Neverwinter Nights 2, part 4

Neeshka's companion quest

Blacklake is the place where Neeshka's personal quest comes to its resolution. I have to say that it seems like her quest underwent many changes during production, because it's pretty incoherent. It goes something like this. An old rival of hers named Leldon, with whom she once worked, threatens her when she enters the city. Neeshka then decides it would be a good idea to break into his house and steal his lucky coin from him, to show off how much better a thief she is. We do it, and it's easy. The thing that makes me think something was changed during production is that the quest journal says Leldon confronted us at his house, but that never happened.

Later, a street urchin gives us a message from Leldon to meet him in the park. So we do, because the game doesn't give us any sane options like staking the place out and sniping him with arrows or setting up traps for him. Now they're saying that the coin wasn't Leldon's after all, but Neeshka's lucky coin, which he stole from her. Leldon makes more threats, there's a fight, and Leldon runs away. Leldon is painted to have a psychotic hatred of Neeshka, but she just goads him on, which isn't wise (but wisdom is her lowest stat, after all).

Next, an acquaintance of Neeshka's shows up and gives her a tip that Leldon's going to pull off the heist of a lifetime, and Neeshka decides to get there first, steal everything, and taunt him about it later. This is the part where it happens in Blacklake, and it's the strangest quest of the lot. We break into a collector's mansion, and immediately the heist goes to hell, because guards detect Neeshka (even though she's in stealth and I left everyone else in the entrance hall), and they attack, resulting in dead household guards. So now what? This isn't just a burglary anymore, it's a full-on assault on someone's household, and wanton murder for the purpose of theft. Those guards were the good guys! If anything should cause an alignment shift, it's this! And yet after killing the guards, nothing changed, and no party members complained, so I just went on.

I continued having Neeshka sneak around in stealth mode, but this was once again ruined when I snuck into a small servant area, and was suddenly forced into dialogue with a servant when I passed a trigger point. And remember what happens in those instances? The main character is teleported across the house to talk to them, of course. Yay, my cover was blown, and the servants all got a good look at me to describe to my fellow City Watchmen later. I left them in peace, anyway. Obviously, this "theft" quest was not meant to be played stealthily, but it really should have been. There should be no triggered dialogue for stealthed characters, ever, unless the NPC detects them! Nevertheless, I forwent the stealth from that point on, not that I had much choice.

Next, I exchanged a foot massage with the master of the house's mistress for a key upstairs, and also learnt that this collector has become obsessed with a simple painting of a ship at sea, which he found in a refuse heap, and that he treasures it above all his rare valuables, and stares at it for hours on end (and neglecting his mistress). It sounded like there was some plot afoot involving an ensorcelled painting!

However, the rest of the information given doesn't indicate that this was anything other than an ordinary painting, and that his fascination with it was simply due to his unfulfilled wish that he had been a sailor himself. It's an unsatisfying ending, since he is truly fixated just on this one painting, to the point where we had the option to use the painting as a hostage to get the collector's key to the vault. If there was no enchantment involved, then why is it just this one painting? Surely he had seen paintings of the ocean before. Surely he has seen the ocean! Neverwinter is a coastal city! Why isn't his house full of ocean paintings, and why doesn't he collect other nautical items like anchors and ship steering wheels? Why hasn't he remodeled one of his rooms to resemble a ship captain's cabin? Why does he do nothing but stare at this low-quality painting all day? These questions are never answered.

The quest does provide a little puzzle to solve to open the door, but as soon as I accomplished that, Leldon came stomping in to confront Neeshka one last time. More thieves just walking around citizens' homes with impunity! Here, the dialogue once again changes its mind about who this lucky coin originally belonged to. Was it Leldon's or Neeshka's? Why are they so dead-set on provoking each other? Are they suicidal, stupid, or both? More unanswered questions. But with Leldon dead, this convoluted diversion seems to finally be at its end.

As a thief quest, it was terrible. Aside from the blatant breaking and entering, killing of guards, and being seen by everyone, this "grand heist" amounted to less than 1000 gold and some jewels, with a couple of pieces of gear, one of which I couldn't even use. It also doesn't seem to involve any thief skills except for using dexterity to pull a key out of a fireplace, but that was implemented through dialogue, meaning you have to do it using your main character. Pointless, since if you're doing Neeshka's quest, you're probably not a rogue yourself. You also can't pick the lock to the vault, and one of the keys you need can't be pickpocketed, which is why I had to hold that painting hostage earlier -- because the only alternative to that was to kill the man! What a farcical heist.

And in the end, I couldn't even give the poor man his painting back.

Act 2

The original campaign storyline requires certain characters to be in your party at various points in the game. Currently, Shandra Jerro is a "free" party member (not using up one of the available slots), so I have her on tank duty, leaving Kelgar at the inn. The mage Sand was required once I set out for Port Llast, and that's an annoyance. He's a wizard, and I already have more than enough capable magic-users in the party. Also, his personality clashes with my actions, and I'm losing influence with him left and right (once, I lost influence with him just for being polite and diplomatic in Lord Nasher's court).

Act 2 begins with a newly-restricted world map, and a task to gather evidence and friendly witnesses for my testimony in the trial the Luskans set up by slaughtering the town of Ember. The incident in the collector's mansion never comes up.

Duskwood (the area around Ember)

Ember was basically deserted, except for the dead bodies of helpless villagers, who all had text describing how cruelly and unjustly they were killed. A merchant in Port Llast named Nya had given me a bag of some kind of herb that was supposed to sanctify the bodies so they wouldn't rise as undead, and so I set about doing that. Guyven of the Road showed up again (a character I'd met a couple of times in other places) and offered some more expositional text. The only other thing to do was to investigate the well. I thought this would involve pulling something nasty out of it, but it turned out I needed to go down into it.

The bottom of the well turned out to be a spacious cavern, but the most outrageous thing about it was the door in one of the walls. I guess whatever source that's keeping this well full of water never gets it up that high, eh? Fine, I decided to stop standing in the village water supply and see what was behind the door.

A tribe of goblins! Of course! They must be very quiet for the villagers never to have noticed that their town is built on top of a goblin settlement. Well, at least they're peaceful goblins, which I suppose explains why they never poisoned the well, despite their easy access to it. Of course, the villagers were all dead by this point, so it hardly mattered anymore. In any event, I accepted their truce (in exchange for killing some giant spiders) and explored their cave. The only rules I had to follow were to not kill any goblins, and to leave their "glowstone" alone.

I found the room with this "glowstone", and I don't really know what it did, except that the goblins considered it very important, an evil dryad wanted it, and Grobnar was alarmingly drawn toward it, like the pre-Gollum Smeagol's fascination with the One Ring when he first saw it. Knowing we were being watched carefully in this room, I was worried that Grobnar might act outside of my control and turn the whole cave hostile on us, so I left that room quickly.

In another area, I found a giant non-hostile spider, and gained a quest to find it some food.

