How come there was no non evil stun immune item in what I understand was probably the final update?

Darteous

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I wouldn't call backing up saves in case of glitches cheating nor an arbitrary ruling. A players shouldn't be penalized dozens of hours of play time due to a glitch.
 

VDX_360

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Using a back-up to get around the permadeath of IronMan is cheating.

No matter how noble, or understandable, cheating permadeath defeats the entire purpose of IronMan.

It casts doubt on every claim you make.
 

stonedwolf

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A valid IronMan playthrough takes on the risk of both predictable and unpredictable deaths. That includes... a device freeze.

Looking through older posts, David decided against higher-level Ironman security features because of issues by non-game events e.g. corrupted saves. Non-game destruction of game might be a valid Ironman perma-death in your eyes, but it is not universal.

You might want to go back over your post too bro, coming on slightly strong to a 35 post dude.
 

VDX_360

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@stonedwolf , thanks for digging up the old references.

Re-reading my posts, I can see how it comes off a bit strong. I deleted the most recent one, the one with the most direct language.

My first few were on-topic and help focused. But I most certainly drifted a bit too stern in the the deleted post.
 

Darteous

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So a permadeath player is just supposed to die at every glitch until they know about them all and just hope that there aren't too many? That's a disrespect to peoples time.

A valid IronMan playthrough takes on the risk of both predictable and unpredictable deaths. That includes the unlucky trap, monsters getting several critical hits in a row, or a real-workd device freeze.
I'm fine with those, my problem is when my death happens because a mistake made with the programming. Kicking a door with full life killed one of my level 23 builds. I'm supposed to not have a backup and just be okay with such a glitch in programming? After that happened I started backing up my saves
To my knowledge death is fair, glitches however are not. Which leads back to my original frustration, mandating evil choices to be able to play in a reasonable fashion isn't right.

Asking for power to overtake slavers is one thing, and if it happened in Mercia then it'd be debateable, but Icemist doesn't have slaves.
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to a 35 post dude.
I've been around a long time, I just don't post much.
 

Atomos

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@Darteous if you encounter glitches it would be in the best interest of everyone to report these here:
also: most players don't mind Ironman exploits as long as you don't encourage other players to do it, or claim that the game is too difficult. It's part of EK charm ;D
 

VDX_360

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Side-stepping my strong feelings on permadeath workarounds, let's explore the mage stun immunity issue:

Mages received several tweaks over development that made them stronger. A few addressed balance issues like not having mage armor provide immunity for an infinite number of traps (just one now). The stun immunity issue was discussed at length.

It came down to that as a class, mages were already super powerful. Stun immunity was just deemed, on the balance, overly powerful for them.

So, no stun immunity for mages.

The Amulet of Dark Whispers really throws a wrench in that system.

I --might-- argue the better fix would be to remove the Stun Immunity from the amulet, rather than add another item for mages.

That would not be a popular idea.

How to dovetail a mage item that gives stun immunity would be tricky. Where to add it to the game? Do you add it as a rare drop, an unique item, or a quest reward? New quest? Modify an existing quest reward?
 

Darteous

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@Darteous if you encounter glitches it would be in the best interest of everyone to report these here:
also: most players don't mind Ironman exploits as long as you don't encourage other players to do it, or claim that the game is too difficult. It's part of EK charm ;D
I can't remember where I posted about it, this happened quite awhile ago, but David did take part in the thread and I believe he said he'd see about fixing it for the update that was coming up at the time. I presume it's fixed, I just don't like dying and haven't bothered to test it. It was one very very few would run into because hardly anyone bothers to be a high level before progressing with the main storyline.

The stun immunity issue was discussed at length.

It came down to that as a class, mages were already super powerful. Stun immunity was just deemed, on the balance, overly powerful for them.

So, no stun immunity for mages.

The Amulet of Dark Whispers really throws a wrench in that system.

I --might-- argue the better fix would be to remove the Stun Immunity from the amulet, rather than add another item for mages.

That would not be a popular idea.

