@marieandsteve2 happy you managed.
Drop me a line if you need anything else

@frattaglia ..picked up the book and back on the monkey trail..thanks for the clue was perfect

Thanks for getting back - nah unfortunately no poetry book in my inventory - any pointers you can give would be great otherwise I guess I can just go to a previous save and start labyrinth again knowing to look for the book

@marieandsteve2 heya... It's been a while and I don't remember the exact steps to overcome the labyrinth
In any case, have you found the "poetry" book in the palace library, near the entrance? it actually refers to items you can see next to the teleporters, it can guide you through
If that's not enough let me know and I'll try to work out the solution

Great campaign so far - I am totally stuck in the palace you go to kill the archmage for Jokar - have exposed several teleport platforms but keep just jumping from one room to another in a circle. Have found a figurine which I guess I need - but can't see anywhere to put it..any hellp gratefully received

Its not that hard fight if you have spellcasters but i don't, because i wanted to try playing this mod without. So i don't have any fireballs just melee and ranged weapons and no proper way to heal because best healing potions are not available in this mod and none of my characters can use wand of healing.

@Kustomrig.fi ideally, these fockers should not see round 2. It's been 2 years now, but I don't remember it as an hard fight. The best way to solve the encounter would be 1. strategically place the bulk of the team out of the way (before dialogue) 2. cc the boss to oblivion 3. apply fireball on the adds (they are vulnerable to fire) 4. leave a poor sod to dodge the boss attacks and wear it down from safe distance

Its the final fight in pit, opponents make too much area damage, breathing in every round and when you hit the boss you get damaged your self every time, healing potions are too poor just healing like 10-15 hit points so using turn for that potion is just pointless when in one round you get 3* more damage. Once they get your 1st party member down its lost fight because you have no means keeping it alive and continue fighting.

@Kustomrig.fi what gives you trouble? If it's the back to back, there is an hidden door for a resting area at the intersection after the first fight, you may rest there. Or you can always go back to the previous area

Pit is impossible without spellcaster who can heal or use wand of healing

Ok, I am glad to see it's possible, and now there's a future plan!

@Brad it is possible but you need to pass a very difficult check while speaking with "Misaye". The harsh and depressing ending is the default, par for the course in colonho.

Have fun

A friend and I are playing and having great fun, but there is now a large question: can you save the Caretaker in Colonho?

@livnlegend1 you probably missed the map in ozmilla's room (noble floor)... I am afraid that wasn't very clear, you need it to move on

Fun module! So I have played nearly all the way through. I defeated Ozmilla and gang, escaped the fortress through the main doors, and spoke to the Baron who thanked me for the help. Leaving to the world map, I can't find the Portal to the Unknown! I must be missing something? I returned to the Baron and he just says "Thank you!". Do I need to activate the portal?

@clockworkj427 that puzzle has 2 parts First you have to interact with the organ and play the right notes, the plates open the way to the exit door

I'm currently stuck at the door puzzle at the Joyless Jest, the one in the cave with the pressure plates. do those actually do anything or am I just wasting my time?

@Venom_coceT I don't think I'll ever come back to deliver a true 6-men version of these campaigns, I'm currently working on another that is taking the best part of a year.
In any case, everything is playable with 6-men parties.

About difficulty, this campaign is not overly punishing, but it can have spikes here and there. I usually like to play 5-men on scavenger, and I find this campaign just a bit on the easy side, so feel free to ramp up a notch

6 man party version when? Or difficulty settings recomendations?

@DrFate Heya.
The puzzle is in 2 parts:
Minor spoiler: you first have to play the correct triad on the organ and "lock in" the keys - there is an hint in the journal you find in that area, then you have to look for plates on the ground (press alt in case) and keep your pcs on each of them
Major spoiler: The solution is the major triad of B flat (Bb D F)

I am having trouble with the organ. Any suggestions?

@Kosocku thank you, fixed in current release

I think I may have found an unintentional exploit: I'd originally missed why the Monkeys would want to be in groups of 3 when they learn to be flat, so I'd tried to learn it again, which gave a wonky answer. After trying a 3rd time, I one again got the message I was expecting, but I also got the 750 xp a second time. Not sure how many times in a row it would work, as I don't want to over-level myself

@RESPIRE FUNDO ah I see.
Group teleporters like these work just like map exits. When playing with 5 or 6-men parties, you need to use the pause tech to progress.

Just put the first 4 PCs on the teleporter (the round decoration on the floor, just before the stairs), pause, then move the 5th and 6th pcs from behind the group to the opposite front side.
Unpause, they will start moving together and for a brief moment all your pcs will be on the tele and it will activate

note, i am using a mod, the Unfinished Bussiness and i thinking a party with six characters is the reason for the performace problem, i will try later play with four

The portal entrance in the Kitchen's room seems broken, after i press the button and pop up the message, when i go to the location the portal simply doesn't work. I step and step in that freak over and over but nothing happens! I like the campaing (especially the Crown of magister reference) but this portal is a broken horse for me...

