DeltanAmbassador

Appreciate that, but the gamer in me isn't quite ready for spoilers per se'. Just noticed something irking though about it. After getting the Crystal Sword, and leaving the scenario (first time I lived that long apparently that I never noticed before) it vanishes. Are all the legendary items and other special gear FS-only? Crystal Sword isn't so powerful it'd unbalance anything, that it's FS-only really sucks. And if all the special gear is like that it takes an awful lot away from the motivation to go get it.

Played it once so far up to the "escape" bit in the lizard's encampment. But due to a "wrong choice" shall we say am now levelling up another party. Was good up to that. Especially liked the thing he did with you can only go one way so you stay on the plotline like. While closed-world design isn't usually much fun, this was one of the exceptions. Also, the 'low' party suggestion was inaccurate. Maybe if we say low equals to 10th it's accurate as my party was all 8th starting out but it's not easy nor is it for a 1st level party. Of course that's if you play 'hardcore' style with no cheating and whatnot. Hope everyone has a merry Christmas. I'm Jewish and even I dig Christmas. I'm like the black guy from "Ghostbusters," "if there presents or candy in it, I'll celebrate whatever you say."

Haven't tried Nephil's, but with two recommeding it, I'll dnl it here presently. I outta say 'be careful what you wish for' at this point. I found some "interesting" combat in FS. One word, "Ambush!" That was a wipe... Of course now that I know it's there I know what to prepare for with my new party. ...I hate restarting, it's too cheaty. Will give those others you suggested a look too Lilith, thanks.

Thinking of the Giant Staff in New Market City, a pole-class weapon doing 1-25+1 (non-magical and enchantable,) similar custom weapons should be more common making two-handed weapon options more damaging than duel-wielding two 1h'ers. The math makes duel-wielding options vastly superior when you figure in damage bonuses, Bless, etc. Descriptions says twohanded weps are the most powerful. Yes, from the point of view that the based amage is higher than a 1h'er and ignoring everything else that's true. But in practice it's more like this: Steel Halberd: 1-18+3 base damage. Ignoring Bless, and Str. and Assassinate damage mods and everything else. Steel Broadswords, two of them: 1-9+3 x2= 2-18+6 or 8-24. That's clearly better than the 4-21 of the halberd. and with damage mods like Bless and Strength it becomes even more efficient to duel-wield. Commonsense though informs us bringing a heavy halberd down on someone's head shoulw be much more devastating that slashing them with swords. So weapons that are two-handed should be made so they're actually more damaging than two 1h'd options. Since you only get half the attacks with a two-handed option, the damage for them should be at least 50% higher than duel-wield solutions. Could do that without unbalancing the game easily enough I'd think. Make them more expensive and rarer on merchants like to help balancing things. The minimum damage potential from duel-wielding and damage modifiers is vastly superior to existing 2h'ed options. Even that 1-25+1 staff enchanted to 1-25+6 is still woefully less than conventional steel broadswords once all the bonus gets added to it. Str and Bless are added twice like instead of once. While you only get Assassinate bonus on the primary, you get the other bonus on both which is where the superiority comes from. 2h'ed weps need higher min and max damage to offset this reality.

What I will say positive for NMC is the prices are reasonable. Not so low it's a gimme in other works. But about what they should be for the gear. But it reminds me of the bazaar in Everquest way back. Once they put that in it unbalanced the game since now newbies could twink chars with gear much better than they should have (when crap gear was meant to teach how to actually use a character's abilities and the value of teamwork, not turn low-level chars into Rambo.) Same again here with very good, very powerful gear available with nothing to overcome to get to it. Be cool if the NMC was part of FS or other high-level scenario way the heck out int he middle of nowhere with some major battles to get past to reach. Sitting on it's own though it's a total exploit if not actually 'cheating.' I'd differentiate cheating from exploiting where an exploit is everything 'in line with a map or the game,' and cheats are anything bypassing the normal functioning of the game. Like shift+W or whatever to refresh merchants, or using the editor for pretty much anything. Only time I use the edito is for Shadow of the Stranger exiting since there doesn't seem to be one like other scenarios have. Presumedly if you finish the scenario it then exists you but you're stuck there otherwise?

