FINISTERRAE version 2.3

[sapientCrow]

Well...
This is the most difficult part of the script for my humble skills, because I use a script of another modder for one specific task (/scripts/fw.lua:92) . All tests works and this error isn't pointed by others players.
But... I gess your forest travel is the beginning of the issue. To have light in the forest, you MUST have one champion wearing the necklace_illuminet. Without it, you have made some random walk I haven't expected, so the crash... Sorry for that.
So I give you the walkthrought:

SpoilerShow

I suppose you have found a golden skull. Go to South West room (with the sqeleton warriors), place the skull on the altar, pick up the necklace. Then, return in the forest and watch the precise steps you do according to the tiles on the ground

If all is ok, you can use the four jewels to open the door orned with the Yggdrazil tree, pass the labyrinth, go upstairs to the pyramidion. Here, you use the indications from the forest walk and you can explore the level. It's symmetrical, so you have three rooms on each side.

no earth or air altar

Yes, it's normal and the reason was explained in a text in AHB cache in Crossroads.

Duncan

ahhh... I had not used the skulls yet I was wondering about that....
So in Pyramidion after I place runic tiles on each of the 6 altars and go back to Dragon Room the door does not open. Do I also need Illuminet in this room. In the forest I figured out I could turn a certain direction on each tile and there was enough light to see and actually I played another Mod which used these ground symbols a lot. So I made it through the forest and reached block puzzle room with a jewel in it. (Great puzzle there by the way!)

Problem is even if I do what I did in forest on ground symbols in Dragon room the dragons still shoot at me. From my understanding the flower style one you can go left. The star you can go right and the other star you can go any direction. the issue in that room is that when I go to back of room and push against wall it crashes. Also my quick save somehow got bugged and moving in any direction produced that error.

Is this door tied to the one in Loki's Cross? I did not check to see if that one opened after I placed the cursed compass and opened the final curtain. Also do I use the crystal skull in Four Jewels, Sides of God or Pyramidion?

Right now or before I had that crash so now I have to go back to a previous save I have all seals and placed 6 runic tiles on altars in Pyramidion. The door is not open in main dragon room. Perhaps it requires I turn at a direction on the floor symbol?

thanks for answering all my questions =)

[Duncan1246]

even if I do what I did in forest on ground symbols in Dragon room the dragons still shoot at me. From my understanding the flower style one you can go left. The star you can go right and the other star you can go any direction. the issue in that room is that when I go to back of room and push against wall it crashes. Also my quick save somehow got bugged and moving in any direction produced that error.

I don't understand when you say "push against wall". What I can say is that you have to use four times the star omni directions (1 by side of the stairs tower + 1 in the WSouthW). Second: when you are in front of the left or the right corridor, you can go ahead, visit the three rooms and return, and when you are again in the central room, use again the path carefully. If you do so, the door of the stairs tower open automatically. I have done it just now and it works.

do I use the crystal skull in Four Jewels...

You deceive me... It's symmetric, OK? So what about the North room in Both Sides?
In my opinion, it's perhaps better (bad saves, altars missed up, and so one) you replay the whole Mountain after Four of the Eight. I know, some parts will be boring now, but this part needs that you understand the whole process.
As you have seen, almost all the place is monster free, the central room of Both Sides of the God look like a cathedral. Why?
Because only initiated men are allowed here, their goal is to do perfectly all the stages of the initiatory journey to get the grace of seeing the 2 Faces of their God... You can choose to do it otherwise but as you have seen, it can easily turn bad.
Anyway, feel free to do as you want!
EDIT: You have said

I place runic tiles on each of the 6 altars

Let me remind you that you have made plenty of complicated things to find some seals, and for the moment you don't have used them.
Duncan

[harpo570]

I don't think anyone is playing this mod as the last post is in 2018. This mod could have been a gr8 mod but there is just to many clues spread out all over the place and you have to try and figure out what clues goes where. This is too complex for me. Some of the graphics is terrible where one space runs into another in a lot of places. I am stuck on the puzzle in the Cave of Dagda trying to figure out the stone in the circle. I have read some of the post here and still can't figure it out. Says a note from here and a note from somewhere's else. Come on get real here. A good mod one should only have to come here maybe once when they get stuck on all the time. That's my take. 5 out of 10 is my rating.

[Duncan1246]

Hi,
Sorry for the delay, it's a long time now since the last post! Happy that you try to play this mod! For your feeling, it's true that this dungeon is more complex than others, because it's an open world. So you can go everywhere in a hurry, do things, kill beasts, and then... being stuck on a puzzle and confused by tons of texts. If you take your time, reading some texts when you find them, and control your progress in the "Magic Book", it's more easy.
Concerning the Cave of Dagda:

SpoilerShow

Two talking heads here:

He feeds and he levies
He is the scale and the plague
He is the beam and the circle

Four build the world
Three animate
One maintains

Here you can see two slight differences with the talking head message of the head in Wreck Castle: three animate versus four, but one maintains precise the role of balance. As the first head says, Dagda is linked to the balance (scale, plague), also to the life (feeds) and to the death (levies, plague), as Morrigan.

If you do what it takes ... in order that is needed , you will not have to fight the monsters

Second hint:

SpoilerShow

You have to place stones one by one in the stones circles, following the ritual. When you do so, each good step switch on a light. When you make a mistake, no more light occurs, and if you make two mistakes, a monster is released. If you have found the ogre statuette in CrossRoads, the path to follow is very similar

I hope it's more clear now, but if not, I suggest you try a new run to understand that is going on in this story.
I keep watching the forum now if you want to reply.

