New Quest: Malice Immortal

[myrddin]

Another new quest an a new (and very large) map, featuring quest encounters, scroll instructions, and quest music (drumbeat). Please download both this zip and the one in the following post. The first zip contains the first half of the quest instructions and the file for unmodded LOMSE.
The second zip contains the second half of the instructions and the file for the GS5 mod.

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[myrddin]

Here is the second zip file, and some hints:

-While there are multiple possible ways of escaping from Karnog, the best (by far) is by defeating the Soulkeeper.
-All other faiths are devoted to one another and loath Death (your faction). Do not go into enemy territory unless you can defend yourself.
-All other faiths have multiple lords, including one that guards the capital.
-The life queen is immensely powerful and not to be underestimated.
-Your main shade is already wounded. If he dies, you lose. Use parrying or whatever it takes to reach the Soulkeeper battle with minimal losses, and do not use your leader to charge in this battle.
-Find a way to get a body as soon as you escape from Karnog.

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[Boaster]

Sounds like a lot of fun. I'll have to try it.

How do you play it?

[orzie]

I love the artwork for this quest, can't wait for a link to a quest file.

[myrddin]

Thanks, and sorry if I did not explain this well enough: the quest files are LOMSE savegames located in the rar files (they are too large to upload unzipped). The first rar has a file called MI, for the unmodded version, the second has an MIGS5, which is the savegame for the gs5 version. Just put the proper file in your savegame folder and load the game.

I hope you all like it, and please give me any feedback, as well as reports for any bugs or issues (I know there are some, but I believe they are fairly minor) so I can fix them (if possible).

[orzie]

It's looking cool

And here the first bugreport comes - when you reload during the game (e.g. you have lost the battle and press Last Save) and press quest scroll, which annoys again with its pumping sound, and then press OK to close the scroll, the game crashes.

[myrddin]

I've looked into this; the bad news is that I can't seem to fix it without removing the scroll and changing the win/loss cinematics to the regular ones (they are both controlled by one little hex value). The good news is that it is sporadic, i.e. most of the time it works fine, but the occasional error can be avoided by using lastsave (or saving often, which I do anyway). Oddly, I think it may be affected by geographical location on the map; if it does not work one time, simply wait a turn and move your party to another area before trying again. And save often.

Even so, if you prefer it without, I have attached a revision with this aspect removed (no quest scroll or quest cinematics).

One other "bug" that I noticed is that the game will crash if a marauder shade party enters the black region to fight with your party on the first turn. This is due to the inability of the game to generate a terrain-based battle map where part of the terrain is void.

Let me know if there are any other issues.

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[orzie]

In the last version of quest every special encounter computer player meets is displayed to me

Also, I've defeated the arch demon (by any means necessary...) and nothing happened - I still can't go through the village! You said something about different ways to escape...

[myrddin]

Not sure what you mean by the special encounters being displayed (especially if you can't get past the village)...I have not had that problem. Also, as far as the village, it should let you out after you conquer it, even though you do not own it (so it auto-kicks your guys out if you try to go back in). It can be conquered on turn 4, then I can move my party out to the left.
It seems I am not having either of these problems. I thought it might have been that I had an old GS5, but I just downloaded the latest on mantera.xorgate.org, and I still didn't have any problems.

If you want, go ahead and upload your current sav (in zip/rar format) and I'll take a look at it. It's possible that your computer/OS might be making a difference, but this might help me tell.

[orzie]

Nov 21, 2012 16:15:28 GMT -6 myrddin said:

Not sure what you mean by the special encounters being displayed (especially if you can't get past the village)...I have not had that problem. Also, as far as the village, it should let you out after you conquer it, even though you do not own it (so it auto-kicks your guys out if you try to go back in). It can be conquered on turn 4, then I can move my party out to the left.
It seems I am not having either of these problems. I thought it might have been that I had an old GS5, but I just downloaded the latest on mantera.xorgate.org, and I still didn't have any problems.

If you want, go ahead and upload your current sav (in zip/rar format) and I'll take a look at it. It's possible that your computer/OS might be making a difference, but this might help me tell.

Here comes the savegame.

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[myrddin]

Ah, very interesting.

I am pleased to announce that I have solved the problem.

Also pleased to announce that there isn't really a problem.

I couldn't quite picture what you were talking about until I replaced the regular GS5 mpq with the mpq for your quest. That is what is causing the encounter problems. Switch back and they will disappear.

Based on this info, it is very likely that your mpq, as it currently stands, may have problems of this sort when dealing with standard encounters. It seems that the data you have added are interfering with them.

As for getting past the village, since you have already been kicked out of the village the first time, try this: move each death shade into the village one at a time, then move it out to freedom. This should work.

One final issue that I have discovered is that occasionally your death party will want to move (by itself) to the death mage tower. Just double-click a few times in a different area at the end of your turn, this usually solves it.

[orzie]

Oh, crap. I hoped my mpq does not affect the game at all.
You know, I play the quest with already updated mpq and I meet the same problems. But I will try to replay it from the beginning using the way you told, cause it was started when I used my mpq, that's true. That tough fight again

[myrddin]

I guarantee 99% that switching to an unmodded (by anyone but Boaster) GS5 will solve the problem of enemy encounters being displayed.

Also, one thing I forgot to mention in the one-by-one moving shades past the village is that all but the last shade may pass this way. In your save, I notice that Valdenwraeth is the last shade. Simply move him first through the village, and do so with the other shades until only the most injured one is left behind.

This should work, and if not, here is your savegame with this task completed (all shades but one are past the village.) So either way, there should be no need to redo the battle.

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[orzie]

Cool, thank you much. Yeah, I've already discovered that unmodded GS.MPQ solves this problem allowing to destroy the village.

[orzie]

Also, the good way to slip through the village without leaving any shades behind:
Just need to send them to the village and deselect the party; the party will stay in the village, not being kicked out. The party will be free to move on the next selection.

[orzie]

Unfortunately, hex-edited stats disappear in the mod after the first encounter. So that I consider hexed quests only a feature for unmodded LOMSE: all the shades return their stats to 10 attack 10 defence, which don't help against demons so much when parrying.

[myrddin]

Unfortunately, hex-edited stats disappear in the mod after the first encounter.

Not exactly. As you proceed through the quest, you will find that the lords of other faiths have been permanently improved. These shades, in fact, were not hex-edited. The reason that they begin with unusual combat stats is that, IIRC, both versions of this quest were originally created in unmodded LOMSE. And the reason for this is that, at the time I began making this quest, I had to have the game choose a particular configuration out of the random possibilities, in order to make the Arch Demon work. (And it was a rare configuration at that, such as when I achieved it, I did not want to have to do it again for the GS mod.) At this point I could do it manually, but it is a minor enough issue, IMO, that I will not.

So I hope this is little more than a minor inconvenience, and it is such a thing as would happen if you loaded an unmodded savegame with modded LOMSE. The rest of the game should play normally.

By the way, if you wish to preserve your shades' holdover stats until the Arch Demon encounter, there are creative ways to do that.