Extreme East Spoiler and Discussion Thread

[shade_of_ox]

But there IS a solution for all the master pack puzzles, right? If so, I'll take a shot.

[The Avatar]

Yep, they are all solvable. I've always solved them after making any changes as occasionally the changes were in and of themselves erroneous and created more problems than they fixed. However, I never updated my answer keys from the original solutions so the puzzles that underwent the most drastic changes (looking at you Sextuplets) have moved far enough away that the key isn't much help at all. Thus, coming back to them months (almost years now) later, I still can't quite get them all.

[shade_of_ox]

OK, so I've taken a break from puzzles to actually play through a few class challenges, and... wow.
Amazing work from you guys here. Magician is a blast to play - feels very powerful, and finally makes Elves feel good to play (I've always seen elves as overshadowed by gnomes in every way because there are so many ways to increase your mana, so this is really something!).

I blew through the bronze challenge on my second try (not my first try because I didn't read the rules ), then beat Silver on my first try with the Earthmother. The silver challenge was very cool, and I especially like how strong the Magician is with the Earthmother - the synergy with Entanglement + the extra glyph to convert seems like a really solid combo. EM has always seemed a tad weak to me, mostly because of the random plants easily screwing you, but with this class it's more than worth the risk (and also he has WEYTWUT so even if you get blocked off, you can escape!).

Looking back, Magician Silver would have been a LOT easier if I'd used the barrels of weasels, but I barely even needed them. The Bag o' Tricks itself looks like a pretty good item - kind of similar to Dragon Soul, in a sense, with the RNG element. It's kind of like Namtar's Ward in the sense that it's more of a standalone item that doesn't need to stack with anything else to be good. Especially since you can see what your next free cast will be, it's an insanely powerful item. The only thing I'm sad about is that you can't refill it.

After that, I scouted Magician Gold and decided not to try it just yet - I want to play around with the class a bit more and get to know it in normal gameplay, first. Instead, I've started on the Heretic.

Heretic Bronze was pretty interesting - it gave me an actual "role-playing" sense and made me actually invested in the story, similarly to playing through the triple quests for the first time, or the Vicious dungeons.

As for the gameplay for Heretic Bronze, that was probably the only part that bothered me - I would kill the level 10 goat, get the artifact, feed it 30 piety, break the scriptures, feed it more piety, and then realize I didn't have enough monsters left to level up again (I overleveled before fighting the goat, probably.) As I understand it, you're required to level up in order to smash the altar and fight the boss, so I was basically softlocked (and to add insult to injury, the game won't let you retire, either, so I had to restart from the menu). I would suggest having some kind of infinite source of EXP somewhere (maybe, every time you kill an undead, the boss spawns one on the floor?) so that you can't run into this problem. Aside from that though, a very cool challenge.

I'll check back in later with more feedback!

[shade_of_ox]

By the way, I no longer have access to Goatperson or the Goat Glade. Is that an intentional part of the mod, or is there something wrong with my Steam version of the game?

[srid]

By the way, I no longer have access to Goatperson or the Goat Glade. Is that an intentional part of the mod, or is there something wrong with my Steam version of the game?

If I followed correctly, I'd say that's because the Goatperson comes in a DLC and the Steam version you just got doesn't have it, while you had it in your GOG version.

The good news is that this DLC is not at all required to play the EE, there are no quests requiring you to play the Goatperson there. But if you really want to explore the new dungeons with this class, I see three possibilities for now:
- Buy the DLC on Steam
- Ask the devs for a Steam key for the DLC (not sure if those exists)
- Wait until GOG updates the game version and switch back to it.

The only sure I'm not sure of is if your Goatperson dungeon progresses will be kept in your savefile when you play add the DLC back. Hopefully it should be ok.

I'm glad you're enjoying the mod so far, I let The Avatar answer to your remarks in detail.

[Nurator]

I also still have the problem of not having goat glade inspite of only ever using the steam version, buying the DLC and having it before... I started a new kingdom for the mod and now dont have it anymore.

Any idea?

@Avatar Yeah, maybe I should take ENDISWAL... I will tackle the challenge if I feel like it, probably will get in 1-2 tries a day... I still want to beat it, especially before shade_of_ox does it

[srid]

I also still have the problem of not having goat glade inspite of only ever using the steam version, buying the DLC and having it before... I started a new kingdom for the mod and now dont have it anymore.

Any idea?

The problem is probably that you started a new Kingdom. We rather recommend to backup the save files, or even better, copy the entire game folder, install the mod in that new folder and launch the game from there.
First, because you will need all the unlocked from the original game, second because unlocking it again takes quite some time, and the EE only start after the end of the main game questline.

So, I have been looking at the game's code to see what triggers the unlock of the Goat Glade, and it seems that
the game requires you to be logged in (which the EE doesn't allow you to do to avoid corrupting online saves) with your QCF account, or if you to be logged in with Steam, which, I guess, requires you to start the game from within Steam, which we don't recommend since you're supposed to run the EE from a cloned folder to avoid accidental messing with the original game install; I'm not even sure it would work anyway, because I believe that the EE completely disables login, which is where the check for the DLC happens.
I didn't see any mechanism specific to GOG, so I guess that the Goat Glade is unlocked via the QCF account in that version.

However, if you start the EE from a save file where the Goat Glade is already unlocked, it should still be available in the EE.

