Problem in Burial Glen in Resurrection (playing as Celts)

[Curtis]

Well, I'm back.  This is one I don't remember getting past as Romans.

 

In the southwestern room of the biggest building (center north) there's a portal.  As per the walkthrough, I pass through the portal, kill the two wights, pass through another portal and find the clue that reads "crate north, crate, barrel".  I arrange the the crate, crate and barrel from north to south on the east side of the room, step through the third portal and…

 

Do NOT end up in the big cross-shaped building in the center south.  Instead I'm outside the previous building, just to the west.  What am I missing?  The Celtic Walkthrough just says, "…place 'crate/crate/barrel' from N to S, then go through the portal."  Obviously there's more to it than that.

[Ess-Eschas]

Hello again,

 

I've just checked, and you do indeed have the correct solution to the puzzle. From the sounds of it, though, you might not be putting the crates and barrels in the correct place. Did you arrange them so that they fit onto the three tiles of carpet on the west side of the room?

[Curtis]

On 12/27/2018 at 8:21 AM, Ess-Eschas said:

Hello again,

 

I've just checked, and you do indeed have the correct solution to the puzzle. From the sounds of it, though, you might not be putting the crates and barrels in the correct place. Did you arrange them so that they fit onto the three tiles of carpet on the west side of the room?

 

Sorry, I didn't get a notification that you had responded. (Ah, I see.  I didn't realize I had to activate 'Notify me of replies' every time I post; I thought doing it once set a preference.)

 

The answer is no.  As I beamed into the room there was already a crate against the north wall on the far EAST side, so I just left it there and shifted the other crate to the place just south of it and the barrel to the space just south of that.

 

I'm leaving on vacation shortly, and I'll try your solution when I get back on Thursday.  Thank you for responding.

[Curtis]

Well, it worked, and I've suitably edited the walkthrough.  Sadly, I'm not even close to tough enough to handle the two wolves at the end, so I'll have to mark this one as another I'll get back to later.  They're really piling up.

 

Speaking of piling up, now I'm in the upper level of the CroneCaverns.  There wasn't anything I couldn't handle down in the Pits below, but on the entrance level the first thing I ran into was 3 Lost Souls (which the walkthrough mislabeled as much weaker Wights), and again I'm running for my life!

 

I'm level 9 now and fully equipped, and these things can kill two characters a round, and I apparently can't hurt them.  (It says I'm doing them mid-20s damage with a sling, but no red is showing up on their bars.)  I'm at a loss here.  I don't remember there being so many things that I couldn't handle when I last played as Celts.  I was 6th level when the Crones tried to lure me to their place, and I put them off untill I could reach 9th, but it just doesn't seem to matter.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Curtis
misspelling/played another four hours

[Curtis]

Well, I figured it out, and I feel like an idiot.  I had the game set to 'Torment'; I thought I was playing on 'Tough'.  Problem:  I changed it to 'Tough', but now it's re-set to 'Torment'.  I'm not seeing a 'save settings' button.  Well, at least now I understand why it's more difficult this time through.

 

Note that I also changed 'Ask at startup whether to change resolution', and THAT has stayed how I set it, so it's not like all of the changes re-set, just Difficulty.  Weird.

[Slawbug]

I believe difficulty level is saved with your saved game.  You need to change that setting while you are playing, not at the main menu -- there it only affects new games.  IIRC.

[Ess-Eschas]

Hello,

 

Slarty is indeed correct. In order for the difficulty setting to stick, you need to change it from within the game itself.

 

Just to clarify this a little, open your save file and then open the File Menu. This can be done by clicking an icon in the bottom display bar (or by pressing Escape if you're on a Mac). Then, select the Preferences option. This will show you a screen where you can change the difficulty, amongst other things. If you do this, and then save your game, your difficulty setting will be changed from that point onwards (or until you change it again) and stored in the save file!

[Curtis]

Thanks to both of you for responding.  I'm trying to decide whether I really want to dial back to 'tough' (which is the difficulty I used as Romans), or if I should try to stick it out at 'torment'.  t seems as though at 'torment' I'm going to have to go back and hit a lot of these places a second time.

 

Which dificulty did you guys play at?I

[Slawbug]

I usually do Torment but for N:R I think I gave in and dialed down to Tough.  The mechanics are unusually well-balanced, and that means that using good builds doesn't make Torment feel like Normal after the first half hour, as it does in some other SW games.  Torment's doable for sure, but at a certain point I'd rather just not have to reload so much.

[Curtis]

Sadly, I'm at a point where reloading simply isn't useful for at least one encounter per major location… and some wandering wilderness encounters.  No matter how prepared I am, some creatures (those huge wolves, Lost Souls, one room of Fomorians, one wandering group of Wights) just kill me before I can inflict any noticeable damage.  It doesn't help that undead are immune to cold spells (perfectly logical), but that they can kill a character (or more) per round after I've done the Beast Ceremony and am wearing armor that eliminates 70% of their damage.  (Yes, I'm calculating the reduction properly, using a calculator to multiply remaining percentages, not just adding up the bonuses.)

