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Hello. After a little hiatus, I finally wrapped up my first real (i.e. post-release) playthrough of Telepath Tactics and wanted to put my final observations in one place. (And I'll say upfront that I was still playing version 1.037 when I finished, so it's possible that you've already resolved some of these issues.)

1. I found during the last battle that I could not cure the slowed status using caffeine pills: using the pills says that it cures the status, but the affected character's movement is still handicapped. What's more, since the game seems to think that the slowed status is no longer in effect, that character's movement never goes back to normal, even after 20+ turns. I'm attaching a screenshot and a log. (For what it's worth, I think the caffeine pills did work as advertised in the previous battle, but they failed to do the trick on two different occasions when I had characters that were slowed during the battle with Tarion.)

2. On a related note, consuming caffeine pills appears to increase dodge by 4% and not 10% as it's described in the inventory menu.

3. I think the terror attack is too overpowered. Its range and the sheer number of status effects it can produce make it extremely annoying to deal with, all the more so since at least 1 out of every 3 times it's used on one of my characters, that character is stunned. Limiting how many effects can result from a single attack or even just reducing the attack's range would, in my opinion, make it possible to strategize against.

4. I was a little disappointed by the engineer class overall and in particular by the perks that come with its promotion to machinist. I found that the process of leveling up Teresa was kind of a tedious chore anyhow, and to only get a health and energy increase upon reaching level 20, I was definitely underwhelmed. As for the class in general, I guess I was expecting my engineer to acquire some skills that involved working with metal; after all, it is the next logical step after building wooden barricades and bridges, and particularly since Sabrina's rope trap gets upgraded to a metal one, I was hoping for something similar with Teresa. Those are my two cents, anyway.

5. I kind of hate to suggest this as it absolutely came in handy for me, but I think the stat improvement for the assassin class could use just a little tweaking: by the end of the game, Tremolo had become a level 6 whisper and his dodge at that point was 101%! Maybe the likelihood of dodge going up with every level should be just a tad lower or, if dodge is increased upon promotion (I don't remember offhand if it is), perhaps it should be by a smaller amount.

6. Tarion is not levitating during the final battle and thus cannot move from his square surrounded by lava.

7. Eating apples occasionally replenishes energy instead of health. I have not found any rhyme or reason as to when one is increased instead of the other.

8. Harriet doesn't earn any experience for killing Malcolm Eichan. She also doesn't auto-loot any of his gear, although that's more reasonable under the circumstances since she just turns around and leaves after the battle.

9. It seems that armor rend never softens the target, even though there's supposed to be a base 50% chance of it with each use of the attack.

10. This last one might be a little iffy but I'll throw it out there anyway: should there be a backstab bonus when using powder bolt? The attack isn't all that useful against units generally, but when facing spirits and golems, the powder bolt is after all more effective than the standard crossbow attack is. In those situations, I found myself wishing that Lakshmi would get a bonus when attacking her enemies from behind.

That about sums it up. Looking forward to playing some mods for this thing at some point! :)

-TM

Ask and ye shall receive... I couldn't reproduce the exact same problem that I had last night, but it's the same premise: Harynx is the character that I'm mousing over, but she has Gavrielle's face tile and Sabrina's character portrait in the details screen.

You can also see that in trying to reproduce the conditions from last night, I ended up with multiple copies of Sabrina's face in my reserve section as a result of swapping characters in and out of it.

Hello. From reading your update reports, it looks like you've been having some issues with the wrong character portraits coming up during deployment. I'm running into that in version 1.035: at the moment, I am lining up for the battle with Cloch and I have Meridian up in the front row (I know that it's her because her name comes up when I mouse over her), but she has Siripent's face on her tile and when I right-click his image, Meridian's stats come up but with Sabrina's picture in the corner. I'm attaching screenshots.

Thank you for resolving the infinite loop issue in the bridge mission. I was able to finish that mission to my satisfaction the other day. At one point along the way, I actually had three enemy characters get caught by the exploding charges, which prompted the Ebon mentalists to try to telekinetically pull their comrades out of the water to no avail. (You can see this yourself in the enclosed screenshot.) Perhaps if bad guys do end up falling through the bridge when the bomb goes off, can they at least be able to swim out of the water afterwards?

In the next mission, I've attempted to get the loot that the Coria Dog Dastard is carrying, but alas, the battle ends as soon as you kill him. (I was hoping to avoid this by keeping another bad guy alive to the end of the mission, but that didn't work out either.) What are your thoughts about that?

