ToEE - Keep on the Borderlands Mod

Honestly, the whole Co8 thing really freaked me out. It seems that, even with patches on patches, there are about a billion things that can go seriously wrong with this game. It reminds me of the film Funny Farm, where a bridge was described as "termites holding hands."

From a certain perspective, maybe it even looked like "termites holding hands" ? ;)
 
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I always assumed that the temple levels themselves were for evil/neutral alignments, whereas the town quests were for good/neutral alignment. Since I was playing a primarily good aligned party, I figured it made sense that the "evil" in the temple didn't want anything to do with me.

That said, it was pretty tedious from that point on, and became a slog to finish. This was sad, as it was a game that promised so much, but ultimately fell flat because it wasn't really a proper roleplaying campaign so much as a single module overblown into a full price game. Most crpgs feature a story that covers much more than one (four level?) dungeon, possibly for good reason :(

As others have stated, this is a game that badly needed to be a series of (linked?) modules to form a proper campaign path.
 
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OK - installed and tried to play. Either I have become a useless ToEE player or this is too hard. I assume you start on level 1 and go out adventuring - found 2 quests, went to swamp, was confronted by 4 zombies (each with 21-24 hp, way above my lvl 1 minions...6-10 hp on average)...and guess what? Two characters died. and again, over multiple attempts. woot. What fun. Are there no level 1 enemies? I tried several combats and died in each of them. Only combat I did Ok in was against lvl 1's in a random encounter, in another 2 Ogres stumbled on my party and slaughtered us.
 
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booboo, start with the spider area. It is much less harsh on your characters than the lizards, because you can typically face one or two spiders at a time. Also, you'll get poisoned, but it just lowers stats until you can rest 24 hours. Make sure you have someone with decent survival skills, so you can avoid random encounters. A ranger or druid is good here. Also you can buy and attack dog and get a free monk inside the village. The best advice is to pick away at the spiders with ranged and be prepared to get webbed a lot. Set your formation so that most of your party is back from the leader. This way the spider will we him and close and then you can pick away with the rest of your group.

Since I know that combat is brutal in these games, I cheat my party to have good stats. I'll have 18's in Str, Dex, Con on my melee dudes. This helps with the invariable status effects that the party always runs into.

You can also find a cave in the spider forest, that has a merchant who has fallen into a hole. Just listen for him in the western part of the forest.
 
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As far as undead; It's not a bad idea to have a human cleric that takes improved turning and the other turning feat. With those most early undead are destroyed and you just get free xp.

If it's not obvious already, I'm playing KotB.
 
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Oct 18, 2006
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THe MOD IS ABSOLUTELY GREAT! but have anyone found a way to poison weapons (kinda buggy quest)? so WHICH weapons can be poisoned? do i need only the poison from the alchemist or must i do one myself with a cauldron? (tinker says i have no poison when i have one, bought from the alchemist for a hundred gp)… 5 hours playing, everithing else is from fine to superb
 
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Gonna give it a shot too, always nice to see new content for this engine! Maybe it gives me some inspiration for my tabletop campaign which I'm building right now :)
 
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I created the majority of the new maps used for KotB many years ago. The outdoor maps of the keep itself have recently been upgraded by other team members. This mod goes far beyond the original D&D module in terms of story.
 
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Thanks crpgnut for the suggestions - are you also using 6 party members or only 5? I have a mix of pregenerated and 'fiddled' charcters (i.e. max point buy) - included a barbarian half-orc to help my struggling paladin… My problem is not being able to hit - the mersenne twister they use seems to generate consistently shitty rolls for me (or maybe I'm just imgaing it ;-) I tried the spiders first, and… *one* of them slowly took out my party :-/ … web (everyone fails), *miss*iss*miss*miss* (poison/fang) *miss*miss* etc. Think we nicked it once. I gave everyone a ranged weapon (most have decent dex) and as soon as we saw the (single) spider, they all fired…even the ranger missed…:-o… then, because they don't have point blank shot, they all missed again and then…once poisoned, they couldn't hit it at all (short of a naturtal 20) and being webbed, the melee people couldn't move to engage (excepet for the paladin who got fanged to death). That was with one spider ;-) Cleric is too low level to do anything useful against undead (well, he failed when I tried). The zombies were 'normal' , but with 7 hp (mage) a single smack can be deadly. Party is : ranger, paladin, cleric, wizard, rogue, barbarian. I must say that sapped my ToEE nostalgia very quickly.

booboo, start with the spider area. It is much less harsh on your characters than the lizards, because you can typically face one or two spiders at a time. Also, you'll get poisoned, but it just lowers stats until you can rest 24 hours. Make sure you have someone with decent survival skills, so you can avoid random encounters. A ranger or druid is good here. Also you can buy and attack dog and get a free monk inside the village. The best advice is to pick away at the spiders with ranged and be prepared to get webbed a lot. Set your formation so that most of your party is back from the leader. This way the spider will we him and close and then you can pick away with the rest of your group.

Since I know that combat is brutal in these games, I cheat my party to have good stats. I'll have 18's in Str, Dex, Con on my melee dudes. This helps with the invariable status effects that the party always runs into.

You can also find a cave in the spider forest, that has a merchant who has fallen into a hole. Just listen for him in the western part of the forest.
 
Joined
Aug 23, 2007
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Cape Town, South Africa
Found a much better place to level up to 2. Go to the tavern at night and talk to the Bailiff. Ask him if he's the captain and he'll say no and then ask what Bailiffs do. The whole crowd will pick on him and he says that the next one who laughs gets sewer duty. Laugh! It'll get you thrown in the sewers where dire rats await. They're non-hostile at first so just attack one and it'll make all other groups hostile. These are easy kills and net 35xp per rat. There is a pack of undead down there too, so if you don't have a cleric with greater turning, avoid the ne section. Resting down there would spawn low level creatures, perfect for your group.

Point buy is terrible, you can roll better even on a crappy roll. To me, the most important thing is dexterity and constitution, even for mages. I'd rather have a 17 Dex and a 14 Int than the other way around. After all, 14 Int is good for up to 4th level spells and by then you'll have raised Int with items by a point or two.

I've played straight too and I don't have any trouble with the spiders. I have the sacrifice in front by several steps and sneak up close enough so that the spiders web him away from the rest of the party. If you have your highest strength member do this, he can break away on his turn. It might take a few rounds but he'll get free eventually.

Once he's webbed, have the rest of the folks spread out and start sniping at the bugs. Don't stand in a group or they may web you again. Sleep any group of spiders, so you minimize the combatants. Sleep is the number one spell. My sorcerer uses it in every battle and I'll rest the party once he's out of them. I think he gets 4 or 5 sleep spells.
 
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Joined
Oct 18, 2006
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I think the "one big dungeon" idea only works when you have setup like gold box series. That way you have some constraints on the roaming instead of being stranded in some huge thing - there is more of a layer of abstraction, making it more manageable.

When it's all in real scale the whole time, then it is a real chore. The fallout-like setup only works well with lots of small, scattered locations.
 
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Apr 10, 2011
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Fortunately, Keep isn't the one big dungeon idea. The Co8 team have fleshed out the mod so that the Keep is just the biggest dungeon or combat arena of several. It has been surprisingly well done, though it still needs a few patches to be truly ready for prime time.
 
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Oct 18, 2006
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I just finished the Keep on the Borderlands and I have to say I enjoyed it as much as ToEE. Not many bugs and the battles seemed just about right. Fantastic and I am thinking of doing another play thru with a neutral evil party muhuhuhuh :)

KotB was the first module I ever played back in 1980 so that also added to my enjoyment.
 
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