KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[Mortmal]

tbh most good items are drops/finds, the only thing I recall buying asap at the stores were the cloaks of SR28

The economy on itself makes no sense whatsoever though, it's like he just bashed the numpad and let that be.

SR28 , gorgon amulet too , fighter belts.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Killing the hydra in two hits strongly disagrees

I don't use craftung, and I sure as hell can't buy everything from the shops, because every piece of gear is so ridiculously expensive.

The samourai is pretty good for dispatching everything that's not immune to crits, there's a couple of +1 skewer weapons which are turned into +X/+8 weapons by the samourai ability.
It's hard to beat that if you get the right weapon or craft it.
On top of that, the samourai negates armor speed penalties...

Pretty much everyone who finished the game will tell you, samurai is not worth it compare to gladiator and fighters. Of course you are playing the cheat engine version of kotc 2 so with no need of gold for leveling and best gear possible i suppose everything seems to work now.

Sure, the wade in fighter's ability is nice but it's a game with a lot of classes and races, the question is : "can you beat it with the team you want to play?"
If everyone had to play with 2x fighters / 2x psions + wiz + cleric it wouldn't be that fun.

The samourai is definitely close to the gladiator in my book but it probably depends on how you use them and how well you can exploit their respective strengths.

 

[CryptRat]

Not sure if it's a bug in the text or in the behaviour or something I'm misunderstanding, but in chapter 2 if I buy a potion from the witches before triggering the battle against the lizardmen then they don't have a free round despite the text still saying they do.

So far the game is amazing, I'm loving it like I rarely if ever loved a game. I'll detail later.

Except possibly for this weird thing above I'm likely just not getting, I only had exactly one bug in my 20? hours or playing (the game froze once when I killed a mimic with a swallowed character), better said that at least the beginning of the game is a perfectly playable state as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Well, I just bashed Pizarra's face in. I feel I'm going to regret not finishing her off.

You men may say whatever you want about "cheating" regarding the disabled level up costs, but I'm having loads of fun with this. The fights that were supposed to be all the rage (goblin king, hydra, Pizarra) I found very cool and cerebral. I didn't need to cheese any of them with constant reloads to get perfect initiative and spell penetration on first round, and in fact all the time I felt like I had a modest margin for failure.

The only time I did need to reload-cheese so far was the efreet at the end of the death snare - and that was mostly due to a fuckup on my part because I forgot to rest before entering the crypt, so I was completely out of spells for the fight.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Pizarra is a great companion, made me look warlocks in another light.

 

[CryptRat]

You realize you really suck when you can't manage to kill a demon but if you dominate it then the other enemies manage to kill it very easily.

 

[Mortmal]

You realize you really suck when you can't manage to kill a demon but if you dominate it then the other enemies manage to kill it very easily.

Other enemies have extremely good equipment, the best gear you have they have it by default . Just look at the editor stats . Wont rant again about it, but thats not how you design 3.5/D20 encounters.

 

[cruelio]

You realize you really suck when you can't manage to kill a demon but if you dominate it then the other enemies manage to kill it very easily.

Other enemies have extremely good equipment, the best gear you have they have it by default . Just look at the editor stats . Wont rant again about it, but thats not how you design 3.5/D20 encounters.

You can actually click on them to see the insane shit they carry. E.G. the first cultist fight in the game when you're level 1 one of the fighters has a +1 icy sword, at a time when a masterwork weapon would be the hottest shit around. Some enemies even have their backpacks full of insane shit, e.g. the goblin king had a bunch of artifact-tier stuff, for no reason that I can discern other than to make you feel bad for looking cause you know enemies don't drop their OP loot.

 

[Jasede]

You should look at the gear every single black wizard at the end carries; each one of them would make a lich blush green with envy and they're 'fodder' enemies...

The weird thing is, how did he go from KOTC 1 to this?
What happened to Pierre? Rape? Sexual harassment? War? Something must have happened...

