Eschalon: Book 1 - Now Available

Arma said:

I think we should have a sub-forum entirely to Eschalon, as well. Anyone with me?

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I'd agree there, it sounds like a game far closer to the hearts of many here than Gothic 3 or NWN. Plus it sounds like a game with a great deal of subtle detail that would be interesting to read about in forums as there's no way one could pick it up alone.

Although it may lead to crippling paralysis about character decision as however you play it you're going to miss out on a lot.

dteowner said:

RTFM!
There's a 15 page pdf manual included in your download that gives the lowdown on the controls.

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It's been so long since I've had a manual that's been more than a few flimsy pages of vacuous drivel and some painfully obvious control commands that it didn't even occur to me to bother looking for a manual, I shall check it out later

Acleacius said:

but even in RL I can see much better than we are given the ability in the game.

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That's because you live in a populated area with lots of light pollution. If you'd ever been to the country in the middle of the night you'd know it gets every bit as dark. You literally cannot see your hand before your eyes. I actually really like the light mechanic. As I'm delving deep within a dungeon I have to keep my eye on the quantity of torches I have left, lest I should find myself plunged into utter darkness amidst a hissing brood of fanged salamanders.

Plus you can learn the Cat's Eye spell which improves your night vision. My favorite dungeon tactic is to carry a torch and cast Cat's Eye on myself. It gives me a huge light radius to see by. When I spot an enemy I snuff the torch, thus preventing it from locating me, and attack. This tactic works out great because there are severe penalties for fighting in the dark. You'll fight just fine while your spell is in effect, your opponent, however, will be more or less blind.

All in all, though, I must admit that I'm a bit disappointed with the game. I spent several hours with it last night and accomplished little more than severely reducing the local salamander population. A shame. I had high hopes. Perhaps it picks up beyond the demo. I won't ever know, sadly, because the demo itself leaves me with little hope. For my tastes there's too much hacking and not enough adventuring.

Gribble said:

For my tastes there's too much hacking and not enough adventuring.

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You could always make a character that does not depend on combat. Then there'd be very little hacking and a whole lot of adventuring. You'd have to find ways to avoid monsters or use other means to dispatch them, which seems pretty adventurous to me.

Regarding light, I love the lighting in the game and the darkness that's present without any light source or other means with which to see. Although the very first time I entered a dungeon, I thought the screen had not loaded yet because it was absolutely black. Then I realised that was intentional and lit a torch, and that little bit of warm light in the darkness utterly sucked me in.

I suppose what I'm really getting at is there just isn't enough story. I've met only a handful of characters and none of them seemed particularly compelling. The first couple of quests I received involved finding a woman's presumably dead husband and clearing a man's basement of its salamander infestation. Both of which I've done a thousand times in other games. I realize the designer's goal was to get back to the roots of RPGs, but there are some things best left in the 80's and 90's. It's a promising game in dire need of a writer's touch.

I'm going to give the game another go tonight. Perhaps when I find that mini-village my opinion will change. We'll see.

Well, to be fair you don't really meet a lot of particularly compelling people in your average rural village either. Granted, the quests are pretty rote for the RPG genre, but on the other hand, your character should be happy he's not being immediately relegated to vagrant status or locked up all things considered.

I'm pretty forgiving with early stages in most RPGs and take the optimistic view that perhaps these seemingly mundane details will play into a broader picture at some point. I've not played more than the Eschalon demo yet so I can't say what comes further down the line.

What got me in the demo was how atmospheric the gameworld is, and how diverse character creation is and how those choices dramatically impact how the gameplay experience changes.
Story and plot, I give those things time. The gameplay foundations are there, so that's a solid first step.

GothicGothicness said:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Shift click......................... DARN do not want to go all the way back in that dungeon I just visited... just to shift click one barrel :O :O how did you guys find out about the shift clicking?? did I miss some file to read???

GWWWWWWWWAh.

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A couple more notes on bashing: cleaving and bludgeoning weapons do best at bashing. And then there's creativity when the opportunity presents itself. Let's just say powder keg + arrow = treasure.

Shift click to bash... well, that's really one of the reason why I believe a meaningful f1 help could be handy, just to tell us about these.

@Gribble: knowing that this is largely a personal preference, I find the pacing so far perfect for me. Not too much hack and slash and not overwhelmed with repetitive, time-sink quests. You'll find more to do in the starting town. So far the quests are basic, but that's OK by me, since there aren't too many of them.

On the writing, again a matter of taste mostly, I actually like it, which is saying a lot for me. As I've stated in other threads on other topics, I rarely find a cRPG's story or writing compelling at all, as it tends to be pretty paint-by-numbers, sophomoric fare. Now I'm not saying that Eschalon is the second coming of Hermann Hesse or Dostoevsky, but I find the writing style clean and believable, without being too dry. One more aspect that's really added to the immersion for me. And maybe it's just me, but are these the best NPC portraits yet? Something truly human and less high-fantasy-cliche about them. Hmm.....

On the (minor) down side, the game could use a bit more diversity in the opponents. If I see one more fanged salamander...

Gallifrey: Thing is, the demo doesn't show much promise--to me, anyhow. Things could pick up exponentially further into the game. However, based on the demo alone, I'm not particularly inclined to purchase the full version.

