Gift of Kylorin feedback

[Darksaber1]

Yes, Valledia is Queen of the Amurites, but dosen't have much magic ability (this, of course, is like saying Mahala is a physically weak Doviello), and Dain is Caswallen, or head-high-Archmage, and serves as an Advisor to Valledia.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I believe the Casawallen is in theory also the head of the army (the mages in the army at least), but for the most part it is an honorary position rather than one of real power. The chief duty of a Casawallen is to ensure that the Amurites magical bloodlines remain strong by mating with a lot of talented young women (or men, if said Casawallen in female). I tend to think that Dain might have been too shy to get dates and so took the trials mostly as a way to meet women, but now has so many girls forced on him that he is worn out and can't really enjoy sex anymore. The other chief duty of a Casawallen is to accept any challenge to magical mortal combat to defend his title. His skills are such that it would be very foolish to challenge him though.


The Amurite government is a Republic, more in the sense of Plato's Republic than in the modern sense. The aristocracy in Amurite Society is made of the heads of the mage guilds. At the top there is an elected monarch, Valledia. Valledia has no significant magical talent, but is an extremely shrewd politicians and an excellent blackmailer who has the aristocratic bureaucrats of the mage guilds terrified. They could easily kill her, but not before word got out of the head of the school of necromancy's necrophilia, and similarly embarrassing secrets about everyone else. It is illegal to track the bloodlines, but she does it anyway and is so actively breeding for the best mages. She was democratically elected and maintained her popularity much like Hitler and Saddam Hussein did. However, she does not have a huge ego and so has not displayed such hubris as most dictators do, and so will probably remain on top for quite a while.

 

[Rod]

I sincerely liked the Dungeon and I indeed solved the riddle just by creating my own grid system in excel.

I especially liked that you didnt had to explore/kill everything in order to solve the Dungeon.

Spoiler :

You could easily outrun the Manes just blowing out the ones in your way, You could ignore the Tar Demon, Stoneskin Ogre and even outrun the Champions with the help of the Floating Eye (which I suppose is the whole purpose of the Floating Eye)

I didnt find the Skeletons and I didnt need to find the Adept as the Clockwork Golem seems to be pretty vulnerable to the fireballs.

But I sincerely disliked that you had only 2 movements and so youi had to hit enter very very often. In the afterworld mod the situation was different, as there you had more movement and could spend your movement on actions. I like this concept way more !!

In the dungeon the limited movement is kind of making it a staggering experience the smoothness is missing. It feels pretty ... ancient ..

 

[Falc]

My main problem with this scenario is what happens when you die. First, you're shown the entire map. Not in detail, but still. Second, you're forced into clicking through all the 'You Lost' screens so you can get back to the main menu and load a save. Or, just Alt-F4 and restart Civ. Neither option is very fun and we all know that sometimes, even the 99% combats are lost.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

yah, I died in there too so i just said "meh. i might do this later."

 

[OzzyKP]

Fun scenario. :b:

Loved the riddle too. :b:

Took me a bit with an excel sheet, but I got it. Though, like others, I didn't figure out I needed to walk right up next to him until I checked here.

 

[Manamus]

i killede the tar demon, took a dozen fireballs. but I wanted to. You can skip most of the guys that fight. The toughest part was all the buggers that you had to use maelstrom on and hope only 1-2 attacked at a time.

 

[Zuul]

I also don't want to see the whole map if I lose a battle.

Spoiler :

The eye should be better somehow.
Give some minor extra if you kill the held monsters.
I miss that the hero can't get xp-promotions.
It's not fun that sceletons you have promoted alot can't move thoughh doorways.

 

[megamanx06]

i died twice with greater than 90% odds. that was not a good day. but because of that, i found that if you are in a combat where you are bound to die, such as the Mesha-thingy, if you click the menu button, the "you have been defeated" screen pops up over the menu, but when you click ok, the menu comes back on top, allowing you to load a game. Also, i found a thing that pops up next to dain when he's in a combat that he's going to lose.

 

[frenzyslave]

I finished the scenario. Fairly cool. I missed leveling up, and some combats were a bit over repeative with fireballs. The dungeon idea is very cool.

I too tried to kill Meshabber, after I legged it in a panic looking for another way past. It wasnt until pure fustration that I charged the demon, and up popped the riddle. Very cool riddle. Solved it after 4 tries.

I killed the clockwork golem, but never did get to the skelly room...

 

[WCH]

Hate to be overly critical, but this one left me cold.

Too short, pretty tedious, nothing felt like there was any point to it. At no point was there any use of magic that required thought or cleverness... it was just open a box and it has what you need in it, go cast it in the obvious place, done. Suggestion: scenario should be about, oh, three times as long, and there should be actual puzzles, ie, something a little more complicated.

Tar Demon... why? It's held, poses no threat at all, and killing it gives you nothing. Pointless. Suggestion: remove the Held promotion so it can chase you, such that it's actually kind of scary.

I'm not into the lack of XP. BtS included a very fun adventure scenario where you wander around killing zombies (I think they were zombies? Been a while) and gathering powerups and whatnot. That was an excellent dungeon game... this was not. The removal of the possibility of leveling up made it very tedious. Leveling up makes me feel good... it's a little reward mechanism that keeps me going forward, because I'm close to the next one. With this it mostly just felt like a waste of time.

Lastly, as others said, there was nothing at all interesting about this in terms of the lore or character. It seems like a wasted opportunity... when I saw it on the scenario list I was excited, thought "that sounds really cool!" -- but the delivery was entirely meh-tacular. One riddle that had no relation to anything, a bunch of pointless combat, a couple "go to X and then go to Y" things, and it's done and I'm being told how I've done the impossible. Wooo.