 

[ERYFKRAD]

What happened to Pierre?

Perhaps the roots of all this are in his diet?

 

[AdolfSatan]

Alright, close the thread, nobody's gonna top that comment.

Jasede kotc1 is based on one of Gygax's best ad&d modules. I think it was yourself who suggested that after developing the same module for 10 years without any testers he probably lost all impartiality, it sounds the most likely explanation tbh

 

[Tweed]

Oh come on, The Sewer of Horrors isn't that bad, especially now that Pierre has made all these baby man concessions.

 

[CryptRat]

Wait, you guys seriously don't love the module ?

I understand you're pissed off because the game was released in a shameful state where winning an encounter especially would make the game crash, but come one, it's fine now and the encounter variety (including the narrative introduction) is completely amazing and easily shits over every other game out there.

Take some part in the beginning of chapter 3.

With some spell slot regaining items in the inventory but still only one way to rest on sight, so the later the better, and after some attrition fights against a group mimics and a few other small groups of monsters requiring one or two dazing spells to deal with without taking too much damage, the next path involves a fight against a bunch of bowmen especially. It's the very first fight in the game against strong bowmen.

Recruiting a former enemy, Pizzara, which I barely doubt will eventually betray my party, allows my party not get surprised by this party of enemies, in which case I feel it could be very hard. But it would not be a wall, because Joe, a fighter, can help the party swim across an alternative path. This part involves at least a couple of battles against evil eyes, which would blind but also confuse (confusion from small eyes and chaos from on bigger eyes further, which would make the party go berzerk which quickly makes your fighters kill your mages), once again a totally inedite fight. The party owns some helmets which purposely makes the user blind so he's immuned to gaze attacks, which I feel is really not a good idea rather than smashing the enemies to death but anyway, it could also help in the fight just below this one.

The party can also access some optional content. First it can fight some, very evil, gorgon witches which petrify, another completely unique fight. I just traded some fake copy of a book I own with them in order to get a artifact which allows to change from stone to flesh. I turned back the witches's personal collection, in particular a succubus paladin, which I ended up try to kill but another paladin of the same order explained me that I should not. After my character managed to figured out her wounds, I had to actively use a negative level removal scroll on it to heal herself so that she would join my party. They currently are the only avaiable shopkeepers, so keeping them alive, until they realize the book is fake and directly attack the party, is interesting especially to be able and sell unused equipment for gold for level up.

After one fight where some quicksand spell got read of a bunch of rust monsters in a place full of gemstones, there's some red trident I can't interact with or maybe it's simply a hint for something else I can't get although' the first possibility is more probable, there's ton of content in this part I've not interacted with yet.

Finally trying to open and decipher a book triggers a fight against a group of different level draining undeads each with their own strong spells and abilities, you don't play with ancient evil relics like they're child toys. An occasion to switch to the anti-undead weapons and put those to good use.

How the hell is this less than totally awesome and miles above everything else out there? At very best I can think of games which would propose similiarly interesting paths and optional content at some points, but those would not propose half as good encounters (no game at all would propose half as good encounters anyway).

For people who would have not played the game I'm not nitpicking at all, it's 100% representative of the first third?? of the game. These encounters I mentioned don't even have different starting bonuses based on your characters, which many have. Having a diverse party truly gives you some very easier encounters. Note that if for the rare case you would not get any of the options preventing a surprise attack especially you still can use one of the "bombs" (level 8 scrolls ...) you occasionnaly get (although' it never really happened to me, I can imagine some encounters would be extremely hard in that case). These bombs can also be used for optional, harder, fights, but personally I mostly skipped those after a few tries so far.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Well I've run into the spider queen

holy fucking shit

 

[Mortmal]

Wait, you guys seriously don't love the module ?

I understand you're pissed off because the game was released in a shameful state where winning an encounter especially would make the game crash, but come one, it's fine now and the encounter variety (including the narrative introduction) is completely amazing and easily shits over every other game out there.

