Legend of Grimrock

[Nattvardsvin]

I also wish it was turn-based. I don't like how frantic and "messy" some battles turn out, having me fumbling to the inventory, trying to quickly use a healing potion on one of my dying party members, only to fail because I wasn't speedy enough. Should be able to hotkey that shit.

That is basically the entire point of combat. It's meant to be fast and frantic. Time is a resource like in any action-style game. That's why being able to hotkey "everyone drink a potion" or "everyone attack" would be stupid - the time it takes you to move the mouse and right-click for basic strikes and cast spells (with the potential to screw up your runes) is where much of the difficulty and tactics come in.

Yeah, you're right. I guess what I should have written instead was that it's not what I personally enjoy. And that's a different matter of course.

 

[Metro]

Re: it's sale performance on Steam -- Steam isn't necessarily full of addle minded retards... well... not completely. Good low budget games with depth and solid mechanics routinely perform well. Dungeons of Dredmor was a top seller during the first few days of its release. I'm sure Wasteland 2 will do similarly well.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Shit, I trained SMA in bows, and haven't found one yet. Hearing that arrows are rare even at character level 6 is disheartening. Might start putting points in daggers/assassination.

XP gain also seems to be partially divided, partially earned through contributions. It's why early wizards seem to level slower, especially if they don't have any spells yet. Not adding as much pet-fight as the people attacking regularly usually. 'cept my wizard who spams firebolt/ball/whatever.

 

[ArcturusXIV]

If this was turn-based, I would be investing time and money on the drop of a dime, as I am the resident Dungeon Crawl/Blobber fanatic...

As it stands, I haven't even played Dark Heart of Uukrul, and am way to nauseated from a 2+ year battle with semi-terminal illness to be of much use in installing and figuring out how to tweak the damned thing so it works on a Windows 7 Netbook. (unless someone has the "easy-to instructions").

Okay, so without scrawling through 8+ pages of data, if you had to rate this "x out of 10"... ?? GUYZ.

 

[Angelo85]

Played until the end of level 3. This game, it's heavan! :D Really having a blast. But I'm a bit worried about the time. According to Steam I only played for 2 hours. If the Levels keep being of similar length to the first 3, the game will end with 7 hours clocked

I didn't rush at all, found a handful of secrets along the way and managed to open each iron door so far. Then again the first two levels didn't had any real puzzles in them and were more of a tutorial I guess.
I was thinking about restarting on hard difficulty to make the game last longer. I went popamole and chose normal as difficulty for my game. So far combat was no problem and quickly resolved, though I have to admit that I save/reload scammed a bit when my guys got poisoned. Mainly because I was running low on antidote potions But after reading this thread I think I'll stick with normal and might do a re-run later on with hard difficulty and 2 evasion Rogues / 2 Mages or some crazy combo.

The puzzles on level 3 were very nice; only got kinda stuck once at the end of level 3, hope that it will happen more often on the deeper dungeon levels :D

Spoiler

Near the end of level 3 where you have to open the last door by opening the gate to let the energy ball pass. I thought it had something to do with the golden key and searched all over the room and adjacent walls for a hidden switch/keyhole to get to the other site of the grate. After 5 minutes of backtracking I returned to the original room and tried placing stuff like the round shield into the slot by the door (hey it looked like something round had to be inserted there ) Then I finally figured out that you simply have to place something on the pressure plate behind the grate *doh* :D

Are you guys using throwing or missile weapons as ranged option? I planed on building my rogue towards ranged weapons but saved up his skillpoints in the beginning because the throwing weapons you found were kinda neat. Now that I finally got the shortbow and tested it a bit I'm even more unsure. All those throwing bombs came in handy against the spiders (too bad you can't pick those up afterwards :D) the only special arrows I stumbled upon so far were poison arrows, but I suspect deeper in the dungeon the options might get as diversified as the throwing options.

 

[Whisper]

Anyone else getting their butt kicked on hard difficulty?
These damn spiders, when there are 2-3 of them in a tight space, it's impossible to not get cornered in and totally slaughtered.

Some guys on this very forums complained about game being too easy.

I asked if they pay on Hard, but got silence as reply.

