[MOD] Call Of House Hardabar

[bongobeat]

Cleared out most of arc, got an ending and found a lot of stuff. No secret cleanup yet as didn't find the archives. At this point my total number of unresolved questions is down to a handful.

1. How to get into the arc armory?
2. How to get into silo A?
3. How to get into the forge of ix?
4. How to grab the king's sword in obanyon?
5. How to use my 3 architect gems?

Realistically, the rewards for none of these could matter. I was ridiculously op before using 4 celestial gems, I can't imagine anything changing that for the final assault.

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Which is somehow still 4 maps long according to the archives I did find.

i've completed this section (next step is xaafi), i miss only 1 secret in styr jungle; i can see a grate, but struggling to open it. I know thelast secret is about there.

The grate leads to an unrelated hidden passage whose only purpose seemed to be skipping the mountain. The last secret is still near there,

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nested in a nearby secret behind a fake fence.

1. There is numbers written on nearby wall text, that needs to be sorted and typed on the "wall keyboard".
2. You can't pass the hangar to enter Silo A, if you're talking about the forcefield near the warden, there is no level there.
3 Forge of ix access is given by giving "disk droid" to some of the wardens.

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First one to trigger that, is the warden just near the stairs when coming from ARC main level. Then the warden will open a new area for you and in that area there is the second droid that will open the forge of ix, once you give him a "disk droid".

Unfortunately you can't use the forge of ix (with 2 metal of ix and one core of ix and an antimatter fuel), there is a wrong condition in the script that make the forge unusable (wroten something_the_trigger = fasle instead of false), sorry for that.
The only way is to directly pop up the weapon with the console:

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Code: Select all

forge_of_ix_1.surface:addItem(composite_bow_1.item)
spawn("antimatter_blast",54,2,4,0,0)
playSound("swipe_techno")

4. You need to drink a potion, wich is hidden in

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the 2nd survival chamber.

5. This is used in mount khand, you must go back to the forgemaster.
I've changed the trigger chain there by the way, because I got a report that it didn't work the first time, the player had to go in front and back of the forgemaster a few time to get the dialogue.

Grimrock is a real mystery for me, forge of ix and that thing with the forgemaster worked just fine for me, even with the bad condition in the script, I mean within the game, not in the editor.

I set all graphics quality to low (everything) and, so far, no crash (5 saves in a row) .. i'd very happy if this stays this way (footfingers arms, everything.. ) very crossed.. I swich bak to high whenever i visit a level for the 1st time,for screenshots mainly).

i've completed this section (next step is xaafi), i miss only 1 secret in styr jungle; i can see a grate, but struggling to open it. I know thelast secret is about there.


ah yes, i found 2 Necklace of the Furious Winds in the game, don't know if it's normal.

BG - thantks for the coordinates, everything was perfect.
ps- i could never find the secret with the crystal in Urutsuku since i was to scared to save the game..

That spear door leads to the sacred groves, it's an hidden path to pass the mountain level and get directly to ravanakul level.

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There is a lever in the north-eastern part of the sacred grove, that open that way.

And it is not the missed secret.
I guess that you did not find the chest of the alchemist by

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going back in the upper secret, where there was a fire orb, and go trough the southern barrier.

Didn't answer any of those questions, but finished the other ending and all achievements.

Overall a fascinating mod, and quite a bit of a mess. The best part is imo the polished well crafted environments and atmosphere (the well chosen stolen music helps a lot). The huge variety also helps keep the dungeon crawling interesting.

The story has its moments, but is told in clumsy and repetitive infodumps (the final cutscene is literally just a very slow retelling of what just happened), and in general tries too hard to fit a standard epic narrative into the dungeon crawler mold (the cutscene levels at the end probably took a lot of effort, but they still don't play well). The scifi plotline was more interesting and fit better. Also, nearly everything being a reference to warhammer, lord of the rings or something (hal, really?) needlessly cheapens the experience.

Gameplay wise, far to many random secrets. A consistent pattern was that any place I got stuck on, the answer was to click/bump/smash everything within a 20 tile radius instead of anything clever. As for combat, bone hills was the true final boss (and a pretty good one), and everything after that was a speedbumb as my party kept stacking infinite stats. Ended around level 75, having long since ran out of useful things to put skillpoints in. And so, so, so many needless respawning enemies. It feels like filler to pad out a too-short game, except this is already anything but too short.

Was expecting an alternate ending in

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using JB's ship to go to the elves, to complete the lotr reference. But maybe it's there and I just missed how to unlock it.

Thanks for your comments. Not everything is perfect, but I'm glad you like some of it. I've based some of the events on warhammer (for the scifi part) and lord of the ring for the ending boss/main quest and other.

Just by curiosity, can you upload a savegame please?
Alternate ending with the airship has never been made, because of the size of the mod.

[knr]

Here's my last save before entering the portal: https://ufile.io/brql937t. I tended to delete map markings after being done with a puzzle/level, so there's not much there, and nearly every item I have is in the inventory of one of the characters.

And I did run Banaora's script once, so this save is 650 blasts lighter than it would be otherwise.

I get the influences, just the references are too direct for my liking. For example, in M&M6, I'm fine with the VARN being mildy styled on trek, but having the captain's name be Krik etc. was too far.

[ene]

i'd suggest 5,6, or even seven rounds (not to say 8+) in xaafi desert, the opponements don't hurt you much (the elemental golems not a single hit almost), the music is epic, shame that the fight is so short, i really mean it. After ravenkul pass, it is really too soft, kind of gentle battle (but maybe because i had lot of train just before as i needed 6-7 fight to realise that you had to destroy the portals to escape , so basically, each run last about 10-15 min for me).

