So, you want to be a hero? Well, your wish is about to be fullfilled. You have come to Castle Ironhammer in the western heartlands to join the Fist of Torm, a knightly order dedicated to Torm and his faith. Castle Ironhammer is the smallest and youngest of the four castles the Fist of Torm holds. All classes and races are welcome, but only those of good alignment are allowed to join. Only a short interview and a truth-scrying spell to determine your intent stands between you and your membership. This module has been designed for a character of any race and any class, starting at 1st to 3rd level. You must be of good alignment. You will be raised to 3rd level (4th for classes weak at low levels)close to the begining of the module. There are three henchmen available, but more henchmen equals less XP. You should reach about 6th level at the end of the module. This is the prelude to a story of groups of power and the hunt for a magic item.
This module is very good if you don't mind the high number of spiders. Did I say a lot of spiders? Anyway I believe I almost past the "finish line" but since I got no chance to help the people in the woods (in other words complete a bunch of quests) I releoaded a saved game just before going back to the castle. I have done everything I think. Yet, I am stuck in a tomb with a light puzzle I have no clue how to solve. There is one yellow pedestal in the Western Room and a Blue one in the Eastern Room. Tried the most logical color combo w/o luck (to light up the third one and unlock the door).
Posted by Mirgalen at on11/17/06
IMHO If I complete a quest (retrieve a plot item and kill the nearby boss) I expect to be able to go back (if not with a portal/stone of recall) "safely". Instead, the way back was crowded with nearly a dozen giant spiders of various shape and sizes. Not a good sign.
Posted by Razide0506 at on03/07/08
Based on the review, I had high expectations for this module. Although there was technically very little wrong with it, it failed to really grab me either. Some of the fights crossed the line from "challenging" to "frustrating," the no-rest areas are much too large (particularly in the marsh, where I had to backtrack several times to rest), and there were several instances where the module just got tedious. It wasn't a bad module by any means, but it wasn't as good as I had expected it to be.
Posted by Grail at on09/20/06
After what seemed like a promising start (that is until you get to the 2nd marsh area in the first "quest"), the module quickly became very mediocre. The main turnoff for me occurred in the 2nd quest, to find the MIA knights. It played WAY too much like the OC, complete with all the drawbacks that made the Original Campaign so tedious. That is, "march through a lot of ground and meaningless combat to do all of X and Y and Z or we won't let you leave the area." When I got sucked into the crystal ball, which seemed far, far, too much like the Snow Globe in the OC Chapter 3, I quit. The running around had bogged down the plot far too much, and I wasn't up for something that *felt* too much like a shooting gallery / dungeon crawl / pointless combat module. If I wanted that, I'd play a game designed for that, like maybe Diablo or Dungeon Siege. I didn't like the OC because of it, and so I can't say there is anything in this module that recommends itself to me. Prior to quitting prematurely (because I honestly didn't see any impending payoff versus inordinate amount of time spent), some of the things I noted were: * after the crisis at Eckersley, the villagers still walked around armed; one villager seemed to always carry a lit torch _indoors_ (huh?) * the first time the Malar druid appeared, a message stated something about him being unable to level up in class 3 * the forest tiles were nice, except every other moment my view was blocked by the leaves because there seemed to be no second-story tiles to hide * a boar has _tusks_, unless you have some sort of mutant hellspawn boar that has horns and stands on its head to dig up grubs and tubers * encounters were generally irritatingly hard. For example, the orc boss in the Cyric temple has an AB of +13, which in play meant he was hitting my AC 23 fighter just about every time (and even when she was on Expertise, he hit pretty often too), and each hit could take out about a third of her HP. That, and he starts with a half dozen or so minions. Sheesh. * Spiders spiders spiders. Boooring. Spiders in the marsh? Okay, maybe that's the theme for the region. But all over the forest too? Why are orcs the problem when there's a spider infestation? If the amount of trekking were smaller, it wouldn't be such a problem, but having to slog my way through so many regions of the same thing just put this too much in the foreground to ignore. * Some skill checks were in fact phoney and had no chance of success. Some others could be repeatedly tried, and I think there was one in Eckersley where you could retry repeatedly on any commoner to get 15 XP each time you lucked out and got a success. * Once an area was clear, resting was still not allowed. This meant, for example, that in the Eckersley marsh, you had to walk back three areas just to sit your ass down to rest. Sheesh. I know there's a vote inflation going on and the minimum vote seems to be 8.0 no matter what, but I wouldn't give the OC more than a slightly sub-average score, so since my gameplay experience was similar to the OC, I vote 5.0. YMMV, of course. _________________________ PC Game Reviews, Hints, and Walkthroughs -- The Fantasy Art of Computer Games
Posted by herrjeff at on09/05/06
PS: Correction, the elusive druid was an interesting NPC to deal with, although options to solve that situation were quite limited.
Posted by herrjeff at on09/05/06
Good, classic adventure, with some variety of areas and enemies but nothing really outstanding. The 3 potential henchmen should satisfy the needs of most players. In Hunter's Landing, the villagers' dialogs would need to be updated to reflect the PC's actions in the marsh, as the people of Eckersley Manor do.
Posted by Pipefish at on03/24/06
A really good module. Full of surprises, and one really good (in a crazed, evil kind of way) sidequest villain. A few bugs, but nothing that makes it unplayable. (Though the forest tileset is really annoying as there is no clipping function.) The problem with henchmen spaces being reduced from three to two if they die can be worked around by simply keeping them from dying so severly that they leave the party. (When they reach 1 hp, they generally disengage the enemy and ask for healing.) The combat is hard yes, even more so with the rest restrictions. I actually had to turn the difficulty down from 'hardcore rules' to 'normal'. Good fun! (But there was one fight near the very end that I simply couldn't do, since out of my whole party the only one who could hurt the monsters was the dwarf henchman. I got around it in a way that I have reason to believe was not intended by the module creator ;)) A walkthrough would be great. There was one subquest area that I simply couldn't find! Being able to tell your henchies to stop casting spells would be good. And so would a bit more dialogue interaction. What interaction and bacground there is, is done very well. It is also a minus that the module doesn't really tell you when it is finished, (by exporting your character if nothing else) you're just left standing there. (With a bug that gives you 1000 xp and more copies of all your henchpeople's items everytime you talk to the finishing npc.)
Posted by Pipefish at on03/24/06
"9.You should mark the rope that leads to the area with the spider cave with a map pin. It is incredibly easy to miss it otherwise." Yeah, no kidding! There's a rope leading to that elusive spider? Where is it? Where? *sobs*
Posted by Egaskrad at on12/18/05
Extremely clever to put together a story. However there is room of improvement on the vision and audio effect. And I disagree with Armin below. I started with a sorceress and I did not find it hard other than one fight which I did something out of place. The initial equipment fit the background well... you are a green soldier, remember. What is wrong if you start out with standard uniform given to you by your Order? You are not supposed to be a one-man-beat-all hero. Some fights you are given clues to avoid and remember that some colleagues have a higher rank for a reason.
Posted by Armin at on09/13/05
Area design and story are quite OK, the game balance is extremely bad for most characters and classes. You start being levelled up to lvl 4 but receive NO starting money or equipment, thus start as a naked lvl 4 char off to fight - for instance - phase spiders in HUGE no rest zones. It doesn't improve much from there, as there are no decent shops throughout the story and no items to be found for the "lesser" classes. As the overly tough fights are geared towards the usual PSS warrior, the fun tends to get buried under loads of tedium and reloads. _________________________ With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince... With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D.... ... and still keep the frog you started with.
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