Conflux III discussion thread - potential spoilers

[Paul Stevens]

The Quests page of the wiki is at 99% complete

That is a great accomplishment. Thank you so much for your efforts.
I have not yet found enough energy to attempt Conflux. With help
such as yours, I might give it a try someday.

[Crashone]

thx for your kind answer.
I'll think twice then before re enter the dungeon.
Despite the fact that Conflux is a wonder and I have so much respect for Zyx ans all his work, desease system still prevent me to play it.

Never understood in the fisrt place why it touch me like that, I was playing the game the day Zyx released that feature, but soon, it makes me stop.
is it because it's so far from the game spirit (imho)? is it because it makes the game so much harder without purpose? is it because I just don't want to see my heroes sick? is it because it was bugged at the beginning?
really can't tell, but the fact is, it pulls some invisibles strings in me that make me feel uncomfortable.

then again, Zyx, if you read this, I know how I much I personnaly owe you for the tons of hours of fun I had with your game, please don't misunderstand me. it's only a personnal feeling, never a criticism.

[Zyx]

Hello, the disease system is out of control. I'll try to fix it this week end!

[Zyx]

Quick fix WIP007:
http://www.cyberskald.com/conflux/

[Paul Stevens]

We are very happy to see you back in action, Zyx.
Fixing such minor issues makes a big difference for
us mortal players.

[Zyx]

Thank you all for your calls. I'm reluctant to untested releases like this one, but I simply don't have the time to playtest it fully anymore like I used to do. I depend entirely on your feedbacks to adjust the difficulty.
Crashone, if you're gonna play, please report about anything broken or unbalanced!

Cheers

[Crashone]

I will.

For now, I can only see the wip006 on your site. how to catch the wip007 please?

thx

[Paul Stevens]

The site says:

Download latest version (Conflux WIP007) for Windows here, or last stable version (Conflux 3.5 B8) here.

'here' is :
http://www.cyberskald.com/conflux/Conflux_WIP007.zip

[Zyx]

update your cache I suppose

[Crashone]

Thx Paul for the link.

Now I'm able to view the wip007 on the conflux page. weird I could not see it yesterday.

[Paul Stevens]

Thx Paul

You are welcome. I hope you keep us up-to-date on your progress.

[Zyx]

thx for your kind answer.
I'll think twice then before re enter the dungeon.
Despite the fact that Conflux is a wonder and I have so much respect for Zyx ans all his work, desease system still prevent me to play it.

Never understood in the fisrt place why it touch me like that, I was playing the game the day Zyx released that feature, but soon, it makes me stop.
is it because it's so far from the game spirit (imho)? is it because it makes the game so much harder without purpose? is it because I just don't want to see my heroes sick? is it because it was bugged at the beginning?
really can't tell, but the fact is, it pulls some invisibles strings in me that make me feel uncomfortable.

My god. I just had a try of the previous version. What a slow death those rats deliver! Long after you wear their hide, their curse is getting and getting at you. After a while I felt like my mind was decaying! I see what you meant now!

Well, it could be the new curse of Vecna, better than this permanent flux of lightnings...

[Phoenix]

In wip006 and below, diseases cure more easlily at the Master levels and when you have raised your Vitality to 90+. I tested all SAR Wines, juices, and all alchemical potions and nothing ever cured a disease in just one drink. Potion strength didn't seem to have any effect either. Curing diseases can be very tedious, but it gives nice exp for your Priest levels. Drink lots of Juice!

The start of Conflux probably gives people the hardest time. It's fun to go head to head with monsters in DM/CSB, but at the start of Conflux every creature can kill you with one attack. I kill the Giant Rat in the Wine Cellar with a door 95% of the time and then do hit and run attacks on the small ones. Save often. If you get a disease before you have a flask, it easier to just reload.

I did manage to kill Vecna and collect her treasure in wip006, but it was much harder with a full team than a single Champion.

Nice to see you around again Zyx. I'll give wip007 a go and let you know if I find anything.

[luke41]

Two questions about choosing champions:

1. After finishing with my party 3 quests (of Leyla, of Mophus, of Gothmog) I have no clue how to open the door on Hulk's quest. Maybe there is no way, since I miss a proper character (i play with Zed, Gothmog, Leyla, Mophus). There is no champ from the "fighters"...?

2. Is there any way to start the game with FOUR MALEFICIANT characters? I fear, I have to choose at least one of the four beginning characters (Zed or Iiado or Leif or Gando), and only later step by step find 3 maleciciants?

