Cow vs Grimrock - Solo Character Victory
Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 9:06 pm
Cow vs Grimrock - Cow wins!
Born into servitude to a noble household of Nothampton, Primrose was raised to be bodyguard and nanny to the children of a wealthy Human scholar. She was supposed to act the humble mule or else be thrown into the streets to live the life of a thug like all the other Minotaurs born in the cities of men but Primrose was not your average Minotaur. She yearned for more than her station in life offered and so while remaining a faithful servant to her master she secretly studied the mysteries of the arcane in his private collection when no one was watching her. She reveled in the wonders uncovered in those dusty tomes for some years unknown to all until one fateful day when one of the children in her care went missing. The child's body was found some days later, cause of death; "unsanctioned discharge of arcane current". That's what was written into the arch magistrar's scroll but to everyone else the cause was simple, "witchcraft".
None can attest to Primrose's guilt or innocence for no one truly cared once her studies of magic became public, the cow shaman, who else could it have been. Her guilt was declared, murder or witchcraft, either way she was deemed a criminal but with no solid proof to be found her sentence fell just short of death. "Cast her into the mountain, let's she her witchcraft help the cow there!", the mob cried out and the court bowed to them.
Shackled together with three small insectoids, also found guilty of heretical magics, she was taken by airship to the top of Mount Grimrock and cast into the bowels of the dungeon. It may as well have been a death sentence, most don't even survive being thrown in, as was the case for the three unfortunate bug men who broke Primrose's fall. Dragging their corpses behind her, tethered to her chains, Primrose resolved not to face the same fate.
Gameplay Stats: (not really a spoiler)
I just finished my very first play through of the game playing as lone Minotaur Mage playing on Hard/Old School. It was tough and very tricky in some parts but I persevered and slowly chewed my way through to the end of the game solving every puzzle I could find and not passing up even the toughest of optional fights. 
It helps that the game is well designed without too many places where you are forced to fight toe to toe with enemies and the places where you do are either fair fights or can be solved with clever usage of items/spells to avoid tight spots.
I did play a bit of the way through at first with a normal party, just enough to get a feel for the classes and skills before playing it solo but most of the game I was going into it blind with a party of one.
Character Stats:
- The other 3 all ended with 0 xp, the one or two times they were resurected (once by mistake and once forcibly) I killed them again right away.
My Inventory and equipped Items at the end (Item spoilers!):
- I didn't use the other 3 party members for anything, not even once did I give an item to one of their bodies to 'hold', I had to back track a few time to pick up stuff I'd discarded for lack of capacity
So has anyone else managed a solo play through so far or is in the middle of trying it?
If so what race/class/skills did you go for and how are you finding it so far?
Not counting.... (Big Spoiler)
If anyone want's to ask how I managed any particular parts of the game then please do so but remember to use spoiler tags.
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As an aside:
To the Devs: Thanks for making such a great game and I hope you have a lot of success in the future. There's still a lot of room to improve if you choose to keep expanding and iterating on Grimrock but overall I think your design choices are really good. Partly that's a testament to how well designed Dungeon Master was but you made changes that I feel were majorly positive while keeping the core parts intact, something a myriad of DM clones that came after often failed to do right.
I've dabbled with dungeon design in the past myself with DM remakes and almost got involved in some DM inspired games/remakes in the past, including one I'm told one of yourselves was involved with and partly influenced Grimrock as a a result. So I appreciate the work that must have gone into making this game and congratulate you on having the determination, resolve and faith to see it to completion.
To the players on the forums complaining about difficulty adjustments: Grow up, I just finished what is probably the most difficult way to play the game possible and I don't see the need to complain. I am of course talking about the people complaining about the idea of adding settings to make the game easier for people with lower dexterity/reflexes, not the people asking for these options. I chose to impose restrictions on myself to make the game harder because I wanted even more of a challenge but I'm not about to deride people who played with less of a challenge than myself.
Also I still found that one puzzle to open the Iron door (you know the one) annoying as hell because I don't have very good reaction time. I had to just keep doing it till I had the pattern memorized and even then it wasn't easy despite having very good manual dexterity. If you did it first time then good for you, but understand that you probably have very good reflexes (most likely you are young and male). Have some empathy for those who aren't so gifted in that sense and are having a different experience of a game than you. Telling people to 'just get better or don't play the game' isn't going to help for some people who have real physical limitations in certain areas. (eg - I've had some fun/balanced multiplayer matches in RTS games in the past with some people who are pro Starcraft 2 players and I have the APM to keep up but I had to 'cheat' my way through the end of Assassins Creed single player because I didn't have the reaction time to do the 'counter kill'; something most average gamers complained was making the game too easy)
The more options for difficulty, both higher and lower, the better as far as I'm concerned and it is something that all game developers could be doing better. See the original System Shock for a great example of a game ( and one that evolved from dungeon crawlers, btw) that had multiple difficulty options for different parts of the game, puzzles/combat/story to the extent that you could turn any of them off completely while having another at the hardest setting. I originally played that game with all the combat turned off because the monsters scared me too much but it's still one of my favourite games of all time. The option only enhanced my enjoyment and ultimate appreciation of the game when I later went back to it with the combat on and did not diminish it as so often I see people calim will happen given 'options' to make things easier in games.
Sorry, that was more long winded than I'd intended it to be but I can never do short posts. Time to go and replay Grimrock with a full party now.