 

So, maybe I'm missing something.  In some Spiderweb games Shields are additive, but I didn't see a note to that effect for N: R.  If I lay on two or three layers of Beast Ceremony or Shield, will that improve survivability?  If not, what's your standard preparation for an encounter you know will be a killer?

[Slawbug]

One thing that's different in N:R from more recent, non-remake Spiderweb games -- the world is much more open.  Once you get past the ruined hall, you aren't really guided to the easier stuff -- in fact there often isn't any direct indication that a particular area is going to be more or less trouble.  At the same time, there is less variation in difficulty between different areas -- a lot of places you can go have some easy encounters and some harder ones.  C'est la vie.  If an encounter is a killer, and you're not at a high level, leave and come back later.

 

Beast Ceremony isn't anything special, it's just some basic buffs IIRC.  And no, multiple layers of the same buff (from whatever source) have no additional effect.  For armor, you mostly have it right, but N:R has a few unique wrinkles.  The percent of damage that each piece of armor blocks varies a little bit from one hit to the next; the stated percentage is a good guide, but in particular it varies massively according to your Armor Use skill.  So if you have extremely low Armor Use, you won't block as much as you expect.

 

(As a side note, I don't think multiple layers of the same Shield or Bless buff have had additive effects to anything besides duration, in any SW game in decades... since Exile I think, unless I'm forgetting some wrinkle of the early Avernums)

[Randomizer]

I've played on torment difficulty and remember having several saves for when I couldn't avoid monsters way above my current party level. There were many places where you want to avoid even wandering monsters. 

 

You really need on harder difficulties to do all minor quests and easier monsters to raise your party level. Almost every area has stuff that  you can't do when you first visit it.

 

Avernum 4 was I think the last game where multiple layers of buffing spells had additive effects, but by then it was only a few percent improvement. I used to do it playing a singleton party and watching how the protection dropped as the older castings expired.

[Curtis]

Thank you both.  I guess I'll stick with torment for now and see how it progresses.

[Slawbug]

1 hour ago, Randomizer said:

Avernum 4 was I think the last game where multiple layers of buffing spells had additive effects, but by then it was only a few percent improvement. I used to do it playing a singleton party and watching how the protection dropped as the older castings expired.

 

Are you sure about this?  With regular buffs, not the Enduring Armor type stuff?

[Randomizer]

I remember now it was Avernum 5 that I saw it. Jeff removed after beta testing information in the text box showing to hit chances by foes that showed their chances increasing against Shield buff and then dropping when it was recast more than once. The difference was only 2 to 5% so it probably was multiplicative rather than additive effect. So it was only useful when you had nothing better.

[Slawbug]

Wait, what?  That makes no sense, nothing has ever had a multiplicative effect on to hit rolls in any SW game.  Are you completely sure there wasn't something else going on?

[Randomizer]

I'm pretty sure since the changes were definitely caused by one spell and I could see the to hit chance each round for each attack. Since it was a singleton party all attacks were on the same character and all the attacks were from the same monster type with no changes within a round. When I went through over 20 rounds in a fight with a monster swarm, I had plenty of time for spells to expire and be recast to see the same thing happening for several cycles from no Shield spell to having 3 castings at once.

[Slawbug]

Even then it would just be a mechanic of the shield degrading when there are e.g. 3 or fewer rounds remaining in its duration -- the actual number of times you cast it wouldn't be relevant, just the duration.  Right?

[Randomizer]

That's what I thought, but repeated castings increased caused incremental jumps. Although since it was during beta testing Jeff might have tweaked things before the released game. Since the final version doesn't let us see monster to hits, I can't really test it since the change is too small see using statistical analysis over a hundred hits.

 

Edit - This was a month before Jeff did his massive game engine over haul to remove exploits like the extra health from having both augmentation and enduring shield, monster summons, and other changes.

[Slawbug]

See, these are the little details and caveats that I wish you would share from the get-go, to avoid creating urban legends   Remember that "invisible -36% Torment armor penalty"?   (note to anyone reading: that is not a thing, that was never a thing)

 

This is something you saw once, during beta testing, a month before a massive engine overhaul; it can no longer be tested for, and we know it definitely doesn't happen in more recent games.  It also doesn't sound like "20 rounds in a fight with a monster swarm" is an environment in which all other variables could possibly be controlled for.

 

Even in A4 and A5, we know a lot about how the engine handles things.  It does not have the ability to register multiple copies of the same status.  It just tracks the duration of the status on the character, and a duration of 0 means the status is not present, otherwise it is.  That's it.