ToEE is fucking awesome bros

[CrazyLoon]

Biggest problem with TOEE is you never really get the chance to fight interesting battles due to how surprisingly short the game is. Granted, the implementation of DnD is second to none, somehow the game anticlimactically ends right when you are leveled enough to do some serious and interesting battles. I recently finished it and I can honestly say, 95% of the time you are just hacking monsters away with your fighters and your clerics casting cure wounds, the remaining 5% is the occasionally somewhat interesting battles. Raising the level cap doesn't help either, when your opponents are only hill giants or giant frogs, which again, more boring hack and slash. Now if only Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale has this turn based combat.

 

[Sitra Achara]

The locked room near the throne had nothing significant in the P&P module - a few broken things and a couple of robes. I'd say it's just another example of Troika blindly sticking to the module.

Re. the Temple, one of the new things in Co8 is that the Temples on level 2 react to a rival faction leader being slaughtered by regrouping into a defensive stance. If you want to see the before and after, get the robes and chat around before killing the leaders. If you want the regroup battles to be hardest, avoid killing the mobs on level 2 before killing a faction leader.
Now, a level 7 group will probably still find those battles easy with the proper spells/preparation, just not as easy as it used to be.

Re. Spugnoir, yes, you can rerecruit him at the inn, and his stats remain.

 

[kaizoku]

Life's a bitch!

When devs change something from the original (eg: FO3 removing TB and isometric view among other things; JA "true" remakes replacing TB with RT if I recall; etc, etc) everyone bitches.
When devs stay true to the original people still bitch.

I'm not saying it's good or bad that they tried to stick to the module.
Just saying that you can't please everyone.

 

[Roguey]

@The Wizard -

You think you're her equal? You are a WORM! A MAGGOT! You are not WORTHY to tend to the smallest of her beloved children! She will crush your puny body and pour your blood into the loam of her bedchamber!

And all you notice is "bedchamber."

Oh right so wearing the robes lets you avoid bs fights? I just freed some orcs and some slave women, I only gave them 10G though and they called me cheap. I should have murdered them.

Yeah, they work as disguises. I see you missed out on the robes in the moathouse (you can use those to get by the ogre or preferably get in a better position to attack him while he just stands there). Once you do a single quest for any one faction you don't need the robes any more to run around unmolested (except against the encounters who are unaligned with anyone).

 

[Cynic]

I got the robes in the moathouse...but I just don't like seeing my awesome dudes in robes all the time. Looks ghey.

 

[Sitra Achara]

Life's a bitch!

When devs change something from the original (eg: FO3 removing TB and isometric view among other things; JA "true" remakes replacing TB with RT if I recall; etc, etc) everyone bitches.
When devs stay true to the original people still bitch.

I'm not saying it's good or bad that they tried to stick to the module.
Just saying that you can't please everyone.

Module fidelity can be good or bad, it depends. Some things were justifiably altered by Troika, e.g. 10x10 rooms, which Troika has wisely merged/expanded, and the overly large elemental nodes, which have been cut down.

 

[The Wizard]

@Roguey: for the record, me and various psilocybin containing fungi are in a very close relationship. it might not always be the nicest one, but every great relationship has its ups and downs.

and yeah, i have no idea what i was thinking when i said that maybe icewind dale 2s music was better. just listened to the soundtrack again and the main menu music was great, but the rest is just EPIC SHIT that can't compete with the ambient tracks of toee. the hommlet theme alone shits all over iwd2 tracks. most of them are not even 2 minutes long and are most likely horrible when looped over and over again. so yeah, was talking out of my ass.

 

[Cynic]

I found a couple of orcs in the temple, asked them to join me and they've done pretty well. Tuelk and Pintark. One thing, don't let Tuelk die and then talk to Pintark, even if you've raised him from the dead, Pintark gets all sad that his bro died and will leave the party saying "Me no go no where now" even if Tuelk is still alive and in your party! Also, if you ask them to leave at any point...well I couldn't get them to re join. Also, I just stumbled on the tower battle and even though I was pretty damn high level (7th average) it was still heaps of fun.

 

[sser]

Wearing robes in the temple did not have the effect I thought it would. Oh well, KILL ALL THE THINGS.

 

[Cynic]

Did you wear the right robes in the right place? I read that if you have a Paladin you can't help any of the Temples without becoming fallen.

 

[Cynic]

Ok so the Fire Temple high priest asked me to grovel before him. I promptly murdered him right after. Are these guys important at all? Or can I just kill them all? I guess they are all evil so killing them is kind of the point right? I'll see what the water and air temple have to offer.

 

[Shannow]

Ok so the Fire Temple high priest asked me to grovel before him. I promptly murdered him right after. Are these guys important at all? Or can I just kill them all? I guess they are all evil so killing them is kind of the point right? I'll see what the water and air temple have to offer.

It's a Troika game. You can kill everything and still finish the game (at least after finding the Tempel).

 

[Melcar]

Yeah, just kill the motherfuckers. They're evil anyway, so may as well go all Biowhorian on them.