This one seems to be a real doozie. I tried a couple more times, but even tapping L didn't give me a log file; all that it gave me was a Windows error message. I'm attaching a screenshot of one of my hangups, but it's pretty much what you already guessed: I just have some character (in this case, Meridian) a few spaces to the right of the cliff that Ebon is perched on. I could give you the code of the error message, on the off chance that that's helpful?

Well, as of version 0.94, I'm still running into that freezing bug in the bridge mission; and unfortunately, this last time, the game didn't seem to produce a log when it went south. :-/ In case it matters, I'm guessing that Ebon Raban is trying to charge his target when he's attempting to make his move (which is when the game's been freezing), but since there's still water separating them, he won't be able to reach them. I've seen those "can't reach target" messages in earlier playthroughs, but they haven't caused the game to hang up before.

This last observation isn't exactly a bug, but it's been happening pretty consistently to me since I started replaying this mission: almost every time that the Ebon engineer places his charges on the bridge, another Ebon character has been caught in the blast. It's usually a cavalier that attacks the charges before a mentalist or crossbowman has a chance to finish them off, although this last time, it was actually another mentalist who hadn't taken his turn before a different mentalist used gravity spike on the charges. And while the cavalier/mentalist who's caught in the blast has always survived the explosion, he's never able to swim out of the water after falling in, regardless of how much energy he has. While this is kind of amusing to watch and it's sort of doing the player a favor, it obviously isn't very realistic that the bad guys would so blatantly damage their own forces; but I don't know how much of a priority realism is for you at this point, on the eve of the release. Those are just my two cents.

Oh, right. I think this is the most recent one. (The timestamp looks about right, at least.) Good luck!

Me again! Sorry to post again so soon. I'm still playing version 0.92. I've finished several more missions, but now I've noticed that the game hangs up during the bridge battle whenever Ebon Raban is about to move. This has happened twice now, so it appears to be a pattern.

Fantastic. Thank you! I just finished the mission, so all is right with the world again.

Hello again. I'm running into a somewhat depressing bug in the campaign right now. During the mission where Sabrina is helping Emma escape from the fortress, when the bridge is supposed to be lowered, nothing actually happens: when you click after the guard finishes his dialogue, you hear the sound of splashing water but the dialogue box doesn't go away; when you click again, the dialogue box disappears but there's no stone bridge to be seen, and after that, it's pretty much impossible to select your characters and you have to abandon the mission. I've attempted this mission at least three times with version 0.456 and once more with version 0.899 and the outcome has been the same every time. Can you help? I'd like to see more of the completed game!

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Hello again! I just finished playing the campaign all the way through for the first time and I took some notes as I went. Unfortunately, I also updated the game as I progressed and as updates were released, so some of the things closer to the beginning may have already been addressed. With that disclaimer in mind, here's the list of bugs and other observations that I had, roughly in the order that I noticed them:

1. Killing any character that has a death monologue doesn't seem to yield any experience. I noticed this first with Zash and Red, but the pattern held for any character that says something when you defeat them in gameplay, including Umber Gnawbone, who of course doesn't actually die.

2. I noticed a typo in the dialogue leading up to the mission where you free Meridian: "Is that where's they're keeping her..."

3. I found a couple more typos during the mission where Emma is escaping from Bloodbeard's fortress: before you start playing, Sabrina says, "If Emma trying fight her way out..." and when Gulch arrives during the mission itself, he says "... or is the fortress is being attacked?!"

4. Also, if you manage to defeat Gulch or Fera during that mission, neither one of them has a "death" monologue. (At least not with the version I was playing at the time.)

5. Some item drops don't occur on the spot where the target actually died but might be a space or two away - which can be problematic if you're trying to strategize how to retrieve items before the enemy can.

6. Moving characters across bridges can be glitchy: the highlighted path showing where the selected character would move often isn't visible but instead appears to be behind the bridge tiles.

7. Dropping an apple and then picking it up again during the apple-picking mission counts towards your eleven apples needed to finish the mission. (So in principle, you could probably complete the mission by dropping and retrieving one apple over and over again.)

8. If you chose not to speak to Lakshmi at the camp earlier in the game, then you have to listen to cricket noise throughout the battle with the hill bandits: after Emma first awakes from her nightmare, Lakshmi doesn't come in to cheer her up, and without that cutscene, it seems like the cricket noise is never terminated.

