Comments - MintyFreshDeath

We'll have agree to disagree about the mists - some of them spawn right in front of switches or on top of mana pickups.

Anyway, I played some more onto Shadow Wood, faced one of those magma dragons - and died instantly the moment he noticed me, taking a stupidly high amount of damage from one fireball barrage. That's when I stopped my cleric playthrough out of sheer frustration.

But I didn't give up entirely and tried a mage playthrough on medium difficulty. I'm only on Seven Portals thus far but I find the monsters spawned are MUCH more tolerable - no more Ettin Commanders. I think this is where the hard mode difficulty is going wrong - too many high level enemies are spawning when your character is way too low level to fight them. If you can adjust the spawn settings to match those in medium then it'll play a lot better.

Also, is it possible to port this to GZDoom? The Vavoom port is way outdated and doesn't have the graphical upgrades recent Doom engine ports benefit from (for one thing, shooting monsters from ledges is an exercise in pain).

Good to see Korax Mod back again. Thanks for your work and effort put into making this mod. I played through the Seven Portals Hub on hard mode / standard RPG complexity as the Cleric and here are some of my thoughts:

Loved the new prayer actions. Saved my bacon and healing supplies many a time. However, the Spirits Within prayer has the wrong messages appear when it's used: I saw it say "Spirit's Within Failed" when the ghosts successfully appeared and tore all the monsters around me to shreds and "Spirits Within Activated" when it clearly failed.

While it's a nice touch to have your healing items auto used before you die, this can cause issues if you fall off a ledge to your death as you will end up auto-using all of your items when you hit the ground and then survive the fall, with no way to get back up except through cheating.

Having the two other classes fight alongside you for part of the hub is neat, but their AI is terrible. I was killed more times in the central area by these morons trying to shoot monsters I was bludgeoning already. If you can't change their AI to aim better, could you please change their projectiles to not hurt the player character?

The Ettin Commander and Afrit Leader are great ideas, but they should NOT be spawning on Hub 1. Thanks to the Commander's one-shot-kill hammers and the Afrits ability to regenerate health, they upset the balance entirely and forced me to switch on God mode when I ran out of ammo because melee attacks with the starting weapon is ineffective on both of them.
I think Commanders should appear from Hub 3 onwards and Afrit Leaders from Hub 2 / Hub 1 Secret Level.

The chilling and poison mists suck. They spawn in areas you're forced to traverse and there's no way to prevent damage, especially when they appear in tight corridors. Please remove them entirely.

Lava Dwellers suck as well. Please make them a later hub enemy at the least, or make their fireballs a bit slower.

That's all I got so far. Even though I've made a few criticisms, this mod is still great fun to play. Keep up the good work.

Quick question: Why does the radar no longer work in the campaign mode?

So, I played a bit more. Here are some thoughts from my experience:

I'm glad you toned down the XP system a bit, it seems more balanced now.

Looting corpses is a nice addition, but it's very overpowered in it's current state. Within the first couple of levels I had more healing items, ammo, guns and crafting items then I knew what to do with. Cutting down the amount of lootable items to a maximum of three per enemy and making them crafting items only (with the rare chance for a health pickup or item) would work better. Enemies already have a good chance to drop ammo as standard, so there's no need for leaving it as loot. Instead you might want to consider ammo loots for the unlockable boxes instead (good work on those BTW).

Compounding the above issue is what you can sell to the Trader. Selling all of my available items mentioned above gave me well over 2000 gold, more than enough to upgrade at least four weapons and curb stomp everything in my path. While I would encourage you keep the option of selling your gear, maybe twig the prices so that you only get a small fraction of the cost when selling items (if that's possible. If not, I'd remove the option to sell ammo and crafting items).

The machete seemed obsolete to me if I'm honest - there isn't any real difference from the dagger and it sets off alarms when you cut someone. You also can't take people hostage with it. Maybe I'd use it if it allowed you to chop off heads. :)

I actually thought the revolver was pretty weak, even when upgraded. The basic pistol completely outshines it when you max it out.

The advanced crossbow doesn't seem to make any sounds when shooting.

Steel bolts are way overpowered; I was one-shotting everything - robot or human - indiscriminately with the things. Made even more broken by how easy they are to craft.