If people 'steal' your deisgns, at least you have the satisfaction of making something worth stealing. Sorta like the old Piccaso line of, "Good artists borrow from other artists. Great artists steal outright." If not earning some kind of living or even just honorable mention though, I'm not sure how you can steal something. Kinda the nature of all this isn't it? Make something good that works, and others take it and use it as a base to build further upon. Dunno when the computer community got all weak titty about "this is mine, and no one else's." Started off very socialistic. Have Good and Evil but havent' started it yet. How many additional maps to the stock 3 can be installed? Remember installing a bunch which proved too many and couldn't see some of them. So now I only keep a few going, delete the trainers which show up as their own like. Can move em in and out to a temp dir when not in use like. I actually enjoy the low-level game the most judging by how readily I'll start a new party. Trying one now sans Alchemy in fact. Too easy to max gold and go on shopping sprees which kinda makes things too easy (esp. gear from FS - something fundamentally wrong when finger-wagglers have more defense than tanks heh.) Have played: stock 3; Rubacus; The Magnificent Six; Falling Stars (enough anyway not to explore around with low-level parties only there to shop heh;) Shadow of the Stranger; and a bunch of others but only to see if starting cities/towns have good shopping hehe. Or actually, one called 'Spears' I've explored around a bit. Descript said rec. for level low-moving to very high. What I miss most is Exile 3's constant progression to level 50. Whereas Blades seems like it isn't set up for that end. Unless you take to wiping out entire towns or taking on dragons and the like. That opening battle in FS is the sorta thing that should be commoonplace, not super rare and unfightable because of the timer. First time I played it blissfully unaware of the timer heh, I thought it was the absolute best battle in the whole game of any scenario I'd played. Actually played it for quite some time eventually having to fall back into the castle to fight from a 'fortified position.' Forcing melee mobs to assault through doorways one at a time like. Not even sure what the max days in FS is. Have gotten to 31 before using the 'out' item running back n forth in the big city between those two random item merchants. Get some good armor and misc items. Rubacus has a merchant like that with some similar, if rarer good drops and a refresh delay of 3 days instead of 1. But no wipe-timer so it's own unique appeal. I know I can refresh variable merchants via shift+w or whatever but I regard that as a cheating. At least progressing days uses up food forcing Manna to replenish and something along the lines of fairplay.

A good idea. A related one is a kind of maps chronology. Start with Dying', then the Medium stock maps, then which ever from there. Been doing those two from the beginning of a party then by about level 10 or so heading into Shadow of the Stranger (entry battle is easy if you understand wizards have to die first heh,) since that map has the Alchemy trainer guy who for 10k gold will train up your Alchemy character to skill 20 without using skill points. Fighting areneas in the stock 'medium' map can get enough coin from drops along with a few other beginning sorta tasks in that map so you head into Stranger with about 8k, get the other 2 from that stock gear it gives you selling it all (better coming once you can max gold via alchemy.) Use Editor to quit out of the map, can't for the life of me find a way to get out like most other maps have... Then go to Falling Stars for good weapons and armor/gear, using misc item to quit out when done. Not a map to wander around with a 10th level party no matter the gear Then head to Rubacus and fight trogs grinding up to about 20th then I dunno what. Compared to most I gather from reading the scenario reviews, I just like the fighting so my review of a map is gonn abe how much fun are the battles? If there's lto of dialogue and talking to NPCs, that's not my idea of fun. If I wanted a dialogue-heavy map I'd play a game where that's the thing you're doing instead of hack n slash. Some of these maps, especially FS, have so many NPCs meandering around, sometimes ya just wanna say screw the normal way of playing the map, go rogue and aggro the cities. Least that way you get your blood n guts fix. Can quit out when through and come back and play more rationally if inclined. And honestly, what's more fun than a city genocide? "This is genocide: the deliberate and systematic destruction of ALL LIFE on Arakis!" - "Dune" Bumping into the NPCs in FS has that line coming to mind often.

FS if any map deserves one, should have it's own clue book/file. Like those for E3 in its' group. Walkthrough/hint book. Bit right above about 'finding all 3 location for enchantment' is tantalizing. One in the giant's forge like from the Eye was kinda crummy - no flaming et al. So wondering about the other two. Like to find a Flaming augment that doesn't involve cheating maps like NMC.

