Hearkenwold

[cartons]

Having backtracked a bit, I noticed that I may have tackled some harder challenges earlier than the narrative required, so some of the current headway I'm making is a bit easier than it would have been other (open world working as intended - and a welcome breather!)

A bug, a typo, and a suggestion:

a bug:
I noticed the quest to deliver a poem from Castle Hearkenwold to the travelling bard (sorry, her name escapes me) occuring twice.
The first time round, I delivered the poem to the bard, but didn't follow up with any subsequent actions. I also did not, at this time, finish the quest of retrieving the musical instruments from Rork's goblin troupe. I later meet the bard again in Skardale. Returning to Hearkenwold, she appears again in usual position outside the castle, and inside I am offered the quest to deliver her the poem a second time.

typo:
Sly, in castle Hearkenwold, tells me about a secret 'passsage'.

a suggestion:
I wished the guild sponsor I met in Skardale would have pressed me more explicitly to remember their name. I hadn't written it down, I suppose, because I expected to offload that memory task to the game. I have been in the habit of taking notes here and there, and don't mind this being a function of getting into the guild either, but I would have appreciated a line like "No really, remember my name!" (and if there actually was a line like that, and I forgot, then sorry!)

[Dorateen]

Yes, the interactions with the bard Lady Madrigal have vexed me for a while, with the different variables and stages when she can be met. I will take a closer look and fix that.

I anticipated there might be an issue with remembering the sponsor names. I'm thinking about placing a book or document in the gameworld that the player could find, and it would have the name of the six sponsors for reference. In the meantime, I'm always around to give hints or answers needed to continue.

(Highlight the line below to see the spoiler)

SPOILER
The name of the sponsor in Sakrdale is Soufara Ebonwind
SPOILER

All the sponsors have a first and last name, the guild doors will accept either or the full name.

Thanks again for the feedback!

[cartons]

A little update on my progress.

SPOILERS:

I'm levels 7-8. Tracked and finished Wrathack, and am siding with Skardale against Relmfur. I haven't yet initiated active dissent, but I did purge a vampire or two I might go campaign in the dwarf mountains for a bit, or try to finish off some guild quests before advancing the plot.

This is my second visit to Skardale; the first time I'd stumbled upon it from the East and had heck of a time with the encounters within and without considering my party's level. Relmfur, and the parts south of Hearkenwold were relatively unexplored outside of Khyn until recently. I found a lot of really good items I wished I'd had (and evidently were intended to be found) earlier!

Some considerations:

I had a little trouble proving to the ghost that I'd met Elena. Would it be possible for her to accept numerical answers?

Also, when I started the game, the ruleset stated that in this campaign Strength counted for HP, and Intelligence for SP regardless whether you were a Mage or Cleric. I balanced my party accordingly, only to regret feeding my Con and Wis stats anemically. Is that guide information out of date?

Lastly, thanks for your help with getting into the Cleric's guild! My initation is complete and I've since run into guild patrons for Fighters, Rangers and Wizards in quick succession (demonstrating again maybe my idiosyncratic exploratory paths).

[Dorateen]

That is indeed fantastic progress! Thank you for the feedback. It seems like you now have several viable paths open for you. There are pretty good items to be found around the Skardale/Relmfur area. Hopefully you will need them if you run into more dangerous enemies. I do enjoy hearing the round-about way these locations are discovered. I hope that players are led in exploration by curiosity, although the party can very well get in over their heads early on.

I checked the conversation with Elena, and there is room to add the number option as long as the parser accepts numeric values. I think all the keyword entries have been alpha only. But I will test it and see.

Sorry about the misleading ruleset guide. In fact, I made the change about a year ago to have Wisdom be the defining spellcasting stat for Clerics (and paladins). I thought this was more in line with D&D. Intelligence still affects SP for wizards and rangers.

[slowdive]

You can always go into your last save game file. It is in the "saves" folder and then the module's folder and look for the slot number that corresponds to the save file you want to edit. In the save file (it is just a text file, json format), do a search for "baseWis" to get to the players list of your characters and then change the "baseWis" and "baseCon" to something more appropriate. The game should automatically recalculate the new max HP and max SP for your PCs when you load up that save game.

[Dorateen]

February Update

Last month I was able to get the first four guild adventures started, the ones for Clerics, Paladins, Rangers and Thieves. Over the next two weeks I will set up the Fighter and Wizard guilds, respectively. At that point, I will have roughly a month and a half to try and finish everything for this conversion. I suspect that I will get most of the content in place, but I will probably need to go into April for a final pass from start to finish. We'll see.

In the meantime, here's a few guild related screenshots:

The Paladin quest


The Ranger quest


The Thief quest


I have also just uploaded a new video to showcase a tough encounter with a rival party. The characters here are 5th level, and managed to survive with a bit of luck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bCPR7ic1gQ

[slowdive]

Making some great progress! The encounter with the competing party was fun to watch and you held up well against them (minus the bleeding part ). There sure are a lot of options to choose for your combat actions. It was a little overwhelming, but I guess it gets easier with time

[Dorateen]

There sure are a lot of options to choose for your combat actions.

Besides combat maneuvers like trip and disarm, there is also a lot of tactical consideration. In hindsight, I might have been able to make things easier if I tried a hold spell. But enemy spellcasters are such a threat, the initial instinct I have is to silence them. The problem is they can still move out of the area of effect unless they are pinned down, and I paid for it. Oh well, in the end, their party's wizard ate a critical for his trouble.

[slowdive]

trip and disarm traits sounds like fun... hmmm, maybe we need that in IB (unless someone already created traits for those).

[Dorateen]

We have a trait for Trip in the Iceblink PC version. I do not think there is a disarm. These are a pain in KotC because every time a character stands up or rearms, they provoke an attack of opportunity.