What I don't like about Book II(marginal spoilers)

[xolotl]

Neither make it bright enough to see all the details, cracks in walls etc, unless you're really close.

Would you mind taking a screenshot of how it looks on your machine, with brightness boosted and a spell/torch/whatever helping things out? Not that we'd be able to see how it looks on your own monitor, but at least you'd be able to rule out some weird bug in your system. I think in general people are happy with the level of darkness in the game when it's supposed to be dark...

Thanks for the tip about foraging. That should have been obvious. However it may be a problem in some areas where you have to rest awhile...

Heh, it certainly wasn't to me. I was a good one-and-a-half times through the game before I stumbled across that tip here on the forums. As to the resting, it hardly takes any time at all before a bag will show up; I don't think I've ever had a random monster encounter before the point at which you end up with a bag (though of course you don't know if you have a bag until you come out of camping)

What's hard to do is figure out where you are and how to get to where you want to go... I'd really rather not spend my time making a map.

I do agree that it's pretty twisty. I did have a much harder time finding my bearings than I remember having with Book 1, though my memory of B1 may be colored by the passage of time. That said, it's not like jotting down a quick map takes much time. Just a few seconds when you first enter a map, for the most part. You don't really need much more than a rectangle per game area, occasionally with a few lines to jot down mountain ranges or the like.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

Misc responses:

Thanks for the tip about foraging. That should have been obvious. However it may be a problem in some areas where you have to rest awhile, hence inviting attacks, in order for the forage bag to show up. Also won't work in cities.

I figured this out when going through Hammerlorne Mines. There's so much stuff in there, I knew I'd have to make multiple trips through to pick it all up, but I'm too lazy to want to run back down dead-end side trails to get the stuff I left behind, so I made caches for myself by camping on the most direct path and left the heavy stuff there. There are two spots in Port Kuudad where you can, actually, camp. By the Northeast Gate that's closed and near the barrels by the docks.

In terms of the lighting, really, try using Gravedigger's Flame and Cat's Eyes together. You'll stop complaining about lack of visibility.

[xolotl]

I do agree that it's pretty twisty. I did have a much harder time finding my bearings than I remember having with Book 1, though my memory of B1 may be colored by the passage of time.

Actually I just got curious about this and threw together maps of both Book 1 and Book 2 in an app I wrote awhile ago to help map adventure games, and if you actually divide things out properly so that the map's accurate, Mistfell is about a million times more complicated than Thaermore was, in terms of how you get from Point A to Point B.

Given that I still do have to refer to maps (whether in-game or not) to figure out how to get to places sometimes in Book 2, I'll certainly concede that perhaps Book 3 could use some streamlining of the various map areas. Or not, I suppose - it didn't really bother me, but it's definitely much windier than the first installation.

pics attached so you could see what I mean...

Edit:
Bah, didn't really want those huge things inlined. Would be nice if I could convince the forum to just give a link. Anyway, here's some HTTP links instead:
http://apocalyptech.com/eschalon/misc/a ... ermore.png
http://apocalyptech.com/eschalon/misc/a ... stfell.png