@RESPIRE FUNDO let's try, it could be something else...
I will use the names of the waypoints on the map so you can retrieve them in-game.
If you are talking about the button on the wall of "Jokar's private room" inside the dungeon, it opens a secret wall in the "kitchens", close to the dungeon's entrance. There you will find stairs for the lower level, activated by a teleporter (just step on it)

The other possible option is the floor plate in the lower level of the dungeon (no waypoint here), it just opens another secret door just nearby

If your problem is getting inside the dungeon from Jokar's house, the entrance is deactivated and you should interact with the torches in the hidden room to solve a puzzle

If any of these seems broken, just let me know

I have a problem... When i sided with the Franzig, it says to go and kill Jokar, but the dungeon seems... not working? I found a buttom on a room but when i think the exit is the portal on ground, is don't activate!

I don't know if the reason is because i am dumb, probably, but i wish some help if is possible.

@Kosocku I know it's a long shot, but have you tried talking with the "pigs"?
If you did, and you found Armand's body and now you need to find his killer, don't worry, that will come up in the course of the campaign

Am I just an idiot? Or did I do something wrong/out of order? Playing "Business of Monkeys" and doing the "Find Armand" quest. Found Armond, found the 3 skill checks, and the next is supposed to be in a certain direction that you just came from. Problem is, I can't find anything at in that area that further's the quest. I've been in that area, cleared everything (including the 2 exits available from there), but can't find anything pertaining to Armond. Any suggestions?

@dantastic

1) if you mean the stairs between The Pit and the "Main floor" of the prison, you lost nothing I just put a couple of locked doors there from the main floor to block players wandering around, but there is literally nothing there

2) the optional dungeon can be accessed from the snow map you have to pass through before reaching the prison, the one where you find the escaped prisoners and have to decide which side to help. You have to explore the map a bit, but the quest doesn't trigger if you didn't complete the "planar diplomacy" quest almost at the start of the adventure, in the Northern Farmlands

Thank you again

Hi, Frattaglia,

I just finished aBfM--quite an enjoyable adventure! I'm ready to move on the the sequel through the portal on the map. A couple of things I wasn't able to do:

1) I was unable to access the Prisoner's Entrance portion of the Prison. It had locked doors with no obvious way to unlock them. Every other set of locked doors in the Prison I could eventually unlock, so I'm wondering what I missed there.

2) I don't think I ever came across the optional dungeon that was supposed to be DLC sized. If I did, I didn't recognize it for being that. Can you share in spoilers where I should have looked?

Thanks!
Dan

P.S., I really appreciated the method for releasing the Wandering One from her captivity. It was a highlight of the campaign for me;-)

Ah, my mistake. I just checked and when trying to break the telescope, got a message that that's not needed now, so I see that all is WAI, here. Thanks! Now...Onward!

@dantastic

thanks a lot!
Now, for the Palace of Visions: no, it is not the optional dungeon... it is an alternative dungeon you are required to clear if you side with Jokar in the Colonho questline. I understand you sided with Franzig and cleared the basement of Jokar's house instead

At that point of the main quest, you shouldn't be able to break that particular item... if that's the case please lmk, you probably catched a corner case

Hi, Frattaglia,

I'm enjoying aBfM a lot and really appreciate the creativity that shines thoughout this campaign, so far. I'm about to leave Colonho for the ciphered "LSSPSAI" location , and wanted to say I'm glad you gave choices to select from because I could still figure out the pattern correctly despite not understanding the "vocal birds" clue until afterwards--then it was an "oh of course!" moment.

Before I leave town, I'm considering breaking a certain item in the Palace of Visions. Is this perhaps how to access the 100% optional dungeon you mention in your description? I'm curious how long this excursion will take, because I'm also hot on the trail of Oz and want to complete the tasks entrusted to my party by the Constable.

I'm really enjoying the detective/mystery aspects of your plot--you've made a campaign I'm enjoying way beyond what I was expecting based on the 6-7 Solasta campaigns I've played so far. Well done!

@Xe-N-on thanks for your feedback and all. Really appreciated

As a piece of constructive feedback, I’d suggest reviewing the difficulty of some encounters to better account for bad luck or non-optimized party setups. Although you described the campaign as mid-easy, certain fights can feel quite challenging under these conditions, especially without reloads.

For a more authentic tabletop-like experience (no reloads), you could consider balancing a few encounters accordingly, or maybe mention in the campaign description that while the difficulty is generally mid-easy, certain fights may be tough for non-optimized or poorly equipped groups. Tools like encounter calculators for D&D 5e (e.g., this one) can be helpful for fine-tuning.

Thanks again for all your hard work—I really appreciate it!
(2/2)

Hi, it's me again! Thank you for your detailed response and for your amazing custom campaign. I’ve just finished Colonho, and I have to say, the level of detail you put into it—occasionally even breaking the fourth wall—is truly impressive. The result feels highly polished and professional.

Since I’ve experimented with the Solasta dungeon editor myself, I know firsthand how much work goes into scripting, especially given the limited options for complex interactions. (In my memory, the NWN2 editor was much more user-friendly.)

