Finally finished it.
I've never been able to finish this expansion due to the Spirit Eater mechanic. I don't know how many times I had tried this expansion before... Maybe five or six. I could never get any further than the academy. It's not that the mechanic is a bad idea (and from a story point of view, I think it's a brilliant idea), it's just that the mechanic, at least for me, makes me feel like I need to rush through everything, because I'm losing Spirit Energy so fast. I hate feeling rushed in a game. It's an absolute killer for me. I want to take my time. And Kaldor said the same thing in another thread, and I think he's 100% correct. MoTB is game that one should not feel rushed to complete.
Fortunately, this time I downloaded Kaldor Silverwand's Spirit Eater Auto-Pause package, and that made a big difference. I didn't feel compelled to rush through inventory management, conversations, or level-up. I liked that a lot.
I get why people like this campaign. It's smaller and more focused than the OC, and maybe due to this focus the story just comes off better. I liked the story. The writing was well-done. The area design is better; you can see the devs making the jump from the OC and really improving on the area design.
I can see why people like the story. A lot of D&D CRP gamers list Planescape: Torment as their favorite of the bunch. Maybe there's just a fascination with the City of Judgement and the God of the Dead, I dunno. But I can see the appeal, and MoTB builds an interesting story around around these iconic gods and locations.
I've never been one to care much about all the different deities in these sorts of games, but I actually made a concerted effort this time to get engaged with it, and for MoTB it's a really integral part of the story. Kelemvor, Myrkul... And it turned out to be fairly interesting and neat story. I enjoyed finding out the origins of the "curse"; that was actually one of my favorite parts.
I dig that we get to play with epic characters here. That was fun. I'm big on the joy of leveling up, the mechanics of D&D, feats and builds... it's just fun to play with the higher level spells and do some really neat things.
I think, of all the battles, I enjoyed the encounter in the lower level of the Death God's Vault. The first time I tried to play MoTB I reached this part of the game too soon, and I just could not handle it. This time I went through the story a bit different. I read a tip that said the lower vault was really meant for Act III. So I didn't even make any concerted effort to go there until Act III, at which time I had enough levels to do it well. Having Kaelyn turning undead, spellcasters firing off Undeat to Death spells along with Sunburst/Sunbeams... it was pure mayhem and joy there for a few minutes. Just an epic battle. I loved it.
As for the Spirit Eater mechanic and its impact... I prefer playing a fighter/mage, and always have enjoyed that combo, but it presents challenges at higher levels. I don't play a fighter/mage to launch a lot of offensive spells, but more to be a fighter that uses magic to not get hit (there's so many good defensive spells). We have the Eldritch Knight prestige class now, and that is ideal, but at epic levels it can take a long time to buff, and when you have a spirit mechanic degrading, even with the auto-pause, it can really hurt, because you need to sleep to re-memorize spells (or travel, which is hokey to me). So, I loaded up my sequencer rods from The Darkening Sky and plugged those in, and they made a huge difference. I kept one sequencer rod for all my long-term buffs, and another for all my short-term battle buffs. Each of the spellcasting NPC's got a rod too. After that, it was fun and enjoyable to play. I prefer the spellcaster heavy party configuration, and only took Okku with me to the Wells of Lurue for one visit. Having a lot of spellcasters at high level means you can spend a lot of time casting buffs. Or you can hit the sequencer rod and auto-buff in one turn... And that made it fun and way less tedious.
I only had a couple disappointments with the whole thing. First, I thought the City of Judgement was... blah. I was a bit disappointed in those areas and the designs. The boss level encounters in them were great, and the final fight was entertaining (and finally a good chance to just go hog-wild with the Spirit Eater feats, so I loved that part; loved that at the end we got to just use them all without worry). But the areas themselves, not so much. I don't know if they were short on time or what. I felt the same way about the barrow as well, to start the game. I liked the idea, but the execution seemed rather uninspired. Those two sets of areas just didn't do anything for me. On the other hand, I loved Mulsantir, the Ashenwood, and Coveya Kurg'annis. All very nice to look at.
I also found a couple doors in the vault I couldn't get open, and I have no idea where the keys are for those. I'll be running through this again, I'm sure (down the road, after I finish my current play-throughs in other mods), so maybe this next time I can figure out how to open those...
Bottom line: I understand the love for this campaign. Just had to get the spirit eater mechanic under control to really enjoy it.
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