Grimrock

mike30542 wrote:

citizengrim wrote:Hey maybe this is not a game for you tho. I meant dont push your self. A game suppose to be enjoyable not put someone in stress. Maybe try take it easy and play on easy mode for a while. IF still not working out, then move on and find a different game

I am/was enjoying the game as I have previously posted but am somewhat frustrated that my progress is blocked by my problems with the combat system. I am certainly not stressed. I will try easy mode & hope that with practice & perseverance I will get better.

Im glad you enjoying it. But take it from my experience. I personally do got frustrated with the game sometimes, whether its with the combat, or with the puzzles, but mostly with the puzzles because I always try to solve it without any help what so ever. When I do feel frustrated I quit the game and do something else or start a new group with different character setup and come back later when I think im ready to tackle it again.

Take it easy

Just wanted to throw my 2 cents into the ring on helping people who are having issues with the RT combat. My roommate loves everything about the game BUT the RT combat. Not because it is bad combat, but because he is very very bad at it. I had little difficulty until level 10 on normal (with 1 major, spoilery exception lol). I, however, know I could never handle hard mode. But he was having serious problems with normal and was still having issues on easy (which he VERY grudgingly switched to).

My advice to him was this. It is ALWAYS easier if you can get a monster alone. So run. A lot. Make sure you always know how to back up (check your map a lot and just learn the easiest route from where you are to at least 2 major rooms back). Then, when you hit more than 1 monster, take off back towards the way you came. Try to make sure 1 of the monsters is following, but with few exceptions, that is rarely a problem. 1 monster will follow you pretty well. But any monsters behind him will get backed up. When the first monster moves, the second monster doesn't move at exactly the same time (most of the time). This causes the second monster, and any subsequent monsters, to end up falling behind. And if you run away far enough, eventually, all but the 1 monster you are kiting will have given up and gone back to their natural habitat. This is especially true in 1 wide hallways and generally happens very quickly if you can lead monsters turn a twisty one.

Once you have a monster alone, find a nice 2x2 area (a square of 4 blocks) and get it to where the monster is diagonal to you. Then...wait. See, excepting the charge attacks of 2 of the monsters, none of the monsters can do damage to you while they are moving between tiles (and if you follow this advice, the charging monsters will never be charging while you actually fight them). But you can damage them while you move, so you have the advantage here. Keep turning to you are facing the same square the monster is facing. When he eventually goes to move into that square, strafe so that you will again be diagonal to him. But, right after you strafe, click any one weapon. This will almost always land a single hit on the monster without putting you in ANY danger. You will both end up diagonal to each other, so he can't counter attack. Eventually, you'll get better at it and you can swing 2 weapons at the monster every time it moves (although that is about the limit if you want to make sure you're 100% safe, maybe three with the slower enemies).

This is a long, slow process (especially with some of the higher hp mobs) and is not fool proof (it can sometimes be hard to tell which was certain monsters are facing, some of them can strafe, and occasionally you'll run into rooms where monsters respawn, totally invalidating this strategy). But most of the time, this makes combat REALLY easy. This tactic will, in turn, make you better at the whole circle dance in general, without making you reload saves over and over and bang your head into a game-over-screen-shaped-wall. It REALLY helped my friend. He is still playing in easy, but he is doing much better, dying a lot less, and generally enjoying the game a lot more.

I hope it helps you too. :OD

Mike - I hope you persevere, as the game only gets better. It does also get harder - but the techniques required to beat the two enemies you've struggled with, are applicable to pretty much every fight. I also died horribly at that point - playing on Normal mode. I wasn't moving enough, and the enemies were able to pin me because I was allowing them to cast the poison clouds before I tried to move away. The key with this fight, is to avoid that situation at all costs. If for some reason you fail to land your planned shots after moving to another position, do NOT stand still and retry the attacks. Move to an empty spot, before they decide to drop the cloud. The more clouds you allow them to drop, the fewer free spaces you have left to move around during the fight. The clouds won't often kill you on their own, but they clutter your view and cause you to get "stuck" on the two enemies, allowing them to land melee attacks on top of the poison.