I found that this cave had a back exit, leading outside the village of Ember. Okay, this explains how the goblins could go out and get food or other supplies without going up the well and being seen by villagers, but I really find it hard to believe that no one in the village ever looked around the area to see if there was anything they needed to be concerned about, especially when they were building the village in the first place!

The door exited into the area called Duskwood, and the trees created a strange magic-dampening field all over this area that caused my spells to fail most of the time. With me, Qara, and the forced Sand in the party, this was a serious handicap, but I decided to go through it as-is, without switching out any party members. The OC is pretty forgiving, even at core rules difficulty. There was no way to avoid or put an end to the magic suppression, but there wasn't much to do in Duskwood anyway -- only two encounters.

An evil dryad was the first Duskwood encounter that I found. She delighted in the slaughter of Ember, and helped the murderers set me up as the patsy by providing them with a magic disguise that made one of them look like me. But they never held up their end of the bargain, which was to take the glowstone from the local goblins and give it to her.

I refused to accept her quest to go do that same thing, and Sand complained that I wasn't taking the opportunity to gather evidence to use in my defense by making a deal with her. I lost 2 influence points with him for that, and I didn't get those influence points back when I obtained the evidence anyway without making any deal. I'll be generous to the game writing and ascribe that to his personality, being not only arrogant, but also unable to admit or acknowledge when he's wrong. I can't understand why some people like this character.

Next, after plowing through a field of wolves, we found two gnome entomologist sisters by a cave, who spoke with interesting complementary speech patterns and flirted suggestively with Grobnar, who seemed more interested in their extensive insect collection than in their scarcely veiled invitations to a ménage à trois.

Something wasn't right, though. Their dialogue left hints about that, and the fact that they didn't want me to look in their cave. I somewhat wish I didn't have to go in and see what was up, because they weren't at fault for what happened to them, but it was the only place left to look for one of the quests I picked up in town, and in retrospect, it was a good thing that I did it. Not only did it satisfy two quests, but it opened up something later in the game.

The trial (or, "Good morning, Worm Your Honour!")

When it came time to present the evidence at the trial, I ended up having to play through that section 3 or 4 times, because the dialogue was often unclear in regard to what I would be skipping or otherwise choosing to do with the available options, and I actually lost the trial every time until the last one. I never got to see the actual evidence presented in any of the runs -- that was handled offscreen. But several times I chose options that seemed normal enough, but somehow forfeited my right to question witnesses or speak up in my defense. Other times, the options given to me all seemed bad and out of character. In one instance, I was unable to fully use a witness to my advantage. I could either use an argument from ethos by pointing out the good character of one of my traveling companions, who was known to the witness, or I could discredit the witness by reminding her that in a previous conversation she had admitted the possibility (without any evidence to support it) that she had actually seen someone disguised as me. But I had that evidence now! I had recovered a magic disguising powder from that evil dryad earlier, so I could show exactly how such a thing was possible. But the option never came up. Once she had admitted the very flimsy claim that "maybe it was someone else", she was taken off the stand.

Sand advised me not to try any diplomacy, bluffing, taunting, or intimidation on the prosecutor, since she was an expert in those techniques, unless I was certain I would win. I don't know how many skill points I would have needed for those things, but I tried anyway on a couple of the runs to check, and even though my diplomacy skill is rather high, it did indeed fail, even though the arguments offered in those skill checks were good ones.

Sand also mentioned the possibility of using the prevailing ethnic hatred of Luskan (a city-state hostile to Neverwinter, and the origin of these accusations) to my advantage in gaining the support of the jury, but this never seemed to work, and simply made me look like an arrogant hothead.

I also had the option of simply letting the super-intelligent Sand handle all the arguments himself (he does have a very high intelligence stat). When I chose that option, it cut to a conclusion implying that Sand had argued for several hours, and yet that was one of the cases where I lost.

It turns out that it doesn't really matter whether you win or lose, because one way or another you have to fight in an appeal-by-combat, whether it's you or the Luskans who demand it. I don't see what this is supposed to prove, considering both sides can select anyone to be their champions, and don't have to fight themselves. So it's not me against the diplomat Torio Claven, but against the giant Harbourman named Lorne, whose name had been popping up throughout the story, and who was the actual perpetrator that was disguised as me during the slaughter of Ember.

One suggestion: Do not accept Qara's offer to fight as your champion in the trial by combat. She may indeed be a very powerful sorceress, but her claim that she can incinerate the opponent before he reaches her proved several times to be an overestimation of her abilities. Lorne is a berserker who immediately attempts to close the distance between to melee range, and this gives enough time for only one spell. The instant-death and incapacitation spells I tried all failed (he ran right through the web and tanglefoot bag).

The fireball did a fair amount of damage when it successfully landed, but it would have taken 3 or 4 to bring him down, and I never got that far with Qara. Once he got in range and started chopping into her with that huge sword, she could either attempt one more spell (likely to fail from the assault), drink a healing potion (only postponing the inevitable by one turn), or try to get out of range (he runs just as fast as Qara, so this only works the one time he pauses to buff himself, which didn't help in my case.

So I picked Khelgar as my champion instead, who was furious about the injustice of the situation. Khelgar, by contrast to Qara, kicked Lorne's arse. But I saw in that fight how futile Qara's attempts had been. The berserker becomes unkillable during his rages, so she would have had to survive or avoid that, which I think would have been impossible. His HP was at 0, and yet he wouldn't die, despite Khelgar beating at least three times his original HP out of him over the several rounds of this berserk rage. Finally, it ended, and Khelgar was able to land the killing blow.

As the main character, I had been getting jerked around and manipulated quite a bit during this story, especially during this whole setup, trial, and being forced to join Lord Nasher's house as a squire to avoid being tried and executed in Luskan. But it became a bit worse at the end of this whole trial chapter when Nasher introduced me to a Luskan ambassador, because it introduced a meta element. I know this ambassador is evil and responsible for certain deeds, even though my character has never met her before, because it was shown to me in cutscenes. But my character doesn't know, and this essentially reduces me to the watcher of a horror movie helplessly telling the character onscreen "Don't go down into that basement!"

Granted, my character has reason to distrust Luskan officials in general after that trial, and Qara did mention that she sensed that the ambassador was hiding a lot of power, and the ambassador was quick to repeatedly silence her more friendly and straightforward assistant, so perhaps it wouldn't be entirely unreasonably nationalistic to be wary of this ambassador.

Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, part 1

I bought Arcanum in early 2010, during a sale on GOG, based on user reviews. At the time, I had only briefly experimented with a single Infinity Engine game (Baldur's Gate 1), and had not yet touched any others of this sort. After trying it out as far as getting to the first town, I decided (wisely, I think) to postpone further exploration until I'd cut my teeth on Baldur's Gate first. Returning to it now with that experience under my belt, as well as Planescape: Torment and some Icewind Dale experience, and I find myself much better prepared to enjoy Arcanum.

