Fire Fields

[Dunk]

Fire fields seem to be far more powerful than I remember. I can't even approach Aram Dol's lair in Silver Seed without 4 of my party members dying.

I started Silver Seed as level 6-7 characters, from Moonshade. So, my party isn't weak. I even have Boydon with me.

You can hug the right wall to avoid the one at the bottom of the stairs, but the one at the corner seems unavoidable, and rips my party to shreds.

I don't see anything in online walkthroughs that give a way to avoid the fields, one barely mentions them at all, just stating, "fire fields appear at the corner". A video walkthrough shows the party breezing right through it with little to no damage.

I'm using the latest snapshot from 8 Feb 2018.

[Dunk]

Sorry, 4 Feb.

[Gotcha!]

I can't remember last time I played vanilla (over 15 years ago, at least), but I think you could be right, although fire fields were always a pain in the rear.

That Aram Dol encounter is very annoying; for me it's the hardest fight in Serpent Isle. If the fire fields don't kill you, Aram Dol will usually come peeking around the corner to finish the job.
I dunno why, but liches seem a lot more powerful in Exult. It's like they use their death spell all the time, completely ignoring their other spells.

To make matters worse: Liches are often locked up behind a door, but in Exult they can just teleport to you whenever. I could swear they did not do this in vanilla. They needed a valid path to you before they'd teleport.

The cube generator's puzzle is definitely a lot harder in vanilla. I had no problems completing that puzzle in the past, but in Exult I usually just enable the hack mover and double-click the cube. I can't survive the traps in there.

So, yeah, there's definitely still room for improvement in Exult.

[monotremata]

Have you ever fought a lich in AD&D or even Baldur's Gate??? Probably the most frustrating enemy you will ever encounter. The whole Time Stop spell they can do is usually enough to render your entire party dead when he's done with you.

[Knight Captain]

Exult handles items in inventory differently in a few spots. Most are related to spells without a container other than the NPC itself.

Cantra's spell battle against Batlin, she seems to use weaker spells like Poison when she has Dragon's Breath. Batln seems to go right to Swordstrike.
Aram-Dol may be another case of this.
Elissa (who plot-wise you don't battle) does this as well, if I remember right.
Olin should have two books on him when he dies post-Banes, but they don't typically appear on his corpse because there is no container on him, and his hands are full.

This is somewhat similar to code I wrote to allow items and containers to be returned back to the Acatar and NPCs in proper order.

[Gotcha!]

@Monotremata:
Yeap, played the BG games.
They're supposed to be incredibly dangerous, absolutely. But in vanilla they would be way less dangerous due to them also using sleep, curse, poison etc. on you, while in Exult they seem to instantly use the I.W.I.N. button, aka the Death spell, in my experience.

[monotremata]

Its been ages since I did the Lich encounter in vanilla. I don't remember having much trouble with it in Exult though, my last run through was about 8 years or so ago though, and that was the first time I actually finished the game. Id have to start over to go through it again, my saved game is at the very end of the game in Exult (and go figure I cant remember what the hell to do without looking through the hint book anyways).

I definitely don't remember it being anything as horrifying as fighting the lich Kangaxx you fight in BG2. Not only does he have a regeneration ring on that rapidly heals him, he constantly casts Time Stop freezing everybody and just wailing away, unless the AI gets stuck in a loop of repeatedly casting it so you never get to do anything but watch the Time Stop casting animation. Not to mention he can use pretty much any mage spell in the game. Once you finally kill him, he turns into a demilich thats even worse. Even though he's got no body now, he still somehow has the ring of regeneration on, you have to have a minimum of a +4 weapon to hit him and he's got something like a 90% resistance to physical damage on top of his magic resistance (he's completely immune to all spells)! He has a tendency to try to cast Imprisonment all the time too, which means if you're hit, that character is gone until someone can cast Freedom on the spot where they vanished. I don't know how I ever managed to get to the end of that game!

[Dale]

Not that this is really on topics, but I most definitely cheesed my way through all the lich fights in BG2. In fact, that whole game required a lot of cheap save and reloads.

[monotremata]

Hahaha thats what they wanted you to do. A bunch of people were complaining about it on the Beamdog forums, because certain encounters ruin their chances of playing a "no reload" game. We had to remind them, 'um thats how AD&D 2E worked, it was brutal'.. God forbid they ever have to play something like an old Ultima and run into a group of like 15 trolls or ettins at once hehe.

[Dunk]

Ironically, once I gave up trying to navigate the fire fields and just teleported to the other side to fight the lich, I chopped him down in 5 seconds.

But really, the hit point losses seem quicker (like 3 or 4 per second) and more powerful in the fire fields.