22 replies to this topic

[Zyraen]

Any feedback on this newly released Mod would be much appreciated Thank you.

Bugs etc can also be reported to this thread.

[Zyraen]

I'm really starting to think I need more bugs in my Mods...

[Zyraen]

Any feedback?

[Azazello]

gimme 2 or 3 months, I'll be back.

[Zyraen]

Any other thoughts on this mod ?

[Azazello]

So I was able to push my party forward to trying the mod. Here are my impressions.

I soon learned that this mod was not made with Big Picture in mind. In BP all your party?s gear is taken away from it before they enter the maze. So after talking to the Apparition and accepting the first challenge, my party had to attack two ankhegs--with their bare hands.

Luckily, I have 3 magic-slingers so 2 other party members had to get bloody in order to distract the monsters from Fire Arrows and Magic Missiles.

The party healed up and buffed, and then waited to be attacked by?some demons. Lots of ?em. Well, not all at once. And maybe only 4 or 5.

OK, I had a choice here: duke it out with magic and no weapons, or Cntl-Y.
The answer is obvious.

The mod became MUCH more agreeable after that. The tokens allowed me to buy those special items that occur in the standard maze, and I could forgo the lesser items.

Still, I had to Cntl-Y through (lost count, maybe 20?) waves of monsters before I had enough tokens to buy all the special items I wanted, leaving a few as useless, and finally getting enough to move to the final judgment.

BTW nice touch with the comments by Imoen. I see from you have included lines for other NPCs. Nice.

The only real distressing part of the sequence was when charname turned into the Slyer then starting attacking blindly. The party had to run around like headless chickens until he cooled off. Not fun in that limited space.

So my review:
I like your mod a lot, and would recommend it, but not for a BP-based game.
I will continue to use it, but as a Branch Two option (see below).
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Suggestions:

The mod could take two branches.

Branch One:
The wave of monsters will mirror the exact creatures that the party would face in the maze, with each successive wave having more difficult creatures.

In your mod, we never fought goblins, yua-tuans, minotaurs, etc. Yes, these are easy to take down, but they could form the 1st and 2nd waves.

The experience for winning each wave could match the exp that we would get in the maze. For example, on the 2nd level of maze there?s a group of yua-tuans, so whatever exp gain from beating them.

I?m not supportive of letting parties keep fighting waves indefinitely just to get more exp or loot. Yes, I know that if the party gets enough tokens they can leave on their own. For me, there would be some condition to end all the challenges and shove the party to judgment.

And finally--much, much, less waves of monsters.

Branch Two:
As I was Cntl-Y?ing my way thru wave after wave, I realized that what I really wanted from the mod was?Spellhold-Maze-Be-Gone.

Sure, this is no challenge to an experience modder to develop, and it doesn?t allow for serious play.

Yet, for those of us who had played the game a lot, there?s no fun in the maze unless new content added, and even BP doesn?t add anything significant.

So if there was either an option, or a totally new mod, that allowed the party to get the lot, get the exp, and then get gone, that would be great.

Who know, maybe Jasper St. Baird will make a re-appearance in the future?


In conclusion:
I really like your mod?s design and truly appreciate you creating it and offering it to the community.

[10th]

Just to chime in, I finally got to play Spellhold Gauntlet. Of course I made some modifications to the ar1512.bcs, because I wanted to keep the items I got during my megamod installation and still be able to do the gauntlet.

What I noticed was, that the Boots of the North weren't offered as a unique reward though you are able to buy them at the token machine.

I proceeded straight to the hardest difficulty setting. The Vampire and Beholder waves were the most difficult, the former because there just aren't that many items around which give immunity to leveldrain, the latter because BP makes those Elder Orbs ridiculously hard.

The equiqment problem Azazello had only occurs when Improved Spellhold is installed.

The option to go either to the riddles portion or straight to judgement was a nice touch, but one should keep in mind that the riddles will award a nice chunk of experience in contrast to the judgement option.

10th

[Zyraen]

Thanks 10th The Boots of the North have been added to the latest version, as well as many other details.

Azazello - Spellhold-Be-Gone has been completed! As per your feedback

[Zyraen]

Actually.. this is the first time I'm playing this Mod using a "fair" party after completing most of the SoA. Now.. I know its weird to say this as someone who created the mod O.O But I'm not sure why SP Gauntlet isn't more enjoyable, lol. I got hooked, kinda.. spent about 2-3 hrs over here, maybe more (I have to admit, without the right abilities the Ultimate Challenge is a bit... Ultimate...). Here's some screenshots Meantime if anyone has comments or feedback on this mod, please do post up ^^;; I may do a minor revision soon to avoid some issues I encountered along the way.


Not sure how many waves brought me to this...

After all is said and done, battling Bodhi in the Gauntlet

[smeagolheart]

I didn't talk to the apparition. I went the long way and fought bodhi, discovered my bhaal powers and went up the stairs... To the spellhold gauntlet, where there were some goblins that I killed and then it said some other guys were attacking me (goblin captains I think) but there were no foes. Odd that. And there was no exit except back up to where I came from (next to minautar statue). So I am stuck due to the mod it seems.

