[MOD]Toorum's Manor

[bongobeat]

I have solved the "clicks" puzzle, but I honestly have no clue what you are talking about in regards to the Beastmaster. I have not seen any text about the Beastmaster, I have not been able to open any doors since I got the Beastmaster's necklace, I have not encountered any "Beastmaster's Iron door", and no false walls. No scroll, no hint. I have not found any of this.

I found the room he is in, killed him and his beasts, and pulled the lever to open the exit. There is a circular corridor that has 3 doors on it. One is an iron door that I can't open, one is a locked door that needs a key and the third door is just a door that I can't open.

There are no hints or clues as to what needs to be done next.

As to why I (or anyone playing this) would want to go back to the first 10 floors: Maybe we left something behind that we would want to take with us, like food. Also I have found Toorum's green gem for his sanctum, are you telling me that it's useless? Then why bother having the Sanctum there in the first place?

I don't mind that the player gets trapped in the temple for a while, but permamently closing off half of the game's levels just doesn't make sense.

ah ok, I thought you talk about the three door requesting ornate key. After the beast master iron door. Well return back to the east, far east, there is a door that you can open with the key of the beast master (cross key).

Ok, but the purpose was that the player was trapped by the mages. It's like grimrock. I don't remember how it was in the game, but here I let the door close.
You can't go back until you do a special job, very later.
And don't throw the gem, you will need it. By the way, did you find the other gem? It is in level 5.

Well that's true if you let things behind you. I did not think about that, when I played the mod, I always carry everything I can, and didn't let items, or food behind me. Except for some "low grade" armor or weapons, every time I found something better. I did not have any feedback of that from the 2 testers who finished the mod, so I did not change anything. Actually (in your version) I have just make the things fast, when you will escape the Theareonan levels.
I can modify that and let the door open, but then the player can finish the mod directly. That was the purpose at the beginning, but after a few month I decided to not make things so easy. Maybe I need to move the sanctuary to another level then, but the sanctuary has to be in Toorum's dungeon, and it will not make sense if I move it now (too rum's dungeon in only composed by the 4 first level, including the other levels accessible only within the 4th first levels.) The rest of levels are some kind of "neutral level" or belongs to the Theareonan mages.

[Unkillable Cat]

16+ levels of monsters not dropping keys, and only now do they start doing so... I need to keep a better eye out for that.

Anyway, I made progress, but now I'm stuck at the third ornate key lock. Big room, lots of pits, monsters on the other side triggering traps. Any hints?

[bongobeat]

The three ornate keys are in the same area

once you find the first in an alcove, the second is behind a closed gate, east of the first, in a large room with blobs to open this gate.
the way to the third key is south of the alcove's first key. Did you see a chest?

16+ levels of monsters not dropping keys, and only now do they start doing so... I need to keep a better eye out for that.

what do you mean exactly? I can't understand that as I have not a good english.

[Unkillable Cat]

What I mean is, many mods have monsters holding the keys, and that they will drop them when they die. Due to how small keys are, I often miss out on seeing them when they are lying on the ground. (See: Chaos Key.) Your mod doesn't have monsters holding the keys, usually they're in shelves, which makes finding them much easier. This is a good thing.

I had learned to think that the monsters in your mod would rarely drop items, and that they would never drop keys. Suddenly one of them does so, so of course I am not looking for it when it happens.

As for the location of the Ornate Key... no, I have not seen a chest. In that direction I was stopped by a door with the text "Elven treasures". While I think I know how to open it, I have not yet tried to use every item of Elven origin to open the door.

[bongobeat]

What I mean is, many mods have monsters holding the keys, and that they will drop them when they die. Due to how small keys are, I often miss out on seeing them when they are lying on the ground. (See: Chaos Key.) Your mod doesn't have monsters holding the keys, usually they're in shelves, which makes finding them much easier. This is a good thing.

I had learned to think that the monsters in your mod would rarely drop items, and that they would never drop keys. Suddenly one of them does so, so of course I am not looking for it when it happens.

As for the location of the Ornate Key... no, I have not seen a chest. In that direction I was stopped by a door with the text "Elven treasures". While I think I know how to open it, I have not yet tried to use every item of Elven origin to open the door.

ok, I don't remember actually, I have use monsters to hold keys, or items for a few times. Now while you are telling me that I feel that I have use this lot of times, but if you said no... Do you remember where you noticed that one monsters drop a key? I remember of 3 monsters who drops a key actually, and you did not meet 2 of them yet.
The three ornate keys are not dropped by monsters, two are in alcoves and the last is in the chest.
try to the south, before the room with elvish treasure and blobs. If you don't see any passage, that is because you did not find the button to open it.

