xenogears

Thank you, osnola! With your help, I was able to figure out the puzzle in Shadow of the Stranger. I didn't realize that just bumping into the walls could also trigger the click that resets your progress. It sounds like you were able to open up these scenarios in the editor. I'm curious how you managed it! When I try to open them, I get a password prompt.

Thanks to the diligent work of the forum community here, I was able to get Blades of Exile running on Windows 10! I decided to boot up a few of the highly-rated scenarios I never got a chance to play, Chains and Shadow of the Stranger, which have both been great so far. However, they also each have me stumped at different parts! I know it's a bit of a longshot seeking help on these scenarios nearly two decades after their release, but I figured I might as well ask. In Chains, I'm quite stuck during the sequence where you have to find evidence against Linda. I found Zankozzie and received his upgraded Piercing Crystal, which I assume is meant to be used on the red barrier in Fedoric's room, but I can't figure out how to use it. Zankozzie said to "place it on the barrier and break it," but dropping it on the barrier tile doesn't avail me. My other current leads are * find Linda's contract (hoped it would be on or around her parents' graves in the Avendale memorial, but no such luck) * the password-protected painting in Linda's room (no clue) * Vark will help me find Zephirius' disciple if I can find a piece of his clothing (where could that be?) * rumors of Linda passing through a wall in the northwest when wearing a special robe - found the building, but can't get in * a coordinate-based portal in the southwest of town, which I obtained permission to use, but says there's "no reason to enter it" when I use it. Quite a complicated sequence. I don't know if anyone recalls the progression here. For Shadow of the Stranger, it's much simpler. I just reached Chapter Two, and was told to go to the brotherhood outpost in the mountains before I talk to Gwennyth. When I go there, I find a rather devious puzzle - an endless corridor in the west, and a stalagmite with a hidden button. Pressing the button doesn't do anything obvious that I can see. As I head up the corridor in the west, stepping on one of the tiles gives the message "Click", which seems to reset the button on the stalagmite. But no combination of the two seems to let me get past the endless hallway, and there aren't any secret passages around that I can find. I'm quite stuck on this one. I recall reading that there were walkthrough files for both of these scenarios, but they may have been hosted on a now-defunct site, as the scenario folders didn't include them. Any help is much appreciated. (Although, of course, I know it's a bit of a stretch. :p)

WRT the OP's suggestion: I don't think there's any need to or interest in *expanding* the company, in terms of hiring more full-time employees. But I would like to see them take more risks. Spiderweb has been making the same game for 20 years. It is in the process of its *second* round of Exile remakes. I get that Jeff wants stability; he knows what the safe investment is. And that's fine, no one can fault you for having "a stable source of income" as one of your aspirations. But this is an incredibly conservative model even for a major publisher, much less a plucky indie developer. Yes, going out on a limb and trying something new, something outside your established formula, is a risk, and a particularly stressful one for an indie dev. But let's not act like it's impossible. Indie game developers do this *all the time.* Yeah, the lack of inspiration is really starting to show (in my opinion). Jeff has stated in blog posts that he no longer enjoys making games for a living, and for my part, I can tell. I see incremental improvements in gameplay streamlining and sanitization but next to nothing in terms of new, interesting ideas. It's starting to feel like a game of Mad Libs, swapping proper nouns and incidental plot details from game to game, but always fitting into the same (increasingly rote-feeling) formula of "EPIC fantasy adventure, huge world, dozens of dungeons, *the choice is yours*!" Even the writing - something which is consistently, and to my mind, inexplicably touted as the company's strong suit - makes no effort to mature. 20 years after Exile we have moved from fighting an evil Empire to "the Corruption." Corruption. Really? Again - I respect the decision to be conservative with respect to innovation in the interest of financial stability. But if that's what's going on, probably we should also be honest about the sort of product is that ensues. Which is to say - derivative, regurgitated, and apparently, consistently profitable.

Hi all, I only just began playing this game, so probably there is something about the interface I'm just ignorant of. I went to the brigand fort near Fort Duvno, beat the enemy mage, and went to his scrolls, but was told my arcane lore wasn't high enough to read them. So I went around and did other stuff, increased my arcane lore and came back to read it. However, now I'm finding that I simply can't interact with the scrolls. Whenever I stand in front of them, nothing happens. Is there a "search" command like in the original Exile that I need to use?

Originally Posted By: Mervian I've been playing the 32-bit version for a while without any major problems (except for the Character Editor). Do you ever notice that you have lost map data for a town or outdoor area? Or has this bug been fixed?

