You can unlock the first vendor as soon as you solve the goblin quest, which is among the very first quests you can do.
As for the ruins battle, I believe you are referring to the bandit ambush battle. I deliberately made the difficulty spike there to know what kind of battles to expect down the line and whether one will find these enjoyable or not.
The campaign is geared towards more optimal parties, but there is no shame in tinkering with difficulty sliders. D&D is a highly unbalanced game and what one player stomps, the other will find nearly unbeatable, which is what devs are quite aware of and why sliders exist in the first place.

Very tedious out of the gate. No vendors early, yet giant piles of things to cart around. Also, it felt very imbalanced against the party... unless you optimize your party very carefully, even early fights like the ruins battle are way too much.

Thank you so much for such warm feedback. I'm super happy to hear you enjoyed it and especially since this was your very first custom campaign!
Unfortunately, the DM has quite a few limitations which we must circumvent one way or another. I tried giving as accurate quest descriptions as I could where it was fitting but I might have overlooked a few and could have done some things better, hands down.
Hopefully TA will grant us more flexibility with Solasta 2 when the DM comes out... somewhere in somewhat distant future.

I just played through this as my first User Campaign after the regular game, and it severely heightened my expectations for the next ones. I loved the variation of the fights, the bits where you could explore for additional information (something I kinda missed in the main campaign), and that the three acts had such different vibes they each pulled off very well - my personal favourite was the second act though, the kind of murder mystery-esque setup and especially the mansion to sneak around in and explore. The overarching plot worked very well too and had a really classic DnD feeling to it. I truly had an amazing time playing this, thank you so much for the incredible amounts of work you must have put into this! <3
The only very small proposal I have would be maybe adding the function where it shows the direction of the quest objectives on the compass, this would have really helped me sometimes.

Thank you for playing!
Trying to find the right spot for challenge while avoiding tedium is what was one of the most demanding parts of creating the module. I didn't want the party to steamroll everything, but neither did I want them to have a deadly encounter at every single corner. Both would grow old very fast.

But yeah... last fight could be perceived as a bit tedious as it's well... the last big fight. I did experiment and test that encounter for God knows how many times... I deliberately placed the monsters in cages to simulate their agony/pain while their master is harvesting their essence and to "immobilize" them so-to-speak, but this also opens an easy opportunity to cook them with walls of fire while taking cover and dealing with the rest of the monsters.
Overall I had the most fun with encounter design, which might not be up to everyone's alley, but I think it's ok for a challenging campaign all things considered.

Just finished the module. It was a great experience. This module is definitely one of the harder if not the hardest modules i've played. I think this module is the first one i've played where Orenetis' model was used as a normal enemy archetype you encounter at various times. His spell usage is refreshing in that I get to see different spells used than by the mage types you typically see in modules. I believe I played with 1.33 % enemy damage, 1.75% enemy health, +2 enemy saves, +2-3 enemy attacks, deadly AI. Battle Cleric tank/healer, dual wield barb, spell master wizard and raven rogue all with a free 1st level feat. The story was solid as well. I did reduce the difficulty for the end battle a little bit because I had a feeling it was going to be a long battle (and it was) and I wanted to finish the module.

To be as brief and without any spoilers ahead: nope, you didn't miss anything.

I'm just starting to play this mod, i think this mod is good. And i find a brief jotting said there was dragon in the forest. But the only thing i found was two cave ogres. Do i miss something?

The general expectation for the game is fighting, so do not expect anybody trying this.
You may mention this in a spoiler tag in the description, and any similar challenges if there are any.
Yes, they have nice loot, so it still worth to kill them.
Anyway I liked the unique spear. Cataclysm Visage, I think that's the name. It's quite rare that such an item is useful. I took the spear mastery feat because of it. My shield fighter became a terminator with it.

