[MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Talk about creating Grimrock 1 levels and mods here. Warning: forum contains spoilers!
Pompidom
Posts: 497
Joined: Sun May 06, 2018 9:42 pm

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by Pompidom »

No need to be upset :)

Different opinions and tastes etc...
We're here to enjoy mods. If you don't enjoy, then just delete it.

So far I'm down to map 20 with 4 hours in. And everything has been fair so far.
Other people have finished this mod without problems.
So far it's a solid mod.

But you have to agree, that if you missed the light scroll at the start of the game in the mines sitting there in full vision on an alcove that you kinda messed up :)

And since you bothered to read upon the entire thread, you clearly missed the multiple warnings not to import a party as it can break sequences and the game.

You probably skipped something vital like you have skipped the light scroll.
We've all been there at least once. Everyone enjoying their game while you're the only one stuck because you missed something obvious.
And I agree that I can see plenty of potential in this mod getting stuck when you missed something vital in the pixel hunt to certain keys or secret buttons/triggers.

I agree that mods shouldn't block you somewhere at the end because you failed to detect a pixel somewhere at the start of the game for a specific item.

In Blood moon I'm actively trying to avoid these annoyances because I understand how annoying this can be :)
wagtunes
Posts: 316
Joined: Sun Feb 04, 2018 11:04 pm

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by wagtunes »

Pompidom wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 10:48 pm No need to be upset :)

Different opinions and tastes etc...
We're here to enjoy mods. If you don't enjoy, then just delete it.

So far I'm down to map 20 with 4 hours in. And everything has been fair so far.
Other people have finished this mod without problems.
So far it's a solid mod.

But you have to agree, that if you missed the light scroll at the start of the game in the mines sitting there in full vision on an alcove that you kinda messed up :)

And since you bothered to read upon the entire thread, you clearly missed the multiple warnings not to import a party as it can break sequences and the game.

You probably skipped something vital like you have skipped the light scroll.
We've all been there at least once. Everyone enjoying their game while you're the only one stuck because you missed something obvious.
And I agree that I can see plenty of potential in this mod getting stuck when you missed something vital in the pixel hunt to certain keys or secret buttons/triggers.

I agree that mods shouldn't block you somewhere at the end because you failed to detect a pixel somewhere at the start of the game for a specific item.

In Blood moon I'm actively trying to avoid these annoyances because I understand how annoying this can be :)
Assuming you're right and I'm a moron because I missed a pixel somewhere and screwed up the rest of the mod, mods shouldn't be that difficult. As for the mines, I didn't even bother going down them because I just wanted to get into the castle. I figured there couldn't be anything that important down there that I had to bother. And there shouldn't have been. Anyway, didn't matter as I found an orb of radiance.

Anyway, like I said, I'm done.

Good luck with your journey.
Pompidom
Posts: 497
Joined: Sun May 06, 2018 9:42 pm

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by Pompidom »

I never called you a moron, let's keep it civilized.
I'm just questioning your play style when you "refuse" to explore certain parts of the mod.

I can see now why some people find this mod infuriating.
It's not for the inexperienced player, I give you that but then again. There is a solution for that: Easy difficulty.
I'm sure the mod is playable for most people on the Easy difficulty.

On Normal with a new level 1 party it definitely requires top tactics and a solid party with min-maxing techniques.
Careful planning of alchemy, bombs, custom spell scrolls was necessary.

I started this mod, not knowing what to expect. New party 4 minotaurs with +6 vit and +4 str on Normal difficulty.

Since I had saved up all bombs with 1 rogue with dual throw, I could go all out when it was needed. He was starved anyways so couldn't deal enough damage with regular throwing weapons.
2 solid fighters in front with 2x sulfurus potion and 2x speed potions as the duration of these potions is rather short so you need to enable these potions mid fight + red bull potions

The biggest problem was food because I had 4 minotaurs. I simply didn't feed my rogue so I could keep my other guys fed.
If i have 1 criticism, it could use slightly more food.

Boss fights and especially the 4 shield wizards while 40 wall heads shooting lightning bolts was simply a matter of dealing enough dps to clear out the trash mobs in time, then freezing them with a frost bomb and let them block the lightning bolts from the wallheads. And apparently when I look over this topic that seems to be the hardest encounter the mod has to offer.

This fight took me 6 tries and only 1 guy alive at the end. That was the only situation where I was like "damn!" "close call!" But that doesn't matter as you can simply get everyone alive back at the healing crystal that opens up. I'm now at a puzzle that I couldn't solve in 5 minutes so that's for tomorrow. But i'm pretty sure i'm very close to the end.

