Originally posted by Oji:

O have no clue how to wake up guardians, ive tried every interaction ive learned playing grimrock and mods for hundred of hours, nothing seems to work...
From the very start it feels like mod is filled with puzzles for the sake of putting puzzles everywhere.

What guardians? To enter Garnodath (in second map)?

Check item names. Hint is VERY OBVIOUS. Also if you played Grimrock 2 original campaign, you will know what item to use the next moment you get there, literally 0 seconds thinking.

Feature or Bug?

You can get Drowsy and Tired at same time.

First you get Drowsy, then you get Tired. And then you get Drowly again, Tired stays. So you get both Drowsy and Tired. Since first is next stage of second (first time Tired appears, Drowsy is removed), should they both be up?

So after that early game frustration i think you might want to explain a little better that your not supposed to rush to wizard asap as his note suggests or just nudge player to explore map 1 a little more. Cos plunging into unknown water with lvl 1 party without ladder in sight is pretty much last desperate exploration strategy, not the first.

Otherwise is going great now, i like secret book and clairvoyance crystals.

15 hours in and my priest still doesnt have heal spell, found cure disease scroll, but priest cant learn it cos its for nature only. Restriction on mages here are pretty high.

Originally posted by Oji:

15 hours in and my priest still doesnt have heal spell, found cure disease scroll, but priest cant learn it cos its for nature only. Restriction on mages here are pretty high.

You can get heal spell in first 15 minutes if you rush.

My entire non-work time is consumed for the week! Thank you, @adrageron! :)

I'll post some combined feedback after I get farther. The food mechanic creates a lot of tension.

The Livingrock Adventures are the very best grimrock 2 mods. The BEST. Thank you!
I do have to say this mod goes way to far with underwater combat, It sucks to fight underwater unless you have a very specific party build. Phew, tough mod. Deathspeakers took 12 Crystal healing shards but I finally got all essences, but I'm going to need to restart at a lower difficulty because I have no way to survive combat in urhold keep at all.

There is certain secret in elemental temple - where you have to throw something under closing door, but you have to be in front of the door while throwing - it turned out that you cannot throw this way if you hold item in your cursor, while you generally can throw items this way under closing doors in other places. This inconsistance led me to belive this wasnt the way to work the secret and basically locks you out from at least 6 secrets in this area.
Just a little feedback rant on inconsistancy in finding already not easy to find secrets.

I love this mod thus far. but a few pieces of feedback
at the start maybe a few more spices will be useful. now I'm at a point where I have no more food problem.
It will be nice if spell damage was linked to the carac. Because right now my troll does more DPS than my caster who seems only useful with the noncombat spell.
But for the first part of the game, I loved the spell that burns the ground to kill 5 monsters in a row.

This will be a lengthy post.

I played and finished the mod and I have previously played both Lost City and Guardians. I love all 3 mods and I think each new one has been a noticeable step up from the last. Some of my feedback will be in relation to these 2 other mods.

Positives:

* The biggest strength in this mod, as it also was in Guardians, is the sense of adventure. Going from start to finish is an immersive journey and because you get so invested in this journey it helps you forgive some of the more frustrating parts (typically difficult fights). Here is why I think this mod does such a good job in pulling me in:

1. World design
This was done a bit better here than in Guardians in my opinion. The layouts of the areas are overall more intricate and there are more interconnections between them. I like the verticality many of them have even though it makes the minimap harder to read . Even with a few areas that felt a bit like repetitions of each other (especially certain caverns such as the swamp and mining ones) there is so much squeezed out of this limited amount of assets. So even after playing hundreds of hours of Grimrock and even outside of the few new environments and weather effects there were still areas such as The Caves of The Drowned, Ruins of Naar and Seven Tombs that are just variations of base game areas but which still feel unique in terms of atmosphere.

2. Progression
You reach the Glade and Garnodat early on and immediately your desire for gold keys kicks in. Similarly you get the growing box and now getting enchanted soils becomes a priority. You start exploring underground areas and you wish you had the light spell. Now you have the light spell but you can't use it, if you just had that one extra skill point there are so many things you could do. Now the game not only keeps you hooked by constantly instilling new needs in you, it also perfectly sprinkles out these items you looking for along with other ones which helps solve problems you didn't previously know how to solve. Two examples of this for me was finding the Translate spell and my first magic pickaxe. In both cases it was just really exciting to think of the opportunities that had opened up and I don't think it can be overstated how expertly the pacing of unraveling the game world becomes thanks to this - piece by piece you're enabled to see and do more and there is almost at least something in the back of your mind that you're looking forward to doing as soon as you have the option to.

