Legend Of Grimrock

Dungeon Master wasn't turn-based.

I don't think turn-based would have made Grimrock better. I think real-time was fine, but they needed a better system (or better user interface) than what they used, IMO.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Dungeon Master wasn't turn-based.

Holy crap, you're right. What the hell am I remembering then? I sure remember playing a tb crawler on the Amiga.

Or maybe I'm just that old. That's it. My young reflexes made it FEEL turn-based.

Jimminy Cricket that huge crab thing in level 5 looks menacing. I'm glad it's on the other side of this grate... for now...

Edit:
Oh God! Now I'm on that side of the grate!

Edit:

And now we are both on the other side of the grate!

Whew. Killed him.

You guys aren't wrong about level 6. The difficulty ratchets up very suddenly and some of your lifelines are temporarily taken away. I can only advise that you prepare beforehand (brew potions) and stay nimble.

The Wizardry and Bard's Tale style of games were turn based (and awesome) while Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder were real-time (and also awesome).

Grimrock was a deliberate throwback to DM, and I thought the UI was perfect for that

There are actually a couple of fantastic turnbased dungeon crawl games out, or coming out, now too - it's crazy how many retro style games are in the upswing. Check out the JRPG thread for some ideas on handheld turn-based dungeon crawlers - I think Unchained Blades is about out and looks pretty interesting, if that's your thing instead. Also Etrian Odyssey!

Quintin_Stone wrote:

You guys aren't wrong about level 6. The difficulty ratchets up very suddenly and some of your lifelines are temporarily taken away. I can only advise that you prepare beforehand (brew potions) and stay nimble.

Eek, I just got down there, died to the ambush of three things twice, then was quick and ran away before I was surrounded and ran to a hallway to get a chokepoint. There was something else in that hallway... Very large...

DrunkenSleipnir wrote:

The Wizardry and Bard's Tale style of games were turn based (and awesome) while Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder were real-time (and also awesome).

I was having this conversation with someone the other day, and they insisted that random encounters were real-time in Bard's Tale, though the combat itself was turn based. ie: You could be attacked while standing still on the street. I don't recall that, but it's been more than 20 years since I've played that game in any way, shape, or form.

Tyrian wrote:
DrunkenSleipnir wrote:

The Wizardry and Bard's Tale style of games were turn based (and awesome) while Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder were real-time (and also awesome).

I was having this conversation with someone the other day, and they insisted that random encounters were real-time in Bard's Tale, though the combat itself was turn based. ie: You could be attacked while standing still on the street. I don't recall that, but it's been more than 20 years since I've played that game in any way, shape, or form.

I think that's true, although it's been a LONG time. If you're standing still (and unpaused) I think you can get nailed with a random encounter. It wasn't like that in the Wizardry games, I don't think.

Bards Tale was pretty brutal - you could totally get killed in town wandering from shop to adventures guild

DrunkenSleipnir wrote:
Tyrian wrote:
DrunkenSleipnir wrote:

The Wizardry and Bard's Tale style of games were turn based (and awesome) while Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder were real-time (and also awesome).

I was having this conversation with someone the other day, and they insisted that random encounters were real-time in Bard's Tale, though the combat itself was turn based. ie: You could be attacked while standing still on the street. I don't recall that, but it's been more than 20 years since I've played that game in any way, shape, or form.

I think that's true, although it's been a LONG time. If you're standing still (and unpaused) I think you can get nailed with a random encounter. It wasn't like that in the Wizardry games, I don't think.

Bards Tale was pretty brutal - you could totally get killed in town wandering from shop to adventures guild :)

It's true. Some of my first gamehacking experience came from playing Bard's Tale. Some friends and I figured out the basic structure of the save game by using a hex editor. We then methodically changed stats and inventory slots to figure out what all the items were. A character wielding a statue of an ogrelord is an odd thing.

I picked this gem up during the Steam sale and just started playing it last week. I am absolutely in love with it so far. I was a huge fan of Dungeon Master on the Atari ST and this brings back all the nostalgia of that but modernized.

After 11 hours in and nearly completing level 5 though, I think I'm gonna have to restart. I pretty much went blackout as far as reading anything about the game beforehand went, as I wanted the sense of discovery and experimentation for myself. That being said, it turns out that I made some pretty terrible character creation and development choices that I feel, with some research now, are only going to get worse in the long run. It's all good though, I think I've learned a lot for my second attempt.

With that in mind here are some character creation and leveling tips that I wish I knew when I started. Feel free to dispute any if you disagree:

-Dexterity is important for your front line fighters. I kept my minotaur fighter at his starting Dex of 7 in the beginning because I thought I'd go all Strength and Vitality like a boss. This has resulted in my minotaur missing most of his swings in combat.