Regarding the challenge I ran into, I should mention that I’m using a non-optimized party with buy-point stats:

Half-Orc Fighter (Commander)
Half-Elf Druid (Circle of Balance)
High-Elf Wizard (Court Mage)
Halfling Bard (College of Lore)

(1/2)

@Xe-N-on

- If for any reasons the dryads come back in counterspell range, you can always bait out the counter with a lvl1 spell like fog cloud or guiding bolt
- At this point you are 3 vs 1 with the bulette, you can either hard-cc it and finish the dryads or go for attrition. Fighter/paladin dodging with shield of faith as a frontline, or a bard viciously mocking it (it has 1 attack per turn) will greatly increase survivability


It's definitely not easy and it may take a couple of tries, but I replayed the encounter this morning with a lvl 3 party with starting equipment and I've almost pulled it off on the first try (dryads dead, bulette down to red but it passed an INT save on the debuff and rolled 3 crits in a row )

2/2

@Xe-N-on it is definitely one of the most difficult encounters in the module, and one of the few that require a bit of preparation

My usual "vanilla pregens" run is over 1 year ago now, but I remember beating it with this strategy (I am sure many other players found more efficient ways to solve it, but that's how I rolled):

- Spread out - if you turtle up you're dead. Stealth helps a lot
- Dryads are there to be a nuisance, they have to be separated from the bulette. A good way is to send out someone to harass them in melee (rogue or monk works wonder here). As soon as they are engaged, they will try to cc the harasser and walk away, which is exactly what you want (they'll be out of range for counterspell)
- someone will have to facetank a bulette dive. There are spots (e.g. behind the broken furniture, over the scaffold) where it can't teleport so your casters can be placed there. A familiar (if you have UB) is well spent as a target

1/2

As a D&D tabletop player and former DM, I find some of the encounters to be excessively difficult. I'm still in Act 1, but facing a Bulette (CR 5) along with two Badlands Dryads (CR 2) seems overwhelming for a party of four level 4 characters—especially when your main damage dealer is a spellcaster who gets counterspelled by the Dryads. Was this encounter specifically designed to wipe the group?

Ah, Thanks for pointing out those features.

@jeff Oof, sorry mate.

Silver lining: you are playing with UB, so you can flag to enable CTRL-SHIFT-T and CTRL-SHIFT-R to teleport your party where you need.
You can find the flags under gameplay/interface IIRC

I am running a 6 PC party and two of my party got left behind getting to the Diamond Queen room, so now I can't move forward. :-(

@Tuck Davis thank you my friend

Yes, there are not many magic items in act 1, but a few here and there are definitely present. For example the caves in the eastern hills have some named items and random magicals hidden in chests.
On the topic of backpacks, there are a few hidden around in act 2/3, and a dedicated vendor once you reach Colonho (early act 2)

About flying: that's sadly a bug of the dungeon maker. Rule of thumb is that if a walking PC has to jump, fly over is impossible. This means that flying is extremely useful, but just for reaching high ground, bypassing difficult terrain or traps, or the random puzzle that requires to overcome cages (there are none in this campaign IIRC).
This bug also impacts flying npcs, for example there is an area in early act 2 that is clearly designed to provide an encounter (the secondary path through the swamps), but I had awkwardly to move it ahead because the mobs just couldn't move around

The only person in my group (Paladin,Hunter,Mage,Monk) who is able to really carry much is my dwarf and even she is quickly overloaded cause of the heavy armor she wears. Even being only mildly overloaded (medium bar) she is slowed down to 4 movement in combat because small creature ~ it is kind of a deal breaker and I considered stopping to loot at all.

The second issue is flying, I don't know if it is a restriction of the world builder but I thought nothing about dumping my wizards physical stats for him being bookish and I knew he would be able to fly pretty quickly - but flying doesn't get you anywhere really, all gaps and obstacles for ppl to jump are not made so you could fly over them so every time there are such 2 spaces he gets incapacited (after he stopped flying cause while flying he can't jump at all)

Greets Tuck

2/2 cause steam won't alow long posts.

Hey Frattaglia, I'm currently playing through the campaign and have to say the story is really nice but mechanically I got a couple problems, it seems this adventure is very sparse with magic items,

I am currently in act2 with my group and only found one armor peace that could be counted and nothing to attune to. Even the vendor after act 1 for preperation of act 2 only sells basic stuff, so it makes kind of sense that there are not even backpacks to be found that would ease up things.

Sr. Frattglia, No worries at all. Thanks for the response. I figured as much.
I had my barbarian and druid invisible by my sorc. and long range scouting
but got 'seen' by bugs. But the two of them won that fight with the other two pcs
just passing turns from across the board at entry point.
Then all 4 hit the hag et al. from both sides and finally just shot the bears and wolf
from across the water - after having snuck by them. Fun Times :-)
I'll go back to re-do that bit gladly. Nice work. Enjoying it.

@seangeno sorry I was away travelling... I am afraid you messed up the order of the quest (my mistake, it was one of the first quests I've created and I may have not considered certain aspects ). Sorry about that

I will try and build a fix, but i am afraid you may be past that with your last savegame. I can only suggest you to reload an earlier save (eg when entering the area) and do the encounters in the right order (wolves first, hags later). TBH I'd cheat them

...was there more than one green hag? what am i missing?