 

[Stabwound]

Having played through to floor 3, I've changed my mind on the combat. While a turn-based game is preferable, Grimrock does do the realtime thing pretty well. I just about shit my pants at the part on floor 2 when you get locked in the room and ambushed on all sides by the undead soldier guys; very cool fight.

On the other hand this is definitely not a game for people with bad hand-eye coordination. I don't know about Easy/Normal mode, but there is simply no way you can kill anything on Hard without strafing and moving around. You'd just get absolutely slaughtered if you tried to go toe-to-toe with anything. Especially the monsters that do AOE ranged poison attacks, you have to strafe like a motherfucker to kill them. I can't imagine playing with the on-screen arrow movement icons they implemented for disabled gamers...

I do recommend playing on Hard difficulty, though.

 

[Whisper]

I was thinking about restarting on hard difficulty to make the game last longer. I went popamole and chose normal as difficulty for my game. So far combat was no problem and quickly resolved, though I have to admit that I save/reload scammed a bit when my guys got poisoned. Mainly because I was running low on antidote potions But after reading this thread I think I'll stick with normal and might do a re-run later on with hard difficulty and 2 evasion Rogues / 2 Mages or some crazy combo.

I plan to finish with default party on normal difficulty, then re-play to custom party on hard (and get all secrets etc).

 

[Whisper]

I do recommend playing on Hard difficulty, though.

I want to get feel of better class combinations and which skills to level first on first run on normal.

 

[Sordid Jester]

Shit, I trained SMA in bows, and haven't found one yet. Hearing that arrows are rare even at character level 6 is disheartening. Might start putting points in daggers/assassination..

Sling + Stones, never run out of ammo. Good damage, too.

 

[mondblut]

the time it takes you to move the mouse and right-click for basic strikes... is where much of the difficulty and tactics come in.

That's just in, diablow must be an epitome of tactics.

Sure, an "everyone attack" button would defeat the whole purpose of the game, but that just confirms RT combat in blobbers is an anathema. Fuck you Dungeon Master, fuck you with a telegraph pole, you've raped our genre worse than Ultima 4, diablow and ass effect combined.

 

[sea]

Played until the end of level 4. This game, it's heavan! :D Really having a blast. But I'm a bit worried about the time. According to Steam I only played for 2 hours. If the Levels keep being of similar length to the first 3, the game will end with 7 hours clocked

2 hours getting to level 4 is pretty fast. The levels start to get larger and more complicated around level 6-7 and it gets very brutal around level 9. However, a lot of the length comes from hunting for secrets - and there are a lot of them. Playing for 20ish hours the first time through I only found 2/3, and those were the "easy" ones. And trust me, unless you're finding like 6-10 secrets per level, you're missing a bunch.

That's just in, diablow must be an epitome of tactics.

Sure, an "everyone attack" button would defeat the whole purpose of the game, but that just confirms RT combat in blobbers is an anathema. Fuck you Dungeon Master, fuck you with a telegraph pole, you've raped our genre worse than Ultima 4, diablow and ass effect combined.

Why does it confirm it's anathema? Because you don't like that style of game? And why does a real-time dungeon crawler somehow damage a genre with a whole host of different combat styles of varying types and degrees?

 

[Nattvardsvin]

Played until the end of level 4. This game, it's heavan! :D Really having a blast. But I'm a bit worried about the time. According to Steam I only played for 2 hours. If the Levels keep being of similar length to the first 3, the game will end with 7 hours clocked

2 hours getting to level 4 is pretty fast. The levels start to get larger and more complicated around level 6-7 and it gets very brutal around level 9. However, a lot of the length comes from hunting for secrets - and there are a lot of them. Playing for 20ish hours the first time through I only found 2/3, and those were the "easy" ones. And trust me, unless you're finding like 6-10 secrets per level, you're missing a bunch.

You've played for 20 hours? The game has only been out for about 10-11 hours though.


Even though I spoke of my dislike of the real time combat earlier, I get the same strange addictive feeling I got from playing Eye of The Beholder I and II. Wanting to go back, starting over with a new party and try out different skills. I have to beat this game on hard.
But f*ck mapping with pen and paper. I tried that shit and I just couldn't stand it. It was fun when I was younger, but now it just felt like such an annoyance.
I don't know if that's a bad thing or a good thing. Probably bad.

