom respawn. This is supposed to be a relatively end-game area because it is physically accessible only by a hole in the ground up in one of the frozen far northern territories, so by this point if you were thorough in your exploration you should have found a talisman that will given a bonus multiplier to the runes (the in-game 'currency' and leveling material, like souls in the other games) that you collect from defeating enemies. Plus there is an on-use consumable that you can craft or find while exploring that functions similarly. So you put on your talisman, pop a consumable, and go on a killing spree all within 10 to maybe 50 feet from the site of grace where you spawn at, each of these creatures drops over 2,000 runes (!) and when you've killed them all you simply run back to the site of grace (or fast travel from the map, though depending on your loading times it will take longer) to instantly respawn them. This process is infinitely repeatable and upwards of millions and millions of runes can be gained in an hour at most farming these things. To top even that off, there is a bird enemy if you look out over the cliffs on a plateau down below, that walks back and forth from the blood lake to the edge of the cliff, and if you stand to the right side of your own cliffs and fire an arrow or bolt at it, it will run towards you to fight but its AI gets messed up at the cliffs edge so instead of flying or pathfinding its way around to you it simply leaps right off the cliff and plummets to death.

At a certain point I'd amassed a decent amount of those consumables and although its been awhile to where I can't recall the timing, I think it was under a minute but definitely under two, I would spawn in, pop the consumable and in rapid succession get off a weapon-skill buff and a miracle buff to maximize my damage output (I think Flame Grant Me Strength and some Divine something or other, its been a few months), all while walking up to the nearest Albinauric so that by the time I was within sword reach length of him I had the consumable and two buffs triggered, immediately start smashing them up by going down to the left and circling back around. Making this circle goes incredibly quickly when you have these buffs at a high level and kill the Albinaurics in a single hit, then tap the button to switch my right hand weapon to a bow (which was prepared to be accessible by equipping it in the second right-hand slot) while approaching the cliff, hit the bird, watch it reach the cliff and turn to run back to the site of grace. Just as I'm reaching the site of grace the runes acquisition is finishing from the bird dying and I rest at the grace site to respawn everything. Now I didn't do this until after I'd beaten the game, but it is so obvious that the developers intentionally designed this spot to be like shooting fish in a barrel, most likely for players who find they are incapable of defeating the end game bosses in order to level up enough without having to wonder around looking for runes. I was already at a high enough level by the time I encountered this spot so that it wasn't necessary, but I absolutely went back and farmed the shit out of it before going into new game plus, both to get a super high level (it was somewhere around 223) and to have over a million runes so that I could stock up on the materials needed for enhancing weapons, of which there are two varieties. I understand that in a recent patch they changed things so that the bell bearings (the things you give to an NPC in the hub area to purchase unlimited numbers of these materials) you've collected transfer over along with all of your non-story related items into new game plus, but it isn't retroactive and anyway it wasn't the case when I finished the game, so you best believe after all that effort I was going to farm runes and have enough materials to max out my favorite weapons. Then I took something like 80 or so of each into new game plus in case I became interested in a weapon I'd not tried.

Anyway I like Little Rosy very much and plan to keep her in my party for now unless I encounter an NPC who seems cooler, and it doesn't bother me if she makes the game a bit easier. If my guys aren't leveling skills because I find her killing everything too quickly I'll just keep her idle in defending or something, that should work, right? I like having the option to gain access to more powerful allies should I find myself struggling, there is no sufficient reason I can think of for not including such an option when there exists the alternative of simply ignoring them if you feel they are overpowered or trivialize other content.

Are you paid by the hour or per word?

 

[unseeingeye]

I enjoy writing and reading, that's all. I'm continuously surprised to find that I'm the exception within a medium specifically designed to facilitate these two activities, but then I have to accept that I'm living during an ascendency of illiteracy. I've even felt the need to preface many of my posts with an apology for my verbosity, given the amount of comments I get questioning or ridiculing my writing habits, which to me is both absurd and sorrowful.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I enjoy writing and reading, that's all. I'm continuously surprised to find that I'm the exception within a medium specifically designed to facilitate these two activities, but then I have to accept that I'm living during an ascendency of illiteracy. I've even felt the need to preface many of my posts with an apology for my verbosity, given the amount of comments I get questioning or ridiculing my writing habits, which to me is both absurd and sorrowful.

I dunno man it feels like you put a lot of yourself out there, which is unusual. Don't mind me too much. For all the abundant brevity I employ I still can't shut up.

 

[Lim-Dûl]

Excessive verbosity is correlated with high estrogen and low testosterone.

 

[Kalarion]

I enjoy writing and reading, that's all. I'm continuously surprised to find that I'm the exception within a medium specifically designed to facilitate these two activities, but then I have to accept that I'm living during an ascendency of illiteracy.

Well, at the end of the day, the medium is designed to facilitate communication. Reading and writing are just the tools. And all things being equal, people prefer brevity and wit to loquaciousness in communication, by far.

I'm the same as you, btw. I struggle against writing 20 words where one will do, and Cleveland Mark Blakemore (being of superior genetic stock) doesn't even bother. Go find the LA Riots story some time :D. So I'm not critiquing, just trying to show it's a little more (at least here on the Codex) than "nobody appreciates reading!".

