KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[Sacibengala]

The problem with KotC2 is that the tokens in this game are ugly.

make your own then

And share. I'm lazy to do it myself.

 

[Reinhardt]

 

[Serus]

The problem with KotC2 is that the tokens in this game are ugly.

make your own then

And share. I'm lazy to do it myself.

Sure. I'll do it in the time between making my own great tactical CRPG and the best historical strategy computer game ever made. I'll send you all three.

I find monsters tokens quite nice and there is a couple of token packs for PC tokens.

Yes, there are some passable tokens for player characters and I use them. I think they are from one of the packs on Nexus. The problem is that they are in different style than monster's tokens which I don't find "quite nice".
You are lucky that you like them. Fortunately after playing for a few moments it doesn't matter much anymore. It's so abstract that action plays is in you mind anyway.

 

[Lios]

Standard tokens art is mostly shit, go to Nexus Mods and download character tokens and, if you're feeling horny, download creature/NPC tokens and replace everything in the module.
I'm not joking when I'm saying that it vastly improves the experience when using tokens. I'm also not joking when I'm saying that most probably a new steam update will fuck up and erase all and any changes you did in the tokens.

 

[Angelo85]

So how powerful is the Editor in this one? Do you have to solely rely on what's already there, or can you create entirely new creatures, abilities, spells, items etc.?

 

[Dorateen]

There is a creature editor, spell editor as well as weapons and items editors. Abilities are another thing, but the hardcoded classes already come packaged with so many options and a builder is free to mix and match to come up with new enemy combinations.

 

[anvi]

Just finished the game, loved it. Tough game, I think a second run will be fun with a tougher team and knowing more of what to expect. Can't wait to try other modules and see if I can make something.

 

[FA7]

These are mostly tokens downloaded from some packs from various games from nexus but I've converted them so they match those in kotc2 + added few of my own drakes, mantises and made blue eyed ones for psions

Here: https://www81.zippyshare.com/v/oRhPMxtm/file.html
Beware! There is around 5k images so loading might take a while when making chars.
Edit: Also you should probably make backup of your PlayerCharacter folder before doing anything.

 

[FA7]

One more while we're at modding. If you're annoyed like me by sound of "footsteps" of water elemental companion then dl this:
https://www3.zippyshare.com/v/UC75UqDI/file.html
Unpack and replace snake 1.wav and snake 2.wav in Sounds folder.

 

[Whisper]

Finished game.
It is difficult even for party that uses cheese tactics/class composition.
Had 5 psionists with double-casting energy balls (feat for +radius and +ignore friendly targets).

SR checks on last map is just ridiculous, welcome to archers with 32 SR. Other enemies had high SR too.
The fact that +6 SR ring did not work (!) did not help things.

Good thing we had Tornado, it does not require SR checks. You can use acid breath/energy walls, but they are more situational.

Psionists feel more powerful than Wizard, especially with changing elemental damage. Sonic is almost never resisted, feat for "acid" is worthless.

 

[Serus]

These are mostly tokens downloaded from some packs from various games from nexus but I've converted them so they match those in kotc2 + added few of my own drakes, mantises and made blue eyed ones for psions

Here: https://www81.zippyshare.com/v/oRhPMxtm/file.html
Beware! There is around 5k images so loading might take a while when making chars.
Edit: Also you should probably make backup of your PlayerCharacter folder before doing anything.

I was using the kobold one for my psion. It is in a pack on Nexus. These ones are ok too. The mantises look like they were taken from a horror sf, i like it.

 

[anvi]

I couldn't wait to start a new party with different classes, but I selected the max stats option and also gave them all a level up. It's like a slaughter now! Even the spell caster can one shot everything with melee. I guess I'll restart without the boosts.

 

[FA7]

I was using the kobold one for my psion. It is in a pack on Nexus. These ones are ok too. The mantises look like they were taken from a horror sf, i like it.

Most of them are from two packs I think, don't remember honestly cause when I started adding it all mixed up. Should have somewhere also big pack from some pillars mod but must have removed it from game folder because of loading times.

Also deep kobold psion ftw, great choice for small char - not suffering from grappling and size doesn't affect his offensive capabilities. I'm now on archmage run, did kobold green wizard and I really like it so far! Can't wait to turn him into some self buffing economical semi melee machine

 

[Darth Canoli]

Finished game.
It is difficult even for party that uses cheese tactics/class composition.
Had 5 psionists with double-casting energy balls (feat for +radius and +ignore friendly targets).

