Solasta Nexus/Steam Mods Campaigns

[lackblogger]

Have you played any yet?

What did you like/dislike about them - without spoilers.

 

[Hastar]

First, you must decide if you are using the mod Unfinished Business. That will change the difficulty of everything you play. It makes your characters more powerful but gives excellent customization.
Steam has more campaigns and newer ones. I've played many of the campaigns and almost all of the highest rated.

 

[lackblogger]

I've edited the title to include Steam.

Any favourites?

 

[Hastar]

Morrows Deep and Forsaken Isle are great. If you are using Unfinished Business use the 6-man party version, if not use the normal.

Against the Cult and its follow-up, War of the Reptile God are 2 of my favorites.

Devilish Deals is highly rated and many people's favorite. It wasn't for me as much but that is because of some of the skill checks and story.

I just played Lifting the Siege and that is the kind of story and campaign I find enjoyable.

Temple of Evil and Interdimensional Escalations are two older campaigns that were my favorites when they were released. They may not have all the new things in the expansions now.

 

[lackblogger]

The Forsaken Isle (2022)

I've now finished this one and I will heartily agree with your recommendation, this module is easily on par any official DLC you'd expect a game to have, maybe even slightly better.

I played the original 4 team members version without the Unfinished Business mod as opposed to the 6 team members version that benefits from the Unfinished Business mod.

It's one of the top 5 all-time user modules for the game for a very good reason. The world and it's lore is very engaging, the characters and their motivations interesting, the combat is continuously challenging, there's also some puzzling to be done. It is in no way a small game, but it's also not an endless epic, and it goes from level 1 to level 13.

In the name of balance I guess I should report some negatives, even though they are not enough to dent it's deserved 5/5 user module rating: The game doesn't make use of non-combat skills such as talking skills, history, language checks and all those kind of features.

Also, in a couple of battles the developer decided to use the 'new spawns to battle' method, which is something that only works if it's done logically, which doesn't happen here. They just spawn up your back-line's backside from out the void. Apparently this is a design limitation of the game's engine. Well, don't bother trying then IMO, but then who can fault someone for trying.

I am now highly motivated to check out their follow-up module, Morrow's Deep, which apparently greatly improves on uses of non-combat skills. It's a shame that it's only a follow-up in the same universe rather than a sequel and you have to start again at level 1, meaning my team I'm now attached to will just have to retire. This prevents me from jumping straight in and means I'll have to wait a bit to reset myself as well.

Without going to decimal places and having to choose between 4/5 and 5/5, I'd be perfectly happy to rate this 5/5 without feeling like I'd given too much benefit of the doubt.

 

[Hastar]

A new player campaign came out for Solasta called The Red Crow. It's a level 1-16 campaign and will take 40+ hours. I have reached level 11 so far and it's been fantastic with hard battles and great detail in the maps. Here's the description:

DESCRIPTION
The Roaming Boar Tavern has burned to the ground. Your party was there. Drunk. The cause of the fire eludes you. Perhaps the fault was yours. Perhaps it wasn't. But to escape the confines of a jail cell, you are enlisted to serve during a time of war between the Snow Alliance and Gallivan.

*Please report any bugs you find and make several hard saves as you go.*

Details: This is a full campaign and is a sequel to The Forsaken Isle and Morrows Deep, with a new party starting at level 1. I strongly recommend having played both of the prior campaigns before playing this one as the spoilers are very heavy, especially for Morrows Deep. If you don't care about the story elements then have at it.
Link to The Forsaken Isle : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2867325315
Link to Morrows Deep: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2914649745

More details:
With the release of Palace of Ice I wanted to use the new capabilities it provided.
-The world map is implemented
-All new locations are used
-Companions come and go, sometimes with the option to take them. Not taking them will make the difficulty considerably harder in the areas they are available. Companions that stay for multiple battles are capable of being killed permanently.

Duration: 40+ hours if all content is done. (If you are playing on harder difficulties, this may take considerably longer)

Levels: Starts at level 1 and ends at level 16.

Difficulty: The difficulty is intended to be moderate (on authentic). Anyone looking for a seasoned challenge should try Scavenger difficulty or higher.

Suggestions: A balanced party is likely best but nothing is necessary. At least one good single target ranged damage dealer is strongly encouraged as a lot of new enemies are capable of flight.

Special Considerations:
-Unlike my prior campaigns, there are a few instances where multiple battles are required with no long rest. These don't come til the second half of the campaign.
-A wand of identify is available on vendors and one found in exploration.
-Crafting is fully implemented and highly encouraged, though not necessary.
-There are 63 custom weapons
-There are several side quests
-Charisma skills like persuasion, intimidation, and deception are used throughout the campaign
-Some classes and most character backgrounds have some special dialogue and content
-Save often, especially prior to entering a full party teleporter

Other:
-The six man version will likely be out before the end of the year.

Mod.io version: https://mod.io/g/solasta/m/the-red-crow

Special thanks to Earendil for early testing!

Enjoy

 

[lackblogger]

Morrow's Deep (2023)

The first sequel to Forsaken Isle (above) continues the saga of The Witch and the Silver Liquid. Much more lore is brought to light here and the game is much more in the popular Bioware format of a central hub with several locations to explore, each one opening up as you complete the previous one.

There are no companions yet but all the NPCs feel a little more fleshed out than in the previous game, so that when they are threatened you feel more inclined to be genuinely worried and motivated to help them.

There are more non-combat skills that come into play in this game than the previous one, but I still rolled a critical fail when my +9 Charisma dude with an 80% chance to succeed tried to persuade for a bigger quest reward. So I didn't necessarily have a better gaming experience as a result.