Bring them on, i'd say, more.


I'd basically agree with what knr said, about the music, nice texture in some maps (but now i play in low settings), but.. we are overpowerd, it's true, with all the secrets and the insane stuff you put in (+100heath, +150 energy, +100 protection..). The fact that in most of case, you can get them too easily as the puzzles are really not complicated. Almost a gift.

I'd add very few interesting fights for me (I told you that many times, nothing new), and most of all it lacks a certain continuity, not as, homogeneous as, say, toorum manor (but i think it's more about the game itself, log2 compared tolog1). My judgement may sound a bit harsh but still like it very much (proof is that i still continue despite all the crashes i encountered).

'Tongues are being loosened' aren' they?


Would need lot lot of polishing i think. For a single person (tremendous respect for the effort), maybe the mod is just too big to be handled (of course, it's easy for me to say that, i've created nothing, just my feelings as a gameplayer. This mod has enormous potential, that's for sure).

That said, a genuine thank you for this mod.


now, where are these stupid priests already ?

[knr]

My complaint about the respawns isn't about the big setpiece encounters with a boss healthbar, those were pretty cool before they became too easy. It's about many regular levels spawning handfuls of enemies in previously cleared corridors which you then clear again the same way as before, repeat like 2-5 times in the same set of corridors. Deadmarches west is the only interesting exception, as the wallwalking ghosts and having to maintain a clear path to the shrine made for a unique experience.

Edit: And yeah, despite the somewhat negative tone of my feedback post, thank you for the mod. I enjoyed my time with it overall, it's an immense undertaking for a single person and you mostly pulled it off.

[Whisper]

Didn't answer any of those questions, but finished the other ending and all achievements.

Overall a fascinating mod, and quite a bit of a mess. The best part is imo the polished well crafted environments and atmosphere (the well chosen stolen music helps a lot). The huge variety also helps keep the dungeon crawling interesting.

The story has its moments, but is told in clumsy and repetitive infodumps (the final cutscene is literally just a very slow retelling of what just happened), and in general tries too hard to fit a standard epic narrative into the dungeon crawler mold (the cutscene levels at the end probably took a lot of effort, but they still don't play well). The scifi plotline was more interesting and fit better. Also, nearly everything being a reference to warhammer, lord of the rings or something (hal, really?) needlessly cheapens the experience.

Gameplay wise, far to many random secrets. A consistent pattern was that any place I got stuck on, the answer was to click/bump/smash everything within a 20 tile radius instead of anything clever. As for combat, bone hills was the true final boss (and a pretty good one), and everything after that was a speedbumb as my party kept stacking infinite stats. Ended around level 75, having long since ran out of useful things to put skillpoints in. And so, so, so many needless respawning enemies. It feels like filler to pad out a too-short game, except this is already anything but too short.

Was expecting an alternate ending in

SpoilerShow

using JB's ship to go to the elves, to complete the lotr reference. But maybe it's there and I just missed how to unlock it.

Your character levels got to 75?

Is there 1 ending or several endings?

How long did it take for you to finish this mod?

[poqwer11]

bongobeat hello!!!
Might come in handy for another update!!
I was reminded here by my compatriots:
In the mine, the weight of the stones (with letters) does not correspond to the actual weight, it can be seen by the total load, if you place the stone in the inventory! The one that 10.0 actually weighs 9.9 and another (I do not remember which one) only 0.1 more! Not everyone will notice this when using the stones in the puzzle niches with different weights!!!

[knr]

Your character levels got to 75?

Is there 1 ending or several endings?

How long did it take for you to finish this mod?

There's sort of 2 endings, but only one of them actually ends the mod, so you can do both one after the other. A bit higher than 75, about 230M total xp, with no humans. Of which 80M came from a single bossfight. But most of the mod was spent in the level 20-35 range. And about 110h from steam playtime, I think. A noticeable chunk of that is probably loading, though.

[Whisper]

Your character levels got to 75?

Is there 1 ending or several endings?

How long did it take for you to finish this mod?

There's sort of 2 endings, but only one of them actually ends the mod, so you can do both one after the other. A bit higher than 75, about 230M total xp, with no humans. Of which 80M came from a single bossfight. But most of the mod was spent in the level 20-35 range. And about 110h from steam playtime, I think. A noticeable chunk of that is probably loading, though.

Can you please spoiler both endings? So cant miss any of them because i did something wrong.
Also did you find many missable secrets?
Bongobeat say that even there is missable area if you make wrong choice, did you find it?


p.s. I really do not like missable secrets (that you cant do, because you did choice).

[knr]

Don't think you can miss the endings, besides doing nonsense like throwing away quest items. As for missable secrets/levels, there are 3 big ones that I know of/remember:

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1. you need to get a wheel from the poet, which means listening to his poems when you first meet him. 2. During the bounty quest, you have to extort the target and then let him go, giving you two items. 3. After a particular boss, a pair of levels explodes, making some secrets unreachable. So get all the secrets in those two levels before saving after this boss.

[2498billb]

Hi Stuck in Xaafi Temple,
1. The green, red, yellow buttons, I see someone else had same problem - what flooded area is a clue?
2. There are gold locks what do not seem to click when trying any key, what do I need?
these are near/in the endless corridor.
3. What does the message mean about 'and when the light shines in the dark, Hope suddenly raises.'
Ignore question 2 I found master key.