It isn't that the writing is bad, per se. I actually like it. Particularly the descriptive blurbs that pop up as I enter new areas. There just isn't enough of it. Nothing has pulled me in. Nothing has piqued my interest to see this journey to its end. I'm exploring, killing creatures, and gathering treasure. But why? Where's the hook?

Minor spoiler to follow:

Take the first dungeon the player stumbles across. It's in the basement of a dilapidated house. You have to open a secret door just to get in, and upon entering you're beset by creatures and traps at every turn. As I progressed deeper, ever mindful of my steadily diminishing supply of torches, I stumbled upon a large antechamber of smooth stone and artfully carved columns. Interesting. What could this place be? What is its significance?

Cautiously, I continued exploring and soon located the corpse of some unlucky thief. Was this his hideout? Or, more likely, was he a fellow adventurer whose curiosity got the better of him? I pressed on, a bit more mindful of my surroundings, only to reach a dead end containing two treasure chests. Surely one of these chests contained a clue as to the nature of this place. A bloody journal, perhaps. The staple of RPG story-telling. Maybe a ring inscribed with a mysterious name. Something.

What did I find? A lump of mithril. That was it. To be frank, I felt cheated. What was the point of that dungeon? There was so much potential that went totally untapped.

I must admit that the portraits are quite nice. The world is beautiful and, at times, it borders on atmospheric. It just needs a little shove to put it on the right track.

Gribble said:

It isn't that the writing is bad, per se. I actually like it. Particularly the descriptive blurbs that pop up as I enter new areas. There just isn't enough of it. Nothing has pulled me in. Nothing has piqued my interest to see this journey to its end. I'm exploring, killing creatures, and gathering treasure. But why? Where's the hook?

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You sound like me in my general attitude towards gaming right now actually. There's good stuff out there but at the same time it just doesn't seem like *enough*, I'm not being rewarded for the time I put into a game. I love gaming, but there's no payoff more often than not.
I'll be buying Eschalon as soon as I can for certain, as I think it's got a lot of promise given what the demo contained.
But it is important to keep in mind that the intention of this game is that it's "old school" in character. And with those games, to answer the "but why?" question is "because it's there". Very few of those old games really made a lot of sense, and I think we were all far more accepting of pure fantasy 15 years ago.

Minor spoiler to follow:

Take the first dungeon the player stumbles across. It's in the basement of a dilapidated house. You have to open a secret door just to get in, and upon entering you're beset by creatures and traps at every turn. As I progressed deeper, ever mindful of my steadily diminishing supply of torches, I stumbled upon a large antechamber of smooth stone and artfully carved columns. Interesting. What could this place be? What is its significance?

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Not "What the heck is this doing in someone's *basement*?!" ?

vanedor said:

Shift click to bash... well, that's really one of the reason why I believe a meaningful f1 help could be handy, just to tell us about these.

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Well, you should try F3...

@Gribble: maybe this is a stupid question, but you found the first note in the house you woke up in and read it, right?

As to the bar of mithril, if you soldier on, more will be revealed...

Ok I bought it then. The combat is quite addictive. The demo is quite short and I have decent char but I think I will still roll a new one. Magick rulez them all.

Magick does rule it all, but be careful of a big bug that will be patched soon. If you buy higher level spells you run the risk of them not being saved to your spell list properly. If you had them hot keyed beforehand you can still use them, but never be able to alter their power level. Also, when this does get fixed in the patch you will have to repurchase any spell that got pushed off the list, so thousands of gold gone in a world where there seems to be limited resources. Not a gripe, love the game, but just an FYI to anyone who might go mage, don't buy high level spells till the first patch is up.

Hit a bug of my own just now. If you go south from the starting map roughly at the middle point, you get stuck in the Salt Coast map. No move, no return, no save/reload. Throw your game away and revert to your last save. Oops.

Loving the game so far.

Melvil said:

Not a gripe, love the game, but just an FYI to anyone who might go mage, don't buy high level spells till the first patch is up.

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Which ones did you have a problem with and I'll avoid them. Was it with Divination or Elemenatal spells. I've bought a couple of spells and haven't had any problems, yet.

Dte, hope you reported this on the official site. As my monthly download limit has been nearly exceeded (by my son ) I'll have to wait till next month to check this out!!

Melvil said:

Magick does rule it all, but be careful of a big bug that will be patched soon. If you buy higher level spells you run the risk of them not being saved to your spell list properly.

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Ok good to know. Ill start to archive my save games.

I'm cracking on with my vaguely roguey build, and there's one thing that does really annoy me - the experience you get from opening a lock / disarming a trap is dependent on the difference between your skill and the difficulty. I'd be much happier to have it based on the difference between your level and the difficulty or something, otherwise there's just the incentive to keep your skill low and save & reload to get through locks. The experience seems to drop to nothing really quickly too, I can have only a 50% chance of disarming something and still get no experience for doing so.

I've only got to level 2 anyway, but I was quite surprised by how many attribute points one gets and how few skill points, only 3 skill points a level isn't much.

Anyone got any ideas how many books of learning are out there as well? I've picked up level 1 in mercantile & alchemy from books which is handy as the first point takes up loads of skill points, but nothing else so far I don't know if I want to use up loads of skill points on learning skills if I'd be better off putting them into raising existing skills and wait for books.