A small spoiler perhaps, but something I implemented and never mentioned anywhere:

If you manage to avoid any fights throughout the entire manor, which only counts humanoid enemies iirc, you will be granted about 20% more XP than if you had killed all the enemies both inside and outside of the manor once you are done with that section.
Naturally, you wouldn't get any loot from kills via that method, but it's something worth considering and perhaps doing as a challenge.
I personally tested it without using any glitches/cheats and what not, not even spells, and it is entirely doable to pass the entire manor part without a single humanoid kill.

It wasn't the maze itself, but IIRC we were indoors on the earlier level and after it, too.

I intentionally killed everything in the maze to make sure I get to the highest level possible. After finding the resting place of course. I already missed an encounter because there is no turning back from the labyrinth and didn't want to reload. And I didn't kill everybody at the Blackthorne manor either. Skipping enemies is a valid tactic for milestone advancement. I like that method, and it's easier to balance for modders, too. Or when we reach max level well before the end. We barely reached level 16 before the boss fight, so xp hunting is important in your campaign.

Hey Zoli
I do agree that the labyrinth can be frustrating, although that area was basically designed to be that way (to kill any adventurer that sets foot in there), but most of it can be avoided (like not stepping on pressure plates will halve all threats there), but the other half comes from paths a player takes, because exploring it in its entirety will probably have 5-6 combats, but only 2 are mandatory to progress to the vault if you metagame and know the way, so it's basically up to RNG in your first playthrough whether you have many fights or few (know the shortest way or not, and are willing to explore everything or not).

And who will keep that silver weapon with the plethora of magic items we find during the campaign? It's just another junk +1 weapon.

I replayed the mission after 2 years, and still think this is one of the best campaigns. The amount of ideas and little details make it very satisfying to play. Not to mention the enemy compositions. On the other hand, I almost gave up one point when the amount of underground levels was excessive (the tunnels after the labyrinth), but a day's break was enough to recover and continue.

Anyway, you could update the description, we can reach level 16 before the boss fight.

A slight spoiler:
The description is very vague and doesn't tell anything outright what you need to do to unlock its full power, a bit of an oversight on my part perhaps.
Anyway, very late in the campaign, you will encounter a statue that will unlock the weapon's hidden potential if you keep it with you (don't sell it) until that point in the campaign.

Such a nice campaign so far, thanks for this mod!

I have a question/need some spoilers though: In the outskirts of Brightreach, there is a cemetry with a crypt below, and in this crypt, there is a room with the hints "Silver", "Light", "Blood" (opposite to 3 pressure plates) plus two hints about being "blessed". I solved the "Blood" riddle (pressure plate went down) and got rewarded with a silver weapon (description saying something about a "hidden property"), but I don't have the slightest clue how to solve the "Siver" and "Light" riddles.

Can anyone spoiler a bit or a bit more, please?

Also, thank you very much for your kind words! An authors greatest satisfaction is to hear that their work is appreciated.
For Solasta 1, I am done. I released two other modules (Stormhold Arena, a randomized, fight oriented one with significantly less story parts, and the 6M UB version of the same module) and plan no other, especially given that Solasta 2 is on the horizon.
I might consider making more campaigns for Solasta 2 once (and if...) DM is released for that game, and if the free time that I will have, or not have, will allow it.

Hey kkxharlequin.
About the bug... I extensively tested that goblin part as there can be a lot of things that can go wrong on freeing the merchants part, and once I 'believed' that all possible scenarios were covered, I let it be as is (you can check that area in DM editor and see there are many "scripts" involving different things that player might do... or move to immediately or later... But from your report (which is the first one I got about this since the release of the module), it looks like I missed something very niche that was done. As of this moment, I honestly don't have the strength to go through that sequence of scripts again and look for a single oversight that a player might have done to break the script, and will leave it as-is as to prevent making further damage to that part of the module...

Awesome stuff LJ. Super happy you found the campaign fun, and the final battle satisfying! I also really love the psi warrior fighter sub. Got to give it a go when I eventually fire up a campaign.

