Eschalon discussion

Figured I'd start a thread for this since we've got 4 different threads going right now. Make sure you use spoiler tags if needed, folks.

Bug report: If you go south from the opening map from roughly the mid-point, you'll get stuck in a forest on the Salt Coast map with no choice but to quit out and revert to your last save.

Everyone seems to like the day/night cycle, but I think my favorite "nice touch" so far are the wells. Of the four I've sampled so far, 2 did nothing, 1 healed me, and 1 unleashed a small mob of critters.

The casket that I opened also unleashed a small mob of critters. My favorite touch is cartography. I like how you have up your skill to make more of the automap appear. It's the little things that make this game great.

Edit: also Melvil reported a bug with buying higher level spells. It seems the hot keys get stuck at one power level and you can't up or lower that level. I haven't had that problem yet but thought I should mention it.

I like the dungeon so far. For some reason that really stands out.

The interface is fantastic and really makes up for the graphics. I wish I could zoom in closer to say 640x480 or even 320x240 but then I would likely see all the pixels so..maybe its better this way.

One thing I wish I had was a little X in the corner of all the windows. Some of them have them but not all. I know you can just hit the icon to open and close them but with using GUIs this many years its just intuition.

Does anyone know of an option to go full screen?

I tried a ranger so far and got my rear kicked. Switching to a fighter was a big improvement. Hint: like NWN I took one point in skullduggery.

You can pick windowed or 800x600 full screen from the options menu. I've tried both and prefer the full screen. I imagine forcing the monitor to run "non-native" costs some speed and some quality, but neither of those are really factors with this game, so I'm sticking with full screen.

My ranger did OK. My cleric did slightly better. My virtuous fighter (the game calls him a paladin) has done the best so far. I think I'm going to try one more build, but he'll probably be some sort of fighter.

by full screen I mean without menus - just a full graphics window.

I seem to remember that the interface used to be more intrusive than it is now back in alpha days. Several of us requested that revision when Basilisk put up some screenshots for us to look at many moons ago. I think they probably could have crunched the info frame down some more to increase the "world" frame, but that's just my uneducated opinion. It sticks in my mind that they were going to try a slightly different frame setup for Book 2, but I could be full of it.

So, to make a short story long, no.

Playing a ranger with some druidic tendencies; he's doing very well but I miss some of the rogue-ish skills from my last character, so I think I'll grab spot-hidden soon.

I'm a level eight swordsman / archer / thief / wizard with both types of lore. Don't try to play it like D&D, there are no class restrictions and the more options you have the better, you don't do better as a specialist.

I can't imagine getting this far without magic.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
Playing a ranger with some druidic tendencies; he's doing very well but I miss some of the rogue-ish skills from my last character, so I think I'll grab spot-hidden soon.

I took Spot Hidden at level 1 and I've only found about seven or so hidden places - none of them extremely worthwhile, did get a couple of items which I haven't identified yet. I could have done without it and kept 3 skill points.

Mage all the way….With bow skill and light armor. I'm sorta playing D&D style, staying away from Div spells due to that being a cleric. Only thief skill I have is spot hidden.

tank/mage would be unstoppable, so far im taking a little from everywhere, focused mainly on Ele/Med/Cart/spot hidden I think, little lore too. found a +6 lore ring, so equipment advantage there.

Getting just a bit frustrated, I is. After 7 characters, I still haven't found one I'm really happy with. I generally dislike playing casters, but I was doing OK with the one magic user I built until I clicked on Maddox's dresser by accident and he went hostile. I just don't know what I want to do. I suppose that level of flexibility is a sign of a very good game, eh?

I am trying to play it through without dying,, didn't die yet! was close down to 2 hitpoints…. faster heart beats heheeh, probably going to die one of these days. Fighter or magic users looks really overpowered, especially since you can combine fighter and magic user!

Hey guys, is it just me or is this game horrible optimized?

I'm on a computer that could run BioShock on 800x600 with a few option turned off and it would lag only during massive fights.

Eschalon starts lagging horrible whenever I enter a forest, and that performance thingy goes up to 20.

Is that normal?

Bad optimization is always a peeve of mine, so if it is: shit.

No, it doesn't sound right. Have you tried the OpenGL renderer?

I think using BlitzBasic has limited the performance somewhat but it runs fine for me on two laptops, one of which is pretty low end.

Originally Posted by Dhruin
No, it doesn't sound right. Have you tried the OpenGL renderer?

Stupidly, no.

There you go, that helps.

Runs fine on both my computer… great game.

I need to stop creating characters and just finish the game with one. I'd say a jack of all trades character will have the easiest time of it. I had a paladin that used both elemental and divine magic as backup and he was unstoppable. I wanted a more challenging game so I'm playing a pure caster this time. No weapon skills except for what I can get with gold or books. This game needs a harder difficulty level for sure. It's a little too easy. I thought there were difficulty levels, but I'm not seeing them…

I disagree. I'm quite far into the game right now and most battles have been really challenging. In fact, I think I have spread my skills too thin. Tried playing a mage, it was really easy at first but I kept running out of sp later on. I'll complete the game with a straight fighter and try other options in my second playthrough. I read that to get one of the endings you have to win a near impossible fight and I'm kind of anxious to see how my toon will do.

From what I've read and played, I think difficulty depends primarily on what kind of build you make and how much you choose to power-game (e.g. using Divine Heal and Alchemy regardless of your character-type, Demon Oil, twinking, abusing Quick Travel and Camping, etc.). I've got 4 characters running now, and I'm finding the differences from just the character types (I don't really power-game) pretty significant, although I'm not very far into the game with 3 of them. My Rogue's had the toughest time so far, and I see rather slow going with him with combat being a very careful affiar making the most of his skills and environment just to stay alive. However, since I've made him a nasty assassin with mercantile, I'm hoping lots of stealing, robbing and profiteering will make his life easier in the long run. My dual-school mage isn't having as easy a time as I'd expected based on everyone claiming mages are over-powered. But it's still early for him and I haven't power-gamed by dumping everything into Perception and Elemental and abusing Fire Dart. He's OK so long as his mana holds out. My pure, weapons-master paladin is having the easiest time, though it's still very early for him as well. He's very satisfying to play when I just want to lay the beat-down. Finally, my Ranger is the furthest along, and he's the most well-rounded experience at this point. He mixes in a few skills to make for some challenging, but not frustrating, combat and adventuring.