As for Meshabber's riddle, I started to chart it out but before getting very far just guessed "golem" based on the lack of information either related to the golem or to "green," its colour (ie, a number of the others were ruled out because food was given, or given in relation to a colour), so while I hadn't actually proved for certain that it was the golem, it seemed pretty likely. Plus, I was getting bored.

 

[mondits]

I Did Not Get The Riddle

 

[Earthling]

Actually thought this one was pretty neat - a few turns in when acquiring the first spell I realized it was kind of a tutorial so I wasn't expecting it to be epic like some of the others I have yet to finish. I guess part of the reason I liked it was simply the time I spent on the riddle and satisfaction from it (So, here's the story: I was playing this one late at night, finding Meshabber, I first was trying to avoid/damage him for a few turns, then set myself up so I could walk next to him and then run away- but that triggered the event. Of course, I was roleplaying going into the cave with only my wits, a salve, and a spellstaff - so I decided not to get out any paper or anything, and just do the riddle in my head. Then I spent about thirty minutes repeating things to myself like "tree, goat, middle, red, pit, end, cliff, green..." but got it right in the end, first try!

The one thing I realized about the riddle is it's actually not even clear which order, left to right, everything goes in. This is particularly troublesome since two places were specified with one left of the other... and other clues refer to one of the places as "first." But then going over it in my head both ways, I think it turned out the same if they are both left of the middle (the tree) or both right of the middle. All in all though I was quite pleased with the riddle, a fitting challenge, shame on all of you who failed...

PS. I'm not going to post in all the threads... loving pretty much all the scenarios though. I played through the first three ice ones a while back but was waiting for the final battle to be unlocked... now I hear I can access those "coming soon" scenarios through the files directly, even better!

 

[Go Boks]

I liked this scenario. The riddle was great (actually solved it, instead of guessing). I wouldn't change it, as people who are stumped by it can always guess.

I too high tailed it when I first saw Meshabber! Eventually, after spending a lot of time wondering around looking for an alternate path, I finally just walked up to him and viola!

The only suggestions I have would be to make Meshabber not so scary (have him call you over in a pop up the first time you see him so that it is apparent to the player that he is an NPC) and maybe try to work in a few more spells by adding in a few more puzzles (I don't think you should attempt to get all the spells in like others suggested, or this scenario would get too long - one or two of each spell type would do, especially since this is a tutorial type scenario, such as a direct damage spell, a summoning spell, etc.).

I did like how some sections were optional and/or had different ways to get past them. That really fits with the back story of the cave being a trial. I would definitely try to add more of that, especially if you are going to work in more spells.

I also agree that the scenario feels a little choppy. However, I wouldn't add in an Afterworld-type system, as then it would cease to really be a tutorial as the mechanics would be different to the main game. I would give everything in the scenario a mobility promotion or something so there is more movement in each turn though.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

I too didn't get the riddle and had to do guess-work (I think I guessed wrong six times before getting it right, because I didn't pay attention the first two times). It made zero sense to me, and even after looking at the grid-chart that explains it... I'm still pretty lost. If I was a mage in Erebus, I'd be dead right now. Good thing I always saw myself as a Harlequin

I found the scenario a bit tedious to be honest. Random odds like 90% where you lose are particularly annoying to deal with, since you have to start over. I'm not 100% sure whether this is the best way to introduce new players to the spells system but I did enjoy the lore of this scenario (chickens truly are divine), so that's a positive I can take from it.

Also, I know you guys are aware of it, but the "Orc" Champions showed up as human. Just a bit of an oddity, although I didn't think human champions looked out of place (they looked ghostly), rather the fact they had the Orcish promotion looked out of place.

 

[megamanx06]

does beating this do anything, or is it just for fun?

 

[BlankVerse]

Interestingly I used photoshop to solve the riddle instead of a spreadsheet. I throughly enjoyed it but it was a bit too hard to solve in your head.

I didn't like the combat with the champions in the maze though. They were weak enough to seem killable (as opposed to Meshabba and stoneskin) but it is seems impossible to get them up to even 80% chance of victory which is alright for an army but not your only unit. Was I missing some pac-man action?

The main thing though was that defeated fireballs seemed to be giving experience. Is this supposed to happen?

 

[Thunder_Gr]

Just finished the scenario, patch t, and I have a few comments:

1)The fireball behaves strangely. It does not go through lava or water and does not get the benefit of the spell extention I promotion that Dain starts with. Also, starts with mobility I(?) and has 2 with the mobility I.
2)The maelstorm pop up info incorectly states that it does 50% damage max, while now it does 30.
3)It is impossible to kill the stoneskin Ogre as it is now. It has 14 strength and regenerates 10% each turn. Max damage from maelstorm is 30%, but even if that goes in a single turn(impossible since Dain does not have any combat promotions), still the ogre has 9.5 strength approx.If you compare this with Dain's 5, you can see you can never kill that Ogre. This needs to be fixed IMO.

I would join with others saying this is a slow scenario, and the fact that the fireball is bugged makes it irritating. I would suggest giving Dain a few combat promotions, and the ability to gain the Haste spell when in the labirinth. After all, he is an Archmage!

 

[Diamondeye]

@ThunderGr:

Spoiler :

3: You do not need to kill the stoneskin... It is held. Think.

 

[Thunder_Gr]

@ThunderGr:

Spoiler :

3: You do not need to kill the stoneskin... It is held. Think.

So, how am I supposed to get through that door then? I can't pass over him now, can I?
Now, I did search for an alternative rout, but couldn't find any. If you say there is one, I must have missed something.
Anyway, the most significant issues are the rest. In this one I might have missed a scenario feature...

EDIT: By the way, I did try to attack it, and lost. He is not a riddle guy.