This is my first Troika game, though I know some people might recommend I try the first two Fallout games first. Troika was also responsible for Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, which also has my interest. I've seen some gameplay footage of it on Youtube, showing the different kinds of dialogue and other interactions available to the player depending on variables such as clan, which is most notable if you're playing as a Malkavian. Members of that clan have some kind of mental troubles, and often perceive that everyone is looking at them or talking to them, even people on TV, or inanimate objects.

Arcanum has a similar mechanic. NPCs speak to you differently based on your stats, what you're wearing, your race, and who you're traveling with, and your own dialogue is affected by things such as your intelligence or level of drunkenness (as in the Fallout games, there's an entire alternate script for all characters including the player if you choose to play a character with the intellect stats of a dullard). The replayability of this game looks very high.

Artistic design

The portraits of Arcanum are unique and interesting, made in a period style that I see numerous fans have attempted to replicate, but I'm afraid only a skilled painter could copy such a distinctive style. Almost all portraits display the typical sullen expression found in both paintings and photographs of the time, whether it was a social norm or a consequence of the long sitting times required to make them, during which an expression would be difficult to maintain.

The elves look like Vulcans, which is an appropriate look for such a proud race. Personally, I like the idea of proud, beautiful elves, and since the backlash against that idea as being too "generic" has led to everyone trying to make non-proud, non-beautiful elves these days, the result is that this kind of elf is becoming the more unique conception.

I do wish Troika hadn't opted for a square aspect ratio for the in-game portraits, however. There's a good reason why real-world portraits are taller than they are wide, and that is to reflect actual human proportions! The portraits in this game are all rather cropped on the top and bottoms, with too much white space on both sides for this reason. The portraits don't even show the tops of people's heads, and I expect they opted for such a low framing because part of the atmosphere of the setting would be lost if the picture weren't framed low enough so as to see at least the collars of the antique clothing. All would be mended with a 2:3 aspect ratio, such as in Baldur's Gate.

Uncropped versions of the portraits do exist outside of the game in a proper aspect ratio as shown here, which Crypton made available in a pack for download after finding them in another pack of beta content.

On a different subject than the portraits, the primary critique I have with the art design of the interface is that in the majority of the panels, the wood texture they used is an un-sanded, un-stained, un-polished wood, rough and weathered, and looks more like a piece of wood they found washed up on the beach than the kind of rich polished mahogany that begs to accompany those brass fittings. Wood and brass are indeed iconic materials for Victorian steampunk, but not that kind of wood! It's also a bit inconsistent, since certain select screens do have a better wood and brass texture, such as the main menu and several multiplayer menu screens. It's time for another mod, if I can deal with yet another proprietary image format.

Some linguistic notes

Like the Elder Scrolls games, Arcanum uses the word "fatigue" to mean the exact opposite of its actual meaning (fatigue means "weariness"), such that having "more fatigue" incorrectly means having more energy. They have "fatigue points", which show how much energy you have. They have a "fatigue restorer", which restores your energy. When you "run out of fatigue" in the game, you collapse in exhaustion. The strategy tips in Appendix 5 of the manual mention that a higher Constitution attribute gives you "extra fatigue". In reality, the more fatigue you have, the less energy you have. In reality, the only way to run out of fatigue is to get a good night's sleep. They should be using the word stamina, or endurance. Perhaps even vim, which would be an appropriate word for the Victorian setting.

They have a school of magic called "black necromancy," which is rather redundant, since the term "black magic" itself is thought to originate from "nigromancy", which is related to "necromancy" by folk etymology. On the other hand, the suffix -mancy is not even a generic "magic" word, but specifically refers to divination (the supernatural answering of questions). Necromancy, at its roots, means consulting the spirits of the dead for answers to questions, and nothing more, just as cartomancy means interpreting a hand of cards for answers to questions, and so on.

It is understood, of course, that the word has accumulated more connotations in modern fiction, but it would be nice if writers would coin a more accurate word for it instead of corrupting a word that means something else, even if it is related.

The manual

The Arcanum manual is extensive (187 pages), and largely written in a style reminiscent of Victorian-era literature and advertisements, as befitting the game's world setting.

It posits an explanation, in the form of a series of scientific lectures, for the clash between science and magic. In this world, the proximity of any magical device causes chaotic fluctuations in an electrical circuit, and even in such simple mechanical devices as inclined planes and pendulums, showing that magic somehow interferes with simple gravity or friction.

It does not attempt to explain the opposite case, of how the presence of technological devices might interfere with a magical spell, though I understand this is also the case within the game world.

It's nice that they tried to give an explanation, I suppose, but when one is as questionable as this, perhaps it would have been better left as a mystery. Absent some conscious guiding principle that would enable the "magic" to discriminate, any force that would interfere so badly with such elementary forces of nature as those used in mechanical or electrical constructs would also play havoc with living creatures, since our bodies and brains also function according to those same laws of physics, chemistry, and electricity.

Interface

Reading the manual has clarified some of the more confusing aspects of the interface that I'd been struggling with when trying to play it before. Turn-based mode is the best mode for this particular game, though I still wish there were a pause feature for times out of combat when I'm trying to click on a moving NPC to initiate conversation. In Baldur's Gate, I habitually pause in order to click on NPCs, especially since I have it running at twice normal speed. The best I've come up with is to temporarily toggle combat mode by hitting "R", which freezes everyone in place if you're in turn-based mode.

The manual has explained why I was often getting fatigued extremely quickly, and it was because I was always overextending myself on my turns. I was not aware that you should only take as many actions as are permitted by the green action-point indicators, and that using more that those would tire you out more quickly. To avoid that, I now click the "end turn" button when my green points are gone.

I was also having trouble with ending combat, because even after a fight was over and I had clicked the "toggle combat" button, my character was still frozen in place, and I couldn't take any actions. I had discovered that entering and exiting the inventory would free me to move, and I had been doing it that way for a while, until I noticed that right-clicking changed the colour of the cursor from blue to its usual orange, and once that had happened, I was free to move again. The blue cursor, I believe, is for selecting a target for spells, and since I'm a spellcaster, my combat usually involves hitting my enemies with spells. I would have thought that ending combat would also tell it I was finished casting spells, but apparently it needs the right-click to cancel casting mode as well. As a matter of fact, I've now found that right-clicking also can cancel combat mode if there are no more nearby enemies, so two right-clicks are usually enough to get things moving again.

Another very useful bit of information that I got from the manual was that you can scroll up to read past status messages after they've disappeared, which they do almost instantly if you're hovering over something else when it appears. Placing the cursor in the upper area of the status message window turns it into an up arrow for reviewing what, exactly, that status sound effect you may have heard was trying to tell you.