Threads like this are why I still use Win98

Something I've noticed in many user-made scenarios is the lack of wandering monsters. Some maps have them, most don't. FS has a few Rokka and those blobby tank things wandering around but there's precious few. Unless you like cave crawls, most of these maps don't have the hack n slash heavy feel of the stock maps or Exile 3. "Shadow of the Stranger" has the one 'enemy camp' fight, but even that's kinda disappointing as after so many have been killed, they vanish. Have considered maybe E4's just not a heavy combat game, but thinking of the stock missions it absolutely is. There's thus no legit reason not to have lots more random encounters and grinding in user-made scenarios. It's not a puzzle-solving/conversation game, it's a combat game. So let's get more combat in these things. I've tried making my own, but the map maker thing is beyond me. I've never had a talent for coding, and that thing seems to assume you do. Alas. Thought I had a brilliant idea of modding existing maps finding the little settings for various combat but gee wiz guys, passwording your maps? Are you selling these things somewhere? If not, loose the passwords. What's gonna happen, someone makes a map better than you do tweaking things a bit? I'm all for art and preserving it, but the nature of computer code is customization. I'd LOVE to tweak FS's opening sequence removing the timer and instant-death thing so you can actually fight it. That'd have easily been the best combat sequence in the whole game of any map, but noooo, put a silly timer on it so we can run away and spend our time talking.

After reading this thread I took a look at New Market City. It's not "kinda sorta cheating" it's cheating. A big part of the game is finding your way to merchants for better gear. Put better merchants all in one place, with no particular combat to overcome to get to it, and it's absolutely cheating. I've tried to talk myself into letting myself use it, but I just can't. Way back when just starting pc gaming I figured anything games let you do, was perfectly fine and would have had no problem with this. But after a lifetime of gaming I realize stuff like this is cheating pure and simple. Have discovered something the map's good for though: if curious if a big hard hitting one-hander is better than 2 lighter weps, can use the golem trainer thing in the map to rapidly level up, set stats, and find out if it's better. Short answer, it's not. Have done the maths and there's just no comparing two 1h'ers with 1 2h'er. I thoght maybe a slith with pole weapon would shine getting some bonus but even using that giant staff with 1-25+1 enchanted with flaming and max stats and assassinate, the damage is noticeably lackluster. Dual-Wielding is the way to go for tanks. And two 1-13+5 (+8 with Rubacus +3 augment) swords from Falling Stars, and the Katana 1-14+5(+8)from "The Magnificent Six" map is the best I've found legitimately so far. Avatar, Divine Thud are as yet not in Blades afaik. Kinda redundant really, by the time you might need them your priest's gonna be doing other things than wasting mana nuking or mixing it up meleeing. If 5 years of Everquest clericing taught me anything it's if you wanna be a cleric, be a cleric. If you wanna nuke, be a wizard.

Still using Win98se here. If it aint broke, don't upgrade from it. PC's 14 years old and have only up'd the RAM (128 to 384) and a 33.6 modem to DSL. The standard of a new pc every new MS OS is BS. Yes, you need to stay current if wanting to use FB, Youtube, and other standards but let's face it, why would you want to? If you just gotta keep up with the Jones', shouldn't be much of a chore to buy some $50 hd and use it for an older OS like 98 so you can play actually good games (as opposed to everything since 2000 or so which is just flashy eye-candy but no depth of immagination. ...Yes, I'm the real-life guy 'Sheldon' of TBBT is based upon.

Ouch. No diplomats here that's for sure. Doesn't matter how much something sucks, someone made it and submitted it for our approval, someone with feelings and hopes, not an abstract consciousness. Wanna help steer em to better scenario making point out politely why it sucked. This is the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Wisdom is intelligence usefully applied. A dozen people saying how something sucks can be disregarded as 'can't please everybody.' But if a dozen people point out how massively unbalanced a 50 dmg weapon is and how getting everything handed to you too easily takes away from the joy of aqquisition and finding such things might make the designer think hmm, ya that's true I enjoy that as well. Just saying, there are ways of reviewing that are constructive and helpful beyond simply taking a big public dump on someone's creation.

I'm a hack n slash fan and love the fighting. To me, and this is just me, a scenario with a lot of hunting for NPCs and talking is gonna have me quitting it in search of some straight foward quests of 'go kill this guy cuz he's bad.' Which scenarios, of any difficulty, are like the opening fight scene in Falling Stars more or less throughout but without the timer-based party wipe (in case you were having too much fun I guess.) Would prefer ones without any party wipes at all which to me are indications of sadistic personality disorders. We're just gonna restore or restart from last save so why bother? Don't mind battles with the legions from hell that result in wipes, but ones where there's no defense are ridiculous. So far having checked several, my faves are Rubacus (for the unlimited encounters Trog fight, and general plethora of wandering monster battles,) and Shadow of the Stranger for the (so far) one pretty decent battle with Empire forces (though once the 2 wizards are down it's pretty easy being a straight melee.) What I'd make if I could (and looking at the scenario editor I don't think that's gonna happen any time soon being clueless) would be massive defender-like missions where you're a garrison force defending some location and massive wave after wave of enemies attack your position. No timers, no instan-wipes, just really tough custom monsters and precious little recovery time if any. Falling Stars opening battle without the wipe timer in other words.