9. Occasionally, when your weapon breaks, your turn doesn't end and you may even be able to attack again: sometimes, you are not allowed to access your inventory after attacking, like normal for bowmen and cavaliers, but from time to time, you can equip a new weapon and use it to attack a second time. Even if you can't equip a new weapon, you can very often continue to move that character, even if they're a class that ordinarily can't do anything after attacking.

10. Another typo: the words "... psy pefense..." appear in the description of the power orb in your inventory.

11. Standing on the far end of a bridge may cause an enemy not to attack you if he is not also on the bridge; similarly, you may not be able to use shield effects on allies unless they're on the same bridge as you. I noticed this problem several times throughout the game (the hill bandit mission is particularly problematic), but I observed it with the most detail during the mission near the end of the game where you're gaining entry to the mines: there was a bronze golem on the stone bridge just in front of Sabrina and when the golem attacked her on his turn, she didn't counterattack. She also couldn't attack him on her next turn until she moved onto the bridge herself.

12. During the mission where you first encounter the Ebon Riders, characters can occasionally pass through the top spiked barricade on the bridge as if it were an empty space.

13. I've noticed that promoted characters - of all of the classes that I've seen so far and regardless of whether they're friend or foe - turn purple during their animations.

14. Items are sometimes duplicated in my inventory. I have had multiple grapple chains in earlier games, and in this playthrough, I ended up with several power orbs.

15. Leveling up Teresa can be challenging since there is no way to replace her weapon in the game (barring random drops in the missions where those occur, anyway): even though you primarily gain experience with her by building things, it seems like you don't actually obtain that experience until she attacks something, meaning that you only have 45 opportunities (I think) for her to actually level before her weapon breaks. It would be good if you can buy a new oversized wrench in Coria, or at least from Sarn Kamina. (Or perhaps have a guaranteed one in the crypt along with the golem parts?)

16. During the tavern fight in Coria, I had a character who couldn't walk through the righthand door of the double doors on the balcony; specifically, I think it was Sabrina, who was standing in the square above the righthand door and could only enter the balcony by walking around and through the door on the left.

17. Just before the next mission, Sabrina's portrait is up instead of Emma's when the latter starts addressing the roomful of thieves.

18. When fighting my way into the mines, I ran into some problems with enemy characters backstabbing my tent. It doesn't seem like this should be possible.

19. During the same mission, the game also periodically froze on me when enemies wandered into traps. These could be traps that were placed by me or the ones that were already there at the start of the mission.

20. Dodge -5 isn't indicated in the description for plated boots, even though equipping them appears to have that effect.

21. When you unequip an item - whether it's a weapon or a piece of armor - a "Strength -5" message flashes every time; thankfully, the character's strength doesn't actually decrease by 5.

22. Moving items around in your inventory is kind of clunky. It wasn't so problematic at first, but later in the game when you're likely to have a lot more items, I found that I really needed to organize my stuff to keep track of who had what and the process of organizing was difficult. I would love to be able to click and drag items instead of "dropping" them and giving them back to that character (if I wanted to keep all of their bandages together, for instance).

23. Characters' faces - especially those of shadowlings - can obstruct dialogue boxes and even block some of the words.

24. When the epilogue was playing at the end of the game, I saw what happened both if Sarn Kamina survived and if she had died. (Sarn Kamina had, in fact, survived.)

I think that's everything. It was a fun campaign! I'm looking forward to seeing how the end of the game looks with the rest of the cutscenes and so forth in place.

Peace out,
-TM

Ahhh, perhaps that's the reason Meridian hasn't been a playable character for me in this game: this time around, I decided to try winning the rescue mission by defeating all of the onscreen enemies, so I never actually did free Meridian from her cell and transport her to the escape point. And it actually hadn't occurred to me to try giving a kite shield to Scarlet, but it makes sense that only spearmen and cavaliers can use it.

I'll let you know if I notice anything else when I go back to playing.

Hello. I've been playing the most recent version, 0.455.531, quite a bit and have a few comments. The most pressing concern for me right now is that I can't play any more of the game as soon as one of my characters advances to level 20: I continually get the "Promotion!" dialogue box, but none of the character-specific information populates. I keep seeing the box with "null" and "0" instead of the character's name and class, respectively, and if I click to make it go away enough times, the game eventually freezes. It also looks like there are fireworks going off in the top-left corner of the screen, for some reason.

