Can I play Temple of Elemental Evil without going insane?
Hello out there,
I was going to give Temple of Elemental Evil a go and I installed the Temple+ and Circle of 8 mods already. However, when I read the readmes and FAQs that come with the Circle of 8 mod in particular, I get the impression that the game is still basically broken, even if you do not commit the cardinal sins of quicksaving and autosaving (which apparently blow up your computer). If I play the game, will I be able to finish it in one go or are savegame corruptions and game ending bugs basically inevitable?
I was going to give Temple of Elemental Evil a go and I installed the Temple+ and Circle of 8 mods already. However, when I read the readmes and FAQs that come with the Circle of 8 mod in particular, I get the impression that the game is still basically broken, even if you do not commit the cardinal sins of quicksaving and autosaving (which apparently blow up your computer). If I play the game, will I be able to finish it in one go or are savegame corruptions and game ending bugs basically inevitable?
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Comments
But there's something else about the game that might drive you insane. The early game is utterly brutal. Enemies tend to have much higher AC than they should e.g. the gnolls in the first dungeon have 19 AC, so even a mix-maxed fighter will be missing them more than half the time (never mind a non-min-maxed fighter). It's very easy to die early on, and at that point in the game the only way to bring someone back to life is to travel all the way back to town and pay to raise them (if you can even afford it).
While resting in many places, there's a good chance of being interrupted by enemies. Resting in the first dungeon can get you interrupted by one or more Giant Crayfish which could easily kill half your party members before you got a first turn.
The gnolls at the moathouse can be bargained with and will leave without a fight. Paladins beware..."fallen" status sucks.
I played the game till the end without using ANY patch including the official ones (i had no internet due to poverty for LOTS of months) so it's possible, i used quick n normal saves (normal saves in previous locations are a MUST to avoid problems related mostly to garbage in the gfx) but can be done.
Never played it but I have looked at the maps and enemy placement. They basically managed to implement perhaps the most iconic module ever word for word into the ToEE engine.
I can't remember any crashes with the German version of TOEE (purchased, not crispy burn from pirate folks). BUT, contrary to the US version we had less patches, so the patches on moddb dot com did not work for me and blocked me from later versions of the mods.
Return to the Moathouse & Pishella's cocky punchlines made the game worth my while nonetheless. I did quit, after the fight with Saint Cuthbert manifesting though...