Take some part in the beginning of chapter 3.

With some spell slot regaining items in the inventory but still only one way to rest on sight, so the later the better, and after some attrition fights against a group mimics and a few other small groups of monsters requiring one or two dazing spells to deal with without taking too much damage, the next path involves a fight against a bunch of bowmen especially. It's the very first fight in the game against strong bowmen.

Recruiting a former enemy, Pizzara, which I barely doubt will eventually betray my party, allows my party not get surprised by this party of enemies, in which case I feel it could be very hard. But it would not be a wall, because Joe, a fighter, can help the party swim across an alternative path. This part involves at least a couple of battles against evil eyes, which would blind but also confuse (confusion from small eyes and chaos from on bigger eyes further, which would make the party go berzerk which quickly makes your fighters kill your mages), once again a totally inedite fight. The party owns some helmets which purposely makes the user blind so he's immuned to gaze attacks, which I feel is really not a good idea rather than smashing the enemies to death but anyway, it could also help in the fight just below this one.

The party can also access some optional content. First it can fight some, very evil, gorgon witches which petrify, another completely unique fight. I just traded some fake copy of a book I own with them in order to get a artifact which allows to change from stone to flesh. I turned back the witches's personal collection, in particular a succubus paladin, which I ended up try to kill but another paladin of the same order explained me that I should not. After my character managed to figured out her wounds, I had to actively use a negative level removal scroll on it to heal herself so that she would join my party. They currently are the only avaiable shopkeepers, so keeping them alive, until they realize the book is fake and directly attack the party, is interesting especially to be able and sell unused equipment for gold for level up.

After one fight where some quicksand spell got read of a bunch of rust monsters in a place full of gemstones, there's some red trident I can't interact with or maybe it's simply a hint for something else I can't get although' the first possibility is more probable, there's ton of content in this part I've not interacted with yet.

Finally trying to open and decipher a book triggers a fight against a group of different level draining undeads each with their own strong spells and abilities, you don't play with ancient evil relics like they're child toys. An occasion to switch to the anti-undead weapons and put those to good use.

How the hell is this less than totally awesome and miles above everything else out there? At very best I can think of games which would propose similiarly interesting paths and optional content at some points, but those would not propose half as good encounters (no game at all would propose half as good encounters anyway).

For people who would have not played the game I'm not nitpicking at all, it's 100% representative of the first third?? of the game. These encounters I mentioned don't even have different starting bonuses based on your characters, which many have. Having a diverse party truly gives you some very easier encounters. Note that if for the rare case you would not get any of the options preventing a surprise attack especially you still can use one of the "bombs" (level 8 scrolls ...) you occasionnaly get (although' it never really happened to me, I can imagine some encounters would be extremely hard in that case). These bombs can also be used for optional, harder, fights, but personally I mostly skipped those after a few tries so far.

Seriously ? No , i am disapointed by the module. The strategy rely far too much on reloading till you get the right dices, or at last it was on the first versions . I wont even comment on the cheat engine version, i am absolutely not interested into that, i want a rpg with rules , balanced encounters according those rules and not straying from that. Maxing stats ,feats every levels, mountains of gold , that was his answer to the balancing , no i am not playing that and i am getting buyer remorse as i preordered the next ones...
I am pretty sure everyone is impressed by the AI and underlying combat mechanisms , the puzzle systems are great too, but thats too far from the real tabletop experience . Kotc 1 was a carbon copy conversion of against the giants, without paying royalties by the way, kotc 2 story makes no sense and encounters if varied and all ,are nowhere close to a tabletop adaptation. CR way over the roof, monty haul , absurd enemies stats and loadout . Of course if he follows basic guildeline the game would be very short and finished in like 4 hours , there's very few maps, i draw more for my weekly sessions.