PS: Sorry to the moderators for making a thread that straddles the line between sub-forums to such an extent.
Born into servitude to a noble household of Nothampton, Primrose was raised to be bodyguard and nanny to the children of a wealthy Human scholar. She was supposed to act the humble mule or else be thrown into the streets to live the life of a thug like all the other Minotaurs born in the cities of men but Primrose was not your average Minotaur. She yearned for more than her station in life offered and so while remaining a faithful servant to her master she secretly studied the mysteries of the arcane in his private collection when no one was watching her. She reveled in the wonders uncovered in those dusty tomes for some years unknown to all until one fateful day when one of the children in her care went missing. The child's body was found some days later, cause of death; "unsanctioned discharge of arcane current". That's what was written into the arch magistrar's scroll but to everyone else the cause was simple, "witchcraft".
None can attest to Primrose's guilt or innocence for no one truly cared once her studies of magic became public, the cow shaman, who else could it have been. Her guilt was declared, murder or witchcraft, either way she was deemed a criminal but with no solid proof to be found her sentence fell just short of death. "Cast her into the mountain, let's she her witchcraft help the cow there!", the mob cried out and the court bowed to them.
Shackled together with three small insectoids, also found guilty of heretical magics, she was taken by airship to the top of Mount Grimrock and cast into the bowels of the dungeon. It may as well have been a death sentence, most don't even survive being thrown in, as was the case for the three unfortunate bug men who broke Primrose's fall. Dragging their corpses behind her, tethered to her chains, Primrose resolved not to face the same fate.
Gameplay Stats: (not really a spoiler)
SpoilerShow
It helps that the game is well designed without too many places where you are forced to fight toe to toe with enemies and the places where you do are either fair fights or can be solved with clever usage of items/spells to avoid tight spots.
I did play a bit of the way through at first with a normal party, just enough to get a feel for the classes and skills before playing it solo but most of the game I was going into it blind with a party of one.
Character Stats:
- The other 3 all ended with 0 xp, the one or two times they were resurected (once by mistake and once forcibly) I killed them again right away.
My Inventory and equipped Items at the end (Item spoilers!):
SpoilerShow
So has anyone else managed a solo play through so far or is in the middle of trying it?
If so what race/class/skills did you go for and how are you finding it so far?
Not counting.... (Big Spoiler)
SpoilerShow
Toorum, he has a bunch of benefits that make him stronger and there are already threads about his play through. From what I've seen he starts with almost as much HP as my character ended the game with as well as having extra stats/skills, traits and a skill tree more suited to being solo.
Ironically I missed him myself so I still don't have the game's built in solo mode available to me yet
Ironically I missed him myself so I still don't have the game's built in solo mode available to me yet
------
As an aside:
To the Devs: Thanks for making such a great game and I hope you have a lot of success in the future. There's still a lot of room to improve if you choose to keep expanding and iterating on Grimrock but overall I think your design choices are really good. Partly that's a testament to how well designed Dungeon Master was but you made changes that I feel were majorly positive while keeping the core parts intact, something a myriad of DM clones that came after often failed to do right.
I've dabbled with dungeon design in the past myself with DM remakes and almost got involved in some DM inspired games/remakes in the past, including one I'm told one of yourselves was involved with and partly influenced Grimrock as a a result. So I appreciate the work that must have gone into making this game and congratulate you on having the determination, resolve and faith to see it to completion.
To the players on the forums complaining about difficulty adjustments: Grow up, I just finished what is probably the most difficult way to play the game possible and I don't see the need to complain. I am of course talking about the people complaining about the idea of adding settings to make the game easier for people with lower dexterity/reflexes, not the people asking for these options. I chose to impose restrictions on myself to make the game harder because I wanted even more of a challenge but I'm not about to deride people who played with less of a challenge than myself.
Also I still found that one puzzle to open the Iron door (you know the one) annoying as hell because I don't have very good reaction time. I had to just keep doing it till I had the pattern memorized and even then it wasn't easy despite having very good manual dexterity. If you did it first time then good for you, but understand that you probably have very good reflexes (most likely you are young and male). Have some empathy for those who aren't so gifted in that sense and are having a different experience of a game than you. Telling people to 'just get better or don't play the game' isn't going to help for some people who have real physical limitations in certain areas. (eg - I've had some fun/balanced multiplayer matches in RTS games in the past with some people who are pro Starcraft 2 players and I have the APM to keep up but I had to 'cheat' my way through the end of Assassins Creed single player because I didn't have the reaction time to do the 'counter kill'; something most average gamers complained was making the game too easy)
The more options for difficulty, both higher and lower, the better as far as I'm concerned and it is something that all game developers could be doing better. See the original System Shock for a great example of a game ( and one that evolved from dungeon crawlers, btw) that had multiple difficulty options for different parts of the game, puzzles/combat/story to the extent that you could turn any of them off completely while having another at the hardest setting. I originally played that game with all the combat turned off because the monsters scared me too much but it's still one of my favourite games of all time. The option only enhanced my enjoyment and ultimate appreciation of the game when I later went back to it with the combat on and did not diminish it as so often I see people calim will happen given 'options' to make things easier in games.
Sorry, that was more long winded than I'd intended it to be but I can never do short posts. Time to go and replay Grimrock with a full party now.
PS: Sorry to the moderators for making a thread that straddles the line between sub-forums to such an extent.
