TOEE is orgasmic

[anvi]

I completed it when it was new ish, but I'm playing it again with the Circle of Eight mod. Game is so damn good, full fat RPG, maybe the best ever made, certainly for me it is up there.

It has plenty of things that annoy me too though. Like when you sell 100 pieces of loot, you have to drag each item from inventory to merchant's window... No sell hotkey. Argh. And WASD doesn't do anything, resolution isn't very customizable so I am playing with it stretched, etc.. etc..

Also the Hommlet is boring as fuck, but that's why I installed this mod, it lets you skip the whole thing and adds a newbie dungeon you can do instead which gives the same xp. The first level is pretty tedious and not very fun. All characters miss their melee about 99% of the time, and you only have a few spells in the whole party. But some reload scumming and you can get by. New dungeon has a bunch of undead and I have a Cleric so Turn Undead rekt them.

At level 2 it gets much more interesting, I have good spells and gave my Warrior specialization for his Longsword so he hits stuff more often now. I love how it is tuned to be really tough, enemies can kill you with one hit. Save scumming is essential, but you muddle through and keep making progress, and eventually I dinged level 3 which feels amazing. Party is really strong now. Most RPGs have worthless low levels, but this game really makes the most of it. You are level 2 for a long time and really have to overcome the harshness which is addictive.

I completed it once before and then I played it again several years ago and got bored half way because the combat becomes a simple routine, summon a bunch of uber pets, click a few things, hack away until everything is dead. Rest. Repeat 1000 times. I may end up feeling like that again this time but I am determined to play it through to the end. Mostly I am driven by my respect for how hardcore it is compared to other games. Here are the things which make this game awesome, most of which I forgot, and I respect now more than ever after having so many decades of similar RPG that don't have most of this stuff...

• Real time exploration, goes to turn based for combat. Perfect.
  
  
• Range on weapons really matters. With a sword you fight toe to toe. With a spear you can hit stuff really far away. Short spear in between. Also fighting a huge ogre is dangerous! Got tank next to him, cleric behind my tank, usually the enemy can't touch the cleric. But against the ogre, he can just reach over the tank and smash the cleric.
  
  
• You get so many options! 5-foot-step which lets you move a bit to get your spell caster out of range of an enemy so it wont interrupt you when trying to cast. It has some downsides though. You can attack, attempt a trip, coup de grace, full attack, fight defensively, all out defense, feint, ready vs approach or spell. FULL TACTICAL FUN!
  
  
• Enemies and players can be diseased, poisoned, level drained, all that good shit.

I miss games like this :-( It really refreshes my memory about how much deeper RPGs used to be.

 

[Lilura]

I like how you can reshuffle your initiative order.

I don't recommend Co8, though. It's either patch 2 or Temple+ for me.

Co8 and Temple+ are compatible, though.

 

[anvi]

I like how you can reshuffle your initiative order.

I don't recommend Co8, though. It's either patch 2 or Temple+ for me.

Co8 and Temple+ are compatible, though.

Thanks. Yeah the reshuffle really helps. There are so many features I completely forgot about or didn't even know about in the first place. I have left the 'tips' thing on because it teaches a lot. I never would have noticed you can set waypoints for your characters otherwise. Do you think I should start again without Co8? Or just install Temple+?

 

[Lilura]

Depends on what you want. Co8 and Temple+ change a lot about the game.

Co8 3.0.4 is the least invasive Co8 that still has lots of bugfixes.

EDIT - I'm a purist when it comes to ToEE, Fallout and JA2. I played ToEE patch2 for years, on and off. I got used to the bugs, glitches and exploits.

 

[anvi]

Wow just installed Temple+ very slick! Lots of useful extra options, game runs faster too. I think I will just carry on and hope Co8 doesn't screw anything that would bother me. I'll probably play the whole thing again some day with just temple+ and try prestige classes. Never played one of those before.

 

[Lilura]

You should post a few of your builds. Be interesting to see how they fare compared to my stock builds.

And yeah, re-startitus can cause you to lose motivation. You're motivated to play now, so just keep going.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Orc cleric of orc gods (i think strength and war domains) with fighter levels is really good Giabt strength and attack buffs from cleric domains, lots of feats from fighter and etc

 

[hoothoot]

Sounds like kotc might have to give it a try sometime

 

[Valky]

Lots of in this thread.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Also Barbarian 1 / Wizard 9 with reach weapon is MUCH better than wizard 10

 

[Max Damage]

BarbWizard with Improved Trip is legit, OTOH you lose some spell slots and an extra bonus feat so it depends on what kind of wizard you need. It's hard to beat pure caster wizard at efficiency as long as he's not at the front of party.

 

[thesheeep]

And yeah, re-startitus can cause you to lose motivation.

So much this... ToEE is one of those games I tend to start again every now and then.
And invest a lot of time into planning and building my party (and installing mods, etc.).
But then when I actually start the game and see the same starting environment I must've seen dozens of times by now, knowing absolutely everything in the first few hours by heart, my motivation takes a dive so deep it could pick up a New Zealand sheep and head back*.

It's the same with BG1, BG2 and some other games. Just can't really play them any more, cause I restarted too often.


It's probably also the reason I actually managed to play Skyrim+Requiem+alternative starts mods so often - those alternative starts are worth pure gold to me. More games should implement alternative starts on their own.