By the way: Since I now play mixed Conflux and some DSB-games, I am a little confused with the spells, it happend to me regulary to use "wrong" spells in the other game!... Funny.

[Zyx]

Hello!
1. There's a special gem, an emerald, which allows you to have a 5th character. I don't remember where but it must be in the wiki.

2. Yes, you have to take a maleficient one as a first character. Find how!

Version WIP008 is here:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21A ... 18BAED6EC0
or
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fi ... 4042691762

[Paul Stevens]

I know several people have attempted to make recordings of
their Conflux experience. Who has gotten the furthest in
this effort? I'd like to publish such a journey on my website.
I tried to make a short recording myself but I am totally inept
and got about as far as obtaining the first flask.

[Phoenix]

Obtaining the first flask is a major milestone in the Conflux experience. The biggest problem that I have with recordings is that I pretty much hate the original DM/CSB leveling system. I can't tell you how many times that I've had a champion go up a level with 0 increases in stats. I save often and when this happens, I'll quit and reload from before the level increase. In a typical playthough, I generate 2500+ log files. I use all four savegame slots and sometimes revert .bak files to .dat. To say that this confuses the splice program is an understatement.

The way I approach Conflux falls into a series of stages:
Stage I: Get a flask.
Stage II: Unlock the Guilds
Stage III: Get weapons and armor.
Stage IV: Start the competition quests.
Stage V: Guildmaster quests.
Stage VI: Empty fhe zoo at the bottom of the dungeon
Stage VII: Choose an ending.

If you follow my path on the wiki and the Quests page, it outlines this in detail.

Just how much in depth did you want to show with this recording?

[luke41]

Well, I kind of mix up the quests - just discovering what happens when running around the Conflux-universe.
So most times I finish some competition quests without even knowing before these were quests..

But about mapping: I suppose too to be the wrong guy for that. The reason: I always discover the game, saving many many times in between, drawing maps as I go further (using an Excel-sheet!...). And for drawing maps, when entering an new room or corridor, I always touch all walls to check whether there are fake walls or invisible buttons. The result as a recording would be ugly und could cause headache: forwand, turn left, touch, turn right, right, touch wall, again left back to the original direction, one step forward, and again...

And actually I never re-play an dungeon again without saving. If I do, like in DM or CSB, I tried some difficult special challenges, like:
- finish with only 2 AND weakest (but strongest in magic) characters, like Boris + Tiggy
- finish with only 2 AND strongest (but no magic) characters, like Daroo + Azizi etc.
(and of course the same, but only with one character...)

Once I tried to finish DM in a "peacenik"-challenge: DO NOT USE ANY WEAPONS or HITS (and no magic weapons like fireballs or poison) - but using pits or doors was allowed... Didnt come very far though...

[Paul Stevens]

Just how much in depth did you want to show with this recording?

For Dungeon Master and for Chaos Strikes Back I always try
to include a complete game recording.

For Conflux, I am not sure what that means. I guess it would be
a complete game to one of the endings. It would prove that
it is possible to win the game! Saves are legal and expected.
The 'Splice' program takes care of them.

You are certainly right that I don't want a 'first-time' recording.
The best would be someone competing in a speed contest. In other
words, someone who knows the game intimately. Like the ten minute
dash through Chaos Strikes Back.

While we are here-----Has anyone posted their best time to one of
Conflux' endings?

[Phoenix]

There's no such thing as a Conflux speed run. All of the endings involve battles with the strongest of monsters. A begining character is extremely fragile and can't even take one hit from any monster and live. Until you unlock the first Guild Aspirant's door, you can't advance beyond Apprentice. You have to unlock all the guild doors to reach Master. The guild "keys" are scattered about the dungeon, and if you don't have the items for the Riddles, you can't use the keys. You also need to completely unlock the guilds to access the Guildmasters. With the exception of Leyla's Quest, all of the guildmaster quests are epic battles. Leyla's requires high health and stamina.

DM/CSB can be won with sub-master champions. Conflux cannot. There's only one ending that I haven't tested and that's the Maleficent guild ending. The Maleficent guild path is outrageously hard in the eveyone in the guild starts with 1 HP and 0 mana. You walk into a wall and half your party dies. I have a savegame with them just after killing them all off and resurecting them to bring everyone up to 25 HP, but that 's as far as I've gotten with them. I don't see a way to win their ending without advancing them to full Archmaster.

[Paul Stevens]

There's no such thing as a Conflux speed run.

It sounds as if you have successfully completed one or more endings.
So, from my point of view, you are the current winner of the
Conflux Speed Run contest. Now, if only you had a recording of an entire
such game.