Or you could just not bother with scenarios meant for high level parties if you don't have a high level party. No shortage of elvel-appropriate ones as well. Save the high level ones for when high level so you have something to do. Don't try and blow through everything in a weekend like. Nor seek shortcuts, cheats, or exploits to allow an unsuitable party into an unsuitable scenario. Related observation is the descriptions in the scenario download sections isn't very accurate so far. Many 'very high' scenarios might well be very high DIFFICULTY, but not insofar as they have high level fights but more the overall difficulty. Have been in some very high and high scenarios and seen very low-level monsters indeed. So either a more accurate as to party avg level for the difficulty, or some once-in-mission heads up like I've seen in some like Falling Stars saying this is meant for levels of xx. Of course it's important to note that beyond level 20 or so, higher levels aren't really adding much in the way of capability since you're just raising Assassinate or Spell Points. A better indicator of capability might be 'if you don't have xx Spell Points, xxx Hit Points, or Spells x, y, and z "you're gonna get wiped."

Not a major inconvenience, but during player creation, playing Sliths I've noticed if you give STR 18 so the racial bonus makes it 20 it'll only keep it at 18. Whereas if you give STR 17, it'll add the 2 STR for 19. Not a big deal, but it's there.

My initial suggestion is limit the text. If you wanna write a book, go write a book. Don't make a mission for Blades and try to do both. Unless the text is critical to know, leave it out. After the first full page, we're just clicking through the rest anyway (at least until we wipe and can't figure out why and go back to see if there was a heads up...) Also, if you're doing a higher level sort of mission, make towns reflect that nature. Been thrown playing high level missions and seeing low-level merchants offering only junk items and equipment. I don't expect top drawer stuff, but crude and bronze weapons and armour don't imo belong in a scenario aimed at 20+ characters. What's the point of bothering to specify that kind of thing when you know your target audience is gonna roll their eyes at it. Lastly, and this one's kind of big, populate the wild areas with wandering monsters. again, keeping in mind your target level groups so they're not always running away. An empty wilderness can completely ruin a scenario by making the player feel isolated and indifferent to the plight of the key figures in it. "Why should I care about these people and their problems? Could hold a kindergarten out here."

How long do auctions take? I've got a game minimized right now and at 30+ days waiting and camping out front I still can't tell if I've won or lost or what's going on. I go back in and see 'if the gate is down' and they're not. Thinking of the warning at the beginning of 'not dallying' I'm worrying this is going to be an aborted game because so much time has been wasted.

Some page of info, or other way of displaying the contents of missions would be extremely helpful. Basicly, a 'if you play through this, this is the gear you stand to get' sort of file. Playing Blades more or less exclusively right now, I'm noticing a lot of unknown progression stuff like where/what mission should I play to get Divine Thud or this n that. I don't want total spoilers of course, but knowing a certain scenario has Thud or other drops would certainly increase my willingness to spend a lot of time looking around in it. Currently, my parties start in Valley of Dying Things and grind up there to about 7th, then on to the 'medium' scenario to fight Araneas to 10 for their top notch drops (though they'll run and not engage from party level 10+ I've noticed.) From there I go to the user-made mission 'Rubacus' for money-making via Alchemy (easily obtainable reagents for making medium heal potions en masse' then spending the money on the +3 Augmentation for Steel Weapons; is a good xp grinder fighting trogs as well in an as-yet infinite encounter ala the Empire Army encampment in Exile 3 near Blackcrag.) Only just discovered the Falling Stars scenario with a previous party (who later wiped in that mission oweing to I think a bug where using Word of Recall brought us back to a wipe-event I couldn't restore from, but that's okay lesson learned - don't use WoR in that mission.) But there's some custom-designed weapons in that mission that make bringing in a low level party worthwhile (weapons doing 1-13+5 normal (+3 Enchantment then back in Rubacus making +8 weps) instead of the usual Steel ones doing 1-9+3(+6.) And some armor that's less encumbering or lighter until magical better options. And the Auction House I've only paid to browse so far, but looks promising offering unique weapons and gear I'll be trying this morning. My only gripe about FS is the opening battle. First time doing it I had a low-20s party grind to upper 20s but then wiped because of a timer on the event that no one thought to mention (heh.) Without the timer, it'd be an awesome xp trainer-like thing (once you take out the enemy mages who are SERIOUS.) But get back into the castle and make use of the narrow halls, bring lots of energy potions and keep everyone buffed, and you should be able to grind up quite high. Of course now that I know there's a auto-wipe if you linger too long, I just run right out in combat-mode not fighting at all. ...If I could code, I'd seriously consider hacking the file and removing the timer because it's such a fun fight. Alas. Anyway, if anyone has a text file with notes on what gear is in what scenario, share it please. Or, better yet, if anyone's familar with Diablo 2's user-made app with all the rune combos and the like and could make something akin to that for Blades with mission descriptions, lists of what gear/spells/etc is in it, that'd be swell (yes I said it, I'm bringing it back hehe.)