Spoiler

*Fun fact: Most of Europe, when you'd dig a tunnel straight through the Earth there, ends up somewhere around New Zealand, with Madrid right on top of it.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I used 4 guys with reach weapons + cleave/great cleave/combat reflexes in my last playthrough and crushed my ennemies and saw them driven before me by just letting them eat AoO. Didn't hear the lamentation of their women though. Being able to melee with reach weapons on top of that is a serious break of 3.5 rules and makes them totally overpowered.

 

[Lilura]

Yeah, in stock ToEE your Glaive's got donut reach. And Great Cleave stacks with Whirlwind. Go and rip bugbear hordes new assholes.

 

[Max Damage]

My only smal gripe with polearms (and anything that's not bastard sword) is that they lose 1,5 strength bonus damage due to becoming one-handed when you cast Enlarge Person on holder, otherwise yeah, you can outrange ogres/trolls and ettins iirc and/or do safe trips w/o Improved Trip.

 

[anvi]

Regretting Co8 already I finished the Moathouse, killed bad guy and his posse, looted all their shit. I survived but used every spell including every heal. But now I can't leave the moathouse without getting ambushed by a huge battle CO8 added. Dumb de dumb dumb... I need to leave to rest but also sell all the shit I looted. Annoying. Now I need to try to rest indoors and get endlessly ambushed by shit.

 

[Valky]

Git gud.

 

[anvi]

I won, close call though jeez.. Got an ok rest indoors which was 2 of the big snakes, I managed to kill them without taking much damage or using spells. Still had to fight about 12 enemies with everyone heavily encumbered and not at full HP. I could have left all my gear behind but I can't be bothered with the hassle of dragging so many items to that little drop icon >.<

Managed to win anyway, had to use a scroll and some potions.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Homlett is definitely weak. I do all of the fetch for it though, because you get get your party to Level 3 (or VERY close to it) before you even leave (excluding spider grove). After that going to the field and turning all the undead is a great way to get XP. If you have a decent thief, you can also rob the major threat in the area without combat. Polearm masters are where it's at. I almost always have two fighter/rogues with combat reflexes. The flurry of trips, sneak attacks, and AoO are glorious. I like to run a party a bit leaner to level quicker and bankroll XP for crafting. Being one character down lets you hit the level cap much faster, which means ARTIFACT CREATION. It's majorly cash positive, so as long as you can make the first one, say, Gauntlets of Dexterity, your only limit will be available experience. I had to literally keep Hendrick alive long enough to get him to call Iuz, then when Iuz showed up he was sandwiched between two uber polearm +3 Holy polearm masters. Absolutely wrecked haus.

 

[anvi]

Good to know! I am running a party of 5 too, I didn't like the sound of the people you can recruit. So I hoped I would get a bit more xp as 5. It is working out well. I've War, Cleric, Rogue, Wiz, Druid. The War tanks pretty well, is probably the biggest damage contributor in most fights too. But mostly he is just there to soak up damage and attention. Cleric has quite a lot of heals, and Bless, so is keeping us all alive so far. Rogue is not great so far, but if I get her behind enemies she usually lands a decent hit or two. Got a lot better at level 3. Also I have a wolf companion that trips enemies over, and the rogue reks stuff that is prone. Wizzy is ok, misses big spells sometimes which annoys me, but mostly he is good for one big battle and then needs a rest. And Druid is kind of my best character. I love having some backup heals in case my Cleric gets smashed. I just give him a few heals which is enough to get the cleric back up if I fuck up. He has no nukes yet, but has a bunch of monster summoning spells which I really like. The Earth elemental seems to smash things quite well and can take a bit of a beating. I also use the Water elemental which never seems to hit but can take about 20 attacks from enemies and dodges most of them. Also the Druid seems to be able to take a bit of a beating, and he has a spear which is awesome.

I specced my warrior for longsword but I might try to switch to polearm once I get one.

 

[JarlFrank]

What I like about Co8 is that it gives you an alternative quest for the beginning so you can skip Hommlet.

 

[Valky]

Verbobonc and Hickory Branch as it is now are quite amazing for hefty new high level content. My biggest concern is that there may not be enough post vanilla adventures because the original game was made for max level 10, but there is a plethora of incredibly fun and interesting additions in the ruleset to classes post level 10, tons of new class feats, spells, etc that are a damn shame to waste when this game is the current most perfect simulator for playing with the 3.5 implementation. Temple+ made the post 10 XP tables work correctly which may add to this concern for being able to use high level classes. E.G. Maybe there's a super fun and cool feat or spell you learn at level 20, but you've gone through all of the maps and fought every battle there is by level 18, which means you can never properly enjoy the use of that high level thing.

 

[Melcar]

Co8 is fine. Vanilla, even with the latest patch, can become unplayable very easily.

 

[coldcrow]

Around 15 replies and no one mentioning the Alt+click transfers stuff from or to vendors/chests. Did you guys even play the fucking game?

PS: Use TemplePlus. It fixes alot of stuff by using a different renderer.

 

[Lilura]

Around 15 replies and no one mentioning the Alt+click transfers stuff from or to vendors/chests. Did you guys even play the fucking game?

You seem upset.