 

[Cynic]

Yeah I reloaded and tried the other way, but I had already killed his henchmen (Antonio I think) and then I think he tried to distastefully rape me so I had to kill him anyway. Will go back to my original save where I killed him right off the bat. Sadly those Noble Salamanders are destroying me right after. Need to pre buff for that fight...I'm not a fan of it but constant fireballs on my mages no matter WHERE they are on the map is a bit bullshit. I wasn't aware fireballs can pass through doors, walls, space and time etc.,

 

[Cynic]

Got a crafting question. So I have a cleric who is level 9. I have Lareth's Staff of Striking which is +2. When I select craft arms and armour, I have no option to make it +3, but I do have an option to give it defending or mighty cleaving. On the other hand, I have a +3 Rod of Smiting which is my preferred weapon of choice. However, I cannot add defending or mighty cleaving to this, the options are red and I can't select them. Of course, it doesn't tell me WHY this is the case. So if a weapon is +3, does it require more XP or gold to add stuff on top when compared to a +2 weapon?

 

[sser]

Hey what level were you when you first hit the temple? I find myself avoiding a lot of fights as I meander around. Namely getting crushed by armies of trolls (IIRC). I went down some stairs at one point and a bunch of lost clouds kicked my ass. I also tried getting to the temple real early by having that one guy get me to the backdoor, except that fight there was so far beyond my party's capacity to fight that I had to reload and do the long-route. Saying I just suck at the game with my shitty parties is an acceptable answer.

 

[Cynic]

I think I am over leveled. I was around level 5/6 when I got to the temple, now I am level 7/8 and just going down to level 3. It's been mostly fine, but I just had a bitch of a fight with some OP'd bugbears. I smashed all the temples...Water was definitely the hardest and most fun. Fire was tough because of the fucking Noble Salamanders, but some resist energy buffs sorted it out. Air and Earth were a cake walk.

 

[Shannow]

On crafting: Never really understood the conditions in ToEE since they aren't really documented, but yes, IIRC, improving magical items requires more XP/gold the more powerful they are.
On difficulty:
1. If you got to the temple early and find it too hard the obvious course of action is to do stuff somewhere else first.
2. The temple is full of fighter type enemies with so so reflex saves and bad will saves. Abuse that.
3. Use the ingame help for info on spells/feats/etc since it's a better source than the manual or the normal info. Coup de Grace trolls when they're down. (Just saying that because it took me 2 playthroughs to find out )

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

fucking Noble Salamanders

Protection From Energy: Fire.

 

[Cynic]

Yeah I did that of course but they smashed me a couple of times first. Just obliterated Hedrack, the guy only got one turn. After smashing him and his crap minions, I went online and realized that this fight is meant to be a lot harder...if he lives long enough. On well, Senshock was pretty challenging, got him eventually though. I've kicked Spugnoir out and picked up Kella. Not sure about it yet but we'll see. Can you get her some sort of Hill Giant weapon? Since her hands arent magical she can't hit anything for much.

 

[Cynic]

About crafting, I've kind of observed that it's best to make your arms and armour +3 before anything else. Mostly for me, what was limiting my choices was lack of money. But I sold a crapload of gems and jewellry and now I'm rich biatch!

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Are you playing with Co8? If yes you should be able to loot everything due to the extradimensional chest. Apart from that you can pickpocket. For instance at the very begiining in Hommlet if you pickpocket some key NPCs like the innkeeper, mage in the tower etc you can easily make >100 platinum. Plus the scrolls and the missile wand from the mage. Pretty good for early on. You will get a lot of cash for rescuing Prince Tremmel. That should be good to craft some stuff. This post contained spoilers. Some monsters require holy weapons, so I can recommend to craft holy axiomatic flaming keen weapons.

ps: I've forgot mighty cleaving. Put this on the wepons too, but only if the character doesn't already have the great cleave feat.

 

[Cynic]

Yeah, playing with co8. I actually totally forgot about pick pocketing and didn't put any points into sleight of hand until recently. I wouldn't want to have done that early on though, that's a bit cheap IMO, would have made the game too easy.

Yeah I've only got 1 holy weapon currently. My cleric took the war domain so he won't be able to craft them sadly. I have a holy spiked chain, and I think a holy spear. I rescued Thrommel but he hasn't sent his reward yet. Does he give you a holy weapon by any chance?

 

[Terpsichore]

I've always wanted to finish this game but i never managed to continue playing past the moathouse (sometimes i quit just after exploring the town), the game feels like a huge drag and nice at the same time.

 

[Cynic]

I strongly recommend it Terpsichore. However, if you're looking for some kind of epic story and brilliant writing, you won't find it here. The game does feel epic, but it achieves this through different ways.

I think the combat, party customization and world in of itself are huge positives for this game. The new content Co8 has added has basically been really good as well. Hickory Branch particularly was awesome, a good size and some excellent encounters.

I think I'm almost finished...and if I had the time, I would definitely be rolling a brand new party and play through it again. Because the game's story is quite "loose" it makes it possible for you to actually role play a bit (partly in your head) and I think this is quite cool. I played through this time with a neutral party, and I can already see that if I went through again with a fully good or fully evil party, the game would feel quite a bit different. Sure you have to kind of use your imagination a bit, but I found that to be fun and refreshing when compared to being hand held and led through the game on a path which was totally predetermined.

I'm probably going to write a review after I'm done.