I've even felt the need to preface many of my posts with an apology for my verbosity, given the amount of comments I get questioning or ridiculing my writing habits, which to me is both absurd and sorrowful.

No need. Apologies are best (though perhaps not only) for genuine and avoidable flaws and defects. An inclination to wax poetic is just a part of who you are. Anyone reasonable understands that, and those who can't tell the difference between real flaws and simple personality differences generally aren't worth bothering with anyways.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

I just had this incredible idea. I realized you could just skip over the guy's posts if you didn't want to read them. Edgy and far-out but it just might work.

You could actually just skim over his posts.

Mind. Blown. M. Night Shymalayan twist ending. The dude was just skimming over the posts he didn't want to read with his eyes. Plus, he's a ghost! Stop you're tripping me out.

 

[ItsChon]

unseeingeye Nothing wrong with verbosity, I love to read a wall of text as much as the next guy. Your last post was just asking for a TL;DR tag though. Idk why you spent two massive paragraphs talking about Elden Ring to make a point that could have been easily illustrated with 1/4 the amount of text. The whole point of your post was about using exploits in a game, and then you veered off into describing one specific exploit in excruciating detail. If your post was about Elden Ring and that specific example, it wouldn't be TL;DR. Does that make sense?

I think I speak for not just myself when I say we all love to see such passion and effort being put into posts, but if you want some objective advice about your writing tendencies, your posts would be improved with some brevity and by staying on topic. You can always double post after all.

 

[unseeingeye]

I take the sincere advice and criticism with gratitude, thank you very much.

My thought process when writing tends to be erratic and I struggle to temper my enthusiasm for descriptive prose. You should see what gets deleted before submitting each post! My writing is also full of anachronisms but I've become accustomed to them and habits like it are difficult to shake.

But it is certainly true upon reflection that, in most situations when a point can be made clearly the less words used the better. I'm prone to not just verbosity but to drench my nouns in multiple layers of adjectives, and things like this are where I feel conflicted because, although I don't consider myself a poet, waxing poetic as mentioned is a tendency I'm inclined to indulge. Not that brevity can't yield poetry, of course; I'm rather fond of laconic speech and aphorisms. Words fascinate me, truly. I frequently dwell in contemplative imagining on the very nature and origins of language, to me it is the most awesome thing that humanity has ever discovered. And it is especially visionary. Borroughs called language a virus from outer space after consuming ayahuasca, well before doing so became a fashion accessory. Whatever language is it for sure is of at least that magnitude of weird and those people who have managed to master it, like Edward Gibbon, or Dante, Dostoevsky, or Shakespeare, are by my estimation men who have approached the divine.

I think I'll try to be more concise and forgo heavy elaboration if the post doesn't call for it because each of you do have good points. And I do put a lot of myself into my posts, its true. When I'm on the Codex I can't help but feel acutely aware of the presence of everybody else and I treat it almost as if we were all gathered together somewhere talking in-person. Whether or not other people are even currently online makes no difference, but that is another issue I could go on about as aspect of the aperspectival culture shift that Gebser anticipated. I share about myself here almost the same way as I would with a friend in-person, or "in real life" which is a total misnomer. This is real life for all of us enduring every present moment and we're sharing in something incomprehensively profound merely by existing simultaneously. I don't share because I expect anybody really cares, but because I enjoy doing so and I'm genuinely curious to learn about other people with related interests. Maybe it is unusual but I just prefer openness and enthusiasm to jaded indifference or juvenile antagonizing. This is actually a reason why I don't play MMORPGs or any other sort of interactive multiplayer online games. I get stuck with a persistent awareness of my sharing even a virtual space in real-time with other people, many of whom are nearly oblivious to the autonomy of the other players and seem to behave as if they were just more unique NPCs existing in their games.

Well, anyway thank you for the feedback, it takes all kinds and I enjoy the Codex for what it is precisely because of the open acknowledgement of that.

 

[Zenyrrah]

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

View attachment 26428

Unfortunately that's still $750.00 in Australian currency.

 

[Abu Antar]

Start Grimoire
Create party
Think to myself: I'll fuck shit up
Start first fight
???
Profit? NO PENETRATION!! NO PENETRATION!! NO PENETRATION!!

 

[Darth Roxor]

have you tried viagra

 

[Ryzer]

Is there a speedhack in game? for those who want fast-paced combat.

 

[Zenyrrah]

Is there a speedhack in game? for those who want fast-paced combat.

A brick on the enter does miracles.

 

[unseeingeye]

Is there a speedhack in game? for those who want fast-paced combat.

Hold down the enter key.

Edit - Sorry I didn't see Zenyrrah's post. You will miss most of the details of what is happening but you can get into a rhythm of holding it and letting go to where it goes significantly faster and you have time to read the outcomes.

 

[Abu Antar]

After a rough start, I'm doing fine, and having a blast. I just hope to find more equipment soon.

I'm running four melee dudes, and four casters.

Music, graphics, combat, exploration, I love it all. Customization is beefy, but I am trying to put as much as I can into the speed stat. Using berserk at lower levels was a mistake. Bastard massacred my own mages. The necromancer wasn't what I expected, but has some very useful spells.

Paying $1 is one of the better gaming deals in a long time. Kudos to Cleve.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Bastard massacred my own mages.

was a mistake.

No, I'm not seeing it.