ToEE - Keep on the Borderlands Mod

Myrthos

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The Circle of Eight team has released their mod for Temple of Elemental Evil; Keep on the Borderlands.
What is Keep on the Borderlands?
KotB is a new module - or total conversion, if you prefer - for the Atari game Temple of Elemental Evil. It was created by modders at the Circle of Eight fansite and freely distributed. It requires the original Temple of Elemental Evil game, patched to patch 2. It does not require any other mods from Co8, such as Co8 8.0: it is a separate module to ToEE and not a mod of it.

KotB is for starting level players. It attempts to push many elements of the ToEE engine to their limits, using the engine's capacity for animations, quests, skills, feats and dialogue, as well as combat, to produce an adventure game in the classic puzzle-solving mode. There is considerably more thought required to finish KotB than ToEE: though all the information is still given in the game, and it is not excessively difficult, just more thoughtful than the original game.

The aim of the game is simple. The player controls one or more characters who have arrived at the Keep on the Borderlands seeking fame, fortune and adventure. The player needs only talk to the NPCs of the Keep and surrounding locales, and role-play their character, to find a variety of adventures, culminating in a journey to the infamous Caves of Chaos, where the party can fight, work for, manipulate or despoil the various tribes of monsters.
Features of Keep on the Borderlands

Keep on the Borderlands expands on ToEE's excellent simulation of the D&D3.5 engine with the following additional features:
New skills - Alchemy, Handle Animal, Climb, Use Rope, Knowledge (Nature), Speak Language, Disguise and Forgery (NPC only) - and additional uses for skills such as Appraise, Perform, Spellcraft and Sleight-of-Hand
New class abilities such as Wild Empathy, Slow Fall, Illiteracy, new familiars, better control over animal companions, new spells, Domain skills, class-specific quests
New racial abilities such as Stonecunning and racial languages
Over 60 new maps to explore, with more interactive environments (such as desks, shelves and cupboards commonplace) and over 40 quests
Heaps of new and classic equipment from the PHB such as Disguise and Climbing kits, new magic items, and many alchemical items.
Deeper, more thoughtful quest progressions, usually with multiple ways of completing quests.
Day / night routines for most NPCs.
'Black Market economy' with stolen items and fences.
And of course the new spells, new equipment and bugfixes that Co8 brought to ToEE, including more than 60 new feats.
You can download the mod at the ModDB site.


More information.
 
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Loved TOEE combat. The rest was pretty mediocre though. I'll have to give this a try.
 
This has got me excited to dig the game back out. Does anyone know if it plays friendly with Win7?
 
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Nice engine, beautiful background, good character generator and 3D animations.

Unfortunately the combat becomes very much the same after a time and the whole world is too restricted, slow, boring. Long walking distances without jump capability destroy the quick expected pace. There is no lightning fast action, enemy action feels like happening in slow motion.

Game & combat system becomes very predictable & boring after killing the Giant.
 
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Took quite some time until it finally got out.
 
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I'll check this out eventually. Before that though... does anyone know if any updates are planned for this?
 
I loved ToEE in spite of its well-documented flaws. Unfortunately I never really cared for Keep on the Borderlands from my old D&D Basic days. I have been known to yell "BREE-YARK" at unsuspecting passers-by on the other hand.

I just wish they would have chosen a different module to implement. Damn it why couldn't Troika have done the original correctly then released the G-D-Q modules as originally intended?
 
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I haven't played this game yet, but I intend to, simply because it's Troika and I can't wait to see what else they came up with after playing a bit of Arcanum and finishing Vampire - Bloodlines.

I heard some mixed reviews about this game, though.
 
I haven't played this game yet, but I intend to, simply because it's Troika and I can't wait to see what else they came up with after playing a bit of Arcanum and finishing Vampire - Bloodlines.

I heard some mixed reviews about this game, though.

Install the Co8 mod that corrects many bugs and such.
Then forge your own opinion. ;)

Do it!
 
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The implementation of the D&D rules and tactical combat is excellent. It is
in my opinion better than any of the black isle/obsidian implementations.
The implementation of the story is for a Troika game, extremely dissapointing.
The NPCs tend to have next to no personality, and the writing and voice acting are
lacking. I felt they implemented the notes to the DM slavishly rather than doing
what a good DM would do with a module like Temple of Elemental Evil and give the npcs some character. I still enjoyed the game for what it was, but don't expect story or characters to come remotely close to Vampire or Arcanum.

Keep on the Borderlands BLAAAH! Why not implement White Plume Mountain
or the Vault of the Drow? Now those were some cool modules.
 
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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."
 
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ToEE was so great and so terrible all in one package. I never played the tabletop version, and one big issue I had with the game was: what am I supposed to be doing at the Temple? Am I supposed to just go and kill everything?

Traveling back and forth to heal got so ludicrously tedious I can't believe they didn't change it in beta.
 
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I remember playing KotB when they first put it out. Was nice, but felt very slapdash. I ought to go and give it another try. I know what little bit I played (Mainly that swamp area with the lizardmen) was fairly decent.

I'm due for another playthrough of ToEE anyway. Just to cleanse myself of all the real-time crap I've been playing lately.
 
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Loved TOEE combat. The rest was pretty mediocre though. I'll have to give this a try.

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."

The only bugs I still get in the game are the Juggernaut bug (Spawning mutliple juggernauts, but that just means more EXP), the nodes running like crap and crashes using Fragrach. I avoid the last two by just not exposing my party to them (Nodes are useless, Fragrach is too overpowered anyway) and just killing every single thing in sight.

Last time I went through the game a little over a year ago with a newer CO8, I noticed the werewolves in the lycan room didn't spawn. Little bugs like that don't annoy me though.
 
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Maybe Co8 should remake ToEE in the Divinity: Original Sin editor :)
 
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ToEE was so great and so terrible all in one package. I never played the tabletop version, and one big issue I had with the game was: what am I supposed to be doing at the Temple? Am I supposed to just go and kill everything?

Traveling back and forth to heal got so ludicrously tedious I can't believe they didn't change it in beta.

I experienced the same issue. I played the game when it was released and enjoyed it up until I started exploring the temple at which point I didn't feel that there was any storyline and it was just being there to be there. I think I completed the first level and a half and then I stopped playing.
 
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