SR checks on last map is just ridiculous, welcome to archers with 32 SR. Other enemies had high SR too.
The fact that +6 SR ring did not work (!) did not help things.

Good thing we had Tornado, it does not require SR checks. You can use acid breath/energy walls, but they are more situational.

Psionists feel more powerful than Wizard, especially with changing elemental damage. Sonic is almost never resisted, feat for "acid" is worthless.

I think + SR rings only work along with wizards natural SR but I admit I didn't check this playthrough if the +3 SR ring was working.
Also, I'm not sure you can combine more than two SR sources.
Natural + familiar works but I'm not sure adding a +SR ring would actually work.

As for Psionicist being more powerful than mages, their spell "empowering" system is way better than the mages ones, up until you start to maximize spells with your Red Wizard.
Also, some Wizard spells are just overpowered, like stinking cloud and late prismatic spells, also weird, chaos, confusion ...
Psionicists are great, don't get me wrong but they out damage Wizards up until they don't anymore.

 

[Whisper]

Finished game.
It is difficult even for party that uses cheese tactics/class composition.
Had 5 psionists with double-casting energy balls (feat for +radius and +ignore friendly targets).

SR checks on last map is just ridiculous, welcome to archers with 32 SR. Other enemies had high SR too.
The fact that +6 SR ring did not work (!) did not help things.

Good thing we had Tornado, it does not require SR checks. You can use acid breath/energy walls, but they are more situational.

Psionists feel more powerful than Wizard, especially with changing elemental damage. Sonic is almost never resisted, feat for "acid" is worthless.

I think + SR rings only work along with wizards natural SR but I admit I didn't check this playthrough if the +3 SR ring was working.
Also, I'm not sure you can combine more than two SR sources.
Natural + familiar works but I'm not sure adding a +SR ring would actually work.

As for Psionicist being more powerful than mages, their spell "empowering" system is way better than the mages ones, up until you start to maximize spells with your Red Wizard.
Also, some Wizard spells are just overpowered, like stinking cloud and late prismatic spells, also weird, chaos, confusion ...
Psionicists are great, don't get me wrong but they out damage Wizards up until they don't anymore.

I meant, +SR penetration ring. At least, +6 SR pen. ring do not work for sure.
It does not work. Which is pretty big since most enemies in map have 30-36 SR.


Psionists have high damage and no SR (!) spell Tornado.
Prismatic spells are resisted by SR still as almost all wizard damage spells.

Also energy ball with radius and max PP invested does more and better damage than Wizard can do with maximised spells. Radius is more, damage is more and you can change energy (Sonic being best, since it never resisted) and save (Fort or Ref) type.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Let's agree to disagree.

I like both and they have different spells and so far, I've never played without one or the other.
Prismatic spells are only resisted inside the castle, it's one fight and if you just get rid of the archers, the fight is won because they can't interrupt your mages anymore.

Also, even if a few mages resist them, they'd go blind reducing their movement and preventing them to 5 foot step, which is big already.
So, the spell kills half the mobs in his area of effects, half-kill a fourth of them and blinds most of the rest...
Which psionicist spell does that?

And you can always go accelerated spells > power surge > weird or prismatic something.
Boom! Problems solved.

Back to my Ironman run.
It almost just failed.
First fight outside the gates was extremely easy but then, the djinn didn't heal/restore spells slots me, fucker even if I'm fairly sure I picked the right choice (well, maybe I didn't).

Then, once inside, I chose not to disintegrate the archmage, first mistake, the fucker played second after my psionicist, I used accelerated spells + tornado and i'm not sure what else and then, he mass irresistible dance the 2 wizards, the druid, the fighter and the rogue ...

From this, it was close to game over, later, 2 mages were paralysed and had to cast still spells but fortunately, the gold dragon could raise deads (the fucker didn't have True Res...).
That's was quite lucky since I think I told him to fuck off.

Oh well, long story short, I raised/TR 8 times or so with the druid (TR scrolls) once raised by the dragon and the dragon tirelesly raised twice a turn (thrown accelerated spells on him with the psion)

I'm still in business!

 

[Tweed]

IT BEGINS!

Spoiler

 

[Dorateen]

Knights of the Chalice 2 review at gamebanshee:

Spoiler

Knights of the Chalice 2 Review (gamebanshee.com)

Introduction

Developed by Pierre Begue's Heroic Fantasy Games, Knights of the Chalice 2 (KotC2) is the long-awaited follow-up to Knights of the Chalice - an old-school CRPG from 2009.

