3082

I’m trying to figure out how I missed out on Temple of Elemental Evil.

I’ll be traveling a bunch in the next few days. Maybe I should get this to keep myself occupied on the train.

3083

Awesome. I’ll have to pick this one up. Graphically, it should still hold up. And I never finished it due to the numerous bugs in the original. I’m up for a good dungeon crawl and this should fit the bill nicely.

3084

TOEE has more in common with Fallout Tactics and Jagged Alliance than its does with Baldurs Gate.

Its all about obsessing over your stats and sweating over how to position your fighter just right so that he stops the orcs getting to your fragile mage. Its full of turn-based tactical goodness, as long as you are the kind of person who is willing to try and understand what an “Attack of Opportunity” and a “5-foot-step” is.

But really, really do look into those fan patches. The original game had some real heart-breaking, crotch-punching bugs.

Tony

3085

I am totally saying this is 100% thanks to my request just a couple of days ago.

If only I had time to play.

3086

I sunk a lot of time into ToEE when it came out. It is simultaneously awesome and deeply flawed. It is an absolutely superb 3E combat sim wrapped in a complete turkey of an RPG.

In a just world, what should exist is the ToEE Construction Set, allowing people to release single-screen tactical scenarios with pre-rolled characters. Alas, this is never to be.

3087

I tried downloading and applying the patches and it says it can’t locate ToEE on my computer and it won’t let me specify a directory (it just bombs out). Has anyone else experienced this?

I couldn’t locate a game version screen in-game, so I’m not sure if GoG released the game pre-patched or not.

:(

ETA: GOG thread is on the case!

3088

GoG’s games are always pre-patched afaik. There should be a version number tucked in there someplace, and it likely says 1.03 (the latest patch, which is unfortunately borked).

You ideally want to roll back to 1.02 (just apply it back on top of the 1.03 install) and then go with the fan patch from Co8. If the patch installers aren’t even finding the game, on the other hand, there may need to be some registry handiwork involved to get it done. I don’t have the PC with my retail install nearby, so I couldn’t tell you what you’d have to enter in the keys. However, I’d expect someone to be on this issue almost immediately.

edit - just noticed you found they’re working on it.

3089

This is the awesome phrase of the day at Qt3. :)

3090

The original AD&D module was T1: The Village of Hommlet (quick trivia: one of my favorite AD&D modules ever). That’s basically the starting town in the game, and the surrounding mini-adventures (like the moat-house). It was originally meant to be a sort of “seed” adventure that DMs could build a larger campaign around, with the idea that perhaps the players would use Hommlet as a base of operations. Then, later on, they did the Temple of Elemental Evil mega-dungeon, and rolled it together with the original Hommlet material, and published it all as one book. So if the early stuff feels a bit like it was written as a standalone adventure, and feels sort of separate from the main dungeon area, that’s because it was. ;)

Second bit of trivia: I’ve always wondered if ToEE was the inspiration for the original Diablo. You have a little village that is your base of operations, and from there you venture into a vast dungeon beneath an abandoned temple, and discover that it has become an abode for demons. Hmm…

3091

I used to have the second edition reprint of ToEE. I wonder if its still around here somewhere.

3092

I bought T1 in, like, 7th grade, and then was bitter that it took them forever (in 7th-grader terms) to release T2. By the time I did I think I didn’t care anymore. Especially since T1 was basically pointless by itself.

ProTip™: when I played ToEE a few years ago, the Powergame method was to create your mage as a party leader, and no other characters. Do all of the perfectly safe conversation-driven village quests by yourself, collecting all the XP for your mage. Then, when you’re ready to actually go to the temple, create the rest of your party and head on in. Now you’ve got a party with a mage that hopefully isn’t made of tissue paper.

Secretly, the balance problem with so many D&D modules is that having low level mages with you is, basically, a penalty.

3093

ToEE was a completely painless experience by the time I got to it. Installed Circle of Eight patch, probably used a walkthrough to zip through the town quests, and then started kicking ass in the moathouse. There’s not much to fret about anymore.

3094

Heart of Winter is awful - one of the worst RPG expansions ever. Trials of the Luremaster was release for free as essentially an apology for Heart of Winter, so definitely skip it if you were leaning that way anyway.

3095

I don’t even remember heart of winter outside of “play the game, but harder!”. Was that all it was? Didn’ they include that for free in IWD2?

3096

Got the Co8 patch installed and I’ve confirmed the game works. Yay me.

3097

I always wondered why the engine was never reused, even today it still looks pretty good and as beautiful (at the time) as BG2 was, TOEE had a sort of modern day crispness to it if I recall correctly.

Aside from that, one of the best TB combat engines ever.

Have to agree with some others here though, the beginning of the game was horribly done. I actually bought the game at release, played a few hours into it and then gave up. Tried once or twice over the years but never manage to get more than a couple of hours in. I LOVE the combat but for a combat based RPG I just prefer IWD which on top of good combat has amazing music, a good story that keeps you playing and decent dialogue/NPC interaction.

Will have to try TOEE with Co8 though as I still would like to finish that game once and for all.

3098

Possibly in part because it was buggy as hell. It also featured a number of design flaws - ToEE became super frustrating when your encounter spilled over into the invisible boundaries of some other monster’s encounter radius. It was unpossible to flee. You could fix these things, and fix the bugs. . .

But the game didn’t do very well sales wise, and Troika went kerplunk, and it is a turn based game. . . I would like to see another game in an improved version of the engine, right now. I would pay many American dollars for this thing. Alas.

3099

There’s supposedly a Circle of Eight mod that fixes much of it, but it requires unpatching then repatching the game.

3100

I remember forcing my way through the unpatched ToEE… Some really nasty bugs, but it was still really fun and especially challenging.

Since I can’t find the CDs atm I might need to rebuy, but it’s only 5.99…
Can you immediately install the circle of eight mod or do you first need to do something else (complicated?) to the game files?

3101

You mean the patch everyone has been taking about since last page? There’s no supposedly about it.

That said, I’m not sure the circle of 8 patch is particularly helpful when discussing using the engine but making an entirely new game.