 

[Jasede]

I agree with Mortmal... from a DM standpoint, the game is just lazily designed.
Here's a great example of how a game can look like that's designed as if it was run by a good virtual DM: Realms of Arkania 2. The whole dwarf mine dungeon is incredible.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I've grown p. fond of the game with free level-ups, but despite that I have two reflections on its general state:

1. While the encounters are quite obviously absurd, they are pretty exciting to go through (provided they aren't pants-on-head retarded like the spider queen)... but in the long run the formula is kind of tiring. It hit me today when I was in the middle of the big sewer in Ch3 and, having analysed my possible next routes, I realised that each direction I could take led to rape. Rape mob of ant people, rape mob of vampires, rape mob of fire-themed stuff, rape mob of spiders...

2. This could work as a purposely ludicrous module if it were a further installment in the series, like Wiz4. If it were preceded by two reasonable modules, and Augury of Chaos was kind of like "you think you've mastered kotc2? Think again!" then it would be okay to have it as a curiosity of sorts. But as the first module in a potential series, the entire idea is just ridiculous in the negative way.

 

[NJClaw]

I realised that each direction I could take led to rape. Rape mob of ant people, rape mob of vampires, rape mob of fire-themed stuff, rape mob of spiders...

Enjoy it while it lasts. Chapter 4 only has "rape mobs of everything" scattered all around the map.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I've grown p. fond of the game with free level-ups, but despite that I have two reflections on its general state:

1. While the encounters are quite obviously absurd, they are pretty exciting to go through (provided they aren't pants-on-head retarded like the spider queen)... but in the long run the formula is kind of tiring. It hit me today when I was in the middle of the big sewer in Ch3 and, having analysed my possible next routes, I realised that each direction I could take led to rape. Rape mob of ant people, rape mob of vampires, rape mob of fire-themed stuff, rape mob of spiders...

2. This could work as a purposely ludicrous module if it were a further installment in the series, like Wiz4. If it were preceded by two reasonable modules, and Augury of Chaos was kind of like "you think you've mastered kotc2? Think again!" then it would be okay to have it as a curiosity of sorts. But as the first module in a potential series, the entire idea is just ridiculous in the negative way.

Yes, it's a bit tiring, not because the game isn't good, it is but it lacks the down time you get when going back to town selling your loot, getting new quests and explore somewhere else.
The fighting just never ends.

Enjoy it while it lasts. Chapter 4 only has "rape mobs of everything" scattered all around the map.

He might just enjoy that...

 

[cruelio]

I've grown p. fond of the game with free level-ups, but despite that I have two reflections on its general state:

1. While the encounters are quite obviously absurd, they are pretty exciting to go through (provided they aren't pants-on-head retarded like the spider queen)... but in the long run the formula is kind of tiring. It hit me today when I was in the middle of the big sewer in Ch3 and, having analysed my possible next routes, I realised that each direction I could take led to rape. Rape mob of ant people, rape mob of vampires, rape mob of fire-themed stuff, rape mob of spiders...

2. This could work as a purposely ludicrous module if it were a further installment in the series, like Wiz4. If it were preceded by two reasonable modules, and Augury of Chaos was kind of like "you think you've mastered kotc2? Think again!" then it would be okay to have it as a curiosity of sorts. But as the first module in a potential series, the entire idea is just ridiculous in the negative way.

Sounds like you haven't turned enough cheat options on.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Is there a campfire in the high sewers other than the one you get with the two people captured by the beholder boss? (and the one after Pizdarra obv)

 

[AdolfSatan]

There's the genie lamp, one after southern deathsnare, and one right before the chapter ends iirc

 

[Darth Roxor]

Also, it's very nice of that cheeky french asshole to put a specialised anti-magic greatsword that dispels magic and lowers spell resistance on hit right before the spider queen fight, WHEN THE DISPEL CHANCE AGAINST SAID SPIDER QUEEN IS 0%

 

[Jasede]

One of the best swords in the game, that. (I am serious!)

 

[Tweed]

Once you have the vorpal axe though you can slice through everything. Use the genie to duplicate it and pass them off to your gladiator.