Thaluikhain

In regards to Dark Wyrms, the only ones I remember in E3 where in one artifact quest in a dungeon under the mutant giant one, and one town in the province locked away due to alien beasts, so not easy to get to with a new party at all.

OTOH, would scry monster show what type of breath it has? Cause then I'd imagine old saved games from near the end might have them, scrying all the monsters was a big part of the game for many people.

I was also surprised to see "darkness" breath in BoE the first time I saw it, I don't remember it in E3 at all, or maybe I'd confused it with some other breath type.

I remember in the Troglo/Giant quest in E3, the place with shifting walls had ethereal monsters, but that was a one-off based on weird terrain in there (and they didn't go through normal terrain).

Had a similar idea about monsters that could go through windows, but that was just going to be more fiddling with terrain and keeping it as a one off.

Oh, I like that. Constantly impressed with all the weird and wonderful things people have done with the editor.

Hmm, playing with teleporters sounds like a decent idea. Or if you wanted to be tricky, change the terrain to put a different room in on the other side of the secret (overwriting what is already there), and then change it back when the party leaves. Had considered doing that, but seemed a bit complicated, and difficult to have anything you actually wanted to see there (such as items or people to talk to).

While it's easy enough to use secret doors to create a hidden room in a town, generally a black space on the map is going to attract attention and get a thorough searching.

Was wondering how to make a secret room and keep it secret. You can get away with it to an extent with irregular caves with lots of solid rock in the map so a secret doesn't stand out so much, but in a normal town it's not so easy.

One thing I'd thought of was if you had a line of bookshelves against one wall, and the next room had a line of bookshelves against the adjoining room, you could have a gap between them which a player might assume was filled with a wall. Though, unless you were in a big library with lots of walls between shelves you couldn't see that weren't containing secrets, this would likely draw attention as well.

Alternatively, I suppose you could have the secret on another level, and have the entrance in plain sight that wasn't obvious, something decorative like a mat or a pot plant that could (in universe) cover a trapdoor or something, but that players wouldn't go up to and click on if they'd not known about it.

Or possibly play with terrain changes, for example, a special encounter that makes a decorative pond dry up and there is something at the bottom you can't get at before hand.

Was wondering what other ways of keeping a secret secret people had?

(As an aside, I really liked in E3 how the thief hid stuff in animal pens. You could break the lock and walk around inside them, but there's absolutely no reason to do so unless you know, and they aren't in any way suspicious. Though, only hides a special encounter, not a room - excepting the really obvious one with the ghosts in the town with the slimes which I'm not sure was connected)

Yeah, I know what you mean, but I'd imagine lots of people spend a while on their stat allocation and then just smash through the combat rather than worrying about tactics because it's easier.

Or maybe an RPG that is all plot, dialog, and skill allocation, with fighting managed by the game AI. Like, Blades of Exile meets Oregon Trail.

Excepting that instead of fighting there's detective work going on, that sounds like Black Closet. You play the president of the Student Council of a girls high school, and you send your minions out to stop things threatening the schools reputation, and don't really do anything personally in-game, just lots of stuff in plot.

Just checked, and other way around, but yeah one of each so easy to distinguish.

Mind you, I have accidentally fireballed one of my own party, because the PC graphic with the armour and red and gold shield looks sorta kinda not really like the Troglodyte Defender with the armour and red and gold shield. I think I did that more than once.

Certainly (also, Shade and Spirit). I personally find it annoying to run into a group of monsters, some that are relatively powerful magic using spirits, and some that are merely shades. i can't really see a good reason for having multiple monsters using the same graphics, beyond having to create less graphics.

But, it's not like it breaks the game either way, just my personal preference.

I'd suggest a new graphic for Turquoise, I don't like monsters, especially with very different capabilities, having the same graphic, though the Ice ones do generate ice fields around them so they look different.

IIRC, there was a room in which it looks like slimes are eating, a wolf, a goblin and a lizard, but on closer inspection they are trying to merge with them. I wonder if they were supposed to do that, or having been left to their own devices they're moving beyond just running round dissolving things.

Out of interest, what is the Crimson Slime's special ability?

No, CRIMSON slime. I had to go with the naming theme of not using primary and secondary color names, but rather, shades.

Was wondering about that, yeah.

As an aside, I always thought the best bit about the slimes was that room where slimes are trying to merge (The Thing style) with other creatures. That was never really explained why or how that what happening, or what it would lead to. But it had lots of potential.

Is it called "Red Slime"?

I mention the slimes in that they seem to be the plague with the least "presence" and would be easiest to replace.

I thought Ishad Nha already completed that, actually - a terrain-only conversion of the entire E3 game. If I recall correctly, he could have converted NPCs too but was asked not to.

Really? Didn't know about that.

In any case, one thing I'd be very interested in is the (presumably inevitable) variants of E3 that could get made. There were 3 possibilities going for who was behind everything, could rewrite the ending to make it one of the other two and keep it a surprise, or even randomise it.

Bit ambitious, though, OTOH, replacing the slimes with another type of monster and putting them in new dungeons, say, shouldn't be that hard

I believe Exile III could probably be ported to the OBoE engine without too much work. One forum member (Ishad Nha) has partially done this already (specifically, porting the terrain so you can set BoE scenarios in the same settings), and I think he could probably finish it if asked; the main reason he didn't wasn't technical issues if I recall correctly.

Really? There'd been discussion of that sort of thing in the past, and usually dismissed as too much work, though I think it was usually assumed to be a scratch built BoE scenario.

In any case, even forgoing E3, it'd allow people to take E3 towns and put them in BoE scenarios. Some towns from E3 got made into a BoE format, but not many IIRC.

