v1.4 Upgraded to work with Kaedrin Expansion and Hyborian custom features
This module, sometimes known by its author as "Highly Boring Hack", is a "hack and slash" random dungeon set in the world of Conan the Barbarian. Nay, to say hack and slash is going too far. This module is for hackers only. Slashers need not apply. And those who want "story", linear or otherwise, can forget it entirely!
The evil wizard Gurgal Sang of Shadizar has tricked you into meeting him and, as punishment for some real or imagined slight against his god Set, has thrown you - or at least the essence of your being - into a massive, perhaps infinite, dungeon called the Maze. The Maze occupies a space between worlds, and consists of small isolated demi-planes connected by magical portals. You may try and hide in the dungeon, languishing until your life runs its natural course, die in a blaze of glory fighting all the other trapped individuals and monsters within the Maze or dare to hope for escape.
The module caters for any party, from a single 1st level PC to a party of 30th level PCs. Module features include large outdoor and indoor areas, and procedurally generated entries, exits and encounters throughout.
You may come across just about anything in the NWN2 bestiary, and many more creatures besides, as well as environmental hazards, random secret doors, random traps, random custom Hyborian treasures, pit traps, cages, Hyborian deity-specific shrines, magical fonts, teleport traps, portable exploding barrels, green slime, brown mould, shriekers, ear seekers and other inspirations from the 1st edition random dungeon system.
Note for Modders: If you are one of those talented individuals who likes to make area prefabs but not necessarily whole adventures, know that the way I scipted Hyborian Hack it takes me about 1 minute to attach an area as an additional demi-plane complete with usual encounters. If interested in contributing please let me know. You will of course get acknowledged as the creator of that area.
Note: remove any PCs created in this module from your local vault before playing a non-Hyborian module.
There is full Kaedrin Compatibility now, which I suspect is what you were asking about. The way I have done the conan.tlk, it may be compatible with other expansions that are themselves compatible with Kaedrin.
Actually, I have changed my mind and think Hyborian Hack is quite good. It still entertains dipping back into it again after a long break.
However, would it be possible for you to make a version of this that does not require a tlk file so that I can use other People's Custom Classes with this mod?
Thank you.
Posted by karen at 2012-04-01 21:27:10 Voted 9.00 on 04/01/12
John, thanks for all the fun! I never did get the secret door to open and I had to just run away from the invincible Ravenous Incarnation of the Sage, but I enjoyed the game. I don't think it took me that long to play it though. I was surprised but it didn't take going through that many portals (and there weren't any warnings), but I made it out of the maze. I intend to replay it one day.
Posted by karen at 2012-03-31 02:57:18 Voted 9.00 on 04/01/12
Another question I hope you can help with. We can't kill the Ravenous Incarnation of the Sage - any of them - no matter what weapon we use (sharp, dull, adamante, silver, etc.). Is this a bug or is it supposed to be this way? After wailing on one for a long time it finally says injured, but no matter how long we attack him it just stays that way.
Posted by karen at 2012-03-30 03:38:30 Voted 9.00 on 04/01/12
Thanks John, I am really enjoying your anything but boring campaign lol! I have a question though. Shortly after existing the first red portal at the beginning of the mod (going north) my rogue found a secret door, but we can't get through it. It just won't open no matter what we try and there's no way to bash it. I even tried to put one of the barrels in front of it and set it off, but nothing happened. Is there some trick to getting the secret door to open or is it a glitch?
Just finished another round that took my party from levels 10-20. It's still as much fun as last time. Nice selection of enemies and some very challenging fights.
It seem to be working. I imported my characters from last time and gave it a quick try through tow areas late last night. Stumbled across two Golden Portals in each demi-plane. also found some shrines, so I guess everything is fine.
Found that my characters carried almost 100.000 worth of loot with them from my last merchant-less run. I'll go for levels 10-20 now.