How to dovetail a mage item that gives stun immunity would be tricky. Where to add it to the game? Do you add it as a rare drop, an unique item, or a quest reward? New quest? Modify an existing quest reward?
Stun immunity is overly powerful for any character, both mages and rogues are too weak to live if they get stunned in a compromised position, are they just supposed to die if they get unlucky in a manner that can't be well planned for. Being unlucky happens, but such one should be able to plan for.

I think there are a few potential fair workarounds. For instance allowing companions to walk around you if you're stunned. One of the main reasons I got 2 overpowered companions was so that they would take the attention off of me in the unlikely event that I got stunned/paralysed and likely kill the enemy while I'm stunned. They did the job well, the problem this time was I literally got stunned as I walked in the door so my companions couldn't defend me.
Could also allow us to train our companions additional advanced skill. If Gris could use scrolls due to magic training I could just have her heal me while stunned. Which I guess I'll have to use Hirge, she's just so much worse of a tank that I don't like to use her and have built up quite a dislike of her to an unreasonable extent...
and no argument that scroll is a bit unreasonable, but so is the stun/paralysis so it balances out.
Will suck that I won't be aiming for the dragon shield anymore, that thing is beautiful.
 

Kakost

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The Crown of Tol is still a debate. Let's presume your character found and deciphered the hidden text, and knows there's a way to return a powerful artifact of a God of Death. Plenty of Good people will still decide the most good action is to still give the Crown to the Bishop. They will likely say that that's the will of The Three via the orders of the Bishop, or argue that keeping the Crown away from Tol is worth more than a single life. It takes out-game-knowledge (or more than one play through) to realize Tol will leave the world behind. Nothing in-game hints at that idea.
Exactly. The entire Tol thing is absolutely meta-game knowledge. Your character cant possibly know what happens by returning the Crown to Tol, by everything that anybody could possibly know, this would be the most evil outcome possible.

Also, even with the meta knowledge, all that we have is Tol's word on the matter. Sure, there's the Tolassian texts where the Tolassians themselves describe how they corrupted the teachings of Tol, but still, we dont know what will happen after his ascension. He was kind of nuts in the head to want to turn the dead into undead to (un)live with the living to begin with, so what garantee to we really have that this truly is the best course of action, despite him claiming to be a good spirited soul filled with good intentions? Whatever Tol's going to do, we dont see the results nevertheless, the Tolassians continue to rise up from the grave despite his ascension over the game, so can you truly say that it is such a good thing? We dont know, so yeah, it's highly debatable.

As for the Orogg Witches, everything that VDX has said. The Dark Lady didnt show evil intent towards the player, did she?

And the captain on Icemist were trying to find ways to destroy her, so his disappearance could be said to be self defense.

What is truly evil is to outright kill Laertes. Something I had to do one time that I clicked the wrong option and there was no way to say "just a prank bro, lets go hunt the Manticore" as I later found out. (I was playing on IronMan, and this made me so mad that I deleted the char, goddamit, I would prefer to have lost the saving by dying, honestly)
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It's quite tedious to line her up and push her, which I have done at times to be on the safe side early on in the game up to about level 12. But to always have to do it is boring and annoying use of time that it starts to feel like why bother playing. I was 4 levels higher than the opponent and had some of the best gear in the game but I have to line up the companion to a door to push them through first everytime just in case?
Well, I decided to play on IM to force myself to adapt to a more prudent playstyle. I realized that even playing on Hard you dont bother "testing the waters", meaning that you can absolute try to hit a dungeon you should have no place trying, and if it doesnt work, you just load and do something else. I didnt want that, I wanted the real experience of the game. Thus I went IM, and that completely changed my game mentality. No longer can I be reckless whatsoever.

This means that I carefully think and play every single step. This include pushing Griss (which is my default choice) in front of me as much as possible, even if it seems "boring", because it aint truly boring, it's super exciting to have that uncertainty, and to have to be sure to always adopt the best set of behaviors as possible, and adopt a true "coward mentality", rather than being the typical RPG guns blazing approach.

(For this same reason I dont play Rogue Meele on IR, I just simply dont know how to plan in the same manner with it, much to my frustration)

I agree with VDX, if you dont want the full IM experience of having to double check every pixel of your screen at every step you take, than you shouldnt play IM
 
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