At its core, the original Knights of the Chalice was a fantasy adventure that didn't try to reach for the stars, and only had three playable races and classes. But it more than made up for it with great encounter design, enemy AI, and a combat engine that was pretty faithful to Dungeons & Dragons.

And so, it's no wonder that a bigger and better sequel for that game was successfully funded through Kickstarter. And now that KotC2 is available for purchase, let's see if it can live up to its impressive predecessor.

Knights of the Chalice Who?

Much like the previous game, KotC2 is based on the Open Game License (OGL) version of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition, which I personally consider to be the pinnacle of D&D.

And while OGL itself is fairly limited in what it covers, it allows those using it to alter that basic ruleset. So, thanks to its crowdfunding campaign, KotC2 now features a total of 10 playable races and 22 classes. Some of those classes are your usual Fighters and Wizards, but a lot of them are quite unique and out-there, which sort of counterbalances the lack of multiclassing in the game.

On the martial side of things, you have classes like Gladiators and Death Knights. Spellcasters have Bishops and Warlocks. A number of classes are based around Psionics. And even some of the familiar classes can surprise you with new functionality.

Wizards, for example, seem to be inspired by Dragonlance and have several Moons affecting their powers. Rogues exist as the spell-casting variant. Bards get their own unique songs and song-like spells. And Sorcerers, instead of just being lazy Wizards, are positioned as a hybrid between a Wizard and a Cleric.

And this brings us to another important point - a lot of the stuff you think you know about D&D works slightly differently in KotC2.

All spellcasters learn several new spells per level here, and then can further expand their spellbooks by copying spell scrolls. But then, they don't need to further prepare those spells, and can simply cast a set number of spells of each level per day. The one big exception here are the Psionic classes where instead of spell slots you have one big pool of power points.

Attributes can also surprise you with how they work, especially with some of the hybrid classes where you can have a situation where a class needs Intelligence to cast arcane spells, Wisdom to cast divine spells, and Charisma to determine how many bonus spells of each type they get.

And when it comes to Skills, KotC2 doesn't use anything resembling your standard D&D skill system. Instead, a character's class, race, attributes, and even Cleric Domains give them access to Skills that can be used in conversations or when interacting with the environment.

In practical terms, this means that having a Kobold or a Halfling on your team will allow you to explore some tight passages, while a Half-Giant or anyone with over 20 Strength will be able to lift heavy objects and bust down doors.

All these changes, plus just the sheer scope of the options you have, can feel overwhelming, but in a good way. On the one hand, it's a familiar system, that is if you're familiar with D&D. But on the other, thanks to all the changes, everything is fresh and exciting. And with your party consisting of up to eight characters, you can spend quite a lot of time building your perfect team.


What's great about all this is that while the game is undeniably old-school, it uses the popular these days hyperlink system that allows you to click most of the stuff you see on your screen and get immediately directed to a detailed in-game explanation for what a feat does, which bonuses a particular race gets, or how a class works.

Now, the original Knights of the Chalice had this dated but charming top-down aesthetic reminiscent of Ultima VII. KotC2, on the other hand, looks like one of those websites you go to when you want to play some D&D online, complete with flat maps, mismatched assets, sudden perspective changes, and sprites that bear only a passing resemblance to what they're supposed to represent.

And the scary thing is, this is actually an improvement compared to what the game was originally supposed to look like, where character and monster models were portrayed as these circular tokens. You can still use these tokens as an option, and I did try using them, and I have to tell you that watching a bunch of pucks sliding across a flat surface is just as pathetic and disorienting as you would expect.

Thankfully, we now have proper sprites, even if they don't always fit. As in your Centaurs will still look like regular bipedal humanoids. But at least there, you can pretend that this is just like when you played pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons with your friends, and because you weren't insane to actually buy official D&D figurines, you were using a collection of Warhammer miniatures, Lego dudes, and Monopoly pieces for your characters.

So in the end, even though this is without a doubt one of the ugliest games ever made, when you're actually playing it, it feels surprisingly close to the original Knights of the Chalice, and that was very much a pleasant experience. I still would've preferred if this game simply iterated on the original's art style, but I guess it just wasn't in the cards.

Augury of Chaos

The main way to play the game right now is to boot up the Augury of Chaos module. It's a complete fantasy adventure for a party of six characters (and up to two NPCs) that will take you from level 1 all the way to around 20.

