Grimrock

I'm going to start over and create my own character, however I have a few questions;

1) If I play old-school mode, does the pits correlate on the level below with the level above in regards to where they are located. What I mean by this is if I fall in a pit on level 3 and map it out, then take the stairs on level 3 down to level 4, will the stairs be where they should be in correlation to where the pits are? It looks like they do on the auto-map, but it's difficult to tell. I can't think of a way to get a correct map drawn out without using pits and stairs as reference.

EDIT: Regarding "old-school", it's actually tremendously fun! I highly recommend it if you have graph paper lying about. Reminds me of dnd. Only trouble is I started at the bottom middle of the page and I'm going off the map so I have to remake my map, but otherwise, it's good so far.

2) Do you recommend old-school mode? Seems like it could really be fun, but also tedious.

3) Do the different races affect game-play other than getting more or less skill points and a higher max-cap on stats?

4) Is there a big difference between Easy, Normal, and Hard modes? In my current game, I'm playing Normal and it's challenging, but fun. I imagine Hard might just irritate me, and I don't want to game to be too easy so I'll probably just stick with normal.

5) In regards to difficulty, do the monsters in Hard give more experience or the same? How about Easy, do they give less?

Thanks for any replies ahead of time.

Based on everything I've been reading over the past day and from my game-play experience, I'm going to try two mages in the back, one ice to freeze my enemies, the other air so I can cast invisibility. I'm giving each of them the Skilled and Strong Mind traits, as the added Energy from Strong Mind eclipses that of Aura later in the game. In the front, I decided to go with two rogues using missile weapons. They will be using Evasion and Skilled traits.

My plan is for the mages to enchant the rogues arrows and, according to weapon data from the Legend of Grimrock Wikia, they should do more damage (and faster) than any sword until the deeper dungeons, and once I do reach the deeper dungeons, I should be firing two-arrows per shot by then doing vastly superior damage to any melee counterpart. In addition, everything I've read points to Protection being poorly balanced in this game when compared to evasion; I find this a bit disappointing as I love to play a good melee character, but I'm also a min/maxer rules lawyer type, so I'll go with what works best in the end. Anyhow, this sound like an enjoyable team so far. I just have to decide on race and I'm good to go! Wish me luck!

Taem wrote:1) If I play old-school mode, does the pits correlate on the level below with the level above in regards to where they are located. What I mean by this is if I fall in a pit on level 3 and map it out, then take the stairs on level 3 down to level 4, will the stairs be where they should be in correlation to where the pits are? It looks like they do on the auto-map, but it's difficult to tell. I can't think of a way to get a correct map drawn out without using pits and stairs as reference.

EDIT: Regarding "old-school", it's actually tremendously fun! I highly recommend it if you have graph paper lying about. Reminds me of dnd. Only trouble is I started at the bottom middle of the page and I'm going off the map so I have to remake my map, but otherwise, it's good so far.

Aye things correlate, otherwise making self-drawn maps would be a pain in the a..

Oh the "where to start drawing" thing is pretty much the same issue with all new self-drawn maps

Taem wrote:2) Do you recommend old-school mode? Seems like it could really be fun, but also tedious.

Old-school mode can be fun depending on the complexity of the map. LoG's main campaign is pretty fair here so after a few games you can run it virtually blind.

Now several custom dungeons might not be that forgiving or even correlative so you've been warned

Taem wrote:3) Do the different races affect game-play other than getting more or less skill points and a higher max-cap on stats?

The differences of races are in their starting stats (and those affected stats like health and energy), their starting skill points and the traits available to them.

Taem wrote:4) Is there a big difference between Easy, Normal, and Hard modes? In my current game, I'm playing Normal and it's challenging, but fun. I imagine Hard might just irritate me, and I don't want to game to be too easy so I'll probably just stick with normal.

The difficulty settings effects the monsters behavior. On easy they become slower, attack less/less accurate, do less damage and got fewer life too i think. On hard monsters become faster, attack more/more accurate and deal more damage.

Taem wrote:5) In regards to difficulty, do the monsters in Hard give more experience or the same? How about Easy, do they give less?

The experience gain per monster is not effected by game difficulty but by monster level. You can't tell the level of a monster before fighting it but you can afterwards. For example a regular spider gives 175 experience. Now when you kill a spider granting more experience like 225 you know it was a higher level then your regular crawlie.