Play a lot of old games as well, though I've long since forgotten my first one (remember you specified your gear answering text prompts of "what be the plus" for your sword and there was a 'Seven-League Boots' item if that sparks anyone's memory.) First I haven't forgotten would probably be Wizardry 1 (and have a compilation of the Wizardry series to 8 I still play once in a while, 8 in particular oweing to some awesome mods (Deathstalker's et al.)) Don't remember when I discovered Exile 3 but I I still play it along with Blades. Blades feels smaller world-wise whereas Exile is a more open-ended feeling enviroment. As I've said elsewhere, in a time when anything we can imagine we can render, it's nice to play games requiring imagination. When everything going on is right there on screen, games loose a lot I think.

I remember when Everquest was still in beta (I'm an old guy heh) I asked if this sort of thing was going to be possible since I'd like being a cleric and being able to level without necessarily slaughtering every little thing like fighter classes and others. Seemed much more 'in character' if I could get levels healing and curing. As it turned out there was some experience and early levels to be had, but ultimately not in any solid way. Bottom line with these kinds of games is you get further into it, and more capable at the expense of another's life (much like real life sadly whether via business or otherwise exploiting others for our benefit.) A game where you could level as high as your hack n slash brethren would either create an exp exploit, or just be too easy. And an overly easy game is a bad game. An alternate option is as many do, make the game harder on yourself by not using things in the game that'd advance you quickly, or make you rich (like Alchemy in Exile 3 and Blades) or getting things you know your lower-level guys shouldn't have yet (like Major Blessing in Exile 3) until at least some higher level when it's not the spoiler it would be to a lower-level party. Correspondingly, if an exp for 'being nice' is something you desire, use the character editor to give yourself the levels or exp once in a while if you feel youd eserve it playing your party that way. Though 'cheating' if done on your honor it's a good make-shift compromsie on it actually being in a game or scenario. Related idea is the 'specials' in the trainer scenarios for Blades where you get a big hunk of experience hitting them. Place those in scenarios you can trigger after doing a quest or some other notable thing besides the conventional big fish eat little fish method of gaining exp. To help resist temptation, can have them hidden and their locations revealed after completing a quest in the scenario. Haven't devled into scenario creation yet so dunno what's possible, but would assume it's doable.

If wondering how to make 30k at will (before being able to get into towns with smithies who do enchantments who also buy back their wares...) Alchemy is the way to go. If you have the finger dexterity and willingness, though perfectly legit, it borders on an exploit how much and how soon you can max you coin. Coupled with knowing where the 'variable exceptional gear' shops are you can be outfitted quite soon indeed. Notice this ability in Blades as well in the 'Medium' difficulty scenario. Combined with the seeming lack of specialty shops, Blades is a much more 'post-apocalyptic' world where gear is harder to come by which is actually kinda nice. Still getting into Blades so my experience is comparatively limited, but thus far I've only needed 12 Alchemy to make perfectly absurd amounts of coin.

Hate registering on every little site, but in this case, making Blades of Exile free warranted it. ...Plus being a longtime fan of Exile 3 and now Blades I wanted to be able to reply and chat about them. As a longtime gamer (am 42) these two have occupied a place in my games listing for some time. Think Exile 3 was one of the only games I ever bothered to GASP pay for! And when I lost the reg code, I remember how cool Spiderweb was about giving me a new one on my honor alone I'd already paid for it (or maybe it was freeware by that time hehe.) Anyway, wanted to drop a note to say thanks for the games. In a time when anything you wanna depict graphically can be, games I think have suffered from a lack of imagination when old=school games like the Exile series though relatively modern, are throwbacks to my Apple 2e days with Wizardry and Bard's Tale. Though I realize it's more akin to the Ultima franchise I never played those. Blades of Exile is currently eating up my life, but this is fine. When I get heavy into game-mode I tend to eat less just in time for swimsuit season.