[Release] The Mine of Malan Vael

[leewroy]

Just finished the module now. I have to say thanks, it was an awesome game! My congratulations. Goes straight to my top 3 modules!

[eLPuSHeR]

I have just finished this awesome module. My party was made by two fighters and two mages (Earth and Ice). It took me about three retries before killing the nasty at the end (Man those bees are a real PITA). Thanks Phitt. I want to say that I agree with everyone else here: Everything in this mod is top-notch. The custom tileset is gorgeous. Maps are cool and challenging. Puzzles are innovative but not impossible. So far, this is the best mod I have played.

I am looking forward to see any new content from you. Congratulations on a nicely done mod. Two thumbs up.

[h0munkulus]

I also wanted to thank you for this amazing dungeon.

Here are my statistics if you are interested:

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FINAL PLAY STATISTICS
Play time: 4:14:38
Monsters Killed: 142
Items Found: 330
Secrets Found: 9/15
Treasures Found: 0/0
Toorum's Notes Found: 0/0
Skulls found: 3
Iron Doors Opened: 0/0
Tiles Moved: 6664
Times Fallen Into Pits: 7
Melee Attacks Performed: 608
Ranged Attacks Performed: 93
Unarmed Attacks Performed: 480
Spells cast: 169
Potions Mixed: 13

Party finished at level 8, about 2/3 to level 9.

Some small gameplay feedback:

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Again this dungeon was almost perfect, fantastic quality. Especially the puzzles were amazing, very innovative, hard but never unfair. The combat was mostly very fun and challenging. The boss fight was fantastic and the hives a great idea. The only thing I would have to criticize is that some of the ambushes did not work very well gameplay wise. I know you wanted to limit the hit and strafe tactic, but I think traping players between two high dps monsters is not the right way to do so. This only leads to a quickload everytime this happens, because the combat system is not balanced around living when being surrounded (front-row/brack-row system). I think the way you did it in the "arena-event" was a great approach. You had enough room to manouver and use tactics, but at the same time you could not make the fight trivial with strafe and hit because if you took to long to kill your enemies you would eventually be too heavily outnumbered.

Thank you for this amazing dungeon and I hope we will see more from you in the future!

[Cadius]

Hey, first post... registered after finishing this mod.

First of, I want to thank you. I currently live in China on business, and in the winter with the pollution in Beijing, being outside isn't much fun. I discovered Grimrock a week ago and compelted the main quest in a couple of days. I went browsing the steam workshop for mods and came across yours.

Living in China has one distinct gaming advantage- the internet is so slow and terrible for western sites, that it's just not worth looking up walkthroughs, so I'm proud to say I completed your mod entirely without a walkthrough.

There were a few points where I got frustrated and had to literally go panel by panel to make sure I'd not missed anything (which I always had), but ultimately, the game ran smoothly. All the puzzles were solved with just a little bit of foresight, and for the first time in years I actually had to make notes on paper to solve some of the puzzles!

I had great fun with it, and the entire experience came off feeling very professional. I hope you have a career in dev work ahead of you, because you belong there.

Cheers.

Edit: Just to add. I felt the ending of your mod was far more satisfying than the original games.

[Komag]

I love when folks take a little time and effort to sign up to say some intelligent nice words, makes modding more rewarding!

I had nothing to do with this mod but I still feel all proud and warm and fuzzy inside after reading that just because I know what it's like to put hundreds of hours into creating something and then sharing it with the public

[Phitt]

Indeed, thanks for taking the time to write this! I really appreciate it! And I'm also glad that you managed to finish the mod without looking at any hints or walkthroughs.

And of course thanks to everyone else as well!

@h0munkulus: I think as long as you are careful and have an 'exit strategy' you can beat the whole mod without reloading and without knowing what's ahead of you. Especially if you actually make use of the potions and bombs you find (something I almost never did in the original game, so I can't blame anyone who doesn't do it in my mod either). Of course you need to act quickly, but that's what I intended. Balancing combat so it's not too hard and not the boring hit-and-strafe either is pretty hard though, probably the biggest flaw the game has imo. Wish I could simply increase the speed of monsters and reduce their delay between actions to zero (which would make even single monsters much more dangerous), but unfortunately that's not possible.

[Komag]

But can't you? I've never messed with them, but what do these do?
movementCoolDown = 3,
coolDown = { 1, 3 },

[Phitt]

But can't you? I've never messed with them, but what do these do?
movementCoolDown = 3,
coolDown = { 1, 3 },

movementCoolDown is marked as TODO on the asset reference page (tried it anyway and it doesn't seem to do anything). coolDown is the delay between attacks, which doesn't really help unless you want a machine gun Uggardian. Sure, it's harder, but not really in a fun way. For animation speed there are only settings for turn and attack anims, but not for movement anims.

[Neikun]

I'm banging my head off the wall trying to balance starving party members, constant damage, and respawning enemies

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looking for the second key in the contaminated area.

I found the first one on the right hand side,
but I simply cannot find the other one.

Help?

As for speeding up monsters, you could probably increase the framerate of the animations and define new animation events for the modified animation files.

[Pecen]

Well, just finished final floor, and i must join to other players, its very nice mod with enjoyable gameplay, and minimum flaws (some places are slightly empty, ambushes sometimes dont work very well).. but thats just a little details.. so, thx for your work, and hope we see another mod soon, gl

If you are interested in some statistics:

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playtime 2:58 (but i have imported party, so most of battles was a quick case, and i get hint on 4x4 puzzle too)
monsters killed 166
items found 343
secrets 12/15 (missed gladius on l1, longbow on l2 and great axe on l4)
4 iron doors open a 3 skulls find