Also useful to know, again from the manual, is that the map interface changes depending on your location. When I was near the bridge outside Shrouded Hills, for instance, the local map worked fine, but the world map was zoomed out to show the entire map, with its coloured dots almost invisible at that size, and it wasn't possible to set waypoints. I was concerned that there was something wrong with my game, but the manual assured me that I just needed to be far enough outside of town for the world map to be enabled. At that point it became zoomed in to a more local view, and I was able to set waypoints and initiate fast travel.

I'm using Drog's high resolution mod, which provides a nice compact alternate interface, as well as an optional runtime parameter to allow me to scroll across the local map as far as I like, which is a virtual necessity for navigating through town. Without the parameter, scrolling is restricted to a rather small window, and so it "stutters" as your character slowly expands the scrolling border in the direction she's walking.

Character creation

I started out by creating the kind of character I usually play -- an elf mage. I was thinking I might dabble a bit in technology as well, though the game is designed to make that difficult. In retrospect, perhaps I should have taken more advantage of the unique setting of this game and made a more steampunk-oriented character instead.

Still, the magic system is slightly different here than in other games, since magic does not use "mana" per se, even though the meter is coloured blue as mana usually is. Performing magic instead draws from your stamina, which I suppose is a natural result of the sheer freedom Troika gave us with this game. Any character can learn any kind of skill, whether it be magic, technological, or other, since there is no class system, and so it makes sense to combine stamina and mana into a single bar. In most games they serve the same purpose for different classes, both being an "energy reserve" that the different classes can call on for their various skills. In lieu of classes, you can instead select a character background, which comes with a colourful little story describing you and explaining why you have bonuses in some areas and penalties in others. There are some surprising variables included in these backgrounds, such as those that give you bonuses to spellcasting during the day and penalties at night, or vice versa.

Although stamina and hit points are separate bars, it's still a near certain death if you run out of stamina during combat, since you'll fall to the ground unconscious, and will probably be beaten to death before you can recover. That's why I can see the mages of Arcanum to be similar to the warlocks of WoW, which rely on high amounts of stamina to use as a mana well, by converting their own life force into spellcasting mana. I'm going to see how well it works to play it that way, by investing points into my constitution stat and seeking items that improve it as well, and investing fully into the spell school of summoning, to provide me with summoned minions.

There seem to be a total of 80 spells that can be learned in the game, which are all visible from the beginning in the character screen. They're broken up into 16 specific colleges of study, of 5 spells each, and they're all learned by using the stat points you earn from leveling up. Each of these 5-spell colleges is a kind of "tree" in the sense that in order to learn the more powerful spells in that college, one must first invest points to learn the simpler ones. Very different from the D&D games, where most mages learn spells from scrolls that are either found or purchased with money, but vaguely similar to the sorcerer class I've been playing. Spells have minimum requirements both for character level and the willpower stat. I wish I'd read that bit in the manual before I started using my stat points, but I'm not going back now.

The technological and non-aligned skills use the same kind of tree structure, though there are fewer of each of those. Tech is supplemented by the ability to find or purchase schematics and recipes, unlike spells. All kinds of crafting are considered "technological", however, which is pretty arbitrary in the case of disciplines like herbalism. I have one point invested in a technological discipline (explosives), which allows me to make cheap molotov cocktails. Very useful for a fledgling mage with only one offensive spell and not very much stamina.

With 80 spells available, I'm quickly going to run out of room on the paltry shortcut bar, which has only 10 slots. I already have several slots occupied by health and stamina potions, as well as the molotov cocktails.

I'm very excited by the promise of this game! I can tell already that I'll be enjoying this game for a long time, and I have much more to write about.

Baldur's Gate, part 7: end of the vanilla game

Return to Candlekeep

Returning to Candlekeep at this point in the game really felt like a homecoming to me, since it has in fact been almost a year since I first started the game. I didn't actually remember who some of the characters were until they spoke and made some reference to the quests I had completed back at the beginning of the game (such as the lady who lost her book).

The whole conceit of Candlekeep doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny in my eyes. You step outside the gates, and immediately you're not allowed back in unless you can donate a very rare book to their library? Even though you grew up there? It's hard to imagine how life would work there under those conditions.

Winthrop the innkeeper showed pretty clear signs of never having been out in the world, though, since his first words on my return was to call out to hidden assassins to fire crossbows at me -- as a joke. Considering the assassination attempts that happened within Candlekeep before I left, and the death of Gorion, and of course the fact that I was in a well-armed group, that probably wasn't wise. I might have fallen for it, too, if the NPC project hadn't inserted tearfully sentimental dialogue from Imoen between his words and my response choices.

My first indication that something was wrong came when I visited the priest's house where the first assassination attempt had taken place. The priest was surrounded by dead cats, and he was acting strangely, as if possessed. He left without revealing himself due to my answer, so I didn't find out exactly what was going on until I ran into another suspicious figure in the library. This time, I questioned him more strongly, and he revealed himself as a doppelganger and attacked. Shortly thereafter, I was approached by a suspicious cloaked figure who knew a little too much about the details of what had happened the night of Gorion's death, and who insisted I have a ring as a gift. I took it, but threw it away and didn't use it. Still don't know what it would have done, but I'm sure it was cursed.

After some intrigue and plot twists (and some amusing embarrassing stories about my character's childhood told by an elderly couple in the library), I ended up in a new dungeon under Candlekeep, and again, I was glad for it! It was a very interesting dungeon, which included some sinister and potentially chilling implications. In here, there were doppelgangers of just about every NPC I had met at the beginning of the game in Candlekeep. Were all of these characters now dead? Is it necessary for them to be dead for these doppelgangers to take their forms? Since the game never lets you go back to Candlekeep, I never got to find out, but it's possible they were not dead, since doppelgangers of Elminster and Gorion even showed up. Gorion died in a more conventional way, and there were no doppelgangers around at that time, and I strongly doubt they had actually killed Elminster, so perhaps these were all doppelgangers who were preparing to take over the real people in Candlekeep, and hadn't yet done it.

Alora disappearing during arrest

I happened across a post on the Bioware forums that warned me about this shortly before it happened to me -- some kind of bug that causes Alora to disappear if she's in your party. It happens when you confront Angelo of the Flaming Fist in Chapter 7. Just before you're thrown in prison, Alora will say "I'm too young to die! [Charname], we've got to do something!" and then the scene switches to jail, whereupon she's no longer in your party. I'm guessing something dialogue-related is supposed to happen between those two events, and it's not happening for some reason (perhaps an expected party member is not present.) I don't think this bug is being taken seriously, because people assume it's actually the intended occurence where Angelo will randomly select someone to be killed on the spot if you choose a hostile dialogue response to him. This is not the case here, because Alora disappears without notice regardless of which response you pick. Choosing the hostile answer shows a random party member being killed, with their belongings on the floor and a grey picture in the party portraits, and this happens in addition to Alora disappearing from the party entirely.