-Evasion > Protection. Again, with my low dex minotaur, even though he had way more health and protection than my human fighter, he was the one dying in combat all the time while my evade happy human has only died once I think.

-Dexterity is useless for ranged combat. Missile and thrown weapons always hit, and dexterity only raises your accuracy for weapons. It's backwards thinking for most RPG fans, but strength is what actually improves these skills.

-Focus on only 1 or 2 skills while you level up. I didn't realize how few skill points in total you get throughout the game and there's no respec or unspend option. By experimenting and spreading my points around, I've come to the realization that I will never be able to get any of the high level skills and spells, which is hurting me now but I fear will absolutely destroy me later on. This is especially true for mages.

-Earth Magic is the sh*ttiest spell school. Seriously, it does the least amount of damage and there are a ton of enemies that are just straight up immune to it. I panicked when I got poisoned a few times and sunk a bunch of points in here that I wish I could take back. Ice and Air are my favorites so far since I haven't found anything immune to lightning and the chance to freeze enemies is a great utility.

-Other than magic, and items that have specific requirements listed on them, you don't need a skill to use anything. This was a total newb mistake on my part, but it took me awhile to realize that anyone could just throw a rock or ninja star, the throwing weapons skill just makes it better. I also effectively used a crossbow for awhile even though I had 0 in missile weapons just because it did more damage than anything else I had at the time.

Feel free to add any tips that you've found.

Wait, missile weapons always hit? Are you certain? I swear I remember my archer whiffing on a number of his shots...

Nicholaas wrote:

Wait, missile weapons always hit? Are you certain? I swear I remember my archer whiffing on a number of his shots...

Pretty sure. If you look at the accuracy stat for an equipped missile weapon in your inventory it shows up as --. You can occasionally "miss" with a missile weapon if an enemy is moving between tiles when you shoot at them, but as far as I know it has nothing to do with your stats. I've never missed a target standing still in front of me.

Unfortunately I've kind of given up on this game.. after getting stuck on level 9 I went to a walkthrough and saw that I needed something that I thought was junk/disposable. I'm pretty sure I used it as a weight for a pressure pad *somewhere* before, maybe on that level, maybe on a completely other level.. either way I was unwilling to backtrack through everything I had been through to try and find one stupid thing.

Finished the game awhile ago, and actually started another in the special Toorum mode, but there is too much other stuff to do for me to stick through it.

As my tips note that the healing Crystals recharge after a short amount of time, at first I was avoiding using them in favor of resting, which cost me extra time/food.

As far as which magic path to go, air and fire are both good choices, only one thing in the game is immune to fire, and it uses fire attacks, so having fire resist makes up for that. Nothing is immune to air magic, so you are good there. As far as Earth goes, the ubiquitous undead are immune to poison, which is especially a problem in the early game when they are dangerous enemies. In the mid-late game you will be strong enough to handle skeletons, and poison resist will help greatly in the mid-game. Poison also has the boon of adding DOT, which can help quite a bit. Unfortunately in the end-game you once again run into very powerful enemies which are poison immune, and your poison resistance, it does nothing. Cold is like Earth in that their is large secondary benefit, in this case some attacks freeze enemies for a short amount of time, which is amazing. In addition the first cold attack can hit multiple enemies, which is nice. Unfortunately there is a late-game enemy which is powerful and cold immune. More importantly, like the poison-immune monsters, and unlike the fire-immune creature, your cold resistance once again doesn't help.

I wouldn't say that choosing a single path is purely necessary, though it might be better. I went a short way down each path (at least 5-8 points in each) before sticking to Fire, and I was still able to finish the game without much of a problem.

Bombs are very heavy, and totally optional, but definitely keep all of the ice bombs. In addition to doing DD they freeze their enemy 100% of the time, which can be invaluable.

the Dungeon Editor is approaching.

See, the thing is, you never ever want to just stand there and fight. If monsters can hit you, people are going to die. So you've got to be reasonably dextrous about sliding back and forth and spinning. If you've got a 2x2 block, for instance, stand like this:

_M
^_

(^ is you, M is monster.) If the monster takes a step in front of you, whack it once or twice and strafe before he can turn and hit you. If it turns so that it will be coming to your right, you should be able to see that, rotate right, and then whack it when it moves, strafing left instead. But if that tangles your fingers up, you can just take a step forward as soon as it moves into the square on your right, and then you can spin around and get set up again.

If you can't set up a 'circle strafe' like this, and you MUST stand toe to toe, try to find a door with a pull chain that you can close and heal up. Monsters don't seem to heal, but you do, and if you slam a door in its face, it can't hit you. So you can recuperate, open the door, beat on it some more, close the door, and so on.

