KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[anvi]

The module maker is so easy to use! Are you allowed to make anything you want or is licensing a concern? I wouldn't mind making an Eye of the Beholder 2 remake or something.

 

[Serus]

The module maker is so easy to use! Are you allowed to make anything you want or is licensing a concern? I wouldn't mind making an Eye of the Beholder 2 remake or something.

A turn based EotB2? If someone pulled this off that would be interesting for sure. It would be only a loose adaptation but still a fine idea.

 

[Tolias]

OK I just reached the encounter with the bi@tch that summons Fizzarmelech and it is kicking my ass.
Difficulty is hard. Party is level 9:

Cloudtop giant fighter. Mostly focused on tripping things with a reach stick and beating ass. And shooting people.

High elf rogue. Opens doors I guess. Occasionally will get a good flank attack in.

Dwarf samurai. Also beats ass and shoots people.

Storm Warrior water elemental npc. Casts stuff and beats dudes. The swimming thing has been useful.

Mantis druid aeromancer. Casts stuff, mostly wind and lightnings.

Argossian human bishop. Healbot. Surprisingly good with smite. Tried to focus on turning, but turning is meh. Domains: Healing, Magic, Reach.

Kobold sorcerer npc. Kind of underwhelming caster. He has variety of spells at least.

Stygian human psion. Blasts and disables all day long. Has really been my favorite part of the playthrough.

Everyone is lvl 9 apart from SW who is 8.

OK the issue I'm having with the fight is that the difficulty jumped about a whole league upwards suddenly? I did pretty much every extra quest/encounter possible (apart from killing the hags so far) and going from the lizardman king to fighting 50 enemies with more than a dozen spell-casters is kinda overkill???

Ofc I am attempting the fight with surprise round + spider wizard.

I can get some good AoE in, like resilient webs, insect plague, psi fog, holy smites, energy blasts, fireballs. The big winner is Chaos cast by the spider bro, which can reliably berserk 10+ dudes who will start beating their friends. I can kill like 20 enemies in the first wave. The first problem is Fizzarmelech. He is immune to so much stuff. I can't reliably manage him for more than 3 turns. At some point he will start throwing his aoe bullshit and wreck my stuff. Similarly, I can't disable or silence ALL the enemy casters, which means that sooner rather than later the stuff that is keeping me alive is getting dispelled (webs, instect plague, berserk) OR I am getting pelted with some aoe. I can't take the time to protect against all possible elements... plus only two of my casters have Mass Prot/Energy, something I am deeply regretting now.

Ok I feel better now that I wrote this.

WHAT the fuck can I do to make this fight more manageable? I have tried to retreat to the small room behind the corridor, but a couple of people inevitably get left behind...

Pls NO SPOILERS for content after Fizzarmelech if you reply to this!

 

[jungl]

read 3-4 or those high level scrolls you been collecting. its better to initially blast and kill as much stuff as you can then disable a manageable small amount of enemies. You can beat the girl before she summons the ice devil. If the devil is summoned you have to get your giant wrestling it.

 

[anvi]

Which one is Fizzarmelech?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Which one is Fizzarmelech?

Dude probably meant Fizzy Bubblech

 

[Desiderius]

Welp, the Half-Sal only check was 50 EXP and getting the info that it's really hot down there. No shit. Once you get down there the Salamander boss doesn't even recognize your Sal half. No hapas for him. You do get this:



But not nearly enough reason to go Half-Sal I don't think, although he's done good work. Reach Disarm owns alot of tough things, but don't need Half-Sal for that.

Half Giant will move into that slot. Time to try the Stillfinger Halfling Ranger. Here's what the HG was doing when I restarted. Crit Shot vs Ghost Dragon:



Don't have Force yet and figured out I forgot to pick up Enhance Ability on any of my casters as well. I think Force would add another 12d6?

