[MOD] Prisoner of Bleakhall - UPDATE! 1.33

[eLPuSHeR]

I guess you cannot use your older savegames (1.1) with the newest update, so I won't update this time.

[LocalFire]

I guess you cannot use your older savegames (1.1) with the newest update, so I won't update this time.

No you can't but obviously you should update if you intend to play again (and I hope you do) I have after all put in a reason to do so

That being said theres nothing stopping a player using version 1.1 from finishing the game, half the stuff in the new update don't really effect the game to much; just some nice addons

[eLPuSHeR]

Ok. In the interim I am stuck again...

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I am on level 4 I think. I am stuck on the "face of time" room. I have opened the west door, but I have been unable to proceed to the north room after the "pits room". I have found a secret in the northwestern corner though. I have been unable to open the "I open once in 24 hours" door either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[LocalFire]

This ones not to bad and it seems like you have the logic behind this puzzle figured out

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Once every 24 hours means once around the clock, remove all the stones or whatever you used to trigger the plates and stand on all of them starting at 12 o'clock making it one "day" to open the door


On a side note if you've been in the pit room (Trust fall) did you find the Crown of Alois? its one of the special items I put into the dungeon and I'm interested to know what people think of them

[LocalFire]

After re reading your comment I realize you're stuck in the trust fall room, no problem heres a hint

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What do you do when you do a trust fall

And the solution

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Walk backwards on the open pit near the north exit and the pit will close as you step onto it

[eLPuSHeR]

Thank you.

Yes. I got the Crown of Alois. I think it's an okay "relic" that could come in handy for certain situations.

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I am almost sure I tried something similar for the 24 hour door.

And for the trust fall, I didn't try the backwards thing, obviously.

Best regards.

I see v1.2 is up. I am going to download it for future playthroughs.

[eLPuSHeR]

I finished this great mod yesterday although I left several things unresolved.

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The end seemed pretty weird/abrupt for me.

Anyway, congratulations on a solid well made mod.

[LocalFire]

Thank you I'm glad you enjoyed it.

The story is left open for future events, after all the reason things were going down in Bleakhall is a symptom of larger events theres also a second storyline in the dungeon but for now I'll leave that for players to figure out how to access it

[minmay]

All right, finished 2 playthroughs on hard. Results of second one (probably a spoiler):

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My thoughts on the mod:

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REALLY slow to start. You have to go through around 1.5 or 2 levels before you get any real puzzles, depending on how you explore the prison. It picks up pretty well after you get the full party, though.
I don't like that the traits/stats/etc you pick at the start of the game impact the party members - you have no idea which one is which until you find them in-game, so you end up with a pretty big advantage for restarting after finding out who they are (I didn't bother to do this myself).
I also didn't really care for your modified wallsets, the contrast increase on the mine wallset is so large that it makes it look distorted. The black-and-white temple wallset is a better concept but the white rings/spots on the black bricks look really bizarre, to the point where I think the wall might actually look more realistic if you inverted the colours! Seeing everything in greyscale also gets tiring pretty fast - I think the checkered walls/floor would look really neat used in a small part of a level, but they aren't that good of a fit for using on 5 full levels. This wallset also needed way more decorations.

But with all that said, the mod has some really good puzzles, enough to make me keep going (twice) in spite of all that. There are a few that really confused me:
- "Alarm clock" - First playthrough I went ahead and woke up the sleepers at the end of that level right away, and this door was open when I found it. Second playthrough I left them asleep and the door was closed, when I went back and killed them it opened. So...the solution to this puzzle is to fail at the previous one?
- Starting the "ritual" at the clock - I did this one by accident both times, just trying what may as well have been random plates. I'm still not sure what the actual solution is.
- Opening the "across from the entrance" clock door - Took me forever, having to press both plates at once was really unintuitive.
- The room of deception - I figured out immediately that I'd have to spell the direction opposite the one I wanted. What I DIDN'T figure out without looking at this forum topic: I only had to use the first letter. I was trying to figure out how to encode the entire word "east" on 15 plates. I didn't do very well.

Other than that the puzzles were excellent. My favourite might be the "trust fall" puzzle, which took me a long time but was completely fair. I'm a sucker for subtle audio clues. You also had some surprisingly interesting items.

Regarding playing as Corvus: for the entire game I found myself wishing he had Thunderstruck. Spellcasting cooldown, even with improved combat caster and haste, feels REALLY long when you only have one party member. Particularly when you are using 20% of your spell casts on mana/life channeling. Just look at my playtime in that screenshot! I think I also would have enjoyed it a lot more if Soul of the Storm etc. actually increased your spell damage like they claim to (if they do increase it, it's not by enough for me to even notice), it gets a bit tiring using so many lightning bolts/fireballs to kill one enemy.

Also...I'm guessing that "6/5 treasures found" isn't supposed to happen.

[LocalFire]

Thanks for the feedback, I can see I have some work to do to address these issues, I fully expect to have quite a few updates to come to get this right so thank you

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Yes the slow start is a problem, I'm not really sure how to address, I don't want to give a full party to start with, I could I guess leave a note telling the player where they are, at the start of the prison levels that should speed up the thing (Getting Merin is fairly easy provided you take the turn that leads to his cell first) I may have to move the cells around so Merin is closer to the start of the prison.
I'll add a disclaimer telling the player not to create a party, that should help with skills thing since any unassigned skills will carry over to when you find the new characters, the stats will also go to my preset values if the player doesn't assign them (or at least it did when I was testing, I'll look into this). Regarding the wallsets I will try out some new colours and add more decorations, I liked the Black and white colouring but I can see your point and the wallsets don't look as good as most others (it was a first attempt at these) so I can fix that (probably).

-The face of time puzzle was supposed to be a clock face hence two hands to open to solve a puzzle, ie. two pressure plates, also the same logic with the ritual in that chamber 6 o'clock trigger the 12 and 6 plates, (I guess if you have a rock or something in place for midnight it could be opened at random by stepping on plates, I'll see about changing the time so it requires a time less likely to trigger by accident.

-The alarm clock was one of the last puzzles I added, I needed something for the iron door and I just tossed in this I admit its a poor section and I'll look into replacing it

-I'll look into the clock clue to see if I can't hint better to make sure two hands will be obivious, possibly change the times for other door so they all require two hands as well

-Ditto with the clue for the misdirection room, will make it clearer

Glad to here you liked the trust fall, it seems to be the one most people hate since it takes forever for then solve it I was considering removing it but now it will have to stay! , I alos glad you liked the items, they were a last minute addition but one I think that was well worth the effort

And regarding Corvus, I could toss in some new members for his quest (I'll have to hide them in new places) maybe not a full party but even one addition could should help address the slowness issue (I generally play as one or two member parties so I guess I'm used to it and didn't consider that

And the 6/5 thing yeah thats not good, I'm guessing a monster dropped it? do you remember where? If not I'm sure I can find it.

Thanks again, Hopefully I can get these issues addressed and new and improved Bleakhall up soon.