The shotguns are a nice touch, but also obsolete. They all kill basic enemies in one hit and the only differences are the reloading times and shell capacity. Probably best if you limit them to one or two rather than four, or maybe give some to the acolytes and cultists for more of a challenge.

Not sure what to think of the two alternatives to the pulse rifle. I keep repeating this word but they seem obsolete, especially when the basic pulse rifle is easy to upgrade.

The minigun was good to use, if again overpowered. Maybe a windup time would help?

I noticed that I can't still find the Trader when the Front moves to the castle, and their weapons dealer doesn't provide you with the option to upgrade items when that event occurs.

I like how the acolytes now actually use their shields, though the cultist's dodging mechanic is a bit cheap. Still, it's far too easy to slaughter your way through enemies as it stands, especially if you upgrade your weapons. The bad guys definitely need their health points doubled at the very least. I recall acolytes in the base game tended to take ten bullets to die and only give back five, but here they can easily die with just three bullets and could potentially give twenty back if you loot them (and this is on Elite difficulty). Even the tough as nails crusaders are easily dispatched with three seconds of auto fire.

I understand enough how the shield works, but what does the helmet do? I thought it was extra armor, but it doesn't seem to change anything when I'm hit.

My thoughts on the weapon degrading mechanic are... mixed. I didn't like it in Oblivion or System Shock 2, but here it actually does somewhat balance the upgradable weapons being overpowered (not enough to not justify giving the Order some more health points though). Plus you gave players the option to switch it off, which is always good.

Speaking of options, is there one to add more blood (at least without going into the console and fiddling with cvars)?

Finally, I noticed a couple of the key binds (the ones for the skill menu and shield) kept switching off when I exited the game. This may relate more to issues with the GZDoom configs and the multiple Doom mods I already use though.

That's all I can think of for now. I only got as far as clearing the castle, so I don't know if you had more surprises in store beyond that. Anyway, in spite of everything I've mentioned above this mod is still a fantastic effort in overhauling Strife and I hope you continue your great work in making it even better.

Major bug I noticed; when speaking with the rebel's weapons dealer (not the trader in the base, the guy in the town), choosing the option to upgrade a weapon when you've selected a weapon that can't be upgraded immediately quits the conversation, but it leaves the picture of the guy that pops up permanently stuck on your screen. The only way to clear it is by reloading an earlier save.

I'll provide a more detailed review once I've played a bit more, but I thought that worth mentioning off the bat.

Played a bit more, got a few more pointers I missed:

6. The weapon wheel for the crossbow doesn't work very well, sorry to say. The selector tends to move all over the place at the slightest touch of the mouse. I think binding a key to switch between the different ammunition types would be better, and the weapon wheel can then be repurposed to include access to all guns (like the weapon wheel addon for Brutal Doom).

7. The Trader disappears when the rebels move to the castle. Spawning him via the console doesn't do anything, so I don't get to spend my loot anymore. :( I presume this is because only Map 3 has been edited thus far to include him and his scripts.

8. An option to turn off the manual sprint would be good. I usually play with always run on, so it's a bit annoying to find it doesn't work anymore.

9. Adrenaline is a nice addition, but too overpowered in it's current form. Making it charge up slower and shaving off a second of the 'stop time' would work better.

Hey there. Just tried this mod out. First off, had some good fun playing through Strife again, and this mod adds a load of neat things to the game. That said, though I've not done a complete playthrough yet, I've got a few pointers that I noticed while playing:

1. It's far too easy to earn XP and there are too many skill points given when you level up. I've reached level 17, haven't even assaulted the Order's first base I've completely maxed out all the skills. I would suggest that either how much XP is needed to level up is dramatically increased, or only give 1 skill point per level instead of 3.

2. I like the option given to spare the Sanctuary captive and kill Harris instead. I also understood what to do on the first go, so it's not too obtuse an objective. Good work.

3. The Trader is a great NPC addition. A brief word on exactly where he is in the readme would be helpful. That and giving the option to sell excess ammo and items would be nice.

4. Is it possible to level enemies as well as yourself? Even on the fourth highest difficulty I'm mowing down bad guys with ease. Or maybe have some of the different coloured acolytes have more health / be a bit faster / have better weapons.

5. Order cultists are a pretty cool addition.

That's it so far. As I know I haven't played all the way through there's still plenty of new content I can't comment on yet. Still, I like what I've been playing, even if there's some room left for improvement.