The door with "elven treasure" does not have any ornate keys within, it's purely a secret room. But in the alcove, font of the door, there is one ornate key.
I think you will not have difficult to open this door.

[minmay]

Just finished this in Toorum mode. There are some issues I'd like to bring to your attention:

SpoilerShow

Issue 1: I actually had to cheat slightly to get past the "mage's challenge." You can use the lightning rod to trigger the air receptor, but there is no item that makes a frostbolt, so I had to spawn a frostbolt from the console. Since you can beat the rest of the mod with Toorum without cheating, this would be a good thing to change IMO. Although "frost rod" doesn't really roll off the tongue...

Issue 2: After using the security pass on level 19, you start taking "poison" damage rapidly and have to escape to the prison level. When I did the dungeon with a regular 4 character party, the poison damage stopped at the appropriate time, however, in my Toorum run, it never stopped and I kept taking damage the entire game. Interestingly, the frequency of the damage depended on what level I was on: it is very rapid on level 19, on level 20 it does damage about once every second, and on every other level I tried, it only does damage about every 10 or 20 seconds. Because of that it was quite easy to finish the game even with the damage, but it was very annoying!
Unfortunately I didn't think to get a save file from before using the security pass, so I don't know how often this issue is reproducible. I have no idea whether Toorum mode actually made a difference here.

Issue 3: The Linux version of Grimrock use OpenAL for sound. Grimrock allocates a finite amount of memory to OpenAL, and if that memory is exceeded, an error will occur and crash the game. There are several places in this mod that can easily make this occur:
1. The flooded section in Level 14 with all the Shrakk Torr. I think this is mainly due to the amount of noise Shrakk Torr themselves make when flying around so you could fix it by reducing their numbers or by using a monster that doesn't make so much noise all the time. The ambient water noise may also be a contributor.
2. The beginning section of Level 15 when you're teleported back to the start and about 24 Shrakk Torr appear around you. Same problem and solution as 1.
3. Level 22, especially at the end when large numbers of Valgar soldiers are created...and especially in the dragon fight, see below. Maybe try to reduce the number of ambient sound effects on this level? There are an awful lot.
4. The fights with multiple dragons or black dragons. These are by far the most difficult to avoid crashes in. In the fights with multiple dragons, if one dragon hits another dragon with its breath, THAT dragon will breathe, too. If these two dragons are facing each other then this will quickly create a loop and almost instantly crash. If they aren't, it will still easily cause a crash if it happens multiple times in succession. With black dragons, their projectiles have an extremely long sound effect and do damage multiple times when they hit, so one black dragon hitting another just ONE time is often enough to cause a crash (multiple damage instances means the second dragon breathes multiple times), and even a lone black dragon will crash if you hit it too frequently. I find myself doing quick saves every few seconds in these fights because of this, which makes them really boring, whereas I'm assuming they're really cool in the Windows version.
The easiest fixes for this are probably giving dragon breath a cooldown time (after taking damage and breathing, they cannot breathe again for 1 second) and reducing the duration of the black dragon projectile's explosion sound.

By the way, muting the sound does nothing to prevent this.

[JimBob]

I now have the firestaff but don't know where to go next.Where should I be heading for?

[Unkillable Cat]

JimBob: The passage on Level 9 snakes a bit to the southeast before ending by a pit in the far south. Dropping down that pit puts you in a part of Level 10 that is otherwise inaccessible.

EDIT: Bongobeat: I said that up to the Beastmaster I do not recall seeing any monster drop a key, though I may be mistaken. I think it is a good thing that monsters do NOT carry keys, as I, just to name an example, tend to miss out on keys on the ground. When I think of it, there may have been a group of Mages up in the temple that dropped a key, in the Priest Quarters, but fortunately I saw that key immediately.

Thanks to your hints, I have found the area you described. One question, do I HAVE to catch that chest? Because this is a puzzle that makes me tired just by thinking about it.

And that is another problem I am running into with your mod: I am getting tired of playing it. I never thought I'd say this about a Grimrock mod, but it may be too big, too long. At least there is some problem here, as I enjoy playing most Grimrock mods, and yet I am getting tired of this one.

[bongobeat]

Just finished this in Toorum mode. There are some issues I'd like to bring to your attention:

SpoilerShow

Issue 1: I actually had to cheat slightly to get past the "mage's challenge." You can use the lightning rod to trigger the air receptor, but there is no item that makes a frostbolt, so I had to spawn a frostbolt from the console. Since you can beat the rest of the mod with Toorum without cheating, this would be a good thing to change IMO. Although "frost rod" doesn't really roll off the tongue...