Amazing campaign with lot's to do and very good lore. There were times that the use of lore gadgets and doors were really clever, like the one in the basement that closes immediately simulating that a magic gust closes it. I played with a friend and unfinished business. Sadly we had conflicts that forced us to play through one computer and streaming through discord but the satisfaction of the last battle was incredible. Bolgrif forge cleric, human artificer, elf psionic warrior, celestial warlock for the win. The elf psionic warrior had 79 critical hits.

Oh i encountered one bug: after freeing the merchants from the goblins in the starting quest, i had a quest, that they wanted to thank me and i should talk to them. But wehen i talked to them, they seem to be stuck in a dialouge about saving some plunder from te caravan and the quest never advanced.
Apart from that everything seemd to work. i loved the Underground arenafights btw, they really felt very tense and dangerous.

Hey HiddenHax,
I liked your campaign better then the original campaign, which was really fun too.
I cant imagine how much work you invested in creating this masterpiece! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I had the feeling that every single aspect was created with lots of thoughts. All maps and Fights felt really handcrafted and the fights were hard and very tense. Loot was great, after a really hard fight you mostly find some pice u could use.

it payed of to look for hints and explore, there was so much to discover (and i havnt discovered everything)
i will surely come back to this gem in some wintermonths.
You should mayb earn money with storytelling or dungeon design. :)
Do u have any plans to create more campaigns?

You can level any character up anytime from main menu -> character selection screen, selecting the character and hitting level up button.
You can go through other campaigns and import level 5 characters into this one, but it is primarily designed and balanced around freshly created parties from main menu and imported directly into this campaign.

Thank you HiddenHax-guess I missed that part ! So i would need to level characters to 5 in another campaign first? I managed to get a knock spell..so all is generally working now. Module is really good btw !

Hello bainin.

This campaign doesn't forbid anything except characters lower than level 5. Are you sure you leveled your party members to at least 5 so that they can be eligible to start the campaign?

Hi all-just started this campaign. When started, my choices were level 10 characters but i wasn't allowed the choice of rogue or cleric...makes for an interesting party mix (wiz, pally, pally, fighter) .

Is this expected? I tried creating a "new" character (cleric) but after completing the creation-the cleric does not show up in the party slot.

I wouldn't mind if a knock spell were anywhere to be found before I got to the goblin cave door without a rogue handy :)

thank you

Happy to hear that!
Now, I don't remember which part is in which location, but they are found in the following locations:
One is in new area, northwest in Ixkritt Jungle, another is in roughly south eastern new area also connected to Ixkritt jungle, and the third is found near the end of Mad Prophet quest in Kragshelm

OK, loving it so far, great job on this module! For the Ancient Evil quest- I found 1 and 2, but where is 3? Thanks

It was a feature I initially wanted to implement but wasn't able to. Languages do not matter in this campaign.

Do languages matter? I have goblin and tried to speak to a goblin but apparently couldn't understand him.

The only piece of advice I can offer is asking on Unfinished Business mod channel on Discord or github if the main dev (Zappastuff) would know how to solve it.

I have honestly no idea about anything regarding translations. Sorry.

May I ask if there is any solution for me to translate this mod after installing Unfinished Business, but all my mission props have become invalid and killing monsters is not counted?

Yep... guess thats the problem... I sell everything...
Ok, my fault!
Thanks for the quick answer.
I hope, I`ll imagine this on my next playthrough...
keep going!

Hello!

Do you have the Chalice? That you obtained from fighting The Champion in the Brightreach Arena It opens the first door and the keys open the other 3. Did you perhaps accidentally sell it in town (It costs 0 but I was informed you can still sell items that cost even 0)? If it was sold, there is unfortunately no other way of getting through the door to complete that quest...

Hi HiddenHax!
I really love this Campain!
But I got a problem... I cannot find a way to end the " heart of darkness" quest. I searched everywhwere for some hidden doors. the sewers, the basement...
Maybe the secret place is the door to the Vault? To avoid the Labirynth?
But I can`t open the door, though I have all three keys...

Difficult to do without complications. There is no other way of changing this other than redesigning parts of certain areas and introducing new variables, which might break current saves of people playing the campaign.