3. Item balance/scarcity
In a similar vein the general supply of items feels really finely tuned in this mod (as it also did in Guardians). Because I'm never in possession of an abundance of food it can make even finding something as simple as spices or grimcap feel like small victories. And this extends to just about every other meaningful resource in the mod. I like finding bloodcap because I need healing potions and finding falconskyre enables me to make potions of wisdom. Even if I rarely run out of money and gems there are always good things I could theoretically spend them on which makes them stay exciting to find. I think this sense of value in items is essential to keeping me engaged as it's like these small serotonin bursts that just keep happening.

4. Length
It has to be mentioned because it has to be admired that someone would make something this substantial for such a small niche of players. I love going into a mod like this because I know it will occupy/consume me for weeks and that I will gradually become more attached to my party and get more invested in improving it.

5. Adversity/challenge
You truly start your adventure without anything and from that point onward it never stops feeling like you're fighting against the odds. This is partially a negative for the mod, I don't know if I would recommend it to someone without prior grimrock mod experience. I actually think the start is a little friendlier than the one in Guardians where your team would begin facing starvation almost immediately but it's certainly not doing much hand-holding and later on it gets harder than Guardians by my estimation.
Now, what I'm getting at is that this might be a negative for some but personally I love it. Every upgrade to my characters feels meaningful and every scarce resource can give rise to deliberation on what to spend it on. I also adore how the main limitation of which parts of the world you can explore lies in the strength of your party. One of my all-time favorite game series is Might and Magic VI-VIII. In those games you could more or less run to the final areas at any point but if your team was weak there was not much you could do there. This both put an enticing sheen on these more dangerous places and incentivized making your party stronger. This mod strongly evokes those same feelings in me and it's one of my favorite things about it.

Other miscellaneous things I liked that I want to mention are:

* New and rebalanced traits
* New classes
* Dividing spells into 3 categories was (partially) a good move that encourages more mix-up in your team-building
* Some of the new spells are really great (especially jump and waterwalking, again reminds me of classic rpgs where having spells like these almost felt like cheating)
* Secret design. It's subtle but I actually think it's a significant step-up from Guardians. The areas feel more densely packed with secrets but less of them are simple hidden buttons. The hints are for the most part great and the variety of things you have to do is impressive. If I had to pick a favorite one it would be the God of Mystery puzzle.
* Several of the new systems are good. Growing box is an excellent mechanic, the banknotes as well.

There are certainly more positives than what I have mentioned so far.


Negatives:

The negatives aren't as strong as the positives but some are worth mentioning I think. There were also a few secrets and enemy encounters here and there which I didn't care for but I'm not that interested in bringing those up.

* Spells
Yes I love the new spells, I love the division into 3 spell types and I love that spells now have a larger function with more utility and buff effects. What I don't like is how weak spells are as a damage source. It's just strange that there are no sources of scaling your spell damage past putting more points into it. Maybe willpower should also add to that? Between no scaling, the opportunity cost of not using my mage's turn and energy on spells that buff the rest of my party and having to draw the spell pattern each team with my mouse, using spells offensively just isn't very lucrative from around the midpoint of the game. I also had a designated mage which is a druid but because of the division into 3 spell types there aren't even any spells anywhere near the level of meteor storm available.

* Certain areas locking you in.
No, I do like falling down a hole and having to fight hordes of enemies while desperately trying to find a way out before my dwindling resources are depleted. I do like that it's a commitment to enter certain dungeons and that you should be prepared before doing so. There are however 2 places where I think this concept is questionable. The first of those is Urhold Keep. Killing the boss in Siren's Deep is not that challenging and with that you might be led to believe that using the skull key which that nets you is just going to be a small increase in difficulty at most. This was my experience and I (stupidly) saved myself inside the keep with a party that was not properly equipped to handle one of the hardest encounters in the game. I don't know if the bigger problem here is that it's too easy to access Urhold Keep or if it's that this particular room (which I don't have to describe because anyone who has played the mod will know which one it is) is just way out of whack.
The other place I want to mention is Garnodat Dungeon. This area is more aptly challenging I think but an area which you will most likely be locked into for 1-2 hours minimum needs to have more food.