But up till this point I find the mod enjoyable and perfectly playable on Normal with a NEW level 1 party. Definitely doesn't need a lvl 50 party. I had to use 0 hints. I looked for the solution on the weight puzzle, but didn't find it and then managed by some more bruteforcing the solution myself. You had to add the rocks 1 by 1 on the same alcove to make it work.
User avatar
Dr.Disaster
Posts: 2874
Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2012 11:48 am

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by Dr.Disaster »

wagtunes wrote: Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:17 pm A new party wouldn't stand a snow ball's chance in hell of surviving this mod. But by all means, give it a shot. My money is on you deleting this LONG before I get as far as I got. If you even GET as far as I got.
The only thing that darkend playing this mod for me was the amount of insta-kills. At various places wrong actions or wrong steps cause instant party death and game over. Beside that it's no problem to finish this mod with a new party. Did it twice, once on hard, once with Torrum, finished each time at clvl 14. The mod version i played is a manually installed 5a so it never updated itself.

Sorry that i can't be more helpful with the Astral Plane but it's kinda hard to recall details from 6 years ago.
Pompidom
Posts: 497
Joined: Sun May 06, 2018 9:42 pm

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by Pompidom »

I'm in the frost towers. When I read over the patch notes, there is supposed to be a shop somewhere that sells tomes of wisdom and armors and weapons and such.

Apparently I must have missed that somewhere and so I have stockpiled a lot of coins. Where is this "shop"?
User avatar
Dr.Disaster
Posts: 2874
Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2012 11:48 am

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by Dr.Disaster »

Pompidom wrote: Sat Oct 19, 2019 5:04 pm I'm in the frost towers. When I read over the patch notes, there is supposed to be a shop somewhere that sells tomes of wisdom and armors and weapons and such.

Apparently I must have missed that somewhere and so I have stockpiled a lot of coins. Where is this "shop"?
Level 32. The map name says it all.
Pompidom
Posts: 497
Joined: Sun May 06, 2018 9:42 pm

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by Pompidom »

Never mind I reached the shop :)
Pompidom
Posts: 497
Joined: Sun May 06, 2018 9:42 pm

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by Pompidom »

Mehh, the colored gem puzzle has me stumped.
I have like 30 gems and 18 slots to fill xD
Bruteforcing this is impossible :)

If anyone has a detailed explanation for this one or a screenshot, that would be awesome :)
Don't feel like solving this one.

Until I get an answer I will restart the mod to try out the new characters you can pick up along the way.
As in this first run I denied the new characters and kept my own characters.

Also I missed out on how to revive the previous 4 heroes that were sent in. Someone explaining that to me would be great.
wagtunes
Posts: 316
Joined: Sun Feb 04, 2018 11:04 pm

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by wagtunes »

Pompidom wrote: Sat Oct 19, 2019 8:09 pm Mehh, the colored gem puzzle has me stumped.
I have like 30 gems and 18 slots to fill xD
Bruteforcing this is impossible :)

If anyone has a detailed explanation for this one or a screenshot, that would be awesome :)
Don't feel like solving this one.

Until I get an answer I will restart the mod to try out the new characters you can pick up along the way.
As in this first run I denied the new characters and kept my own characters.

Also I missed out on how to revive the previous 4 heroes that were sent in. Someone explaining that to me would be great.
Oh what's the matter? Did you get stumped? I thought this was child's play.

FTR, your explanation of things in the post above this one focuses entirely on combat. Combat was never a problem for me. My only problem right now is that there's supposed to be a teleporter at the end of the Astral Plane and it's simply not there. Either there is a bug in my version or there was something that needed to be done elsewhere (place an item, hit a button, whatever) to enable that teleporter. As you gave up at the colored gem puzzle, you never got as far as the Astral Plane so you can't comment on my frustrations there. When you get there and see that there's no teleporter (assuming we're playing the same version) then you can criticize my play.

I've been playing these dungeon crawlers since the early 90s. That's how I learned that there are things that can simply be skipped until you get stuck and have to go back. Had I gotten stuck early on, I would have gone back to the mines. And even though, not going there, I didn't get a light spell scroll, I made do with the torches. Eventually, as I was about to run out, I would have backtracked back to the start if I had to. As it turned out, I found an orb of radiance and therefor did not need to get the scroll.

Sorry for my sarcasm at the start of this response but it really drives me crazy when people think they know how well or poorly I'm playing when they have no idea what is going through my mind when I play these things. Visually and structurally, this is an incredible crawler. Might be the most exciting one I've played in a very long time. Technically, it's poorly conceived. The insta kills are beyond ridiculous. The dead ends, unless you perform 17,000 random tasks prior, are equally ridiculous.