Originally Posted By: Sarachim Even 10 dexterity is too much. I never go above 5, and leave it at 1 for my casters. If you keep your fighters blessed, they will rarely miss after the first few levels. The same goes for weapon skill- it only affects to-hit, not damage, so anything above 5-ish is a waste. Is hit % compared to the armor value of monsters in order to determine whether your swing connects or not? I've never known what the math was for that, but even with 20 dex, 20 str and 20 weapon skill, I very frequently found that I would whiff against monsters once their armor went into the 25-35 range. Am I going to miss noticeably more with only 5 dex and weapon skill? And yes, blessing my fighters is a given for any major fight, but I tend to not want to bless fighters up just for one or two random monsters that I've stumbled across during a dungeon crawl. Originally Posted By: Sarachim As for advantages/disadvantages, it depends what sort of player you are. If you're a powergamer who doesn't mind levelgrinding to make up for exp pentalties, then you should definitely play all Sliths with lots of advantages. Well, I generally try and do *everything* that's in the scenario, but I would never grind on wandering monsters to make up for an xp penalty. So if I could *make* it to level 50 with positive traits just playing the game and exploring everything there is to explore I'd gladly do it; otherwise I'd be very hesitant.

Originally Posted By: Lazarus. I don't buy many levels of dexterity/weapon skills, at least not until strength and assassination are maxed, and even then luck gets preference. Assassination and luck before weapon skills? Wow, I always thought 20 in your relevant weapon skill was a must. I guess I should be messing around with the character editor and seeing how it affects hit % and whatnot.

So I had a pretty standard party setup that I used for a very long time without questioning it much. It worked for all of the Exile trilogy and most scenarios, but when I finally stopped to think about it I realized it was far from ideal. It was typically 3 fighters (2 ambidextrous blade users and 1 polearm user), 2 mages, and 1 priest. One of the fighters was a slith and one was a neph; the rest were human. Casters took Magically Apt, obviously. The only drawback I ever took was Frail. Reading some other people's posts I get the sense that I can do a lot better than that. For starters, it makes no sense to have a dedicated mage/priest because you will want to put as much as possible in mage and priest spells at the beginning for free SP. (I usually find room for 7 of one and 5 of the other, though I think I could get 7/6 if I sacrificed even more int). It seems as though others like taking only sliths (because the XP penalty just comes out in the wash eventually) and almost every positive trait. Also, what's the consensus about the right amount of strength for a caster? I know that the bare minimum is 4, and you want to get it asap to maximize hit points, but do people generally take it even higher than that? And I've also heard some people say fighters don't need much dexterity. I always capped both strength and dexterity at 20 for fighters, but many claim you never need more than 10 dex - what is the general opinion on this? Actually, are there other noteworthy things to mention about stat point allocation in general? Aside from a caster's strength I typically raised *anything* I was using to 20. And is archery *ever* any good? I found it to be incredibly useless every time I tried to put points in it, but maybe I am missing something? I typically liked to keep my XP per level hovering around 120-130, but it seems like many people were content with splurging on positive traits and getting up to around 200. For someone who is playing a massive scenario, or the original trilogy, what would you consider to be the best part setup, in terms of race, traits, and role (caster/melee/etc?) How much does the XP penalty *really* wind up mattering? Should I get as many positive traits as possible? Should I be using more/less melee? Any tips are appreciated.

Shouldn't there be a stickied thread that contains the most up-to-date Windows and Mac versions of OBoE? It seems as though a lot of people (myself included) frequently have trouble locating the most recent builds at any given point. A sticky that receives regular updates (and maybe lists what changes have been made in that version/what bugs still need to be corrected) would go a long way towards keeping the project accessible and reminding everyone that progress is still being made.

Something in the version Ormus posted (found here http://info.wsisiz.edu.pl/~kowalsg0/) that would be really, really, *really* nice if someone could fix because, for a completionist like myself, it's a bug that pretty much destroys my desire to play the game: Map data is randomly lost for both town and outdoor sections. This happens very frequently and always seems to happen upon reloading a save file (it never happens in the middle of a session, or at least I've never noticed it doing so). I've never played with the "Don't Save Maps" setting on so I don't know exactly how that functions, but it's possible that that's getting toggled on without the user telling it to do so. However, I've never lost my map data for ALL towns or sections - usually most is preserved. When town map data is lost, the town that was affected also has the locations of all its items scrambled and show up in random places. Sadly, I know nothing about coding so I can't really help pinpoint the line where this problem shows up, but it seems like a pretty major bug so it would be great if someone could fix it.

Morover: Refer to my original post for a description of the bug. Celtic Minstrel: That's the very version that has the bug that I described. Do you know of any other? If not, I guess I'll need to get in touch with whoever worked on that version to inform them of the bug.

I can get the text working just fine on the above one and I can load some scenarios normally (others need to be renamed to one of the scenarios that came with the game, like valleydy.exs or stealth.exs, and then opened from the "Start Scenario" button rather than the "Custom Scenario" one.) The map loss bug is killing me, though.

I've found a couple of links to compiled versions of Blades that seem to be more or less working, but there are some major outstanding bugs in them. Most notably, I'm encountering a bug where map data (both town and outdoors) is randomly lost. If it's town map data that is lost, then the position of any items that are in that town will become completely scrambled. This has happened in both scenarios that I've tried to play, The Forsaken and Wreck of the Slug, and for me it makes the game more or less unplayable. If this bug has been fixed, then could someone provide a link to a compiled version for Windows that doesn't have this bug? And if it hasn't, well, I guess it goes on the list of things that need to be fixed. The version that has the bug I'm referring to is found at this link: http://info.wsisiz.edu.pl/~kowalsg0/