Temple of Elemental Evil discussion thread (merged)

[Iron_Chef]

Keeping Fragarach (if you've got a character who can use it, which isn't likely given a LE party) is far better than any XP that can be earned from turning it over.

The vanishing party members is probably a pre-patch holdover. It used to be dead NPCs effectively vanished from your party as soon as they were killed -- you could only bring them back if you raised them on the spot. Looks like they mostly fixed that. Maybe Otis' return flag kicked in -- he usually bails on you after your first trip back to Nulb from the Temple.

You weren't suprised when Elmo (LG ranger) refused to attack Thrommel, were you?

I was kinda hoping he'd help, LOL. Isn't standing idly by when your hero, the prince, is being killed by assassins an evil act? He never left the group or said anything about it after. Then again, he's an idiot and probably forgot; I think he has a crush on my charisma monkey lady rogue/fighter.

For RPing reasons, I wouldn't keep Fragarach even if I could use it. My clerics and most party members all worship Hextor and destroying the sword is a holy quest mandated by our superiors in the church. Keeping it would not only be suicidal, but a violation of alignment, our orders and religion.

What I wanna know is how come my reach weapon fighter with Improved Trip keeps getting tripped when she tries to trip foes? Shouldn't she be able to drop her guisarme instead? It's almost gotten her killed numerous times.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

They didn't implement dropping weapons because they decided (1) getting disarmed was no fun, and (2) then they'd have to add graphics for picking the weapon back up.

Personally I think they should have put disarm in.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I finished the game a few days ago, and I noticed a small bug, as it seems:
I rescued prince Thrommel, but during one of the combats in the temple he was killed. I immediatly raised him, and when I left the temple and got back to Hommlet to create some items, he left the group to travel home.
But when I finished the game, the epilogue reports of Thrommel being dead and this causing a difficult time in the coming wars. Obviously, a mistake, unless he was killed on his way home (but how, I explained him: "If your sword has an auto-hit function, use power attack 10 all the time for maximal damage output...")

Another "bug" (or at least a point where the 3.5 ruleset and the game doesn´t fit together):
Elementals can be sneak attacked.
I am happy about this bug, because they obviosuly overpowered these Galeb Dur monsters (They have Damage Reduction, fine. But what the hell is Damage Resistance, and why does it apply to all kinds of damage I inflict on them? And why aren`t these inhabitants of the earth plane or pocket dimension not earth creatures?) Without my sneak attacking, dual-wielding halfling rogue the fights would have been much more difficult.. (caster routine: haste, empowered fireball, empowered fireball, ice storm, fireball, fireball, fireball, spells are up. Fighter routine: miss, hit, deal little damage)

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[Iron_Chef]

QUESTION:

I'm in the Temple. I'm working for the Air Temple, but then Allrem at Fire Temple asks me to do him a favor recruiting Oohlgrist... only I already recruited him into MY party. I head back to Air, but the Air guys attack me and I have to massacre them ALL. Fire guys (salamanders) attack me on sight in Fire. I never get back to Allrem, leave, come back, can't be bothered to find Allrem, and instead delve deeper. I find Hedrack, kill him and his goons, and start investigating that level, find a door to Fire Node, and there I keep getting massacred by Salamanders casting fireball, only to find a freakin' BALOR guarding the door out, who won't negotiate but insists on fighting. He is invincible. I can't even scratch him for 1 point of damage...

How the heck am I supposed to vanquish a Balor at 8th level? This sucks!

How do I get the other Node doors open? Fire was the only one available.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

All the node doors should open for you -- not sure what's going on there.

The Balor is the toughest fight of the game, hands down.

Several approaches will work:

- Penetrate spell resistance. Bombard with tons of cold spells while you hold him off with summoned creatures.

- Send him home with a dismissal (requires a lot of luck for him to miss the save, but it can work).

- The old fashioned way -- close to melee and mow him down while your cleric keeps your front-liners propped up. Frost-enchanted weapons work nicely (This is how I did it, though admittedly my fighter was using Scather with a maxxed-out Power Attack to do about 80 points of damage per round, the ranger had a frost longbow, and the cleric had a holy mace. Only the rogue bought it, but she did get some sneak attacks in.)

Edit: This won't work if this is the first node you try (I recommend the order Air, Earth, Water, Fire), but once you start picking up the elemental power gems, use them to summon the demon guardians against each other. The Hezrou has a lot of hp and can lay some smack down on the Balor.