Here you get an idea of some of the battlefield control Ranger can offer:



Fired up some Sleep and Glue Arrows on a couple tough fights and really turned the tide.

Speaking of Turning, here's a unique dialogue from Turning Domain:



Can also do this at level one (this is the third turn of the fight):



That's with max Elementals for EXP as well. The little Halfling Bishop nuked like eight of them. EDIT: looks like he's level two since I forgot to pick up Improved Turning at character creation. The extra 2d6 is from the Domain so would work on level one as well.

On the next turn the Half-Sal Sam took a five-foot step and Whirlwind killed the Fire Druid and both Scorps thanks to Half-Sal Fire damage. Very good early no doubt.

As for why 22 Search?



Thankfully don't need Elf for that since Familiar can get you to 22 then your INT takes care of the rest. Trying a Necro this time. Somebody said something about triggering waves of Undead with the skull in the Second Mission? Haven't been able to do that yet. Skull just crumbles and gives me 2 HP.

 

[Tweed]

Well so far aside from crashes and people dying this has been a curbstomp. I did most of the village stuff at level one, then I leveled up to three for the hag cave death snare, ran the sewers through level three until the arena where I leveled everyone up to six and now I'm about to enter chapter 3. I could level everyone to 11 or so now if I wanted to, but I'm holding out until it's absolutely necessary.

 

[Serus]

Argossian human bishop. Healbot. Surprisingly good with smite. Tried to focus on turning, but turning is meh. Domains: Healing, Magic, Reach.

You probably would do turning better with turning domain, it boosts the damage quite nicely at least early on . But that is in theory, I went with a cleric but this time magic, mystic.


A propos or not, I remember a fun little bug from abandoned playthrough, maybe it's known and certainly is harmless:
In Finchbury, If you pay the spiders to release the boy and THEN return to the cave and kill the spiders, the boys becoming free scene plays again. Doesn't cause any problems, not even the ability to collect twice the prize.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I personally just don't like the tokens. I would have preferred if he found some way to stick with the old sprites and art-style of KOTC1 and improved them somewhat with some better, simple animations for attacking and casting and what not.

He clearly said it was too expensive to go for animated 2D sprites due to the expanded bestiary.

My custom token here disagrees

But which do you prefer, the foot or the brunette?

WHAT the fuck can I do to make this fight more manageable? I have tried to retreat to the small room behind the corridor, but a couple of people inevitably get left behind...

You've probably been hoarding acorns of earthquake, now is the time to use them.
As for the demon, you could focus on pizarra with a disable spell like stinking cloud + a fast fighter to corner her.
I prefer to wait for the ice demon to be summoned for extra xp and loot but then, you'll probably need to flank him, a summon behind is a good idea and a tough fighter/barbarian/DK in front with a skewer weapon.

Skewing is life death!

 

[Tweed]

I just finished third chapter opening battle, took four tries. Burned my acorns and a tornado blast plus one of the druid scrolls I'd been hording, also had to burn a true rez because fuck reloading. I never let Pizzle get the demon summon off, don't care enough about his meager xp or the weapon he drops.

 

[AdolfSatan]

RE: Ugly tokens

If enough codexers postulate for a joint effort, we could generate a token pack using D&D bestiaries to replace all the uggos bundled with the game while keeping a consistent look. Since it won't be a commercial release, and it'll be adjoined to no one's name, we don't have to worry about its legal status.

 

[JarlFrank]

My custom token here disagrees

But which do you prefer, the foot or the brunette?

The music

 

[Desiderius]

Argossian human bishop. Healbot. Surprisingly good with smite. Tried to focus on turning, but turning is meh. Domains: Healing, Magic, Reach.

You probably would do turning better with turning domain, it boosts the damage quite nicely at least early on . But that is in theory, I went with a cleric but this time magic, mystic.