[Phoenix]

I've compelted 8 of the 10 possible endings. The Deathtrap Dungeon is a separate game with its own ending, and I mentioned the Maleficient guild difficulty. I've never set out to get to an ending as quickly as possible. My goal, beyond completing the wiki, has been to complete the competition with a single guide so that the 4 guildmaster quests are accessible. I don't think anyone has the patience to sit through a recording of the complete game. One of my nearly completed runs shows Time=1783665 Total moves= 617079. It would take days to watch at normal speed. One single battle in Mophus's quest with one monster can take over an hour.

[Zyx]

I could make a nerfed version with little inversion from my side to allow for a faster experience. Originally perseverance was meant to be a main component of certain victories. Nowadays time is becoming a scarce resource, and I didn't mean the players to surrender their life to Conflux to reach the endings... what do you say?

[Paul Stevens]

I, myself, am not going to play Conflux enough for it to make any difference
to me. I am not suited to these complex games. I'd wind up in a rubber room.
I play a decent game of Super Mario Bothers.

But.....I agree that asking people for their time is asking a lot. There is plenty
of opportunity in Conflux to test one's mental skills without testing one's
patience. I think it wise to bias the game away from long battles.

[Phoenix]

Zyx, that particular battle can be cut in half by just including a second DES saber. That is the longest battle because only a single champion can attack the creature. Personally, I enjoy the difficulty, but it still takes some time to explore everything Conflux has to offer.

[Antman]

I was actually making a complete recording of Conflux, I'd gotten quite far but had come across the glitch in the view cleaning room. But I see Zyx has released a new WIP008 version, I'd guess that this version is different enough that I can't play the recording through the dungeon... I'll try tomorrow and see what happens

[Antman]

Whoops, WIP008 is actually the version I had played.

@Zyx: would it be possible to get a version of WIP008 but with the DSA bug mentioned at the end of this thread (viewtopic.php?f=75&t=25152&start=480) fixed and no other changes? This would allow me to replay the recording of the game up to that point then I continue playing and making the recording without the bug being present. It would be much appreciated! I've had a look with CSBuild but I'm not too sure what I'm doing when it comes to complex DSAs.

@Phoenix: You can still save and load to ensure you get the stat increases you want when you level, the splicing tool should deal with that fine as it does the work of figuring out which recording files to use. It would not have any effect on the recording when watching the playback. There's actually a recording of a play through with the maleficient guild all the way to their ending You can find it here: http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Conflux_Competition/ . You'll want to play it with quickplay at the start though as it is quite slow to get going...

@Paul: I'll send you the recording I'd made so far up to the DSA bug, I can't quite remember if I'd made it to any of the endings yet, it's been over a year since I last played it. Speed runs to some the endings could be a lot of fun I reckon. I'd like to finish my complete recording first if possible.

[Paul Stevens]

It appears very possible to fix the DSA error that occurs.
There is a "Wash Footprints" DSA at 16(8,24) that probably should
not be there. It expects to be activated as a 'Spell Filter' rather than
as a target of a pressure pad, switch, etc. It is at a location
that contains an 'AND' gate that opens the wall at 16(8,23). It
does not seem to make sense to have the DSA at that location and,
in any case, it can not work.

Nevertheless, I don't see why it would cause a 'Sequence Error'. I hope
I don't have to discover why. We will see.

Antman.....can you remove that DSA at 16(8,24) from your last good
save and attempt to continue your game? I removed it from "dungeon.dat"
and was able to 'playback' the entire game. So it appears that the DSA is not
necessary at least until the time it caused the error. If you can continue
your game from that point, then we can remove the DSA from 'dungeon.dat'
and you should have a complete recording.

What a monstrous effort on your part! At the time it died you had played
for approximately 59500 seconds or 16.5 hours.

[Paul Stevens]

Having said all of that.......I see that there is a second,
perhaps unrelated, error that may have caused the Sequence
problem. After we get past the DSA 'Wash Footprints' error, we
can go into this second problem if it still exists.

[Antman]

Removing the DSA certainly prevents the error and everything works fine, it does look like it is there by accident. I also ran the recording through from the beginning with the DSA removed from the dungeon.dat, I still got the sequence timing error at the point where the DSA bug was originally occurring. But loading from the last created save and playing the section, then running the whole resulting recording again worked without any issues (that vblmultiplier=99 is a life saver...). So it looks like it should be good to continue, thanks for looking into it!

16.5 hours, I don't even think I'm close to half way through...