The story is pretty simple. Your party of adventurers rolls into a village beset on all sides by various forces of evil. You do battle with those forces of evil and in the process uncover a bigger conspiracy of evil. You confront the big bad before you're actually ready, and in accordance with his Villains Anonymous playbook instead of crushing you, he teleports you into a hostile environment. This gives you a chance to become stronger and come back later to settle the score.

Along the way, you'll deal with squabbling goblin tribes, explore ancient tombs, and battle all sorts of demons, beholders, and necromancers. You know, your standard fantasy dungeon crawler fare. But in a pleasant turn of events, the game actually gives you a lot of agency when dealing with those threats.

At times you can reach an understanding with some of the subterranean denizens, which allows you to trade or rest within their territory. Occasionally, you can use your skills to take out an enemy leader before manually dispatching the remaining rabble. There's even an encounter where you can recruit a former foe to become one of your companions.

The game is split into several self-contained chapters, each represented by what is essentially an expansive dungeon. There's a village and its surrounding areas, a sewer, a bigger sewer, and a stronghold captured by the forces of evil.


Without a doubt, the main attraction here is the combat. Each area is tightly packed with challenging encounters that will put your tactics and understanding of the underlying systems to the test. Much like in the original game, you can only rest here in predetermined spots, and only a limited number of times, which makes smart resource management very important.

When this module was originally released for the game's Kickstarter backers, it was generally considered to be very difficult. And while you can still experience that original level of difficulty, right now, the suggested Normal mode feels moderately challenging without becoming frustrating or unfair.

With Augury of Chaos being a high-level D&D campaign, there are several ways to make things tougher on the player. Something like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, for example, inflates monster stats and then asks you to build characters that can reliably overcome a long list of natural immunities and an Armor Class of 80.

Augury of Chaos instead plays around with creative enemy placement, overwhelming numbers, and spellcasters that start battles with a long list of active buffs. I find this to be the more satisfying approach. The only thing that feels cheesy there is the developer's annoying habit of granting some of the tougher enemies a bunch of spell-like abilities that for all intents and purposes are spells, but can be used as swift and free actions purely to make your life harder.

On the other end of it, you have access to a wide range of combat maneuvers that feel very impactful, the very much overpowered high-level spells, plenty of ways to increase your initiative scores and simply not give your enemies a chance to act, and a lot of powerful magic items.

And if you're not satisfied with the gear the game gives you, you can engage in some crafting that, just like back in Knights of the Chalice, allows you to create some absolutely monstrous weapons capable of trivializing any threat.

With combat being such an important part of the whole experience, we still shouldn't forget that Augury of Chaos has plenty of non-combat encounters in the form of puzzles, riddles, and secrets.

Seeing how the game was primarily designed by one guy, its puzzles are expectedly quite idiosyncratic. The designer is fond of both math and chess? Sure, here's a puzzle combining the two, because why not. And here's a psych test. Or a coded message you have to decipher. There's even a crossword puzzle at one point.

These puzzles act as a nice change of pace and, for the most part, are pretty fun. But if you don't like them, the game has a built-in hint system that eventually just feeds you the answer.

The one outlier there is the crossword puzzle. While most of the questions there are obvious, a few simply make no sense, and asking for a hint only gives you the first letter that you already have from answering some other question. Thankfully, you can find the solution online, so if you get stuck there, just ask Google for help.

Overall, Augury of Chaos is a neat dungeon-crawling adventure that will take you somewhere in the vicinity of 30 hours to complete and probably leave you hungry for more, even if its later stages become a bit samey due to the imbalanced nature of high-level D&D.

If that's the case, you can try beating this module with a different party or opting for a higher difficulty level. But apparently, more adventures are on the way.

Other Adventures

So, what do you do after you're done with Augury of Chaos? Well, you can also play through the Tutorial module. Apart from teaching you the ropes, it acts as a self-contained adventure that in some ways feels more well-rounded than Augury of Chaos. From my understanding, it was developed after Augury, which can only mean good things for the subsequent modules.


According to the game's Kickstarter campaign, at least three official modules are already planned. A mid-level adventure, a high-level adventure, and an epic adventure.

But in the meantime, you should know that the game is shipped with a powerful editor that allows you to create your own adventures. It's too early to tell just how many of those will get made eventually, but already, you can find some unofficial modules online.

