Temple of Elemental Evil discussion thread (merged)

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I've recently given up on this game. The performance is unacceptably bad. I'm in the fire node and it constantly freezes for minutes at a time, and saving games takes 5 - 10 minutes. I am so sick and tired of game publishers releasing buggy software into the market then relying on patches after the fact. Bah.

Dial your particle effects down. I make it through the fire node with relatively minimal slowing that way.

 

[uv23]

Dial your particle effects down. I make it through the fire node with relatively minimal slowing that way.

I dialed everything down and it still runs like crap. Maybe i'll load it up again in a few months when they've released a patch or five.

 

[Mystic Eye]

Has any one tried out the unoficial patch yet? Does it work well?

 

[KnowTheToe]

How do you spontaniously cast healing spells. the book says to channel positive energy, but I don't see where I can do that.

Also, how do you identify potions?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Hold down the shift key while selecting spells (ie, per page 1 of the manual).

In the base game, you need an Identify to ID potions. With the unofficial patch, Read Magic will work.

The unofficial patch fixes a number of spellcasting and item crafting problems, as well as making a wide range of masterwork items available through the blacksmith in Hommlet -- all of which are useful improvements. They've added some additional magic items (ioun stones, new rods) which while creative, will cause your game to crash if you have them in a save file and uninstall the unofficial patch. I'd prefer they just stick to fixes and not "improvements" myself, as there's a tendency to go too far -- read magic identifying potions being one example.

 

[Joseph Elric Smith]

Hold down the shift key while selecting spells (ie, per page 1 of the manual).

In the base game, you need an Identify to ID potions. With the unofficial patch, Read Magic will work.

The unofficial patch fixes a number of spellcasting and item crafting problems, as well as making a wide range of masterwork items available through the blacksmith in Hommlet -- all of which are useful improvements. They've added some additional magic items (ioun stones, new rods) which while creative, will cause your game to crash if you have them in a save file and uninstall the unofficial patch. I'd prefer they just stick to fixes and not "improvements" myself, as there's a tendency to go too far -- read magic identifying potions being one example.

The part I don't understand is why would read magic allow you to identify a potion? What was the person who did th patching thinking? if they were trying to make it easier to play the game, well cheat codes should always be optional. Guess i'll have to wait for the official patch, and I was looking forward to much of what they had done too.
Ken

 

[zero skill LPB]

Me, I kinda like read magic = identify potion

In PnP 3.5, PCs are able to use Craft (Alchemy) to identify potions. But, sadly, Craft (Alchemy) isn't implemented in the ToEE CRPG; the only option you have is to fork over 100 GP to cast Identify on each and every individual potion. In addition to this inconvenience your PCs have fixed inventory space + there are no portable containers in the game = your PCs packs will quickly become crammed with un-ID'd potions.

I appreciate that the Co8 dudes have provided another way to ID the little buggers that (1) doesn't involve spending absurd amounts of GP just to find that I have indeed been carting around 10 potions of cure light wounds, (2) still has a small cost [zero level spells are useful!] associated with it.

 

[KarinsDad]

The part I don't understand is why would read magic allow you to identify a potion?

I guess it depends on your point of view.

My position is:

Why wouldn't potions have labels on them in the first place? If you brewed 10 different potions, wouldn't it be hard for even you to keep track of which was which without a label, even if they do have different colors?

Finding potions with no labels is something that happened in our games in the 70s, not in the 21st century.

What was the person who did th patching thinking?

I assume the person who wrote the patch thought as I do and had the potion creators put "magical writing" on the potions so that spell casters could figure it out, but non-spell casters could not.

However, with just magical writing on them, I could also see the program "occasionally lying" on cursed potions and the like whereas Identify would not.


In our game, potions almost always have labels on them, be they accurate or false. However, I think I'm going to start using this idea of having potion labels written down in arcane text (similar to scroll text or wizard spell book text) for arcane potions or ancient languages (similar to Latin in the real world) for divine potions or even possibly just a code for those spell casters who might not know arcane or ancient languages (e.g. potions created by Bards or Sorcerers or even any other class where the creator could not or did not want to use some set language).

This minimally forces the party to use Read Magic and/or Comprehend Languages to figure potions out. Not a biggy, but even having a few zero or first level spells allocated for potion determination (if found) means that other spells cannot be in those spell slots.

Who'd of thunk it? A computer game actually using a concept which can be used in real gaming.

 

[KarinsDad]

How tough is the fight with Lareth's minions?

I allowed him to join my party so that I could go to the Temple, he then ambushed us when we entered the Temple, but it did not get played out because the program crashed last night when the first thing I attempted to do was head back out the door I came in.

So, I was curious as to how tough this fight may be. My party currently consists of 2 Clerics, 1 Fighter, 1 Rogue, and 1 Wizard, all third level. I was thinking that when I go back, I might just grab Elmo in Nulb as a follower first. And, my characters are only 800 XP away from fourth level. So, should I bump them up to fourth level with random encounters first, or will that just make the brigands and such in the Temple even stronger as well (i.e. does the program adjust the preset encounters to the level of the party)?

 

[Dark Jezter]

The part I don't understand is why would read magic allow you to identify a potion? What was the person who did th patching thinking?

They were probably thinking "Geez, how stupid is it that you have to spend 100 gp to identify a potion using the Identify spell?"

I'm glad that read magic now allows you to identify potions, since the Craft (Alchemy) skill wasn't included in the game.