And with all that, this crawler doesn't even come close to how bad Daedelus Of The Damned Souls is. I regret the day I ever attempted it. The end doesn't even end. When you make it to the last level, which is wall to wall critters, all you get is a scroll that says "You've reached the end of the game." Talk about incredibly poor execution.

So please be clear, I have thoroughly enjoyed playing this mod outside of the insta kills and the bug in the Astral Plane. Trust me, in my version, there is no teleporter there.

Anyway, I have not returned to the game since my post from a few days ago and have no plans of returning to it. Starting a new party is pointless because I'll just end up at the Astral Plane and stuck again.

Oh, and one last thing. These games CAN have bugs. The Master Quest mod has a bug where you can set a counter to negative making it so that when you reach a plate that's supposed to open up the four walls so you can get past them, the plate doesn't work because the counter is negative. So you end up stuck and can't go any further. I have been able to duplicate this bug several times now.

Point is, these game are not infallible. People can either make bad games or ones that have bugs that make them unplayable beyond a certain point. When I encounter either of them, I simply give up. Life is too short. My frustration here is that THIS crawler was really off the charts amazing. Easily my favorite of all the mods, even more so than ORRR 2, which can be a real pain in places but was always fair. This one is just ridiculous with all the bolders.

Good luck on your next playthrough. I know enough when to cut bait and go do something else.
Pompidom
Posts: 497
Joined: Sun May 06, 2018 9:42 pm

Re: [MOD] Eye of the Dragon

Post by Pompidom »

wagtunes wrote: Sun Oct 20, 2019 10:24 pm
Oh what's the matter? Did you get stumped? I thought this was child's play.

FTR, your explanation of things in the post above this one focuses entirely on combat. Combat was never a problem for me.
Wagtunes, just let it rest :)
You're frustrated about getting stuck at the end of this mod and you feel cheated because you don't get to the ending for whatever reason, we get it. Emotions will always be a part of the equation whenever you spend any amount of time on something only to see it fail at the end. We have all been there. Plenty of games out there that bugged out or where devs eventually show the player the middlefinger :)

You don't have to send a message to Drakkan, you can simply activate the teleporter yourself probably as long it hasn't been renamed to something silly.
Just type in console: teleporter_24:activate() for example.
You will have to try every single number though until you find the right one.
But it will probably take only a couple of minutes.

I will probably do the same thing with the gem door if I feel like playing the mod further.

It's just that you are contradicting yourself in pretty much every single post. And that's what I'm simply getting at.
1. You complain non stop that the combat is impossible and that you need to cheat with a level 50 party to survive the onslaught.
And that there is no way anyone can play this mod with a level 1 party.
And now you suddenly say that combat never was an issue for you personally?
2. You skip parts of the mod because you feel entitled that any area you feel is worthy to skip should never contain progress items.
3. You don't even bother to download the latest version of the mod in 2019 while the latest version was released over maybe 5 years ago?
4. You refuse to follow the description of the mod and import a party which can possibly break progression. And in fact did break progression in earlier versions for a fact.

If you defy logic, there is no point in having a discussion with you.

You told me that playing this mod with a level 1 party was impossible. It's clearly not. Plenty of people finished this mod just fine.
And I personally found the difficulty of combat on Normal in this mod just fine with a brand new party.

1 bad puzzle or riddle or mechanic doesn't make a game or mod suddenly awful. It does get annoying when it halts progress permanently.

Creating interesting puzzles and a good layout is hard and very time consuming :)
Give credit where credit is due.

Personally, I don't like "cryptic riddle puzzles" like this "gem puzzle"
In just the same way I'm not interested in "word games like scrabble" "tv quiz shows" and other nonsensical tv knowledge.
I always skip/google them in every game I play instantly.
If I can't solve it in less than a couple of minutes, then google away :)
But I also accept that there are people out there that really enjoy this kind of puzzle in the same fashion there are people out there that do like tv quiz shows and "word games"

I'm glad that you vented your frustration in this topic, otherwise I would have never tried out this mod.
I enjoyed the mod and if somebody helps me with the gem puzzle I will continue my adventure. If not, no biggie. I don't have a compulsive need to "finish" a game. It was a good mod especially considering it was made in 2013.
Even the "instakills" didn't bother me that much. It's certainly a mechanic I'm not fond of and I will never implement mechanics like that in Blood Moon. But in this mod, they kinda made sense on most locations.

It's ok to give constructive criticism if it makes sense.
If the mod is awful because it contains like 101 game breaking bugs that halt progression permanently on every single corner, then sure you can bash on it. I do that as well. There is nothing wrong with telling the objective truth. Even if it is only to warn other people that may get suckered in wasting their time. But if you do that make sure that it is indeed 100% the modder's fault :)
But in this case you gave potential new players false information and basically lie to us. That's where I draw the line.
Post Reply