[gylippos]

I guess that this is so far in the past for you that it doesn't hold much interest any more, but I'm driven to make some comments.
I tried this a couple of years ago but gave up in confusion. having played a lot of mods since I tried again recently but got lost in the same way as before.
I liked the setup of the game, and found it's balance of puzzles and fighting about right. Some things, like the bridge problem in the underwaste were just terrific.
Some things just didn't work for me. The ones that stopped me were the 4 swords in Edenia, which I could not get to open the little area with the second crow figure no matter how I placed them about the graves, and the power gems and fire essence in the fir bolg mine. No matter which hand of which character I placed the gem in, I could not get the gem hanging in the air, and therefore I could not get the fire essence below. I realized that these were two items necessary for progression, so that there was no point in continuing.
In general, I never came to terms with your puzzle mechanism and how you related your story to it. The dispersal of clues far from their puzzles, without any guide that I could see for applying a clue to a particular puzzle was very discouraging. The cryptic clues often confused me when I was unable to decide what your meaning was. Looking on this forum, I could see that English is not your first language, and that your constructions are often not standard in themselves.
Despite my failure to get to the end, I got a lot of pleasure from your mod. Thank you for your work.

[Duncan1246]

Hi,
First, thanks for your reply, as you says it's a long time since the last one! So I don't remember all now and I can't give you a specific response.
You don't speak of the "magic book" that you probably have found in Wreck Cape (first room underground). It's designed to give you a breadcrumb trail and collect every textual clue that you need to use later. Perhaps it don't work for you?
However, it's true that this story isn't so easy to figure out and you have to explore slowly, step by step, even if you can go almost everywhere in a hurry. Otherwise, you shall be lost with tons of confusing texts as a reader jumping entire chapters to know the end...
If you play Finisterrae once more, I promise you a more accurate help (if you give me a precise description of what you are exactly doing).
Duncan

[gylippos]

From past experience, I probably will come back to your mod at some time. I'm currently having another try at the one room round robin, which beat me in the past. After a few years, I forget what was in a particular mod, and try again as if it is new.
As far as your magic book is concerned, I found it early as expected, but it wasn't really useful. It suggested some directions to go, but if it was accumulating the notes I picked up, I never saw where, and I didn't find any way to put the notes in the book myself. So I had carry as many as I could, and try to note down where I got them. The Grimrock system does not make this an easy business, as you can't index your notes at all. Perhaps your book did this, but as I said, I didn't really see how it worked.
I've tried most mods for both Grimrocks, and find it hard to believe that people have done so much work to provide them. I'm profoundly grateful to all of you.
There are not many coming out now of course, and most of those depart quite a long way from the original Grimrock structure, introducing features that don't add a lot to the game, and often make it clumsy, memory hungry or cluttered. Yours was right in the original spirit, so even if you beat me, I enjoyed your take on the game a lot. As I said, it is likely I will come back to it as an itch I can't avoid scratching.

[Zo Kath Ra]

There are not many coming out now of course, and most of those depart quite a long way from the original Grimrock structure, introducing features that don't add a lot to the game, and often make it clumsy, memory hungry or cluttered.

I'm curious which kinds of features (and which mods) you mean.
Since you phrased it so vaguely, you probably don't want to offend anybody.
But if you want to elaborate in a PM...

[gylippos]

Hello Zo Kath ra,
You are right, I had no intention of offending anyone, and my message was more one of support for what was in Finisterrae than any real intent to put down what others have done. It is really only my own personal preference for the original setup of Grimrock 2 that I was expressing. So the fighting add ons like wounds bleeding and extra potions that some use don't appeal to me. Likewise new spells are interesting, but don't seem important to me. They often unbalance the game.
Shops add a dimension that can be good for stories, and provide something to do with all of the extra stuff you pick up, but are not something that I feel a great need for. I don't really mind them though.
The really complex terrains that some mods have look fantastic, but I find that they seem to clog up the mods that use them.
Since I have no skills to produce anything like these mods myself, I don't really have any right to be critical.
Finisterrae frustrated me in the areas where I couldn't understand what I was supposed to do, but that is my problem in the end.
Thank you for taking the interest in what I had to say. Be aware that I am old (70) and live in a very secluded (but wonderful) part of the world. (Tasmania). I tried to send this as a PM, but didn't manage, so it is here.

[Duncan1246]

Hi gylippos,
You says:

As far as your magic book is concerned, I found it early as expected, but it wasn't really useful. It suggested some directions to go, but if it was accumulating the notes I picked up, I never saw where, and I didn't find any way to put the notes in the book myself. So I had carry as many as I could, and try to note down where I got them. The Grimrock system does not make this an easy business, as you can't index your notes at all. Perhaps your book did this, but as I said, I didn't really see how it worked.

In fact, all the commands are on the picture of the left front page AND the tree of the right page (if I remenber well). You have to click on the highlighted symbols to see the new pages added. You can't add texts yourself because some texts draws the background or give a local clue and aren't useful to fulfill the missions. Only the most essential texts and notes are gathered by the book.
Each mission is splited in several steps, and the description changes when you reach them. So, each time you discover an important object or text, you can find a new record in the book and some hint to go further.
I add this book when I realize how difficult the dungeon was because of the open world concept. In almost all the others mods, as in the initial game, you can't go ahead without solving the next puzzle, so breadcrumbs aren't necessary. Perhaps I push LOG concept too far from the original idea...
Duncan