A propos or not, I remember a fun little bug from abandoned playthrough, maybe it's known and certainly is harmless:
In Finchbury, If you pay the spiders to release the boy and THEN return to the cave and kill the spiders, the boys becoming free scene plays again. Doesn't cause any problems, not even the ability to collect twice the prize.

Not theory here, I've been doing it and very happy with it. The bonus continues to scale throughout the game effectively giving you 1d6 per level instead of every two levels since you get the extra 2d6 right away and making it much more likely you'll beat the save for full damage. No fuss no muss AoE damage and heals up your Elemental/Outsider companions even if you're not fighting any undead, outsiders, elementals, aberrations, constructs, or dragons though those categories cover many of the toughest situations you'll face. Bishop already pwns humanoids pretty well. Bishop only I think tho.

Magic + Turning worked fine (Turning is really good at the hardest early fights and there is some unique diaolgue - Holy Water potions sell for a good bit) picking up Mysticism at lvl five in time for Prayer but this time trying Human Bishop and skipping Magic altogether to get Reach at five and Mysticism at one.

 

[Achiman]

How close am I to the end? I'm up to the second fight at the castle. Every fight now is taking like 2 hours to do. how many more are there?

Also anyone else getting crashes when you cast the insect swarm spell. Reliably crashes the game for me. Computer will go into 'thinking' and never come out of it. You can still bring up the main menu but the game itself has frozen.

 

[rojay]

is the inventory clunky or am I drunk already ? I have troubles drawing equipmen in the inventoty slots

You might be drunk, we can't know, but you are also correct. It seems that the areas you need to drag an item to or click aren't identical (or are smaller) than the buttons you see on screen. I just have to do it slightly more precisely that in most other programs.

The part of the item you are moving that registers in the game is the top left corner. So drag the top left corner into the inventory slot/another character's portrait, etc. and release the mouse button. The item will be moved/transferred.

 

[anvi]

Yeah those castle gate battles took me ages. And a lot of crashes, although the update fixed a lot. They are seriously epic battles though, never seen anything like it any other games.

Spoiler

The good news is those 2 battles are probably the hardest and the remaining fights aren't as bad. Although there are still several more battles and the finale is pretty tough. It was really testing my efficiency with rests and stuff. If you want more spoilerish, there is another dragon fight once you get into the castle, he was chilling out at the back of the castle courtyard and comes active when you get close and he summons lots of allies. Then there's a 3 small but hard fights at the back wall of the castle, and they are pretty close together so you gotta be careful to get them 1 by 1. Then there's another tough fight in a building, close quarters, v interesting. You get a campfire as a reward! And then the final building has 2 or 3 fights and the finale is tough. There may be 1 more random battle I forgot but that's mostly it.

 

[PorkaMorka]

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.

Tokens are lazy and insulting, because at the same cost in dollars and computing resources you could have had rectangular tiles showing the full body of the character or monster.

My favorite kind of video game art is 2d low resolution tiles with either no animation or one attack frame only, as found in the Gold Box games or Dominions III. But I find tokens extremely off-putting.

The key difference is that traditional square tiles actually show a representation of the character, even if it's a borderline stick figure. That gives your imagination something to work with, you aren't just making stuff up.

Each FRUA sprite tells you a lot about a character, even though it only has a limited number of pixels to work with.

Some of them aren't even very aesthetically pleasing, but they still convey a huge amount of information about a character. This guy's a knight, this one's a barbarian, cocky swarthoid, fighter cleric, archer, stronk woman, light armor swordsman, thief, black robed man of mystery with a sword, cleric, evil cleric, white wizard, red wizard, black wizard, dwarf, hobbit fighter, hobbit thief, blah blah blah.

This gives you a starting point, some information to build your understanding of the character on. The developer and the artist are stimulating your imagination with their art, they aren't forcing you to imagine everything from an undefined starting point.

There are a lot less complaints about the art in competing D&D game Low Magic Age, even though it's kind of uninspired and sourced from some pre-done asset pack. Even though it uses static tile images without animations. Because it still represents the characters and monsters like a normal video game does, while KOTC2 just gives you some prosper fantasy clip art head floating in a circle.