I'm guessing this might be mod-related or Tutu-related, and that, combined with not everyone having Alora in their party anyway, may lead to the bug's lack of exposure. The workaround I used was to remove Alora from my party just before confronting Angelo, and returning to pick her back up after getting out of jail.

Duchal Palace fight challenging, and buggy

I encountered another more game-stopping bug at the Duchal Palace battle. The first time I did it, everything went smoothly. I killed all the enemies with no party members lost and both dukes still standing. The trouble was, nothing happened after that. I went around and tried to talk to the dukes and Sarevok, and they had generic responses. I went upstairs and all around, and nothing was happening. So I reloaded, didn't do quite as well that time (one of the dukes died), and this time the surviving duke (Duke Belt) initiated a conversation that progressed the plot once the battle was done. Well, that wasn't very ideal.

I played that battle several more times, to varying degrees of success, but any time both dukes lived, the game would get stuck. Only when Duke Belt was the only survivor did things progress as they should. He informed me of the fleeing Sarevok's destination (the ruins of the older city of Baldur's Gate, on top of which the current city is built), and I declined his offer to teleport me there, since I wasn't done looting the palace yet.

I'm a sorcerer priest

From what I understand, evil characters (below a certain reputation level) receive destructive abilities at the beginning of each chapter, while good characters receive healing ones. Up until chapter 7, I had only gotten Heal Minor Wounds and Slow Poison, but now that I've gotten Call Upon Holy Might, the "holy" part finally made me realise that these were all priest spells. The question is, do all gods control the healing and holy type spells? Even the Lord of Murder? So in D&D, it doesn't matter which god you're a priest of; as long as you're a priest, you get to use healing spells and have all the other specialties and restrictions of priests. How very...egalitarian of these gods.

Thieves' Guild Maze

The traps in the maze were spread so far apart, you might be lulled into carelessness, but I steadfastly had Imoen find and disarm all the traps down these long corridors. There were markings on the walls that I noticed next to the first set of traps, and saw them again when I got to the next set, but they were so conspicuously placed that I didn't trust them to be anything more than a more subtle 2nd-level trap to beat those who didn't get careless from the long distances between trap placement. Did Sarevok reset these traps when he passed through? Or did he somehow evade them without setting them off?

Anyway, the skeleton warriors and doom guards were pretty tough here, even one at a time, and I had to rest frequently. The maze, alas, was featureless and tedious.

When I got to Winky Pennyrate lying on the floor deep in the maze, his dialogue indicated that I was heading into the final showdown, and it occurred to me to wonder if I was missing anything by plowing on ahead, so I checked with the Dudleyville guide, and it advised me to delay the final battle until after I'd gone through the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion content. It seemed pretty narrative-breaking to go off and visit other locations just like that, since Sarevok was on the run and all, but the Tales of the Sword Coast manual explains that beating Sarevok ends the game, and if you want to play the expansion content even though you've already beaten him (without just loading up a save from before you fought him), it resets the final battle so that it hasn't happened yet. So one way or another, I'm leaving him down there to stew in his own stink until I've finished my tour of the expansion.

Expansion content

Several days have passed now, and I have completed the game. For the purpose of chronology, since I hadn't yet posted this or my notes about Tales of the Sword Coast, I've decided to describe my experience with Sarevok here, and deal with the expansion content afterwards.

Final battle with Sarevok

This was a very tough, challenging battle on Core Rules difficulty. I've heard it's made tougher if you have the expansion installed (which I do), and it's also tougher with Tutu, because Tutu limits the number of monster and skeleton summons you can have.

I think I attempted this battle almost 10 times before finally succeeding. It was mainly due to Angelo's explosive arrows, and it had be be cheating how often he was able to shoot them. I just kept seeing these rapidfire explosions, boom, boom, BOOM and dying over and over. I can't shoot arrows that fast! Sarevok resisted every single attempt I threw at him to paralyse him, make him sleep, or capture him in a web or a Resilient Sphere, even with his saving throws lowered with Greater Malaison, and he just kept chopping through my summons (and then Minsc and my other party members) faster than I could summon more while everyone else was getting creamed with fireballs (and I didn't have any fire resistance potions on hand, and didn't want to go all the way through that maze twice more to get some down there).

So, after reading up on some suggested strategies on the old forum, I finally beat it with this approach. I snuck up there just out of view, and threw a Dispel Magic up there. It said it worked, with all the names of the enemies showing "Dispel effects", but it didn't actually seem to make any difference at all. Two of them still had their cylinder and sphere shields, and Sarevok still ran around like Sonic the Hedgehog until I dispelled them again during the battle with Alora's magic-dispelling arrows (slower, since I had to do them one at a time, and sometimes she missed, but it was worth it not to dispel the beneficial buffs on my party).

Anyway, they didn't react to the dispel, so I just snuck Imoen up there stealthed until Sarevok spoke. His henchmen teleported down to the rest of my party as usual, but Sarevok didn't move since he didn't see anyone, so I was free to focus on the three stooges Tazok, Semaj, and Angelo. I had skeletons and 7 summoned monsters down there waiting for them (wands of monster summoning seem to be exempt from the summon limits), which kept them all busy, along with Minsc acting as a decoy protected by Otiluke's Resilient Sphere (which he sometimes resists, to my annoyance -- apparently that's another one of the changes caused by Tutu) and allowed everyone else to stand out of the way and let Alora shoot the dispels at them and let me and Edwin DPS them down and refresh the summons as they kept blowing themselves up shooting those detonation arrows at Minsc and the monsters standing right next to them. Imoen was hit by one of their confusion spells, though, so she was standing within range of the blast. I managed to draw her down with Viconia as a side effect of going up there to heal her. Confused Imoen started trying to attack her, so I had her chase Viconia out of range of the explosions, threw a heal on her and got out of her way (she didn't follow further to continue attacking).

For once, I got those three killed without losing a party member. In previous attempts, I had tried to win even after losing members, since Viconia could raise the dead using scrolls I'd been collecting for the purpose, but healing potions just don't heal enough at this level, and it takes too long to drink as many as you need while there's a battle going on. I'd like to see more than one "strength" of healing potion in this game, like in other games. You know I had to be desperate to beat this battle when I still tried plowing ahead even though Imoen died a permanent death in one of those earlier attempts.

So anyway, with just Sarevok left to fight, I was actually able to rest to relearn my spells and rebuff everyone, since I'm using a mod that lets you rest in most interiors as long as you're not in battle and enemies aren't within the field of view. It's possible I may have been able to win without resting, since I had plenty of healing potions on hand, but I really wanted to finish this game before school started again.