Avo - You should at least find your main problems addressed, the tricks, and the caverns of refuge. There are potions of restoration there and merchants with infinite gold to buy your stuff, which in itself has been improved in value. Having the caverns completely changes the complexion of the game.
Hi John, not sure what's the status at the moment, but it still seems not to be working. I downloaded all files listed above and I get a "Missing Hak" error message when I try to start the module. On top of that my nwn2 errorlog doesn't tell me which hak supposedly is missing.
Probably a bit late but I've updated the module with the following fixes:
Golden portals and other tricks now appear.
Increased value of some treasure items in placeables.
The range of magical items to find added to again.
Beholders! These were causing a crash every time. I did my own behaviours, which I think are quite nice and this bug is fixed. Also there are now rays that miss their target and a telekinesis ray that telekineses PCs.
Slight fix to some areas.
Slight fixes to scripts for smoother running.
Changed calculation of number of encounters, reduced encounters in open areas, and reduced perception range of some creatures, so there is less crowding on entering a module.
I might test a little more before uploading to identify other causes of crashes when playing at higher levels.
I am so sorry not to have checked on this site for ages, only being prompted to do so by a comment on one of my other modules. I did indeed introduce a simple mistake which meant that the only tricks being generated were rock falls (outside) and cage traps (inside). This was introduced deliberately for playtesting and then never reversed.
I will upload after addressing this and other issues. I had one crash that seemed to be caused by the Beholder model not loading properly, but on retesting I cannot reproduce it. Don't know about multiplayer crashes - it used to occur regularly before I set transitions always to be party transitions, and never was a problem for me after that. I'll also look at balancing and treasures.
For the trick bug, the quick fix is to remove the line 657 in the script setnewareaheight.
Hey, my friend and I had a blast playing this mod. I've always been a fan of hack style games, so this was a welcome diversion from standard plot driven modules.
We had a couple problems which prevented us from getting beyond level 10, ranked in order of importance, lowest to highest:
- Special features mentioned in readme (especially golden portal and fonts) never showed up, which made equipment tough to find
- In certain levels, mostly open ones, we found the density of creatures to be excessively high around the portal, not a big issue, since we could jump back through
- Biggest issue was the loading screen crashes, which we don't find in single-player, that makes this almost unplayable as a multiplayer game, is there any way that could be fixed?
Otherwise, this is one of the best mods I've played so far! In the meantime, we're going to try your multiplayer Conan campaign.
Posted by ArtAndor at 2011-10-13 06:47:57 Voted 10.00 on 08/10/11
Hi there, its been a long time and now i am still playing your mod (yeah i really do :D)
so besides notifying you that i got some minor issues:
- no golden portals since i update the mod . . . i am not sure why or how
- some random crashes around char lvl 20 (somehow until then i had no crashes, nor i had crashes going from 27 - 30, i wonder if this may be a monster issue)
and one request:
can you make it compatible with Kaedrins? (alot of feats that i got through Kaedrins, or would have gotten (like Dragon Disciple: Black . . cant choose) arent there, nor spells, nor abilities)
and once again: thank you for this fantastic mod :)
Finished this weekend, but I am not sure wether to vote. It was fun and I brought a party of 4 from lvl 1 to 10 through almost 40 areas. But I suspect that the game didn't work properly. Through out the whole game I didn't even once encounter any of the things that are listed as "tricks" in the readme. Without any shops to buy healing potions it became "interesting" after a while.
I am also somewhat in doubt about the trasure. In the final few levels of my game there were plenty of opponents with level draining/ability draining powers. Additionally I faced some Rust Monesters and Grey Oozes. I never found an ingame way to get rid of those ability or level losses (luckily one char was a cleric)and loosing a weapon or an armour meant reload. To be honest 9 out of 10 treasures were useless junk (clothing/ copper jewelery/ cash).