Having played through to floor 3, I've changed my mind on the combat. While a turn-based game is preferable, Grimrock does do the realtime thing pretty well. I just about shit my pants at the part on floor 2 when you get locked in the room and ambushed on all sides by the undead soldier guys; very cool fight.

On the other hand this is definitely not a game for people with bad hand-eye coordination. I don't know about Easy/Normal mode, but there is simply no way you can kill anything on Hard without strafing and moving around. You'd just get absolutely slaughtered if you tried to go toe-to-toe with anything. Especially the monsters that do AOE ranged poison attacks, you have to strafe like a motherfucker to kill them. I can't imagine playing with the on-screen arrow movement icons they implemented for disabled gamers...

I do recommend playing on Hard difficulty, though.

How do you deal with those spiders on Hard difficulty?
Especially when there are several of them in small spaces. I'm trying the best I can to strafe and avoid getting hit, but it's impossible for me to keep it up all the time. I get hit a few times, and I'm basically toast because of the damn poison and the amount of damage they do.
Got any other special tips for dealing with them?

 

[octavius]

Can you use the doors, traps and pits against the enemies, like you could in DM and CSB?

 

[Nattvardsvin]

Can you use the doors, traps and pits against the enemies, like you could in DM and CSB?

Oh yes. It's very useful, and very fun.
I made like 4 Undead Soldiers fall down a traphole.

You can also land on enemies if you fall down a trap and an enemy is right under it. Happend to me with a snail.
I squashed it.

 

[roll-a-die]

Yes you can, it doesn't net you experience though. One of the early examples in the tutorial, is a pit trap with a lever as a trigger and a manageable if difficult level of snails in the next room, You have a few options fight them kiting them around the room, in a long and difficult encounter, because you have little in the way of weapons at this point, or drop most of them into the pit trap.

So a question for a question guys, does the room with 4 or so snails, next to the second floor entryway, have anything besides the cap and rock in it.

 

[Angelo85]

Being overly excited I made a little mistake in my previous post I meant I played to the end of Level 3, not 4!

Here's my stats so far:

So 3 secrets per level on average. Looks I have to get back upstairs and search some more

Nattvardsvin sea already finished the game because he wrote a Review for GameBanshee.
[insert obligatory joke about newfags here]

 

[Nattvardsvin]

Nattvardsvin sea already finished the game because he wrote a Review for Gamebanshee.
[insert obligatory joke about newfags here]

Oh. explains things then. I feel stoopid.


Btw, one thing that would be nice is to see how many secrets there are on each floor.
It does however add a little to the atmosphere, not knowing if there are any secrets left or not, I guess. I don't know.

 

[Jasede]

Yeah, you're missing a bunch. I'm in floor 3 and have 16 secrets.

Someone help me out: in the room with the billions of spiders in level 3, one of them sometimes dropped a golden key. In my current save game though, none of them did. How do I find my freaking golden key now? And what's behind the golden lock?

 

[Jasede]

It was under a torch I dropped. ._.
Anyone defeat the green slimes yet? Secret downstairs in floor 3 to 4. Not sure if I am intended to come back later or missing a trick. I am thinking, maybe I can freeze them?

 

[Jaesun]

If this was turn-based, I would be investing time and money on the drop of a dime, as I am the resident Dungeon Crawl/Blobber fanatic...

You have never played Dungeon Master?

 

[Jasede]

Or Lands of Lore, or Eye of the Beholder? I grew up on what I used to call "arrow RPGs" as a kid. I always used the mouse to play them instead of the keyboard.
Oh and 17 secrets without touching level 4!

 

[ArcturusXIV]

If this was turn-based, I would be investing time and money on the drop of a dime, as I am the resident Dungeon Crawl/Blobber fanatic...

You have never played Dungeon Master?

I played Lands of Lore II, which was my starting point. No, no Dungeon Master. Wizardry 8, and so forth, though I don't go back that far, probably to about 1997/6 or so.

 

[Jarpie]

Almost Human have pretty much perfectly nailed the mood and the feeling of Dungeon Master, love every second of it.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

My stats so far. Not yet done with dungeon level 3, been pokey looking for secrets and left the game running while I did other shit once or twice.