First, I softened him up by sending Edwin up there to throw fireballs, Alora to toss a potion of explosions (and ready her arrows of dispel and detonation), and Minsc to throw an oil of fiery burning. I myself started by casting a web, hoping to catch him in it so I could have Edwin cast Cloudkill, but as I mentioned before, he just strode right through the web. So everyone ran back down to the bottom of the screen (always avoiding the big trapped circle area in the centre that can't be disarmed) where I had more monsters and skeletons waiting for him. This time, Minsc stood out of the way, since he had resisted Otiluke's Resilient Sphere this time, and I just had Alora shoot arrows of biting at him, Viconia cast Firestrike from scrolls and the Wand of the Heavens, and Edwin and I shot magic missiles at him and refreshed the summons as Sarevok kept mowing them down, and finally it was all over.

I was treated to a final movie and credits for both vanilla and expansion Baldur's Gate, and then the title screen. I thought I would get a spoken epilogue like in the chapter breaks, or maybe a screen of text congratulating me, but no such luck. The ending movie was fine, but I really think a little textual or spoken story ending should have been in there.

I went and found some videos of the end of the game in the original (non-Tutu) engine, and I see that it was supposed to tell me something like "Sarevok has fallen. The battle is won!" (which isn't really much better of an ending) and then tell me about the final save. It did not tell me this, in fact, nor did it award me the XP I saw it award the player in the video. Perhaps that's what was supposed to be happening when it kept auto-pausing and saying "target gone". Not sure if this happens with Tutu all the time, or if it's a bug. After the Duchal Palace bug, Alora disappearing, this, and the bug I'll describe later from the expansion content, I believe I have the global variable bug I've read about, though I thought I had installed all the patches.

Ah well. It's done, and Baldur's Gate 2 awaits!

Final thoughts

What an incredibly long game! I first mentioned plans to review BG at the beginning of May 2010, but my earliest screenshots are dated from early January 2010, and here we are in January of 2011. The game saves themselves attest that it's been 346 days since I started the game. Admittedly, I took my time getting into it, with all the other games that also occupied my time (as well as school and other non-leisure concerns), so as a rough estimate, I'd guess I spent about 4 months playing this game, if I exclude the time spent playing other games. And it was a very fun ride. I really enjoyed the challenge and difficulty in the fights that I had to attempt multiple times trying different strategies.

Baldur's Gate 1 and its expansion had a very clear major theme of doppelgangers, both in the merchant's league questline and in Candlekeep, and the expansion continued that theme. It is a horrific and tragic thing to happen, and it was used effectively here, but I hope it doesn't continue into BG2, because any more of it and it'll get old.

It's interesting how much my perspective has changed over these years in regard to these games. As much as I may complain about modern RPGs now, now that I recognise most them as sickly shadows of their ancestors, I do have to thank them for introducing me, with training wheels, to a genre that I had shunned until recently. Perhaps as little as 3 or 4 years ago, whenever I saw images or video of a game in isometric view, with little coloured circles under the feet of the characters, I immediately lost interest. Modern "streamlined" RPGs serve their purpose as a sort of child's "My First RPG" to people like me who never got into them when they were really good, and they eased me into the genre painlessly. It's much like going to see a movie before reading the book it was based on. If you watch the movie first, you'll be more likely to enjoy it than if you read the book first, because the book is always better.

I saw people lamenting the passing of Troika at the time, but I never understood what had been lost. Now I do, and all I can hope is that enough independent developers rise to the occasion, to fill the niche that is being ignored by the larger companies, before I run out of good games from the past that I haven't played yet.

Next post, I'll talk about my impressions of the expansion.

Torchlight: additional observations

The story in Torchlight

The story in Torchlight is pretty bare-bones -- this is not a game you play for the story -- but it goes like this: There are 3 continuing quest lines attached to the main dungeon. One is the main quest, which has you chasing a mage named Alric deeper and deeper into its depths, revealing the remains of older and older civilisations as you go. The other two are a "find this item" questline, and a "kill this mob" questline, which you'll basically accomplish as you continue along the main quest, so there's no reason not to pick these up.

There's one quest unconnected to the main dungeon, and that's given by an NPC who has a magic wand that can open portals to other dungeons to which no tunnels lead. I generally go through a few levels of the main dungeon, and then alternate to this other set of dungeons. One of the other NPCs (the wizard-looking one) also gives map scrolls as a reward, which open portals to separate, standalone dungeons. You can also buy such scrolls from the vendors, but I believe I read that these reward scrolls lead to specific, specially-designed dungeons.

Suddenly rising difficulty

Around level 24 or 25, a few levels into the lava prisons, I started dying a lot. Attacks by many mobs started killing me faster than I could hit the hotkey to quaff a health potion. (I'm playing at "hard" difficulty, because I had read that "normal" was too easy, and I'm generally glad I made this choice.) And it didn't help that as an alchemist with many summoned minions (permanent golem and nether imps, with temporary skeleton archers, flaming sword, and zombies, in addition to my non-summoned dog), I was having trouble telling friend from foe in the crowd. At least your AOE attacks can't hurt your allies.

For the first few deaths (which kept occurring within seconds of the Alric's second boss fight, every time I arrived at his room) I took the option of paying a monetary penalty for the convenience of resurrecting in the current level of the dungeon, instead of paying nothing to resurrect back in town, but as this happened numerous times, it became too much of a drain on my gold. It wasn't even the boss that was killing me, but all the trash mobs ganging up on me.

Exploring town services for a while

My rapidly diminishing gold, and my increasing frustration, prompted me to leave the main dungeon alone for a little while, and go buy some maps to teleport me to a random lower-level dungeon so I could level up a little more and acquire some defensive spells and talents. While I was at it, I decided to gamble on the enchanter's services to upgrade my gear. Enchanting is a great opportunity to upgrade gear, as you can enchant a piece of gear many times, unlike other games which only allow a single enchantment on an item. The downsides are the high cost of an enchantment, and a small risk of losing all enchantments, which increases as you apply more and more enchantments to it. There are also special enchantment fountains to be found in the dungeons which allow you to get one free enchantment, though with the same risks as above. Enchantments are random, and can apply stat bonuses, increased weapon damage, faster recovery of health or mana, and even extra sockets for stat gems! There is a very wide range of effects that enchantment offers, and even though I did end up ruining a few good pieces of gear this way, I generally consider it worth the risk. I've read that it used to be much cheaper and less risky to enchant items before the current patch, but I think it's at a fair level now, to keep things challenging.

Another service I explored at this time was the transmutation NPC, which I had neglected before. This NPC allows you to convert any two gems of the same sort into a higher-quality version of the same gem, with higher stats that you can apply to a socketed piece of gear. You can also transmute three health or mana potions into 1 higher-level health or mana potion, a service I use a lot now. But the service that I started using the most was to transmute any four pieces of unneeded gear from one of my loot runs into a gem. This way, I was able to obtain enough gems to transmute into much higher level gems to maximise my stat bonuses. However, gems don't stack in the storage chest, and since there are several different grades for each type of gem, my storage chest is almost completely dominated by gems.

