Ho Tu Lo Shu: The book of dragons (Or how I want my CRPGs to be made)

[notpl]

Be aware if you pirated the pre-sequel back in the day that they actually did improve the translation as they went along through patches, so you might have had a worse experience than is currently available. After a few patches it became comparable to ToW, which is to say not great but still obviously not MTL.

 

[notpl]

The presequel has the worst translation, I beat tales of wuxia and playing this one while understanding what im doing, so either would work. Tale of wuxia is a great starting point, and then if you enjoyed it, move on to this.

That or you could play Path of wuxia, heard the translation there is much better.

PoW is still not fully translated, the team has only just gotten to the year 3 plot. Probably won't be truly finished for another year or so.

 

[Alex]

Sadly the pirated version is several patches behind, makes it nearly unplayable. Heck, even the bought version of Tales of wuxia is a version behind, the biggest patch the game received, with new game+ and more content never saw any translation and is only available on the beta branch I believe.

It is really a shame.

As I understand, the Tale of Wuxia game had the option to enable stuff from the latest version by opting into a "beta". This would enable some events that weren't available before. Apparently it also enabled an alternate route through the game. I was particularly interested in that it apparently enabled learning styles that used both sabre and sword. Despite all that, it also changed the portraits used by several characters. As far as I can tell, the new portraits were actually uglier and not well received.

The option to opt into the beta seems to have been removed, however. The only way to access this content now is by changing your language to chinese.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Hey nigs, I wanted to try this, but the shit crashes at start up. It gets to the first loading screen right after launching, loads for a little while and then freezes with the following informative error message:

(Sometimes it also has a red exclamation mark for added informativeness!)

Any ideas? Googling doesn't give me anything useful, only this thread that also reports the issue but doesn't provide any fix: https://steamcommunity.com/app/952860/discussions/0/2847921219523720004/

 

[Abu Antar]

Never got that prompt.

However, I am getting an old problem that I used to get on my laptop. After initial loading screen, my game goes black, and I can't do anything. New computers aren't always better.

The only thing you can try is change PC to Chinese language. No one seems to have any answers to technical issues about this game.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Wow, it was actually a faulty .dll file that made it crash (lib_burst_generated). Downloading it from another source fixed the launch crash.

Big thanks to Alex for pointing me to the folder with the crash logs.

 

[Abu Antar]

Well, now that you got it working, you're in for a treat.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Well, now that you got it working, you're in for a treat.

Sure am.

Because now I get a black screen after character generation.

 

[Abu Antar]

Well, now that you got it working, you're in for a treat.

Sure am.

Because now I get a black screen after character generation.

Yeah, that's what I get on my new PC. I have this on my laptop, too. My previous desktop did not have this problem. This is where my Chinese language advice has a 50-50% chance to work. Otherwise... yeah.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The only thing you can try is change PC to Chinese language.

Actually, I just switched the Windows date format to Chinese and now it works.

This is all sorts of amazing.




NOW THAT I SPENT 3 HOURS JUST TO GET THIS GAME TO RUN, IT BETTER BE FUCKING EXTRAORDINARY

 

[Abu Antar]

The only thing you can try is change PC to Chinese language.

Actually, I just switched the Windows date format to Chinese and now it works.

This is all sorts of amazing.




NOW THAT I SPENT 3 HOURS JUST TO GET THIS GAME TO RUN, IT BETTER BE FUCKING EXTRAORDINARY

I was going to say that I did the same lol. Time for my 4th playthrough.

If you don't like it, you can choose my tag for the next year.

 

[Alex]

Since you guys have played this game before, I am a bit lost. In one of my early attempts (when I discovered that a low physique character on hard is suicide) I got a bit lost and found a dying person near a mountain, who told me to give a caravan a message about a fish getting away. I can't, for the life of me, find that guy again. I've ran around the foot of the southern mountain range thinking I met him there, but no luck. Can anyone help me.

roxor, one thing you might want to be aware is that some quests are timed. As far as I can tell, most aren't, but some are.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

I can't, for the life of me, find that guy again. I've ran around the foot of the southern mountain range thinking I met him there, but no luck. Can anyone help me.

I know the guy and yeah he is in foot of one of the mountain.

No i don't remember the exact coordinate, but I guess I can confirm that he did exist

 

[Alex]

I can't, for the life of me, find that guy again. I've ran around the foot of the southern mountain range thinking I met him there, but no luck. Can anyone help me.

I know the guy and yeah he is in foot of one of the mountain.

No i don't remember the exact coordinate, but I guess I can confirm that he did exist

Finally found him. He is laying against a huge rock which stands opposite to the mountain, which is probably why I kept missing him. It is southeast of the gongshi village. The spot overlooks the river to the east and is not far away from the caravan in question.