This was my one big mistake, and it sent me back through the previous level in the hope of finding some thing or some way to get past them In the end, I just had to rethink my actions and be smarter with my fighting. It extends the fight (always), but a long fight is much better than a losing battle and a reload/resurrect It's possible to do this fight without a single cloud being placed, and it's a matter of patience and well-placed, well-timed shots - there doesn't actually need to be any panic or rushed movements/attacks.

I guess it would have helped if I had explicitly directed my comments to the specific problem as well as providing general strategy advice. LOL

I remember that room well. It was hard...very hard for the time. Thankfully, the guys who spit the poison cloud don't show up too often (but man, just about every time they showed up, even much much later when I could kill them really fast, they were super pains). But for that room specifically, it's all about getting in 1 good attack, and then moving so you're not near either of them, dropping all the ranged firepower you can into them, rinse and repeat. Give your front line some knives or a extra bow or whatever, and don't worry about "wasting" one time use ammo, like bombs, so that you never have to be in melee (if you have the extra ranged weapons to spare). It's a tough fight for the level.

But again, the key is just to make sure you don't stay in any 1 place for too long and to make sure you don't let them back you into a corner. Even if you only get 1 hit every 5-10 seconds, as long as you don't stand in the poison, it's not impossible. It just might take a long time.

I really hope you find a way to make the game fun for you again. It's a great game and I hope everyone who buys it can get the same level of enjoyment out if it that I did.

I'm on level 9 now, playing the game on hard.

I'm sure this has been said but it won't hurt to repeat it. Almost every encounter with a single enemy can be won without or with minimal damage by retreating (or sometimes quickly advancing, as needed) to a space at least 2x2 large, and standing diagonally across a monster. There the monster AI will deliberate, sometimes for quite a while over the two possible ways to approach the party.

When it picks one you just hit it once or twice and strafe to the next diagonal position, and repeat until its dead.

Never stand and fight if you can help it, and against one monster there is never any need for fancy tricks over the one I described.

Frost magic can help dealing with mobs since frost shards fire in a straight line, and frost bolt can freeze them.

In this game you have to plan your encounters, which means a lot of saving and reloading. If you plan them correctly there is very little chance of a character dying.

So far there has been only one area I find impossible to beat and that's Fighter's challenge. The game is tough on this difficulty, but mostly fair. I never try to go more than one level a day, its far too tiring. I've been occasionally frustrated by the way the game can chuck too many monsters at the party and some of the dexterity puzzles but its always beatable, after a few tries.

mike30542 wrote: I am/was enjoying the game as I have previously posted but am somewhat frustrated that my progress is blocked by my problems with the combat system. I am certainly not stressed. I will try easy mode & hope that with practice & perseverance I will get better.

Sometimes the problem is simpler than we all think (as this game has proven to me many times).

For a good while I did not realise that Q and E turn you on your tile, this can make a huge difference for moving combat. Strafing and turning with the mouse is much harder. Hope that might help.

Maybe petri can make a GOD mode for these people.
This is a great game and I feel sad that these people for whatever reason can not enjoy it.

I guess you could call me 'hardcore' as gaming is my main hobby. Its not much of a boast (certainly nothing to be proud of ) but I've got a lot of dungeon crawl and FPS experience under my belt and even I fumbled the controls on occasion. Shoot/dodge gameplay just doesn't translate well to a grid format (in my very humble opinion).
Perseverance is key. Obviously if you're not enjoying yourself then don't force it, but I think if you accept that there's going to be a learning curve and measure success in smaller increments, you may get more out of the game.

I got pretty frustrated at some points. One puzzle in particular drove me up the wall, even though the solution was blindingly obvious (turns out I was over thinking it.)

I didn't read all 8 pages, so I'm sorry if this has already been mentioned.

@OP
A tool called CheatEngine has a speedhack function that goes both ways. You can speed up or slow down the game at your leisure with a simple command.

Start CheatEngine, attach it to the grimrock.exe via the "computer" icon in the upper left corner. Notice the "Enable Speedhack" check box on the right side, and use the slider to adjust the speed. Somewhere in the area of 0.85 and 0.9 should be fine, but you'll figure that out.

Good luck and more importantly, have fun!

ExecutiveMonstah wrote:Shoot/dodge gameplay just doesn't translate well to a grid format (in my very humble opinion).

FWIW, I find it much more pleasant in a grid format, since it's a much less ambiguous problem.