Though...tbh, that might have been exciting a few years back, but nowdays interest in BoE seems to have waned. Being able to play E3 again without mucking round for compatibility would be quite nice, though.

EDIT: Not meaning that as a slight on the hard work done by devoted, fans.

If I ever finish any of my scenarios, I wonder if anyone will even play them. I'll probably work on them anyway though. Eventually. (I especially want to finish the two-town one that uses a lot of the new features.)

Well, I'd start, but I tend to get fed up and quit easily when I get stuck and go replay old favourites.

Hmmm...what about the events on the surface that led to people being sent down there?

IMHO, though, the games worked better when you are thrown into an unknown environment, where you know as much as the characters.

I liked the idea of having enemy archers drop arrows when they die, so you can restock that way, and because it sorta makes sense. But unless you went all out and made a scenario friendly to archer PCs, it wouldn't do much.

Had wondered about that, as being a good archer is a nephil stereotype, so having useful archery might be desirable in a nephil based scenario. Wasn't sure how this could be done, excepting with new, more powerful items, lots of arrows around or maybe level and monster design that made archery useful.

I sort of want to fix this so that the monsters summoned by the spells are hard-coded into the engine (though still allowing a scenario to intentionally override them somehow). I might never get around to it though.

Why? Was there a problem with telling designers not to muck about with those monsters?

The idea is great, but in Exile, it's like, "Ooh, Arrows of Light! And Exploding Arrows! Oh, wait, I have six uses of each, then they're gone, and there's nowhere to replace them. Hmm, and here's Demonslayer and this Magic Wave Blade that I can use as much as I want..."

The same could be said of scrolls or wands, though you don't need a bow or archery skill to use them.

Yeah, if you just use archery occasionally, it's not a big deal, but if you want it to be the primary attack for one of your PCs, it's a pretty huge hassle.

Ah, you mean a dedicated archer, not someone fulfilling another role who has a bow. Never even considered trying that.

It also devalues magical arrows, because you get so few uses out of them; and that further devalues archery compared to regular weapons.

You mean because fighters will have magic pole/edged weapons they use all the time, and archers can only use magic arrows sometimes? While that's true, they can use magic bows, and I do like the idea of carrying different types of magical arrows with different uses.

really, the main problem with archery is just that keeping arrows in stock is annoying enough that archery would have to be better than other damage-dealing options to justify it, and it isn't

Huh...never saw that as that much of a problem. There's the infinity arrow, for one. OTOH, even when I had arrows, I'd rarely bother using them, so I didn't tend to run out fast.

the monsters those spells summon aren't actually hardcoded fwiw: change the monster definitions that they refer to and they'll summon different things. some scenarios took advantage of this on purpose and others did it by accident

Oh sure, the editor just tells people not to mess with them.

Wasn't archery being useless a bug, though? If so, that should be fixed in OBoE and archery should no longer be totally useless.

I thought it was just the way the game was balanced, rather than a bug as such.

Yeah, I found this restriction annoying and have done quite a bit of work to remove it. It's not accurate that the summoned creatures are stored directly in the item, but they're included in party data somewhere. It may still be a little buggy.

 

There are still items that can't be carried between scenarios, mind you. Mainly ones that call a special node (which is also a new possibility that I added). There are several "item abilities" that make it call a special node in various contexts, such as when you strike a monster with it, when you drop it on the ground, when you equip it, when you use it, etc (can't recall if I did all of those, but most of them).

Ah, fair enough. I always thought it was weird that there are spells that summon specific monsters that a arty can keep between scenarios, but not items that summon the same ones.

(I hear Pyramids did this and kind of annoyed people who didn't catch on as to why the shop was selling a particular item at the beginning of the scenario, not having which would strand you midway through the scenario.)

Oh yeah, the rope. That was annoying.

Using regular items can call special nodes now too, and you can design simple E3-style books that you can even take between scenarios, if you wanted.

Hey? Would they still work in another scenario? I thought you couldn't move across items linked to specials, the same as you couldn't move stuff that summoned monsters, because you wouldn't know what you'd get on the other end.

In any case, yeah, you can have all those shops, but, for me at least, I'd not miss them if they'd gone. In A Ship to Algiers, you can have goblins kill shopkeepers, IIRC, if you aren't fast enough, and if the wrong ones died that could make things very hard. But there's some types of shops I might not notice if the NPCs weren't there anymore.

Oh, congratulations.

In my experience, the place where you can sell stuff is the most visited, the sage to ID the stuff so you can sell it just below that. Below that is the blacksmith for new armour and weapons. Maybe the random item hop to see if there is anything nice/cheap today. And of course people to train you or teach spells. I don't use alchemy though others might.

I don't usually visit other shops much at all.

Archery shops are common, but only as useful as the archery skill, so not much. Paying for healing isn't useful when you've got priest spells to do the same for free (though at lesser levels you won't have all the spells for all the options you can buy). Inns aren't any better than resting in a friendly town. In E3 there were a few "tool shops" where you'd buy lockpicks or torches and lamps which are useless if you have a lvl 3 mage. Being able to buy enhancements for weapons is sorta cool, only way too expensive to actually do.

There's also marginally useful shops that sell a limited amount of items that don't need replacing. For example, a store that sells both types of boots which is worth visiting once and then not again.

Of course, shops like that can add filling and flavour to a town even if they aren't particularly useful as shops.

Was wondering if people tended to use the same sorts of shops. Also, for larger scenarios, how few and far apart can they be before their absence becomes noticeable? Being far from shops can be inconvenient (which can be a plot point, of course), but how far is "far"?

I know I'm a bit late to this, but:

Slarty is the NSA!

Isn't that a Miley Cyrus song?