June Update
This is an important update as I have been working on the continuation of Hearkenwold in the IceBlink engine after a slight detour to make the module available for Knights of the Chalice 2.
The last thing I been building was the separate guild adventures available to the corresponding player classes. I have talked about before how it would be necessary for the player to join at least one of these guilds, for when the moment arrives to advance the central narrative. And this is why:
Yes, the King is having a council and only highly respected individuals are allowed. Or at least characters who completed one of the guild quests. Each party member who has such affiliation will have the option to express their credentials and thus enter the council room.
I am using some of the floor tiles from DungeonCrawl Soup that were made available and Pongo posted about in the other thread. I'm not sure if it is too much of a clash with the quality of the other graphics, but I think it looks nice.
Naturally, the new content I am putting together will feature new opponents to fight. Here is an example of a gargoyle mage, a monster with the toughness of a standard gargoyle, but the ability to cast spells on the party.
The tricky part is going to be due to the module's non-linear approach to design. I want to be able to create challenging encounters for high level parties, but there will also be areas that mid-level characters could access as well. In the end, there will be a mix of both. And if powerful parties stumble upon weaker foes in some places, that is just the nature of growing strong enough to dominate the enemies.
I was still working with builds 198/199 up to this point. But I will grab the latest version of IceBlink so I can start working with more of the new additions. I did however copy over the two weapon fight traits. To showcase this, I had our party's paladin pick up the trait at sixth level and then equip a short sword in his off hand.
I also started using the weather effects settings. Just the deafults, which seem perfectly suitable for the outdoor areas. I made a gif to cycle through a few different zones showing rain, snow and a sandstorm.
The version of Hearkenwold that I upload next will be focused on continuing the main adventure path, as well as including one multi-level cavern dungeon. Again, some content will be exclusively post-guild adventures, but will then link up with the rest of the module. And other areas will be available to players who have not yet started the guild quests. I am hoping to finish by the end of the summer, although as always, these projections tend to slip away. I have so far created many of the outdoor maps and critical encounters. This month I started on the cave dungeon. If I can finish that, then it is only a matter of filling up the surrounding areas with content.