* Lackluster finale
I don't mean the final bosses. It's cool that there are multiple endings too. To better explain what I'm missing here I wanna point to Lost City and Guardians. In Lost City you thought you were about to finish the game upon entering the pyramid and then the game just pulls the rug from underneath you by throwing you into this really complex multi-area puzzle-thon which will likely take almost as long to get through as reaching it did. I loved it because of how unexpected it was along with its intricacy and the sense of mystery surrounding some of it.
In Guardians you reach the Citadel thinking you're about to finish the game but here you're instead faced with big confusion as to what you have to do in order to progress. I had a few gripes with some of the figurine locations but overall I absolutely loved this part of the game because it felt like this grand final puzzle which forced you to revisit many of the earlier parts of the game.
This is what I'm missing in Final Adventure (and it's possible I'm missing it because I'm simply not aware of something): I would have loved that big mystery at the end. Instead I think the "main quest" is very simple in terms of puzzles, you're pretty much always being straight-forwardly told what to do. Beating the game isn't simple because some of the enemy/boss encounters along the way are very difficult and they force you to strengthen your team by finding secrets. This is absolutely stellar design in my eyes and I don't object to it. It's just at the very end where I wish there was something more.

* The sleepiness mechanic. I like food scarcity but I don't like a mechanic that punishes me for secret hunting by draining my food reserves, makes the best way to play saving and loading your save upon solving a puzzle along with forcing me to explore a lot of areas during nighttime.

* Nature magic being close to mandatory. I had a druid so I was in the clear but with several major underwater areas (all of which I personally really liked btw) I don't think water breathing should be restricted to a specific class.

* Secrets you can miss
So besides the thief god one which I think can very easily be made impossible there are also a decent number of puzzles where the items lying around the room might be hints (such as green - key blue - lockpick). I think this can cause frustration (some puzzles practically become unsolvable) and also instill unnecessary caution in the player to mark where they find items.
In a similar vein I wish the armor set bonus book was acquired much sooner. I had already begun selling pieces of certain sets before I realized it's something the game tracks and was pretty disappointed to find this out.

* The flaming skulls...
Maybe just reduce their evasion or something...


That's all I can think of for now. I guess as suggested by the title of the mod that this will be the last one we see from this author. Massive thank you for the hundreds of hours of enjoyment these 3 mods have brought me. You're a phenomenal game designer in my eyes. Hope these notes were helpful and fun to read.

Hey, Kale! Thank you for detailed feedback!

Originally posted by Kale:

That's all I can think of for now. I guess as suggested by the title of the mod that this will be the last one we see from this author. Massive thank you for the hundreds of hours of enjoyment these 3 mods have brought me. You're a phenomenal game designer in my eyes. Hope these notes were helpful and fun to read.

You did play Eador?
This game was designed and done solo by this author.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/232050/Eador_Masters_of_the_Broken_World/

Have 2000+ hours in it, strongly recommend.

Allow me to give you my opinion. Overall, Final Adventure has super high quality.
But the length is too long and the difficulty of battle and
action is too hard in endgame.
In this respect, The Guardians has good balance I think.
In endgame of this work, I felt like I was doing the
Ancient Evil battle at all times.
It's okay to have difficult stages, but too many of them can be tiring. Severe trap action is also too much.

Although, I enjoyed this mod very much and if you make the next one I would like to play it!!

Originally posted by sumaneko:

Allow me to give you my opinion. Overall, Final Adventure has super high quality.
But the length is too long and the difficulty of battle and
action is too hard in endgame.
In this respect, The Guardians has good balance I think.
In endgame of this work, I felt like I was doing the
Ancient Evil battle at all times.
It's okay to have difficult stages, but too many of them can be tiring. Severe trap action is also too much.

Although, I enjoyed this mod very much and if you make the next one I would like to play it!!

You can always start in Easy and there modifiers in start of game to make game harder/easier.

I KNOW THAT. And I restarted with walk in park mode. But trap or magic damage and action difficulty is no change in specifications.
There are too many enemies especially elite skelton soldiers.They can transform though!
And what's more, final bosses(Beleth and Livingrock systems) is still hard and I was so dumbfounded.
Even with this I have completed Lost City and The Guardians in hard mode. I don't think casual users can clear this mod for the length and difficulty.