Taem wrote:Based on everything I've been reading over the past day and from my game-play experience, I'm going to try two mages in the back, one ice to freeze my enemies, the other air so I can cast invisibility. I'm giving each of them the Skilled and Strong Mind traits, as the added Energy from Strong Mind eclipses that of Aura later in the game. In the front, I decided to go with two rogues using missile weapons. They will be using Evasion and Skilled traits.

My plan is for the mages to enchant the rogues arrows and, according to weapon data from the Legend of Grimrock Wikia, they should do more damage (and faster) than any sword until the deeper dungeons, and once I do reach the deeper dungeons, I should be firing two-arrows per shot by then doing vastly superior damage to any melee counterpart. In addition, everything I've read points to Protection being poorly balanced in this game when compared to evasion; I find this a bit disappointing as I love to play a good melee character, but I'm also a min/maxer rules lawyer type, so I'll go with what works best in the end. Anyhow, this sound like an enjoyable team so far. I just have to decide on race and I'm good to go! Wish me luck!

An interesting party combo; should be pretty entertaining.

One word of advice or two :
You prolly need to get used to the auto-pickup behavior once you start using enchanted arrows/bolts. The catch is upon hit an enchanted missile will become a regular arrow/bolt again. Thus a rogue holding i.e. frost arrows will not auto-pickup any of his spend arrows so you'd have to pick them up manually. Now to circumvent this you can set up your back-row mages to hold a single regular arrow/bolt and let them do the auto-pick of any spend missles.

Invisibility is good for sneaking around but once you attack anything it's gone!

Melee in LoG can be pretty entertaining. Nothing agains a beefy fighter clad all in heavy plate and dishing out 200+ damage per hit. In a crowd of monsters with all of them gnawing at your ankles he's prolly the one to last longest due to his Protection and higher health combo.

Dr.Disaster wrote:you can set up your back-row mages to hold a single regular arrow/bolt and let them do the auto-pick of any spend missles.

HA! I never thought of that trick, nice

No-one really confirmed this for you, so i'll state it explicitly

All pits line up perfectly. As do all stairs. Please note that the down stairs on one floor are on the exact same tile as the up stairs on the floor below.

have a look at Komag's "Legend of Grimrock - Remake" (http://www.nexusmods.com/grimrock/mods/230/?) in the dungeon editor and you will see this for yourself. Also, if you don't mind a tiny little bit of meta-game cheating. Have a look at the start location on the first level and write it down. Provided you map your dungeon correctly, you should be able to fit all levels onto the paper if you use the same starting point. Since all levels connect by stairs and pits, and all stairs and pit line up exactly


Edit: Only 4 months too late lol

Edit 2: on a grid that goes from (0,0) [top left] to (31,31) [bottom right], the starting location on level 1 is (2,8) on standard (x,y) coordinates

TSotP wrote:No-one really confirmed this for you, so i'll state it explicitly

All pits line up perfectly. As do all stairs. Please note that the down stairs on one floor are on the exact same tile as the up stairs on the floor below.

have a look at Komag's "Legend of Grimrock - Remake" (http://www.nexusmods.com/grimrock/mods/230/?) in the dungeon editor and you will see this for yourself. Also, if you don't mind a tiny little bit of meta-game cheating. Have a look at the start location on the first level and write it down. Provided you map your dungeon correctly, you should be able to fit all levels onto the paper if you use the same starting point. Since all levels connect by stairs and pits, and all stairs and pit line up exactly


Edit: Only 4 months too late lol

Edit 2: on a grid that goes from (0,0) [top left] to (31,31) [bottom right], the starting location on level 1 is (2,8) on standard (x,y) coordinates

Heh, 4 months late - and I think Dr.Disaster's post confirmed it before you. :p

I personally don't use maps at all when playing 'old school mode'. I had a lot of practice memorising mazes like this in Bloodwych. Incidentally, my mental 'map' isn't really like the kind of thing one draws on paper. I don't imaging a grid or distance or anything like that, but instead I just think about which way I should walk to get here I'm going. It's also similar to how I navigate in real life. When I'm going somewhere unfamiliar, I rarely know where I am or what's nearby but I usually know which way to go to get where I'm going. Am I weird?