 

[Serus]

I think the FRUA or other low res 2d is ok but those are'n tokens and would look out of place in the game. Which means that you are not criticising the tokens in game specifically but the whole decision of making the game in a boardgame/p&p style. Whatever you may think of gold box/frua graphics - they are going for different aesthetics than KotC2. In other words, you think that this aesthetic cannot work for a computer game at all. I'm not so sure.

The problem is not with the chosen style itself but, in my opinion, with the execution. Average or worse quality and inconsistent - even within the token set. Big monsters are shown with full boy, most other stuff only portraits. Some are looking better other worse. Everything looking strangely as being made in lower resolution than the levels.

TL;DR: Tokens are not pretty but, in theory, they could be.

 

[Darth Canoli]

There are a lot less complaints about the art in competing D&D game Low Magic Age, even though it's kind of uninspired and sourced from some pre-done asset pack. Even though it uses static tile images without animations. Because it still represents the characters and monsters like a normal video game does, while KOTC2 just gives you some prosper fantasy clip art head floating in a circle.

And?
Have you played the game?
On a scale from 0 to 1000, Low Magic Age Encounter design rating is -2 000 000.
Dungeon exploration is also terrible.
Quest are generic fetch quests outside of the main story, which wasn't really interesting either last time I played.

You dislike the art, fine, enjoy LMA then...

By the way, are you a backer?
Because if you're not, you better shut your trap since Pierre never hid 2D animated sprites with the new extended bestiary was too expensive.

Anyway, the only way to fix it is to make a big donation, thanks in advance.

 

[Serus]

There are a lot less complaints about the art in competing D&D game Low Magic Age, even though it's kind of uninspired and sourced from some pre-done asset pack. Even though it uses static tile images without animations. Because it still represents the characters and monsters like a normal video game does, while KOTC2 just gives you some prosper fantasy clip art head floating in a circle.

And?
Have you played the game?
On a scale from 0 to 1000, Low Magic Age Encounter design rating is -2 000 000.
Dungeon exploration is also terrible.
Quest are generic fetch quests outside of the main story, which wasn't really interesting either last time I played.

You dislike the art, fine, enjoy LMA then...

By the way, are you a backer?
Because if you're not, you better shut your trap since Pierre never hid 2D animated sprites with the new extended bestiary was too expensive.

Anyway, the only way to fix it is to make a big donation, thanks in advance.

Darth are you going mental now?
"You can't criticise something because a different thing is worse in another product". What?
"You can only praise a game unless you are a backer". I seems that a customer that paid for a product cannot criticise it. It is an exclusive for backers only now!

<double Picard>.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Darth are you going mental now?
"You can't criticise something because a different thing is worse in another product". What?
"You can only praise a game unless you are a backer". I seems that a customer that paid for a product cannot criticise it. It is an exclusive for backers only now!

<double Picard>.

It's not the first time I see mentions of LMA, there are a few in Gog/Steam reviews.
At the very least, if you want to make comparisons, compare the game to something of equal quality.
LMA dungeons and encounter design is garbage, everything else is mediocre at best.

As for the backer thing, the only way to fix the art is money.
There were 2 kickstarter goals to get 2D sprites animated in 2 and 4 directions.
None of which were reached.

 

[Efe]

he made a release on steam = money
he could have made more with better and consistent art whether its token or sprites.

 

[Grunker]

graphic whores itt make me sick

tokens are the true pnp experience

only possible improvement is if all tokens were black marker text on white background with coffee or coke brown stains to emulate your friends' vain attempts at personalizing the designator for their warrior pc on your beige wax battlemat used for any and all encounters in your moms basement

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The tokens are gaudy. Not a graphics whore, just don't like 'em.

Goes back to playing ZapM in ASCII mode.