Check out the new Spells section of the Armory. All the spells we have so far are separated by level. We will have more spells in the days to come.

Gamevortex just put up part 2 of their interview with Chris Avellone, lead designer of Torment. Especially interesting for people who are "into" pen & paper Planescape.

They also have a Torment review up.

Just noticed it at Vaultnetwork... a profile of our favorite artist dude.

Go check it out.

Got two more. Check 'em. Maybe I should turn the "top 10 signs you've been playing too much Torment" into one big top 100 or something... That might work a whole lot better.

UPDATE: Also a fresh top 10 from Voldenuit.

I just got a third Top 10 submission, from DarkElven, so I made a separate top 10 section. Check it out.

Eurogamer has posted a review. Check it out.

Larry Cole alerted me to the fact that BIS has put a beta patch up on the official screenshots page. It should solve a few problems. I haven't tried it yet, if you have, tell us your experiences on the discussion board!!!

Spotted at Vaultnetwork:

Checkout's review

Got some more stuff from Fish. Check it out. No, I'm not gonna tell you what it is.

I finally finished putting in all the new hex codes that Bishop sent me. Also, I got a lot of updating to items and monsters from Mob, with some help from Dan Anderson.

a big THANK YOU to these people!

So I've finally gotten my hands on Torment... Yay!! I just sneaked on to do an update while waiting for the full install to finish, I just had to share the news.

Tim Donley made a little update on the official site.

Jason Suinn made this post on the official board

We're currently testing the final version of the patch now.Barring anything bad happening, it should be coming out within the week.

Vaultnetwork has posted a developer profile of Ken Lee, Torment producer

this one at Gamepower

Check CNN's review of Torment
Thanks to Sarducci for sending this in!

The signature clown posted on the Developers Board that he can answer any questions about Torment. So let's put him to the test, shall we? If anyone can ask him a question he/she can't answer, inform me and I'll give you an honorary mention. The e.mail (for those that can't use the link) is CYHED4@aol.com.

Here's another helpful page on how to join the Xaositects. Thanks to XaositectR for the info.

I've put up a new page on how to join the Anarchists, with thanks to Xander for the info.

(news source BGChronicles)

Vaultnetwork has posted their 1999 awards. Torment won on several points. Check it out...

I asked Dan Spitzley, Black Isle programmer, for a bit more info on the patch (more specifically: which fixes would require a restart), and here is his reply:

Hi Calis,

We haven't determined all of the issues that will require a restart. Thereshould not be many. Once the patch is more or less finalized I will talk to allof the designers/programmers/scriptors in order to compile a list of theseissues. I will post it on the we site shortly after the patch is released. Ifpossible I will try to place the list in a readme in the patch itself.

Thanks,
Dan

P.S. - Sassy is cool, as always.

Dan

Just spotted two new ones at GA-RPG:
one at Gamespot UK
one at Gamesfirst

Voldenuit sent me some hex codes for items. Check 'em out.

Also, he sent me some priest spells to update his spell hex codes with. You can enter these in your mage spell book. Enjoy...

Got this from Flamethrower, a reader:

Apparently, Dixons UK is bundling the novel with the game. Pretty sweet deal... so for all you UK'ers out there, it might be worth to check this out!

Just saw on GA-RPG that Desslock's posted a review of Torment. It's a biggie.

Voldenuit sent me a cool hex editing guide, so that all the addle-coves out there (me included) know how to do it.

It's in the stores in most of Europe! And it has a cool jewel case! NO MORE CARDBOARD! Woohoo! Erm. That means not a whole lot of updates today, since I just got the game =)

Click the link below, and follow the yellow brick road...

Quite simply, go and buy 2 copies of this game... one for your computer and a second one so you can cuddle with it at night.

Torment took home both the Best Story-Award and RPG of the Year award at Gamespots Game of the Year Awards. In the RPG category, it even beat the game that won the Game of the Year-award, Everquest. The Readers Choice is still up for grabs, so head over here to vote Torment!