Returning to the fight with a nuclear bomb

In addition to the gear upgrades, after I had gained a couple of levels, I obtained some spells/talents that helped me enormously. First I invested a point into the "ember shield" talent in the Battle tree. This just absorbs some damage and prevents knockback, and it's not very strong (only absorbs 230 points at rank 1), and occupies one of the precious few slots in the quick bar, so I'm not sure it was very useful in the long run.

The second, more useful talent was the "beam golem" from the Lore tree. This gave me a second permanent summoned minion to join the other golem, except this one shoots lasers too. Having more minions to distract attackers away from me is good enough reason to use this, but he actually does a lot of damage as well.

Next, I obtained the "ember sentry" talent from the Battle tree. This is another temporary summon, but 6 minutes is quite long enough for my purposes, and I can immediately cast it again whenever it goes away. This is a crystal that floats around you, automatically shooting laser beams at any nearby enemy. This is especially useful in overcoming my earlier problem of getting confused about friend and foe in battles involving large numbers of mobs, which has been happening more and more often. Now I can just see where the laser is shooting, and cast my spells in that direction.

Finally, the giant bomb. At the bottom of the Arcane tree is the "ember strike", which is a spammable AOE attack that shoots a rather wide beam of energy from the sky at any location on the screen where you put your mouse cursor. Aim this at any grouping of normal mobs, and you can take them all out in 3 or 4 hits. Although it might seem like a cheap sort of weapon to use, it's pretty necessary to use this kind of AOE when you're facing against an army of enemies.

At any rate, when I finally returned to the fight that had been giving me trouble, it had fully respawned, but I had no trouble hacking my way through it, and the final boss battle went smoothly. I expect as the enemies get stronger, these weapons will not be quite as overpowered.

Coming up next

By now, I'm at level 31, and I continue to enjoy the game. However, I've become distracted by yet another game, and it definitely needs to be discussed. The Dark Mod, a Thief-like total conversion, which I had been anticipating since its announcement about 6 years ago. Expect a general overview and some reviews of individual missions for it coming up.

Day 21: Vampires, oddities, huge dungeons, clothes

I don't know how long I searched for the sewer system under Balmora Expansion. I could have just opened the mod in the construction set, but I ended up finding it thanks to a user's helpful tip on Planet Elder Scrolls. There are actually three entrances to the Undercity that I know of now, but one's hard to find. I only saw it once, when I left through it, and I couldn't find it again afterwards (it's in the hills outside of Balmora). The easiest one to use is the one in Carnithus' house on the east side of town, but it's only open from dusk 'til dawn, since the Undercity is a settlement of vampires. Another entrance that has no daylight restriction is behind a locked door in Zakothre's General Store, but Zakothre is constantly right there in sight of the door, so you need to be practically invisible to unlock it without getting reported.

I have a problem with a couple of locations in Balmora Expansion and other mods, in which I enter an interior and it's pitch black, and no light spell or night eye has any effect, but I can see fire effects. I'm not sure what causes it, but if I go to other locations for a while, I can usually come back later and the lighting is normal again.

The Undercity is pretty interesting (though not as large or imaginative as the Undercity in WoW), and has a few quests for the non-hostile vampires there, which you don't need to be a vampire to complete, several shops with unique items on a goth or vampire theme, a nightclub that sells some new beverages, and another player home as a quest reward, with a pretty unique design and new textures for it. If you want a dark, evil-looking lair that's not a cave or tomb, this compact but elegant home with black marble columns and vaulted ceilings may be the place for you.

The Undercity is in a section of sewers that are copied from the Mournhold sewers, complete with goblins, but one section has an unusually large concentration of goblins that was a welcome challenge after so much of the usual Morrowind combat being only 1 or 2 enemies at a time.

I'm not a vampire, but I'm planning to become one at some point, to go through some of the quests of one of the clans, because I like quests. I've already killed the leader of one of the three vampire clans as part of a quest, but it's not the clan I would have joined anyway. Just like the Great Houses, there are three vampire clans, each focusing on one of the three playstyles in the game: fighter, thief, and magic-user. The leader I killed was from the Berne clan, the ones who focus on stealth, and I'd be joining the magic-user clan, the Aundae.

In order to get infected, since I'm currently immune to common diseases, I'll have to make a spell, potion, or enchanted item with Weakness to Common Disease, and go fight some vampires of the clan whose bloodline I want to be a part of.

Inconsistent hostiles

Not sure why this happens, or if this is a common thing, but most of the time lately, when I approach NPCs out in the wild or in caves, shrines, etc., they don't turn hostile immediately. I often engage in conversation with them, only to find out that they're Barbarians or Mabrigashes (Ashlander witches), both of which are hostile. Only after a few seconds have passed do they turn hostile. I'm not a stealthy sort, because I like to make sure an NPC is actually hostile before I attack, or I may kill an innocent person, and since there's no colour-coded indicator like in other games (like WoW), this means I have to wait for them to attack me first. I may have to install Fliggerty's Enhanced Detection mod, which includes a spell to "detect enemy", defined as "any creatures or NPCs that are currently hostile towards you, or have fight settings of at least 80, which means they are likely to attack you on sight."

In one case, one of the Dunmer strongholds whose Propylon chamber I teleported to was occupied by a coven of witches. They were all hostile to me except one. She never attacked, so I left her alone. She didn't have unique information or offer any services, but maybe she's a part of some quest somewhere. I thought one thing she said was funny, though (I assume all witches say this) about my trade: "The Temple calls my patrons the bad Daedra, and perhaps they aren't very nice... But I guess I'm not very nice, either." Well, hey, at least you don't attack adventurers on sight! She also offered to teach me something about summonings, but no such topics appeared in her list, so who knows? Maybe that's what she meant about not being very nice. Offering to teach me something, but giving no way to ask her about it.

In another, more bizarre instance, I entered Kagaruhn from the upstairs door after jumping onto the roof, and upon entering I saw what looked like an Ash Ghoul standing in the room down the hall, with his back to me. I snuck up behind him and initiated conversation, and he had some things to say to me (he was one of those one of those named guys, the ones whose first names are all "Dagoth", or else "Dagoth" is some kind of title like "Darth" is in Star Wars), so I thought maybe I was supposed to be talking to him. Except he also had barter and repair options. which I don't think he was supposed to be offering. I checked to see what he had for sale, out of curiosity, and it appeared to be the items I'd expect to find on his dead body after I kill him -- most specifically his heart. I purchased his heart, and he said, "Thank you, come again." Then he attacked me when I stopped talking to him.

Temple quests

A lot of the Temple quests are just "go here and cure this person's disease", but there are some clever and refreshing ones, which require some actual thinking to figure out, like the one in the Puzzle Canal, and the one where you go to Mount Kand and have to answer riddles given by atronachs (though that one you can cheat if you've picked up one of the coloured books of riddles scattered around the game, one of which contains the answers. I didn't have that book with me when I did it, though, so I had to do it the hard way, which I liked better anyway.