There are a couple of spots where you can't really use any tricks... the start of floor 6, if I remember correctly, is just insanely hard. I ended up having to run like crazy to find the key to let myself back out again, and then I could kill a monster, retreat up the stairs, rest, go back down, kill something, retreat, and so on.

Yeah there is a surprising amount of "twitch" in a game that looks like it should be turn based.

It's really deceptive. It's slowish twitch so it's not like SC2 or Tribes or something but it's twitchy nonetheless and everything in the game screams "slow, turn based, take a sip of tea whilst you fight" but then the mechanics punish you harshly for being lazy in combat.

I don't dislike it but I found it to be unexpected.

I also found all the constant spinning about to make me vaguely sick to my stomach after an hour of playing. Games almost never do that to me but something about all the spinning you have to do in this one.

Great game, though.

Yeah, that's part of its predecessor (Dungeon Master) as well -- that you weren't supposed to just stand there and trade blows. This was the major differentiation between 'real time' and 'turn based' -- real time monsters hit far harder, but you could simply not be there when the blows landed.

It's easy to think about and play this game like Bard's Tale, but it's much more like Dungeon Master, so you need to stay mobile whenever possible. It doesn't take a huge amount of space to do normal 'circle strafing', so do so whenever you can. The game is balanced around you using every trick you can figure out to avoid attacks.

And try not to fight more than one mob at a time, if you can manage it. Much easier to dodge just one.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...

A beta version of the long-awaited Legend of Grimrock dungeon editor is now available to the public.

It's good news for all the old-school dungeon builders out there, as the Legend of Grimrock editor has finally been released. Sort of, anyway: it's a beta version, and with all the internal changes made to the game to allow modding, you can expect a few bugs. It's also currently restricted to Steam versions of the game, because Steam allows Almost Human to do "frequent incremental updates" as issues arise.

This game also had one of my highest "sh*t Pants" counts of any game in recent memory. Probably my biggest moment of that was when:

Near End Game Spoilers:

Spoiler:

I had just encountered the enemies that look like all the statues in the game (Goromorgs?) for the first time and decided to take a rest with my usual trick of just shutting the door in the monster's face.

Then he opened the door...

and killed me.

I about jumped out of my chair and my wife looked at me like a crazy man when, wild-eyed, I shouted "OH MY GOD, THEY CAN OPEN DOORS!!!"

Thurgrim wrote:

This game also had one of my highest "sh*t Pants" counts of any game in recent memory. Probably my biggest moment of that was when:

Near End Game Spoilers:

Spoiler:

I had just encountered the enemies that look like all the statues in the game (Goromorgs?) for the first time and decided to take a rest with my usual trick of just shutting the door in the monster's face.

Then he opened the door...

and killed me.

I about jumped out of my chair and my wife looked at me like a crazy man when, wild-eyed, I shouted "OH MY GOD, THEY CAN OPEN DOORS!!!"

Spoiler:

Yeah, that got me too. I definitely had a fright and had to run up to the previous level. (Luckily they still can't climb stairs).

So I bought this during the Steam autumn sale. Finally got around to trying it today and cleared the first floor. So awesome. I had so many flashbacks to playing Dungeon Master on the Atari ST computer. I felt like a kid again.

This is currently 50% on GOG.

Level 3 down. F*ck spiders, just f*ck them......

Yeah? Well, wait til you meet... on second thought, you'll find out.

Just how much can I "multiclass" my guys? It's apparent that they want you to stick with ONE skill tree only for the most part. But if I max out one tree how many points does that leave me at level cap?

Tamren wrote:

Just how much can I "multiclass" my guys? It's apparent that they want you to stick with ONE skill tree only for the most part. But if I max out one tree how many points does that leave me at level cap?

Very, very few. I found that the end skills in a class were worth effectively single classing, especially for the casters.

It's sadly very inefficient, mechanics-wise, to multiclass.

Well I think I hit a brick wall. I'm on level 4 and I'm just totally stuck. Had a good run of it and I even managed to figure out how to get the gear key. I got the 4 scrolls and I think I'm supposed to put them in the alcoves, but none of the combinations I try do anything. Can anyone give me a push in the right direction?

I'm also VERY underwhelmed by my rogue. I put all my points into making her a backstabber, which sounds great on paper. Can't go wrong with triple damage right? Well as it turns out most enemies are far too fast to backstab, they just move and turn too quickly. And since the Assassination tree doesn't provide any weapon bonuses her damage and accuracy are terrible, even with the backstabs. Meanwhile my fighters are firing off special attacks left and right and flattening the enemies with 50-60 damage hits.

The evasion penalies for light and heavy armour are really harsh too. I'm giving up on the level 50 skills and putting everything I can into that tree until I get the mastery.