Just bought it

[Del_Duio]

Hi, just wanted to say that I saw this mentioned up on TigSource the other day and downloaded the demo. I thoroughly enjoyed the crap outta' it, very great game that reminded me of all the D&D and Ultima I used to play "back in the day".

I finally finished the demo version and went to purchase the whole game about 5 minutes later so I guess you guys are doing something right Mostly I want to make some new characters from scratch and see what's possible for party combinations. I am very impressed at the level of detail you guys have been able to put into KotC, and how challenging the game is.

P.S: That Lich fight was a killer, but once I figured out how awesome that +2 walking stick of disruption was it made it possible (still had to reload like 30 times but that's cool haha).

[BlueSalamander]

Hello Del_Duio, welcome to the forums and thanks for the praise. Disrupting weapons certainly are a must-have in the demo fight against the lich.

[Del_Duio]

No problem, well worth the purchase.

I broke into the orc fortress but then escaped before that big entrance fight. Right now my guys are level 7 with a level 6 wizard. (K/K/C/W is the party I'm using). Soon enough I'll return but I think I'm going to head back to the queen spider fight and maybe win it this time with my wand of confusion and free action cleric spell

A few comments, if I may:

Crafting is kind of overpowered, mostly because you can craft stuff anywhere and always seem to have the basic ingredients at any time. It might make more sense to restrict forging weapons and stuff like that to armor / weapon shops, where material like cold iron and silver would be purchased (presumably) from the blacksmith- hence the gold cost to craft or forge something. Similarly, you could restrict wand or wonderous item crafts to magic / scroll shops.

I really wish there was a thief class in this game. As it is there's not really any reason to ever wear leather armor or any of the lighter stuff, as clerics and knights can wear full plate without (much) of a penalty and nobody's going to want any sort of armor on their wizards anyhow I'd guess.

Are there any regular helmets in the game? The only one I've seen about 10 hours in is a +2 WIS helmet I crafted. Kind of weird, I think I might be missing them at a store or something.

Being able to rename your equipment is AWESOME. So cool, I appreciate you putting the effort into that.

EDIT: I got past the spider queen, and through the thri-keen and dwarf king overthrow part, down to the secret tomb. HOLY SHIT those 4 acid bastards are hard as hell!! I'm grinding on random encounters on the coast for money and exp to put some acid resistance magic on my knights' armor and then I'm going back to kill those mofos. This is a great game and it's a lot of fun

[BlueSalamander]

Crafting is kind of overpowered, mostly because you can craft stuff anywhere and always seem to have the basic ingredients at any time. It might make more sense to restrict forging weapons and stuff like that to armor / weapon shops, where material like cold iron and silver would be purchased (presumably) from the blacksmith- hence the gold cost to craft or forge something. Similarly, you could restrict wand or wonderous item crafts to magic / scroll shops.

Yes, I agree it would make more sense. Crafting would still be a bit overpowered though.

As it is there's not really any reason to ever wear leather armor or any of the lighter stuff, as clerics and knights can wear full plate without (much) of a penalty and nobody's going to want any sort of armor on their wizards anyhow I'd guess.

I guess there are a couple of cases where it can be useful - if you rolled 18 dex and decided to keep increasing Dex, or as a wizard if you prefer to wear mithral leather rather than bracers or the mage armour spell.

Are there any regular helmets in the game?

No there aren't any.

[Del_Duio]

No helmets? Aw man! You could have a Dragon Helm that grants minor fire protection (like the -10 fire damage rings) or something like that, it'd be great

So are there any aside from helmets of wisdom though? Should I craft them for my remaining guys?

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Having higher WIS will help everyone's Will saves, so there isn't much of a reason to not use the helmets. Same for CON (fortitude) etc.

There's a cleric spell (Greater) Protection from Acid btw.

[nocker]

I just bought the game too. I was looking for tactical RPGs yesterday, found this and got in love with the idea.

Something that almost made me not buy it was the lack of reach, both in weapons and as in larger creatures. Good times with reach/AoOs was one of my main sources of fun in Temple of Elemental Evil.

Congratulations to the author for making such a sweet old-time RPG experience. This is exactly the kind of game I love.

Now, onward to play it...

[BlueSalamander]

Thank you for your post, nocker. Anyone else thinks Reach is very important? It's a rather complicated system. Another thing that's rather complicated is monsters occupying more than one square. If all monsters occupy only one square like in ADOM, it's easier to pit the party against, say, 10 dragons and there's no need to worry about monsters having to squeeze through.

[Tiavals]

Reach is extremely vital if you intend to make the fighter classes competitive with wizards. They can threaten a much larger area, and strike from behind summons and do all kinds of other tactical stuff. Reach also makes a lot of monsters more threathening.

[nocker]

Thank you for your post, nocker. Anyone else thinks Reach is very important? It's a rather complicated system. Another thing that's rather complicated is monsters occupying more than one square. If all monsters occupy only one square like in ADOM, it's easier to pit the party against, say, 10 dragons and there's no need to worry about monsters having to squeeze through.

I know monster size adds a whole host of complications, but I find it's a vital part of D&D experience. One thing that you could look to implement is moving through occupied squares and squeezing through restricted spaces. I'm tearing through the game right now (since it's my first time it's with a x2 max rolls + max hp party consisting of mul warrior, human cleric (leader) and two half-elf wizards) and a great source of frustration in a lot of fights is when a fight starts and the fighter is stuck behind one wizard. In tight corridors the fight can become completely stuck like this.

I imagine this can be a bitch to program, but combat in d20 is more fluid than you usually see in tactical RPGs. I wonder if this can be programmed by making some changes on the A* (or whatever pathfinding algorithm you're using) to treat spaces occupied by friendlies as empty to cross, but not to end their movement there. (then of course there's the Charge exception )

Squeezing through smaller spaces is also a vital part of movement on d20. Otherwise you get silly situations like a large monster being unable to reach the party because there's no 10' opening for it. In the tabletop, the monster will squeeze forward.

Another troublesome thing is the lack of 5' step around corners or doors frames. (maybe this would be better going on the suggestions for the next game sub-forum? )