 

[Greybar]

Elementals can be sneak attacked.
I am happy about this bug, because they obviosuly overpowered these Galeb Dur monsters (They have Damage Reduction, fine. But what the hell is Damage Resistance, and why does it apply to all kinds of damage I inflict on them?

hear hear. DR15, SR15, avg 100hp, and they're CR4??
The (atypical) 10th level PCs in the sit-down game I run would have trouble with more than 2 or so of these. Thank you teleport scroll.

Before I go back there I'm going to super-stocked on scrolls and potions, I'll say that much...

john

 

[Greybar]

Pathing fix?

Okay, somewhere I remember seeing one of the Troika programmers talking about modifiying a INI file or somesuch to force the system to spend less cycles trying to determine paths as the cursor passes over the screen.

I said to myself: "well if I have trouble I'll come back and try that".

I went into what i'm assuming is the earth node and immediately had near-hang problems with this, but now I cannot find the info (search'd AtariCommunity and ENWorld)

Anyone else see this? Was I dreaming?

john

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

All the node doors should open for you -- not sure what's going on there.

The Balor is the toughest fight of the game, hands down.

Several approaches will work:

- Penetrate spell resistance. Bombard with tons of cold spells while you hold him off with summoned creatures.

- Send him home with a dismissal (requires a lot of luck for him to miss the save, but it can work).

- The old fashioned way -- close to melee and mow him down while your cleric keeps your front-liners propped up. Frost-enchanted weapons work nicely (This is how I did it, though admittedly my fighter was using Scather with a maxxed-out Power Attack to do about 80 points of damage per round, the ranger had a frost longbow, and the cleric had a holy mace. Only the rogue bought it, but she did get some sneak attacks in.)

Edit: This won't work if this is the first node you try (I recommend the order Air, Earth, Water, Fire), but once you start picking up the elemental power gems, use them to summon the demon guardians against each other. The Hezrou has a lot of hp and can lay some smack down on the Balor.

Interesting. I hadn`t so much trouble with the balor. One of the other demons gave me some more trouble, IIRC.

Okay, somewhere I remember seeing one of the Troika programmers talking about modifiying a INI file or somesuch to force the system to spend less cycles trying to determine paths as the cursor passes over the screen.

I said to myself: "well if I have trouble I'll come back and try that".

I went into what i'm assuming is the earth node and immediately had near-hang problems with this, but now I cannot find the info (search'd AtariCommunity and ENWorld)

Anyone else see this? Was I dreaming?

I found the ToEE.cfg, but I am not sure if there is an appropriate entry.
Possibly the

astar_max_time_ms=xyz
astar_max_window_ms=xyz

have something to do with it, but actually, I don`t know.

 

[Greybar]

aha! Thanks, searching on Astar was the clue I needed:

* ToEE.cfg variable added "astar_max_window_ms" the amount of time astar keeps track of CPU usage (in milliseconds)
* ToEE.cfg variable added "astar_max_time_ms" the most amount of time astar can spend on the CPU in "astar_max_window_ms" amount of time.

Here is an explanation of how to tweak these values

john

 

[Li Shenron]

I tried the demo just yesterday night, and I want to ask some basic questions.

- How do I use skills? -
From the radial menu I can only access Sneak and Search, and Sleight of Hand for the Bard. Isn't it possible to try identify scrolls with Spellcraft instead of using Read Magic? Also, when you use Search where are you actually searching, a 5ft square or a larger area (never found a thing so far)?

- How do I ready an action? -
I tried to select for example Ready vs. Approach from the radial menu, and the message "Action readied" appears and the initiative goes to next character. I never get to do the readied action tho, which by the way I didn't even have the chance to define.

Also, why sometimes some of the actions in the radial menu have the yellow colour? I get that when they are green you can do them and when red you cannot, but yellow? Does it simply mean you can do them but they are full-round actions? For example, the Monk has Flurry of Blows active by default, but if I attack it usually get one attack only, unless I first click on the yellow Full Attack.

It looks a nice game overall, only I don't understand why in the demo the party is so uncommon... I would have expected an iconic party with Dwarf Fighter, Human Cleric, Elf Wizard and Halfling Rogue + one extra like the Half-Elf Bard, the Human Monk, Half-Orc Cleric and Gnome Paladin are quite peculiar for a demo