Unfortunately, the game's mod hub seems to be tied to Nexus Mods, a place where you have to register an account before you can download anything, as opposed to Mod DB, where you can just download what you need without too much hassle.

Among the currently available stuff, Hearkenwold deserves a separate mention because it's essentially a standalone game ported into the KotC2 engine. It not being a commercial project, it can be a bit rough around the edges, its journal entries are lacking, its difficulty curve is all over the place, and it can be confusing to navigate. But it exists, it's free, fun, and offers plenty of interesting encounters.

Technical Information

I've already mentioned the game's visuals, so now let's consider its audio design. The music is fine. I'm pretty sure most of the tracks were present in the original Knights of the Chalice. Audio effects are in a similar ballpark. But voice acting, if you can call it that, is down there with the visuals.

Once you get over the fact that the game's main menu for some inexplicable reason keeps talking to you as you click it, you'll be presented with a very robust options screen that lets you adjust and fine-tune a great many things when it comes to both the game's difficulty and what it displays to you.

Unfortunately, this doesn't extend to the resolution, where the only options you have are fullscreen or a tiny window.

On the other end of this are the game's animations. The default animation speed is already fast, but the game allows you to increase it past ludicrous and all the way to plaid.

But what is perhaps the game's biggest technical issue is the fact that it's more prone to crashing than a legally blind octogenarian driving an F1 car. Pretty much anything you do can cause the game to crash, reinforcing the age-old wisdom to save often and in different slots. Thankfully, all this crashing mostly happens outside of combat, so if you quicksave right after you're done fighting, you shouldn't lose your progress.

At least the game is pretty quick to save and load. Still, hopefully, some future patches will make it more stable.

One other annoying problem mostly plaguing the later parts of the game are all the slowdowns that occur when the AI tries to figure out what to do, or when you move the cursor around a bunch of enemies, triggering some calculations regarding potential attacks of opportunity.

Conclusion

The original Knights of the Chalice had a simplistic story, neat old-school visuals, barebones character development, and great combat design. Now Knights of the Chalice 2, and in particular its Augury of Chaos module, trades in the first game's pleasant aesthetics for a greatly expanded list of character-building options.

The end result is an engaging fantasy adventure that feels like both a faithful adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons and a fresh system at the same time. If you like CRPGs and can get over the visuals, there's no reason for you not to pick this up.

 

[Tweed]

and I have to tell you that watching a bunch of pucks sliding across a flat surface is just as pathetic and disorienting as you would expect.

 

[Reinhardt]

yeah, stopped reading there

 

[kinzadza]

+1

 

[JarlFrank]

Knights of the Chalice 2 review at gamebanshee:



Knights of the Chalice 2 Review (gamebanshee.com)

And the scary thing is, this is actually an improvement compared to what the game was originally supposed to look like, where character and monster models were portrayed as these circular tokens. You can still use these tokens as an option, and I did try using them, and I have to tell you that watching a bunch of pucks sliding across a flat surface is just as pathetic and disorienting as you would expect.

Another one filtered by the tokens lol

I have no idea why people dislike them, the tokens have incredible visual clarity, makes the battlefield easy to read.

 

[Sunri]

Knights of the Chalice 2 review at gamebanshee:



Knights of the Chalice 2 Review (gamebanshee.com)

And the scary thing is, this is actually an improvement compared to what the game was originally supposed to look like, where character and monster models were portrayed as these circular tokens. You can still use these tokens as an option, and I did try using them, and I have to tell you that watching a bunch of pucks sliding across a flat surface is just as pathetic and disorienting as you would expect.

Another one filtered by the tokens lol

I have no idea why people dislike them, the tokens have incredible visual clarity, makes the battlefield easy to read.

People dislike them because they look like shit, simple as that.

 

[Sacibengala]

Knights of the Chalice 2 review at gamebanshee:



Knights of the Chalice 2 Review (gamebanshee.com)

And the scary thing is, this is actually an improvement compared to what the game was originally supposed to look like, where character and monster models were portrayed as these circular tokens. You can still use these tokens as an option, and I did try using them, and I have to tell you that watching a bunch of pucks sliding across a flat surface is just as pathetic and disorienting as you would expect.

Another one filtered by the tokens lol

I have no idea why people dislike them, the tokens have incredible visual clarity, makes the battlefield easy to read.

People are stupid. They like pretty, not practical stuff.

 

[Dorateen]

"Pretty is as pretty does."

Dwarven saying.