Knights of the Chalice (OGL RPG)

D&D was never very friendly in terms of things like this. Many games got around it by allowing liberal or semi-liberal resting. This game restricts resting, so no it isn’t easy.

I haven’t found myself in a scenario like the demo in the full game, fwiw. I can leave the first cave I explore to go heal at my leisure.

The demo is harder than the full game, at least for the first 5-10 hours. In the full game you can build your own party and you start from level one. You also have more choices about what to fight, so you can start out with some easier battles ( of course finding the easier battles can be a tad bit difficult at times).

In the full game you also start out with easy access to a camp fire, it gets much harder of course when it takes that away (which it does occasionally). In one instance I was limping along for an hour trying to retreat from a situation before I realized I had passed over 3, that’s THREE, camp fires. I have no excuse other than I was fixated on trying to find the exit, rather than looking for the camp spots.

That is kind of weird. Why not just use an already made font and save the artists for like improving the in game art? I didn’t know people still made fonts. I can’t imagine why. It seems like every useful font type should have already been discovered by now.

Many require a license so he may just be trying to save on that cost – especially since he doesn’t use that many characters (uppercase letters and a few symbols).

You guys that said the game is hard weren’t kidding. Definitely having Pool of Radiance flashbacks.

Well, a quick search on Google for ‘freeware fonts’ turns up a lot of hits.

Again, the demo is harder than the main game. In the full version I set my characters to have full hps on level up, and also have at least 2 stats at 18. It’s kind of like easy mode but not really easy, just not punishingly difficult. Other tips would be “Don’t forget to level up” and “Guard your Mage.” Leveling up is especially easy to miss, you need to click on the little star that shows up by their names in the upper right.

When I asked about truetype fonts he pretty much stated it wasn’t possible. I am guessing he is old school blitting the characters with his own DrawString function and just wanted a bitmap with every character on it. Either way he got the message, a new font is needed. While time will tell, he seems to be very receptive to suggestions and he already issued a quick bug fix.

What’s amazing is how stable the game is. Most triple A titles in this genre by large professional teams are not this bug free.

Holy god, the Ork stockade is HARD.

And yet, they keep on coming, check this out:

And it’s actually a really nice looking font, in my opinion anyway. It is spookily like my own handwriting, except neater, readable.

Have you found the camp fires? One of them only shows up after beating a certain NPC but at least one other is more easily accessible. The problem is locating them, especially after you find you are locked in. Because of the dialog you probably won’t find the easy one, or at least I didn’t.

Won’t say more unless somebody asks, don’t want to spoil anything more.

NO, PLEASE TELL ME WHERE THE EASY ONE IS. I NEED IT SO BADLY.

Edit: I know which NPC I need to kill for one, but I really don’t want to go back and do it. I think I might die.

Ok, so I’m still struggling through the demo. Why is it that every enemy can attack like 2 or 3 times per round, and I only can attack once? Is this a weapon proficiency thing?

I could be wrong, but Lizardmen (as an example) have multiple attacks because their mouth counts as a natural weapon. Likewise, their claws do too. They may also be higher level than the party just to pour salt on the wound. At least it seems that way. The game is brutal in a good way :)

I stand corrected.

There was apparently once some kind of card distributed with certain magazines, where you could write all the letters in upper and lower case, and then they would send you a font based on your own handwriting. I never saw this alleged card but I saw a lecture giving by a guy who did this and the whole lecture used his handwritten font.

It’s upstairs, where the witch first drops you off, behind the large door she explicitly warns holds a bunch of orcs. If you are like me you decide to go explore and promptly forget about it, wondering where the sweet jesus a campfire is.

Another one is after the Male NPC you need to kill, the one that offers to let you out if you kill the female NPC first (who coincidently also has a camp fire that appears after you kill her).

What ever you do don’t try and find the underground exit like any sane person would think. It’s a brutal path if you haven’t found any campfires and once you finally find the exit to the outdoors I hope you are prepared for nigh unbeatable ambush. It’s seriously much easier to clear the ork fort in it’s entirety.

Is there a storyline or point to this game, or is it mostly lots of fun dungeons to battle in?

There is a full campaign with quests and such, but it’s mostly just an excuse to start battles. It also has simple puzzles and traps, though it’s all very obvious. Well, usually obvious. An unreliable ‘narrator’ had me confused for a bit.

I love the AI in the game. The enemy spell casters don’t just nuke, they use their entire spell line. I was just now pinioned between two armies of gnolls in a trap. No problem I thought, I can take down armies of them at this point. That was till I saw the Gnoll Wizards, who started hasting, buffing, and blinding. Not wanting to be sandwiched I laid down a firewall, happily confident it wouldn’t be counterspelled because they where so busy buffing. Felt pretty smug till they dispelled it. So I had to waste another spell on another firewall. Fine, whatever. Instead of entering the burning ground though they sat on the other end and started buffing themselves with resist fire then running across unscathed.

Little bastards.

Oh, I thought you meant there was another one after you are sealed in. I got the witch one pretty early on. And yes, that ambush is brutal. I guess I’ll make a bunch of scrolls and go after the lady.

Woops, forgot it’s outside. I didn’t find it till after I unlocked the door, so I was really hurting by that point. You don’t need to go after the lady, the man is easier. Course you might not get the theoretical treasure promised by the brigand. You know, the treasure hidden by his flux capacitor.

Is there any use for the precious stones aside from selling them?