Let's see. This isn't so much of a bug as just a problem if you're trying to buff Scarlet's stats: it doesn't look like you can buy new lances for her until you reach Coria, which basically means that I couldn't use her in any battles for a good chunk of the middle of the game. Not a huge deal for me, as I had other characters that I was more interested in playing, but it could be frustrating on later runthroughs.

Also not a bug, but a comment about leveling Emma and Sabrina: at this point in my game, Emma's counter is 7 - and of course, it's basically impossible for her to counterattack seven times unless she gets a ranged attack later in the game - while Sabrina's counter (at just a slightly lower level) is still 1. It'd be nice to have Sabrina fight back more than one time when attacked during an enemy's turn, considering I think she is level 12 now and Emma's counter was 2 when she advanced to level 3. Is the way that characters level in TT entirely random (new attacks aside), or is there something that I'm missing?

And on using the rapier: when I have tried using the thrust attack to do some initial damage to a unit who counterattacks, I've found that my character will also counterattack, ending the turn. The end result is probably not so different from my original goal, except that at this point, that character with the rapier is also unable to counterattack on the enemy's turn if their own counter is too low. (Perhaps this is where a counter of 7 might make some sense, as I think about it...)

Another item question: should swordsmen be able to use the kite shield? I tried giving it to Emma and she was unable to equip it.

Ah yes. And I wasn't able to complete the first mission in the Coria Dogs' hideout unless I killed the bartender, which of course got me some demerits and made me feel a little guilty. :) I tried pulling the lever in the lower-right corner and putting different players (including Emma) on the square leading down to the basement, but nothing short of murdering the civilian did the trick.

On earlier versions, I was able to begin playing the black spriggat character (I forget her name now) following her rescue mission, but on this version, I haven't been able to and I actually didn't have the option of chatting with her at the camp afterwards, either. Similarly, the cutscene implies that the cryokineticist and engineer that you meet will be joining your party after they've been reunited with Lord Dakarai, but I haven't been able to play either of them since the mission where Emma's escaping Bloodbeard's stronghold.

I've also seen a handful of typos in the game, but unfortunately, I wasn't writing any of them down while I was playing. I do remember seeing "litle" in the pre-battle dialogue of the Coria Dogs boss fight, and I think I saw a typo in the item menu for the steel spear. Sorry I can't be more specific, but if I see any more, I'll be sure to keep tabs on them.

Just a few last points: for players who are as money-oriented as I am, seeing the amount of gold you've collected during a battle would be a fun thing to have in the end-battle statistics - and much more informative to my mind than the number of items collected, for instance. It would also be nice to be able to check how much money the party has from somewhere inside the menu; as it is, I don't really know how rich or poor I am until I actually find myself in a shop. And lastly, I find it very frustrating when enemies pick up sacks of aura that are dropped by other fallen enemies: even though it looks as if that enemy is gaining the gold in the sack, it isn't actually added to their inventory and it is thus effectively gone from the game. If it's too difficult to have an enemy already carrying 25 gold gain 50 more gold from a sack that he picks up, then perhaps there's a way to stop enemies from picking up drops? (Of course, it's possible that you designed the game this way deliberately, but I'd be surprised if you're that sadistic!) :P

I think that's everything I've noticed. It's been really fun playing this version, as there's a LOT of new content since the last time I played back in September. I look forward to seeing even more!

Peace out,
Tunnel-Master

[Edit: Oops! Sorry, I somehow ended up modifying this post instead of replying; I've restored it now. My bad!]

Hello. Just a couple of things about version 0.455.430. First of all, it appears that if you convince Scarlet or Lakshmi to join you during the caravan mission and subsequently lose the battle and retry, you will still have Scarlet/Lakshmi on your team in addition to the Scarlet/Lakshmi in the caravan guards. But even though it's possible to have two Scarlets and two Lakshmis by doing this, it doesn't seem possible to get past the load screen at the end of that mission.

Also, in the little shop section following the caravan mission, I kept getting stuck if I bought anything or if I had Emma look at her inventory.

Hello. I downloaded 0.455.376 a couple of days ago, but sadly, whenever I reach the part where Lakshmi says, "I bet that depot is filled with supplies," the game hangs and I can't continue my turn. It's acting as if it isn't hearing my mouse clicks; I try clicking in the dialogue box to close it, but nothing happens.

EDIT: Sorry, that could have been clearer. The mission where the hangup occurs is the one in which you retake the weapons depot, but that was probably self-evident to you.