Issue 2: After using the security pass on level 19, you start taking "poison" damage rapidly and have to escape to the prison level. When I did the dungeon with a regular 4 character party, the poison damage stopped at the appropriate time, however, in my Toorum run, it never stopped and I kept taking damage the entire game. Interestingly, the frequency of the damage depended on what level I was on: it is very rapid on level 19, on level 20 it does damage about once every second, and on every other level I tried, it only does damage about every 10 or 20 seconds. Because of that it was quite easy to finish the game even with the damage, but it was very annoying!
Unfortunately I didn't think to get a save file from before using the security pass, so I don't know how often this issue is reproducible. I have no idea whether Toorum mode actually made a difference here.

Issue 3: The Linux version of Grimrock use OpenAL for sound. Grimrock allocates a finite amount of memory to OpenAL, and if that memory is exceeded, an error will occur and crash the game. There are several places in this mod that can easily make this occur:
1. The flooded section in Level 14 with all the Shrakk Torr. I think this is mainly due to the amount of noise Shrakk Torr themselves make when flying around so you could fix it by reducing their numbers or by using a monster that doesn't make so much noise all the time. The ambient water noise may also be a contributor.
2. The beginning section of Level 15 when you're teleported back to the start and about 24 Shrakk Torr appear around you. Same problem and solution as 1.
3. Level 22, especially at the end when large numbers of Valgar soldiers are created...and especially in the dragon fight, see below. Maybe try to reduce the number of ambient sound effects on this level? There are an awful lot.
4. The fights with multiple dragons or black dragons. These are by far the most difficult to avoid crashes in. In the fights with multiple dragons, if one dragon hits another dragon with its breath, THAT dragon will breathe, too. If these two dragons are facing each other then this will quickly create a loop and almost instantly crash. If they aren't, it will still easily cause a crash if it happens multiple times in succession. With black dragons, their projectiles have an extremely long sound effect and do damage multiple times when they hit, so one black dragon hitting another just ONE time is often enough to cause a crash (multiple damage instances means the second dragon breathes multiple times), and even a lone black dragon will crash if you hit it too frequently. I find myself doing quick saves every few seconds in these fights because of this, which makes them really boring, whereas I'm assuming they're really cool in the Windows version.
The easiest fixes for this are probably giving dragon breath a cooldown time (after taking damage and breathing, they cannot breathe again for 1 second) and reducing the duration of the black dragon projectile's explosion sound.

By the way, muting the sound does nothing to prevent this.

congratz to finish it in too rum mode. I did not even thought that was possible with only one character!
thanks for the feedback:

for issue 1: I don't know yet. You are the first telling me that you have to cheat to pass it.

issue2: normally the damage is stopped when you enter the room, accessed by breaking a wall. I dit not test it with toorum mode, but maybe it's a temporary bug. Can you retry please? You can cheat to go directly to level 19 if you don't have a savegame, if yes I will give you a pm for a cheat room that will be useful to train yourself to test special areas.
That's normal that the damage decrease when changing of level, the more you get far, the less you get damage. The timer's time settings which gives you damage is divided by 2 every time you change level, and get to "normal" if you are in the same level.

issue3:
1: I have done this mod on a mac os computer, the sound issue is both the same on mac. But i did not have any sound problem. I will see to reduce what it can be.

2: I will delete one of the water sound and remove some monsters.

3:which version did you play?
I have already removed some valgar soldiers (in V1.39). I have noticed a big lag when they were spawned, especially when you get the emerald key, I have deleted all monsters coming after. so their is only about 8 monsters spawned at the beginning, when you just come from the stairs. And 6 are standing behind secret doors.
If you have played the latest version did you notice a sound issue in level 23 or 24? in the experimental lab or cooling system? They are lots of running sound here.

4: Yeah that's the problem with the automatic retort of the dragon. Maybe I will delete it. Actually I have already deleted the automatic dragon breath (it shoots every time the creature walks or turn) of the "enraged" dragon (meets in the hangar level 18) for the version 1.4. This reduce the amount of lag of this creature, and it's now like any other dragon. I don't think they are better in windows version, I got a big lag when a dragon hit another dragon and vice et versa, both on osx and windows 8.

[bongobeat]

I now have the firestaff but don't know where to go next.Where should I be heading for?

return back to level 9
then follow Unkillable Cat guidance

JimBob: The passage on Level 9 snakes a bit to the southeast before ending by a pit in the far south. Dropping down that pit puts you in a part of Level 10 that is otherwise inaccessible.