Dan Spitzley, Programmer Dude at Black Isle, made a big fat update on the official board concerning an upcoming patch:

All right everyone. The patch is in progress and has been since we all returned from vacation on Monday. It should be complete some time within the next week or so, after which it should make a relatively quick appearance on the net. Please note: This is MY estimation, not the company's. I expect it will go smoothly (it has so far). We have a list of about 150-200 things that we want to fix (both programming and data so the design team is still keeping busy), sorted by priority. Here's some of the most important ones:- Obviously, the slowdown bug. I fixed the slowdown that was occuring randomly in places such as the Dustman Bar and Fell's Tattoo parlor. There was a problem regarding servicing of tile resources in the Memory Manager. It was NOT a memory leak. I'm not sure how that rumor got started. Some thread of execution was marking a group of tile resources as being serviced while subsequently not servicing them. This resulted in what amounted to an infinite loop in the resource servicing thread which would not terminate until the area was switched or the game was saved. Please keep in mind, that this is not necessarily the Holy Grail of slowdown fixes. We are still looking into other potential causes for slowdown which may be rendering or AI related.

- The bug regarding Attacks Per Round dropping to 1 after 20th level as a fighter is fixed. Sorry. My fault.

- The bug with the blank dialog box with the Cancel button popping up during a Level Up attempt has been fixed. This was related to having a cursed weapon equipped which could only be used by certain classes, and then switching class to one of the weapon's invalid classes.

- The CD swap problem between the Lower Ward and the Hive should be fixed. An extra request for character animation data was being made by the area the player just left. Since some creatures in the Lower Ward don't appear on CD2, their animation information is only on CD3. As a result, CD3 was requested again, and this caused the ugliness of multiple swaps and lockups.

- The whole "Demand for WED" assertion thingy when entering an area. I'm still looking into this. For some reason it appears that occassionally a BIF file that is copied into the cache is somehow corrupted on the way there, resulting in problems during the load. We've seen that deleting the cache contents and letting the game recopy the file seems to work. I'd like to find a more proactive method of dealing with this, however.

- A number of problems with stats like Lore and Saving Throws rolling around back to a worse value have been fixed.

- A nasty lockup when entering the Dead Nations for the first time has been fixed. This was related to the coincidental usage of global variables with the same name between two separate areas that didn't have anything to do with one another.

These ones were just a few from my list. A lot of quest related fixes are also being made by the designers. Saves will NOT be invalidated by the patch. However, I must stress that in some situations a bug fix may not take effect until a new game is started.

Thanks,
Dan

As you may have noticed, our boards seemed to be getting slower every day, so I'm trying to do something about it. I have currently disabled the cookie functionality. I hope this speeds it up a little...

I've modified the FAQ to have a list of questions up top which will jump to the answer you want. Speaking of answers, I've also added a few new questions.

CGO has posted some torment tips. Some useful stuff in there.

After reading Mindwarp's Top 10, Voldenuit decided he wanted to make one too. Read his top 10 here.

Got these from a reader, Voldenuit. I have no idea how to use them, but if you do, you can find 'em here.

Not on a major game site, but an interesting read anyway (that is, if you haven't had enough of the torment reviews already). Read it here.

I have updated the following pages:

• The Dark of Cutters (NPCs)
• The Dark of Factions
• FAQ

one at Games Domain
and
one at RPGFan

We've been mobbed again...

check the items section of the armory...

I've made a FAQ based on the multitude of questions submitted to the official messageboard; be clueless no longer!

And I quote:

Update, update, update! Get yer fresh hot update!

More to follow.

Mob

DBTavern informed me that they now have an Icewind Dale site, called Ice Winds of Dale, run by Aurapsi. Give it a look...

Nameless no more! Head over to FHOP!

If you haven't had enough already, take a look at This one, at Game Over. Or read the conclusion we blatantly ripped:

in any case, Planescape: Torment is a yet another astounding title out the doors of the Black Isle factory, and is well worth your jink, as Planescapers would say.

Guess who submitted it...

thanks to a hint from a reader. Thanks Christof!

Check out this cool top 10 by Mindwarp!

Mob decided to teach us a lesson by updating the monsters section of the Armory. Check it out.