 

[Lhynn]

Since you guys have played this game before, I am a bit lost. In one of my early attempts (when I discovered that a low physique character on hard is suicide)

Id advice you to play on normal for your first playthrough, game is designed to be replayed many times, as there are a lot of choices to make and content to see depending on your alignment. Normal will be pretty challenging and you will get familiar with the systems and figure out how to resolve quests, there will be a lot of trial and error and plenty of difficulty spikes along the way that you can better prepare for in higher difficulties on replays.

 

[notpl]

On the other hand I found the max difficulty to still be pretty easy, bordering on boring toward the end of the game. It really depends on your familiarty with turn-based RPGs, I suppose. I definitely couldn't imagine playing on Normal and having a good time.

One thing to be aware of is that enemies scale to your level and you really should have the maximum amount of XP diverted toward your martial arts at all times, because those are what make you stronger. It's kind of stupid that you even have the ability to alter this, and it defaults to such a low value.

 

[Lhynn]

I love that the game is incredibly obscure when it comes to its many mechanics, but knowledge and mastery is rewarded by making the game easier, it is how rpgs should be.

As for the level scaling, I think its dumb, but apparently its not standard level scaling, enemies have a base level and a top level depending on the area they are from, also higher level enemies seem to not only be stronger but have different skills available.


Really wish the translation was better, even if I can still progress through the game and the steam threads and guides are very helpful and should let you solve most things.

Havent had time to play it lately, but will during January.

 

[abnaxus]

The extra party slot in hard difficulty helps a lot. You need to keep Duan Siping around to get a very powerful skill, but on normal difficulty you'll prolly kick him out to make room for others after his part of the main quest. Yet he will refuse to join again unless you never did anything he dislikes which is very unlikely.

Same with that archer.

 

[notpl]

Yeah the good party members are incredibly fussy. The evils are all homeboys. The only problem is that every evil party member has exactly the same build/affinities and it's kind of boring playing with 4 poison claw users.

 

[Alex]

The extra party slot in hard difficulty helps a lot. You need to keep Duan Siping around to get a very powerful skill, but on normal difficulty you'll prolly kick him out to make room for others after his part of the main quest. Yet he will refuse to join again unless you never did anything he dislikes which is very unlikely.

Same with that archer.

That is a bit of a bummer. I let the kids from the first village keep stealing food because it seemed a little less bad than the alternative. Oh well...

Since you guys have played this game before, I am a bit lost. In one of my early attempts (when I discovered that a low physique character on hard is suicide)

Id advice you to play on normal for your first playthrough, game is designed to be replayed many times, as there are a lot of choices to make and content to see depending on your alignment. Normal will be pretty challenging and you will get familiar with the systems and figure out how to resolve quests, there will be a lot of trial and error and plenty of difficulty spikes along the way that you can better prepare for in higher difficulties on replays.

To be honest, I only played on difficult so I would have access to the fight option with NPCs. Although, now that I did, I am a bit confused about what it is supposed to accomplish.

 

[abnaxus]

Certain NPCs carry unique weapons/skill books which you can get by challenging and defeating them. Like those two white swordsmen in the city (who are related to a very complicated side quest). But you may get ebul points.

 

[Alex]

Certain NPCs carry unique weapons/skill books which you can get by challenging and defeating them. Like those two white swordsmen in the city (who are related to a very complicated side quest). But you may get ebul points.

Why? I mean, shouldn't a challenge be kind of a neutral or honourable thing? This reminds me, I found a monk that killed an apprentice near the leopard king's stronghold. I had the option to challenge him for his technique, but preferred to let him go since I didn't want to challenge him while he was hurt, or fight against his apprentice, I let him go instead.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying that.

 

[notpl]

Certain NPCs carry unique weapons/skill books which you can get by challenging and defeating them. Like those two white swordsmen in the city (who are related to a very complicated side quest). But you may get ebul points.

Why? I mean, shouldn't a challenge be kind of a neutral or honourable thing? This reminds me, I found a monk that killed an apprentice near the leopard king's stronghold. I had the option to challenge him for his technique, but preferred to let him go since I didn't want to challenge him while he was hurt, or fight against his apprentice, I let him go instead.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying that.

The "duels" are more like muggings. They give you good points if you beat up evil guys, evil points if you beat up good guys. It's best to keep yourself neutral for most of the game, because once you go evil it is almost impossible to swing back to good and it locks you out of all sorts of things.

 

[Reinhardt]

any gud waifus?

 

[Abu Antar]

any gud waifus?

If you're into that thing, yes.