I'm pretty sure I'm on the latest version.

I don't think setting it to 0 is enough. Zero-cost items can still be sold as long as they're being sold along with other items that are not zero-cost.

Maybe it would be better to have it not be an actual inventory item, and just a flag that gets set? Not sure if that's possible in Solasta.

Only by buying it back from the same merchant again. Are you perhaps playing on one of earlier versions? On latest I set all of these items to cost 0 (cannot be sold).

I sold the chalice needed for the Heart of Darkness quest , because I didn't realize it was a quest item. Is there a cheat or something that I can use to retrieve it again?

There are some gameplay choices, like choosing diplomacy or fighting, stealthing around vs wiping out whole levels of enemies. There is a particular choice in chapter 2 where you can choose to finish a level going one route or a completely different one that will result in entirely new levels and encounters, but none of it will impact the ending of the story.

p.s. bypassing all enemies via stealth in a very particular level (you will know which one when you get to it) will reward you with more XP than wiping out all said enemies.

Just wondering, not a big deal, but are there choice and branching paths?

There shouldn't be any problems besides using the teleport command on one map where party gets split up as it originally was created when 6M parties didn't exist in mod. Will patch it somewhere in the future.

Would this play well as a 6-Man party?

You're a life saver! Thank you! Can't wait to continue playing :)

Thank you for bringing this issue up. I will address this in one of future updates when I get the time to look into it and release a bigger patch. In the meantime, you can easily enable party teleportation in UB mod options (don't remember if it's under ctrl+f10 or regular game settings) to teleport whole party wherever your cursor is currently showing. It is very handy for exactly these scenarios.

I was really enjoying that campaign, the combat is really varied and fun and the environments are engaging. Unfortunately, when loading in to the labyrinth one of my characters got stuck behind the wall you start again. I was playing with the UI mod and had 6 characters loaded in, so that's definitely the cause. Because there weren't any fast travel point unlocked in the Labyrinth, even when I found the exit or long resting areas, I wasn't able to fix it, so I'm stuck and can't progress. It was really good before then though! So definitely only play this mod with 4 characters, or else you'll never escape the Labyrinth

Thank you for playing Flynt!

This campaign can be tedious at times combat-wise if a sub-optimal party is brought into it. I do admit that. Nice to hear you braved the storm and emerged victorious in the end.

There is lots of great custom campaigns out there, Artyoan's campaign trilogy for example, which I would definitely recommend to check out, whether it's 4-man or 6-man versions. I finished his first campaign 4-man, Forsaken Isle, and loved it. I heard the other two are also great, if not even better than the first one.

I chose this as my first non-official campaign after finishing the official ones. I decided to play through with a pretty non-optimal party for a change.
I just completed the final fight last night. All of my party went down at one time or another, but I managed to get them on their feet again. They finished with 3 of them at less than 10 hit points each. I kept expecting to lose and have to restart to whole fight, but I kept squeaking through. It kept me up way later than I intended because I just couldn't stop.
Thank you for making this campaign. I'm so glad I chose to play it. I enjoyed most of the combat more than the official campaign combat. My only regret about playing it as my first user created campaign is that now all the other campaigns may seem lesser in comparison.

Thank you so much Zhe Toralf! This truly made my day.
I'm very happy to hear you conquered that encounter!

As a non-native English speaker, I used google to check out words that I wasn't quite sure about spelling right, but alas, there are likely quite a good chunk of those that still got past the checks.
Feel free to share those that are found (probably best to screenshot them in dialogues) so that they can be eventually corrected.

We finished it a while back. Regarding the fight: Our party was a bit squishy but we huddled together and our wizard cast globe of invulnerability that way we actually made it.

This is easily one of the best, if not the best user campaing for solasta. The quests, the worldbuilding, the levels are amazing. If you put a gun to my head and asked my to say something negative it would be some spelling errors but considering the insane amount of dialoges in this I dare anyone to do better.

10/10 will play again