I don't know why, but I don't tend to reroll skill checks, even though I do reload combat. Weird that. Anyway, I didn't have to reload any combat encounters until about level 6 or 7, when I also discovered that I was forced to reload to progress when just one of my team died, let alone a total party wipe, as none of my team had the ability to use either Revivify spells or scrolls.

The combat isn't easy even on normal, but when you've played Solasta games a lot then you become naturally good at them and it's very difficult to lose any of the combats as a result. I tended to rest only after every two fights as my personally imposed rule, and I progressed just fine that way.

The one flaw with this superb game is that, towards the end of the 40 hour campaign, every battle becomes an end-boss battle, one after the other, for what seems like forever, with your team becoming ever more OP after each, to the point where the final, final, end boss battle was a complete cake walk and somewhat anti-climactic. But still great fun, of course. After all, it is fun to roflstomp the bad guys that have been giving you so much grief the whole game.

Definitely still a game that will appeal to fans of regular combat more than story folks, but there is a lot of story here and a world that does pull you in in that classic way. Again, without going into decimal places, another worthy 5/5 virtually professional standard mod campaign here.

I've now spent 320 hours in the world of Solasta and I still haven't repeated any content and still have lots of quality games to play in this universe.

 

[Hastar]

The one flaw with this superb game is that, towards the end of the 40 hour campaign, every battle becomes an end-boss battle, one after the other, for what seems like forever, with your team becoming ever more OP after each, to the point where the final, final, end boss battle was a complete cake walk and somewhat anti-climactic. But still great fun, of course. After all, it is fun to roflstomp the bad guys that have been giving you so much grief the whole game.

I agree with the large battles. Early and mid-game there should be a few easy battles. Every battle is balanced to be difficult. This usually means a large number of opponents. A few easier battles would change up the pace.

Fighting a legendary creature or two by themselves would also be nice. The mod-maker said it would be too easy because of missed saving throws. I am not sure how much you can change stats in the dungeon-maker but I've always enjoyed a few battles against a legendary creature by themselves.

Great campaign and his latest The Red Crow, is my favorite.

 

[lackblogger]

Yes, the problem with making every battle 'tough' is that they invariably all play out in a very similar way, with some heavy tanks blocking you from archers and spellcasters. But by doing it every battle, you get so used to it that it ceases to be tough, when the best way to toughen up encounters is simply to throw surprises, which can be one solitary Green Hag at a lower level or one solitary dragon at a slightly higher level, etc.

And have enemies that require different resistances or shoot different types of attack. Again, with his preferred set-up, you can too easily predict what resistances are likely to be required and which the enemy won't like receiving.

I'm not a fan of making everything really difficult and min/max imperative, but I am a fan of variety. As you say, even a little bit of quick splatting here and there is still variety.

 

[lackblogger]

There are more non-combat skills that come into play in this game than the previous one, but I still rolled a critical fail when my +9 Charisma dude with an 80% chance to succeed tried to persuade for a bigger quest reward. So I didn't necessarily have a better gaming experience as a result.

And my first experience of a skill check I've specifically built for in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous:

And people wonder why I prefer combat-prioritised games to skill check-prioritised games

Ah well, I'm sure someone will come up with a better solution one day.

 

[Zloth]

Well, halflings in Solasta get to re-roll when they roll a 1. You should have made one of those! Then you could have this happen:

 

[Lannister]

that sounds cool, i`ll probably try out some of these..... did I understand that using steam yields to more and better campaigns ? than I have to buy it on steam as I only have the GOG version

 

[Hastar]

that sounds cool, i`ll probably try out some of these..... did I understand that using steam yields to more and better campaigns ? than I have to buy it on steam as I only have the GOG version

Some of the modules are on Nexus and Unfinished Business is also on Nexus. Steam has many more modules though.

 

[Lakorus]

Please excuse if this is a stupid question, but as I don't use steam: are the steam-modules tied to a steam-account which has Solasta? Or is it possible to download modules via a steam account (that hasn't Solasta in its library) and then somehow use them in the GOG-version of the game?

 

[Hastar]

Please excuse if this is a stupid question, but as I don't use steam: are the steam-modules tied to a steam-account which has Solasta? Or is it possible to download modules via a steam account (that hasn't Solasta in its library) and then somehow use them in the GOG-version of the game?

It's on Steam Workshop and you have to be logged on to Steam. It's one click to subscribe to user-made content. It's very nice for certain games and Solasta is one of them that it works great for.

 

[Zloth]

You can subscribe to games you don't have on Steam, but I'm dubious that it will do anything for a game you bought on GOG (or Epic). I don't think the game will ever contact Steam to see what subscriptions you have.

You might be able to do something weird like buy the game on Steam, get the game to download your subscribed mods, copy the mods over somewhere else, uninstall, then ask for a refund on the game. You'll probably only be able to pull it off once, though, and you might need to hack on the mods a little to get them to work with GOG/Epic.

 

[JFarrell71]

Your best bet is to look for campaigns on Nexus or other hosting sites. I like a lot of the Solasta campaigns are Steam workshop only, so you may be out of luck. But there may be mirrors for some of them.

 

[Lakorus]

Ok, thank you for your replies. I'll have to stick to the ones that are on Nexus, then. I probably won't have the time to play more than one or two anyway...

 

[Couchpotato]

Try this search steam for the mod name and then search the name on the site.

Skymods - Solasta: Crown of the Magister Mods Catalogue

An alternative storage for game mods.

catalogue.smods.ru

 

[lackblogger]

A new player campaign came out for Solasta called The Red Crow. It's a level 1-16 campaign and will take 40+ hours. I have reached level 11 so far and it's been fantastic with hard battles and great detail in the maps.

Enjoy

So far it's pretty good. I haven't got too far yet, just made it to the main citadel. I've gone with a fairly experimental party this time, so no idea if I'll be able to beat it, but it'll be fun trying.