More about Ga-RPG. In their poll about the RPG of the century, Fallout defeated BG in the final round with the smallest margin. 50.17% vs 49.83%, but Fallout is STILL the winner. Go Fallout!

I just read the review at Ga-RPG and I noted that the two links they had concerning the game, both led to this site. That's right, two for us, none to the official (okey they had links to BIS and Interplay too, but the point remains) site. Just thought I'd let you know...

Woohoo! We have a millenium bug! Our boards now display the year as 19100!!! Hehe. I'll go check it out...

My parents' computer still lives, or I wouldn't be posting this. Anyway, the year is 2000 here (The Netherlands, a pissy little west-European country). Happy new year everybody!

We hope to bring you more Torment for a long, long time...

Last review before we hit y2k? Maybe...
Another positive review at GameDaily [news source: GA-RPG]

Baldur's Gate is currently ahead in GA-RPG's RPG of the millenium poll. This is mainly because BGChronicles told people to vote Baldur's Gate :) (before that, Fallout was ahead by over 25 %)

To try and keep some balance here, I suggest we all go in there and vote Fallout! Remember, Black Isle created Fallout... and Torment!

UPDATE: just to clarify, Black Isle DID NOT make Baldur's Gate, they only published/produced it. Bioware made Baldur's Gate.

Bringing this baby up to v1.0.3... grab it while it's hot...

Ok, I've expired the poll. It was more out of necessity than will, though. The poll just stopped working after 673 votes! Dunno what's up with that, I think I'll drop the writer of the script a line... Anyway, vote in the new poll! The results of the old one can be viewed using the link below

Oh and by the way:

• 47.3 % thought Torment was a Great Game!
• 28.2 % thought Torment was the Best RPG ever!
• 13.0 % thought Torment was the Best game ever!

Just noticed at GA-RPG that a couple of new reviews have been posted, just before y2k... get 'em while they're fresh:

• Computer Games Online review
• Game Pro World review
• Gone Gold review

If you're a fan of Black Isle RPGs (like the absolutely wonderful Fallout series), you'll kick yourself if you don't try this one. In the case of Planescape, the greatest torment is not to play.

More thanks go to Mob!

This one solves a lot of the problems with the editor. The "assertion error" bug also seems to have gone away. Have fun...

Huggies_Dragon has played around with the editor a bit, and this was what he commented (whatcha waiting for? Download that editor!!!):

Ken sent me the new updated version, and it works like a charm. He has worked hard to make this editor perfect. It is now.

Well, because I don't know what the hell is going on, I decided to delete the former post and redo it. Seems that TeamBG's kick-ass editor causes assertion errors in some cases, for some people, and has a few tiny bugs left in it, but overall it's a kickass lil' program. As soon as I have any idea what the cause of this stuff is, I'll be sure to report it, ok?

In the meantime, don't let these doomsday reports keep you from downloading the editor and trying it for yourself. Just keep a savegame from *before* using the editor, and you'll be fine no matter what. Happy hacking...

Huggies made a lil' savegame that will let you start the game with 25 in everything and lotsa more stuff.

He is a muscular fella who gets all the girls and has an IQ of 300. Why am I flattering him in such an extreme manner? Because he has spent way too much time converting the Armory to another structure and putting in new items! Thanks Mob!

Now head over to the armory and take a look...

TeamBG has a character editor that allows you to do Stuff (tm). Check it out...

It's getting a bit of a drag, but the Stratos Group also liked Torment:

The plot and dialogue throughout the game are very well written, giving the player the familiar 'one more quest' feeling, where you tell yourself that you're going to stop playing after just one more quest, which quickly turns into several more, and so on... The one complaint I have here is that the characters tend not to remember things you've already said to them, sometimes leading to repetetive conversations if you don't respond to the dialogue exactly the way the developers intended you to. Important encounters are automatically written into your journal, a book you'll find yourself referring to often while playing. In the journal you can also get an overview of any creatures you've encountered, as well as a listing of all the quests you currently have assigned (and completed quests in another section).

and about time it was.

Links Do Not Necessarily Suggest Endorsement.
Names, trademarks, and copyrights are the property of the originating companies.
Site Content © the Pit crew. All rights reserved.