The one that I thought was funniest was the pilgrimage to Maar Gan, where you find Darth Maul just standing around in the foyer (actually a dremora -- they all have that red and black horned head style in Morrowind), and if you talk to him, he says, "If you are a pilgrim, read the inscription on the stupid rock." He does this even if you're not on the quest. You see a few of these daedra around the game who are bound to Vivec's service, and are very grumpy and sarcastic about it, which I find amusing.

Main quest interference

Without naming names, so as to avoid spoilers, I was more or less forced to progress further than I'd planned in the main quest, due to reaching the point where certain parties who shall remain nameless become hostile toward you, and refuse to allow you to do their quests. This was despite having held back at the warned "point of no return". The NPC said very clearly "Are you sure you want to do this? You might want to take care of your business with the other party before you accept this action," so I said "No, don't do it yet," and went off to do my business, but they acted like I had accepted it anyway!

Luckily, this period of bad graces is relatively short, once you go off and do a few tasks and meet Lord Vivec, and everything goes back to normal. In my case, I had put the main quest off so long (I was past level 40 and had 51 reputation points by this time), that the "shortcut" option was open to me, in which the Wise Woman expresses concern that I haven't fulfilled the prophecies yet, and that I should go talk to someone in the Temple High Fane. Apparently you can entirely skip the trials involving all the Ashlander tribes and the Great Houses and get sent to Vivec directly. But I ended up doing most of the trials anyway, just because they offered such nice rewards, and because I like quests.

Dungeon crawl mods

I was browsing through some more mod lists, specifically one devoted to mods that add single dungeons to raid and loot, and one caught my eye: Qwert's House of Madness, which boasted a 100-level "randomly generated" dungeon just outside of Hla Oad. 100 levels? Randomly generated? I wondered how that was possible in the game. But what it actually meant was that the dungeon was randomly generated with an external program called GenMod, which is designed to allow quick and easy generation of Morrowind interiors, and saves ESPs to which you can add further detail in the normal construction set.

So Qwert said s/he generated this dungeon to celebrate the release of a new version of this program, and didn't even know what all 100 levels contained. Now normally, I prefer well-designed and carefully crafted environments to explore, but I was well aware that this was not designed for that, so I took it for what it was. This had in mind other hack & slash type RPGs instead, not something you explore and admire, just something very obviously game-y that you hack your way through and loot and pillage. Some of the floor plans really did resemble something you might see in a classic computer game featuring random dungeons like Rogue or Nethack, or maybe a pencil and paper RPG whose focus wasn't on realistic architecture.

It featured many new types of enemy (all monsters, no NPCs), with different abilities and stats, some of which were very tough, like bosses, though all using the stock vanilla Morrowind meshes. It was an interesting change of pace. The levels are absolutely packed with monsters, of all kinds, from kwama workers to skeletons to dwemer centurions and so on and so on. There is also no theme or unifying design to the levels, as all types of containers and furniture appeared side by side together (i.e. a dunmer chest, next to a mine cart, next to a dwemer cabinet, next to an upper class bed, etc.) This random assortment also extended to the architecture itself, as the levels I explored were comprised of Telvanni mushroom interiors, Redoran interiors, and Daedric shrine interiors, though the architecture was consistent within a single level (no mix and match on a single level, in other words).

I worked my way through the first 6 levels of the dungeon, having to exit after every two levels to unload my loot. But the first time I went out and came back, I was very disappointed to find that all the monsters had respawned already. I hacked my way through to the next level doors quickly that time, but the next time I headed out to unload, I stopped by the spellmaker and made a few new spells. I made three new damage spells: absorb health, shock damage, and poison, all between 100-150 damage points over 5-10 seconds, and having the widest possible range (50...feet? Yards? Meters? I'll just say "units"). I also made a 50-unit-wide soul trap spell, and picked up a bunch of empty soul gems that had been gathering dust in one of my bases. The spells worked beautifully, taking out entire roomfuls of monsters at once, and filling up about a dozen soul gems per fight.

It was definitely useful for leveling up my enchanting, as I used the filled gems to recharge some of my magic items I had used in the first couple of levels before I made the spells. But even though these were perfectly valid spells that anyone can make in the vanilla game, they felt a little too overpowered, and removed the challenge from the dungeon, so I probably shouldn't have made them. They'd certainly be far too powerful for a normal Morrowind dungeon or typical encounter, considering how sparsely populated and spread out the NPCs are in them, where you rarely ever fight more than 1 or 2 enemies at a time. The most powerful thing about these wide-range spells is that they don't even need to hit an enemy directly -- I can cast it against a wall or the floor in the middle of a room, and it affects everything within the 50-unit radius. These spells are like going into a bandit lair and just tossing grenades inside, and then going in to loot the bodies. I don't recommend it, as it'll take away the fun. I might still keep the wide-range absorb health spell in reserve for emergencies if I get ganked by a crowd of mobs, because the more mobs that are attacking me, the more health I'm leeching into myself.

The way the House of Madness dungeon is set up, from what I've determined so far, is that level 1 has a door to level 2 and a trapdoor to level 10. I haven't gone down to level 10, but I expect that there's another trapdoor on level 10 leading to level 20, and so on. From what the readme file says, there are also some kind of activators on every 10th level, so you can choose to teleport from the surface directly to any of the levels you flip that switch for, once you've been down there.

Qwert also made another 100-level dungeon called The Undead Dungeons near Seyda Neen. But those turn out to be the smaller of Qwert's dungeons, as it turns out s/he also created The House of 6 Pains, which is 500 levels deep, and The Dwemer Graveyard, a dwarven ruin that's 1000 levels deep!! Unbelievable! And I thought the dungeons in the Oblivion mod The Lost Spires were huge! Why haven't I ever seen a tool like GenMod for Oblivion?

Better Bodies robe fix

So, I never did figure out how to convert the BB dresses and gowns into proper robes. The game just silently exited whenever I tried to run my mod that changed them from "shirts" to "robes". I tried renaming the body parts in NIFskope, and of course I had to make new "body parts" for the NIFs in the construction set, but it wouldn't work, and I don't know why.

On the other hand, I think I might have a faint idea of why these gowns weren't defined as robes in the first place. From some comments that I managed to find after scrounging through ancient search results, it appears that robes, both vanilla and BB, are made to replace the entire upper body (and possibly lower body as well), and for some reason it's not practical to make a robe with a low neckline or bare shoulders, so they had to be defined as shirts.

So, since I really wanted to use these clothes, and using them meant I lost several enchanting slots due to clothing overlapping or covering up what I don't want covered up, or not covering up what I do want covered up, I just made special copies of these gowns in the construction set with multiple enchants built into them -- the same enchantments I purchased or would have purchased on multiple items under normal circumstances.

An effect of this is that those glasses (the ones I hadn't been using because they made my neck disappear) worked properly. Apparantly it was another one of those cover/not cover conflicts with my vanilla attire.