Overall it made for tremendously challenging "survival" experience. I enjoyed it a lot and I plan to do another round to bring my party at least up to lvl 20. But before I do that I'd like to get a feedback on the game mechanics. Because for the second round (and a vote) I'd really like to be sure everything worked the way it should.
I'm enjoying thsi quite a bit, but I was wondering about one thing. After bringing my party to around lvl6 I decided I had seen enough of the mod and risk a glance at the readme without spoiling anything. After all, there is not much story to spoil...
I have travelelled a good 20 demi-planes or so by now and have not yet encountered any of your "tricks" (fountain, shrine, shop!!!) etc. Is that normal?
Especially a shop would be most welcome by now because I was attacked by some Wights around lvl 4 and half of my party is level drained and not a single Restoration potion/scroll in sight.
I'm enjoying thsi quite a bit, but I was wondering about one thing. After bringing my party to around lvl6 I decided I had seen enough of the mod and risk a glance at the readme without spoiling anything. After all, there is not much story to spoil...
I have travelelled a good 20 demi-planes or so by now and have not yet encountered any of your "tricks" (fountain, shrine, shop!!!) etc. Is that normal?
Especially a shop would be most welcome by now because I was attacked by some Wights around lvl 4 and half of my party is level drained and not a single Restoration potion/scroll in sight.
I checked and the elementals and mindflayers are all standard Obsidian blueprints, apart from the epic ones and I took it from the epic fire elemental.
ArtAndor - Thanks for the clarification. I'll look at the elementals. I think it's all an issue mainly because it was initially all too high a level. Since your first post I have made the level uplift for inventory more lenient, with a free 5000 and then 1 level uplift per 10,000/level. I have made some other little updates too which I'll upload shortly. At third level the only thing that would cause knockdown are wolves. There are also some heavy plate boots available which give immunity to knockdown.
John
Posted by ArtAndor at 2011-08-10 11:53:30 Voted 10.00 on 08/10/11
no, i also meen all elementals and even some minflayers, and sorry for my first comment :P found out i had to much gold on me xD
otherwise, really fun mod :)
I'm starting to wonder just what kind of equipment these low level players are bringing in for a "fun and challenging" experience. Do you think I would have a formula as complex as the one I designed (that follows PnP 3rd edition) so that fair 3rd level characters would face a horde of archdemons? Why would I waste my time doing that? How far do you think I would have got playtesting? Yes, and "all" enemies have improved knockdown - you mean wolves probably - ie about 1% of enemies. Perhaps you forgot to add knockdown immunity to your magic sword or whatever.
Posted by ArtAndor at 2011-08-09 13:48:04 Voted 10.00 on 08/10/11
oh and the ingame tool doesnt seem to work..... no matter how much i tried to change game dificulties... didnt help....
Posted by ArtAndor at 2011-08-09 09:33:45 Voted 10.00 on 08/10/11
what i dont get is how a lvl 3 char, with some equipment... can spawn 5 arch devils and 10 epic fire elementals?
cant u adjust some max dificulty based on lvl?
aka i find this module very fun at lvl 10 - 30... but at lower then that...
i also find only fair that those spawned are based on equipment and char lvl. but seriously... u should adjust formula with max dificulty per lvl (so u wont be able to get epic stuff breathing at u and pwning u each time u arrive to new area), on top of wich, i wonder if swamp area is bugged? i had it 2 times and bother times it stuck on loading screen.... well perhaps is something to do with me.
oh and why all mobs have improved knockdown? its far annoying then anything else in whole game ._.
ok some of them has it... but not being able to stand up, isnt that fun.
10 - A Masterpiece, Genuinely Groundbreaking 9 - Outstanding, a Must Have 8 - Excellent, Recommended to Anyone 7 - Very Good, Deserves a Look 6 - Good, Qualified Recommendation 5 - Fair, Solid yet Unremarkable 4 - Some Merit, Requires Improvements 3 - Poor Execution, Potential Unrealized 2 - Very Little Appeal 1 - Not Recommended to Anyone
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