Hack and slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash...

[Mea Tulpa]

I just hacked my way through most of the Eastern Gallery subsubterranean. I kept coming to a new screen and expecting the caverns to end, but no, they extend through practically the entire area! And I am getting really tempted to change my difficulty setting to Normal. I swear, if I see one more Plated Chitrach...

 

While I enjoy being forced to marshall my resources carefully and creatively, as Torment forces me to do, this is getting a little ridiculous. Clearing those chitrachs wasn't difficult, it was just really tedious. Oh look, another twisty passage, oh look, another egg sac, position just far enough to avoid a double attack, twang twang heal cure fireball twang twang a miss! fireball let's move on, oh look, another twisty passage, oh look, another egg sac... over and over. I finally decided to let one of my characters get overloaded because there was no way I was walking through all these !@#$ tunnels again just to pick up treasure.

 

Previous games had just as much combat, but the combat was less draining on the guy at the keyboard. There were still interesting battles that made you think, and do things creatively -- even in Exile where you could run a broken singleton and kill things without bothering to enter combat mode. But having to deal with regular enemies that way, over and over again, is no good. The tendency of the AI to swarm whoever's most easily swarmable, which at first seemed like a golden opportunity to run a tank, is quickly becoming boring and annoying.

 

I think the Plated Chitrach annoys me particularly since it's such an obvious lift of a Geneforge creature, right down to most of its statistics...

 

Honestly, I really like this game. I'm not trying to be, you know, a Grumpy Garzahd. But this is ridiculous, it's just not a positive play experience.

[Lattan]

I don't think you're really expected to do the entire underground cavern at once. I did it roughly in parallel with the "surface" and, while tedious, it wasn't too bad.

 

Plus it was the worst thing I've hit through most of the Great Cave, so it does get better. Unless you don't like the Honeycomb, which apparently some people didn't...

[Alorael at Large]

Different tastes. I liked the chitrach maze under the Eastern Gallery. I also discovered that going into fight mode and waiting near egg sacs is the most efficient way to kill chitrachs. You get one free round to whale on the new bugs when they emerge.

 

That was on normal, of course, and that assumes you want to try melee against chitrachs, which is not at all a certain proposition.

 

—Alorael, who will nitpick and say that you couldn't get a singleton anywhere without entering combat mode in Exile. Nethergate introduced the concept of attacking with the first character in town mode.

[Synergy]

Curiously enough, hacking through all the chitrachs as a singleton was easier than with my previous parties of four. He has over 3/4 poison immunity, and parries or dodges 7/8 chitrach blows, so it was easy to send him in anywhere and just hack away, casting the occasional Icy Rain, fireball, or Lightning Spray if things got too crowded for my liking. Hasted and blessed and shielded, he carved through them pretty effectively. Riposte wasn't that big a deal with the plated chits...maybe it happened 1/3 or 1/4 of the time, perhaps due to my high Blademaster.

 

P.S. I agree about too many chitrachs. They become very tedious indeed. More does not equal better. Frequently, more is less. I'd rather see something very clever than something that seems interminable.

[RAmpaGE]

I went down the first hole that lead to the chitrach caves, northwest from Cotra or Silvar. I went on to clear the entire cave in one go... or at least I planned to. I cleared all but the three norternmost parts of the map (another chitrach cave and two spider caves). Cleared the lizard island too, which left me with enough loot to encumber my entire party (but I was leaving stuff on the ground while I cleared each screen).

 

It definitively wasn't as hard as it was annoying. I don't ever want to see that cave again. But I will, since I started over. As if I didn't have enough of the clawbug chitraches. Now, if only I could still fight in town mode... T_T

 

RAmpaGE.

[LetheRunner]

What I found about the AI that made the whole game much less tedious, and perhaps more interesting, is that you can do much like you do in MMORPGs and hate manage. Critters will usually attack either what's right in front of them, or the poor S.O.B. who last hit them. You can even get some monsters to bounce back and forth between two ranged attackers so that they never get to use their full attack, in the meantime having a melee harangue them as they bounce. Of course, ranged enemies are a different story, but I still found this tactic useful.

[Mea Tulpa]

Alorael -- you're right, my bad. But didn't Exile 3 and Blades, or maybe it was just Blades, have this feature as well? I'm sure I remember mowing down goblins that way -- two-dimensional goblins.

[Celchu]

Quote:

Originally written by Slartucker:
Alorael -- you're right, my bad. But didn't Exile 3 and Blades, or maybe it was just Blades, have this feature as well? I'm sure I remember mowing down goblins that way -- two-dimensional goblins.

I remember that E3 at least didn't let you attack in town mode; your memory is probably due to the fact that the party's graphics didn't change between town and combat modes for a singleton.

[Lilith]

None of the Exile games, including BoE, allowed you to fight outside of combat mode.

[Delicious Vlish]

Nethergate brought that little change about.

[Mea Tulpa]

Hmm. I think I must be remembering the reverse, then -- doing a dungeon entirely in combat mode.

 

Oh, *yeah*. Now I remember. That was back when non-singletons could skip important encounters by ending combat mode strategically. Heh.

[Alorael at Large]

That's also an exciting feature of Nethergate and Avernum games. It never did get fixed.

 

—Alorael, who simply thinks of it as an exciting incentive for BoA scenario designers to experiment with different orientations.

[the horned slayer]

i think i got past some of the demo version in a4 by closing combat and opening!

infact i evan went to the CASTLE!! without registering

evan though the letter is on it's way