Now, I understand that you have already invested quite some time in your new kingdom and already unlocked quite a few things, so I will take some time to discuss this with the other modders and try to think of a solution for you.

[shade_of_ox]

Cleared Heretic Silver!

This one took a few tries. Heretic is a lot less straightforward than Magician, I think, and I didn't really enjoy the gods given me in this challenge that much.

After a few failed scouting attempts, I ended up sending in an Orc. I took EM at level 1, racked up a bunch of piety, took some shots of Greenblood and a couple of Vine Form (I wanted to be able to take a hit from the boss early, since I had Yendor as an extra level up). EM is great for Heretic if you want to take advantage of the CP bonus, it's easy to get piety and lose it (by killing her plants).

I took Mystera at around level 5 for Mystic Balance and a bit more CP from killing some Freezing Wraiths and taking a Mana Burn from a plant. Started fighting the boss at level 6 with a catapult to 7, and Yendor to put me into 8, at which point I took TT, killed a bunch of popcorn for Reflexes, and killed the boss with that and the rest of my potions. I never even found one of my health potions and still managed to win, mostly thanks to CYDSTEPP and GETINDARE from TT.

This challenge was surprisingly difficult, maybe a little harder than most silver challenges in my opinion. It was also my first experience with the new enemy traits, which might have made it a little more difficult than it otherwise should have been, but at least I think I understand how most of them work now . And of course, I'm sure my strategy was far from optimal - I think maybe Mystera at the start and EM later on could have worked better since then I could use Plantation for more CP, but that would be a harder early game (on the other hand, I could have popped Yendor at level 1, saving popcorn for TT). Overall it just felt like I didn't have a lot of resources, and I also got a few unlucky blinks from the Burn Vipers which cost me quite a lot of extra blackspace.

Anyway, overall I had a good time - Heretic looks like a very technical class that it will take time for me to fully figure out how to play.

[Nurator]

Nice, congratulations. I didnt even tackle this challenges yet. Did you notice there are new levels and quests on the overworld? And a multiple parts riddle that ends in a ridicolous challenge I am trying to beat for a month now? I would love you for to tackle that too so we can help and motivate each other

[The Avatar]

The Bag o' Tricks itself looks like a pretty good item - kind of similar to Dragon Soul, in a sense, with the RNG element. It's kind of like Namtar's Ward in the sense that it's more of a standalone item that doesn't need to stack with anything else to be good. Especially since you can see what your next free cast will be, it's an insanely powerful item. The only thing I'm sad about is that you can't refill it.

I tend to think of it sort of like a keg of health or mana, except more broadly applicable in exchange for being more random. Totaling it up, it really is a phenomenal deal for its price (exp bonus, 1 stoneskin, 1 DP, 10 poison/level, net 1 health/level, 3 mana, first strike, might, 2 slows, 3 tiles scouted, 4 magic damage/level, *and* 1 free knockback for just 19g?!) yet it's exceedingly hard to get value out of all of that in just one fight.

Heretic Bronze was pretty interesting - it gave me an actual "role-playing" sense and made me actually invested in the story, similarly to playing through the triple quests for the first time, or the Vicious dungeons.

I would suggest having some kind of infinite source of EXP somewhere (maybe, every time you kill an undead, the boss spawns one on the floor?) so that you can't run into this problem. Aside from that though, a very cool challenge.

Really glad to hear that the story part does payoff there, as I worried it would simply be confusing to do it the way we did. At the same time, I am very much aware of the potential soft lock(s) that result from this and have been looking for a simply way to resolve them. The boss spawning undead on certain conditions (not sure it'd be on kill undead since that could get cluttered, but maybe just on talking to him) is actually quite elegant is it tackles both potential soft locks at once.

This challenge was surprisingly difficult, maybe a little harder than most silver challenges in my opinion. It was also my first experience with the new enemy traits, which might have made it a little more difficult than it otherwise should have been, but at least I think I understand how most of them work now . And of course, I'm sure my strategy was far from optimal - I think maybe Mystera at the start and EM later on could have worked better since then I could use Plantation for more CP, but that would be a harder early game (on the other hand, I could have popped Yendor at level 1, saving popcorn for TT). Overall it just felt like I didn't have a lot of resources, and I also got a few unlucky blinks from the Burn Vipers which cost me quite a lot of extra blackspace.

Anyway, overall I had a good time - Heretic looks like a very technical class that it will take time for me to fully figure out how to play.

Yeah, there's a reason that this is the only challenge that lets you prep from your locker. Yet in addition to that generally making you more powerful than you'd otherwise be in a silver challenge, it also lets you pick a wide variety of strategies (another one of Heretic's strong points--it can become almost anything it wants). That being said, it's also worth noting that class challenges are meant to be slightly tougher than the normal game equivalents. While this is debatable at best for bronze challenges, the silvers are meant to properly challenge your use of the class, and the golds are meant to beat you to a pulp (or at least make you prove your mastery of the class). I'm sure you saw a taste of this if you fully scouted Magician Gold, and I maintain that Heretic Gold is one of the hardest non-badge-specific runs in the game (and to my knowledge only I and one other have beaten it), yet it is also beatable with extreme consistency once you've gotten a strategy. It just comes down to the fact that the Heretic does have a very high skill ceiling, as you recognized.

Also, as Nurator mentioned, get out on the main map too! Right now you're enjoying the mods extra content of sorts, so upgrade that Explorer's Guild and check out all the extra dungeons and questlines.