[Zyraen]

Spellhold Gauntlet makes NO alterations to the existing area with Goblins. If you can't pass through it, it is probably due to another Mod making an Issue there. If you look at the code for SPG, it works on another identical version of the same map, Z#xxxx, and not the original. It is also impossible to enter the SPG Area except through the Apparition (not counting the use of CLUAConsole:MoveToArea )

However, I once got stuck there in the unmodded game because I didn't kill all the goblins. You might want to check out the bottom and left side of the map to see if there's one or two kobolds / goblins missed out.

Edited by Zyraen, 22 May 2008 - 07:31 PM.

[smeagolheart]

Yeah sorry the maps looked the same so I thought it was the same, oops!

[Hoppy]

Now I am just kicking myself in the but for not installing this mod! I will next time though, it looks cool!

[Azazello]

I recently played the *NEW* SPELLHOLD-BE-GONE choice...

Zyraen, BRAVO and THANKS!

I made the "mistake" of also using SCS-II's components of removing items from both the Maze and from chests, etc., so this was very challenging battle. But fortunately I had a mage with the spell Anti-Magic; together with some buffing, Enchant Weapon, and a couple of Power Word: Reload, and eventually I was able to win the fight.

Sure, the Ultimate choice is cheesy but then again so is the Maze. Both are still good fun.

[Zyraen]

Glad you liked it was a life-saver for me, else I'd have been driven mad by the asylum...
I really wish I had more feedback on this, I don't think pple know about it much... or maybe other reasons, it sucks? lol

Edited by Zyraen, 03 December 2008 - 08:01 AM.

[Irbis]

i know the feeling. you waste your days and nights for people to enjoy this mod - cuz after all, you dont do it for yourself to play. but bear in mind that rather small minority have a forum profile or are willing to gratz/ungratz in topics. most ppl just leech, they go straight to DL section and download without simple "thank you". just look at "last clicks" 5 are forum members and 20 others have "guest" label. shame that i am really to busy to try your mode as i really had enough of original version. i mean yes its one of the best pure "dungeon crawling" in BG with riddles, badguys, secrets and exploration but the randomness is nearly non existant so after 3 runs you can run thru spellhold with covered eyes.
i dont know but hosting and advertising your mod on few modding comunities would be okey. suprising but vry few people visit the forum for additional content as they dont know heres any. so they think that download placed on website is everything.
a side note: you can place some new content you know in spellhold (if you havent done that already). like unqiue your-made rewards for example. every customisation if served correctly will always benefit the product.
a sidenote 2: BG 2 really lacks of good dungeon crawling =\ just remember ruins of magic school in BG1, or great Nashkel mines. thats why when iam not a big of hack&slash i have stronger love for IWD then BG. it just reminds me good old Eye of Beholder trylogy =) no sheep-spawn involed, no semi-realistic party members. just plain normal advantures, and all of them with history and personality made by me.

wohow that was a huge side note o_o" sorry

[Azazello]

Lack of feedback might not be due to like or dislike: part of the challenge is that more players are playing mega-mods so it'll take years to get to Spellhold!

I'll do my part and encourage newer players to review the Gauntlet.

[Zyraen]

Will do my best to look into the bugs Thanks!

[Kuugen]

I played this one a lot. I found it to be a nice method to.... exp farm.
I'm playing sort of my "own" "weimar tactics lunatic madman edition" mod, so I take 300.000.000 exp for level 50 on a triple class. after a good 10 hours ( of hack and slash and literally over 9000 tokens in my bag of holding who will never be taken out due to size ) of constant killing and farming, I experienced increasing lag. It happends if you play several ( 10+ ) waves of monsters without resting ( so that their corpses vanish )
sure, that is a hardware limitation thing, but that could be easily changed if you
a) use custom monsters that don't leave physical corpses, basically, they get chunked on death. that DRASTICALLY reduces lag. I modified monsters myself and only felt a slowdown after about 50 runs in.
b) force the party to rest every 12 waves

also, sometimes the appariton conflicts with the cutscene from the Chloe NPC mod. I had three scenario's
a) the apparation doesn't spawn. while this isn't REALLY bad, it's annoying
b) the Chloe NPC mod cutscene doesn't happen ( which cuts off any further way to improve her weapons)
c) both of the above and also my first two characters get permanently stuck in some sort of hold ( as if they, and only they ) were in a cutscene. THIS is extremely annoying.

I'd guess if you placed the trigger to spawn the apparation simply elsewhere ( for example, in the area script for the previous map. ) I was unable to locate the script that forces the cutscene for the Chloe NPC mod, but it does happen RIGHT after bodhi leaves, and so it conflicts with the spawn of the apparation. If you place the apparation as a actor there and assign him a script that eventually leads to a destroy self script with a check if the party has a spellhold item.



you asked for bugs, here we go.