Lancroft

Hello epic people working on the Classic Adventures TC..

I've been playing through your mod with great enthusiasm. The possibility of playing through an entirely new series of adventures as a normal person who isn't gifted with divine blood is really refreshing. You've effectively given us an entirely new Infinity Engine game for free.

What's more, the mod is challenging enough to give even a veteran Baldur's Gate player plenty of nasty surprises. Especially the Silver Princess quest is downright brutal. The traps here are instant party killers, the dungeon gives you hardly any chance to rest (more on this later) and it manages very well to make one realize again why even low-level enemies, such as Ogres, slimes and bandits, can feel so dangerous in a low-level PnP AD&D game. (Since I have only made it to Saltmarsh so far, I expect that later parts of the mod may be much harder than this dungeon, but by that point I expect my party to be more well-rounded and more able to deal with such challenges.)

By comparison, I found the Sunless Citadel to be a more forgiving place, and the possibility of bargaining with the kobolds really added to the immersion in this storyline.

Nevertheless I want to stress that I find it an incredible idea to have these recurring forks in the story, where you can choose which path you wish to follow to reach the next plot point. I'm currently at the pirate ship part of the Saltmarsh story and am already looking forward to my next playthrough, where I will follow a different path. This narrative structure allows for immense replayability, and that is exactly what most of the fans of the Infinity games will be looking for.

Needless to say, I would really like to help with playtesting this mod in order to help improve it. I always love doing multiple playthroughs of games, so I'd love to go through the mod with different characters, different storylines and different party compositions in order to hunt down bugs, report issues and give feedback on NPCs. I am currently only part of the way through my first complete playthrough, but here is a list of the issues and minor bugs I have found so far:

Asking Rurik to return to his shop before completing the Silver Princess or the Sunless Citadel does not make him reappear at his shop in Oakhurst as one would expect.

Instead, he goes to his shop in Saltmarsh. This makes it impossible to buy any equipment from him while trying to complete either dungeon.

Resting in the Silver Princess dungeon is impossible with the near-100% chance of monsters appearing.

This renders arcane spellcasters practically useless for the duration of this quest. Although I noticed this especially in the Silver Princess, I think it applies to many dungeons in the game.  Not so much a bug as a balancing issue; I feel it makes arcane spellcaster PCs and NPCs very unattractive in the early part of the game, when they still have very few spells and need to rest often. Perhaps it's true to the PnP mods, but I would rethink it for gameplay balance and fun.

Chaarna's voice set does not appear to work.

I guess this has been commented on before, and I understand that it is hard to find a good voice actress for her. It would help, however, if she just had some generic NPC soundset from IWD, for example.

Candella's voice set is far too loud.

I understand she is meant to be a bit of an airheaded loudmouth, but after she practically broke my headphones on a number of occasions I had to resort to turning all the voice sounds down, unfortunately rendering the other characters very difficult to hear.

Paraway's Wolf Charm can be used by Dirbert.

Map note on level 2 of the Sunless Citadel displays an enigmatic text.

The map note at the top of the tree that you can climb down in Sunless Citadel (Goblin leader's room) reads "To accomplish great things one must not only..."

Wall issues level 2 of Sunless Citadel.

This map was difficult to navigate. I was able to walk through walls in various places. The bridge(?) leading into southern caves is completely black.

Candella dialog launches repeatedly.

Candella dialog launches repeatedly during the Silver Princess dungeon, but does not proceed beyond the first talk. It mentions the death of your parents, an event which has gone unmentioned in your biography.

Paraway rushes ahead of the party and dies easily.

Paraway does not exactly make a good first impression. He is equipped in a hide armor, yet constantly rushes ahead of the party, usually arriving first at any melee fight. I suspect his kit grants him some kind of speed boost. Since his proficiencies and equipment make him a perfect character to keep behind your tanks (a safe position from which he could still be dealing damage with his spear), it would really help if he lost the speed boost. Either that, or he needs some better starting armor. Especially because you cannot equip him with gear from Rurik after you've accepted Rurik in your team.

What would be best, in my opinion, is if he lost his speed boost, gained a specialism in long bows and came equipped with a long bow and some arrows right from the start. This way he could at least contribute as an archer and occasional melee support damager, rather than being the frontline rusher and obvious cannon fodder that he currently is.

Haunted Mansion lvl. 2. Staircase to basement is barely visible, not recognizable as a staircase.

I understand that finding it is part of the challenge, but having to scan this entire map with your mouse-pointer to look for this exit is not really fun. The main problem is that it does not at all look like a staircase.

That is all the feedback I have, so far. I hope it is useful to you. I feel really excited to get to play this amazing total conversion, and would like to thank all contributing modders again for putting so much hard work into it. In spite of some of the many minor bugs and issues I reported, I want to stress that I feel that this is already one of the most mature and complete total conversion projects that is currently in development.

I will update this topic regularly as I run into new issues or bugs that I feel could benefit from my feedback. I hope this long post does not annoy you, and if it does, please tell me and I will shut up

EDIT: My apologies for starting a new thread instead of simply submitting these to the latest bug thread. I should learn to read more carefully.