sweet map! lavamen, dead ogres coming back to life. earthquakes, the floor falling apart. and i love the music on off switch

When the music was calm, the atmosphere was amazing. Great episode!

This pack is absolutely sensational. Deserves to stand alongside classics like Insomnia, Day of the Lords, Adamantine Cruelty and Once Upon An Atrocity.

But ...

WARNING: SPOILERS.

I can't find the fourth rune. I have the one in the secret room by the base of the first tower that you ascent -- the room that you drop into from above. I have the one that you first see through bars and later get by flooding the underground tunnel and swimming up under it. And I have the one that sits on a shelf above the inside of the big door from the main courtyard, which you get by teleporting from a secret location behind the face on the stairs. But I don't believe I have even SEEN the fourth one.

Can anyone help?

Look by the large Imp statue that overlooks the first map area

Nope, couldn't such a statue. The only ones I see in That Shallot are the two really big ones (the Guardians) and the one in the hallway where the zombies and the grenade launcher are. I did complete the level by trick-jumping across to the second tower, grabbing the pentagram and waltzing through the Guardians' firestorm. But it was unsatisfying.

Could you please spell out in more detail where that other rune is?

Many thanks!

Face the gold key door, turn 180 degrees, keep walking forwards towards the big cave where all the lava is, you will 'fall' onto a giant imp. This is the satue that you saw in map1 where you killed the vermis and walked into the tunnel to get to map2. Fall off the imp onto the broken bridge, voila!. When you get the fourth rune, whichever order you get them in, there is a small cut-scene.

Thanks, that sounds very clear -- I'll try it tonight. (I misinterpreted "first map area" as meaning "first area in this map" rather than "area from the first map".)

Make sure that you play on Hard just to get the final exit reward!!

Hi Mike, your maps always have a nice taste for setting the mood very well with music, atmosphere, so I'll play asap !

Oh, sad for me. Looks like a great map but will not run under quakespasm or rmq engines on Linux. Could not spawn server start_____.bsp

Dancing Zombie, the map works fine in Quakespasm, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

Perhaps the best release ever. Any one of these maps alone would be sensational. The three together just rewrite the rulebook. I see this is currently scored 4.6/5 with 11 ratings, which suggests four people scored it less than 5/5. I find that unfathomable. Absolutely magnificent.

De gustibus non est disputandum, MikeTaylor.

what a nice little episode! the atmosphere is excellent, visuals are great, architecture is epic, exploration is rewarding. monster placement is boring at times, but ok for the most part. not sure if mandatory secret hunting is a good idea, at least the rune secrets are not way too difficult and merely require a bit of attention.

insta-death trap in the beginning of the second map looks completely unnecessary though, also the bridge under the swinging blades seems to be permanently drawn back after a couple of seconds (why on earth???).

overall, the first map is probably the best, the third one is just slightly less consistent, and the second is the weakest of the pack.

I'm using Quakespasm and I can't figure out how to load the first map. I started with the -game command though.

read the readme.

What an experience! 5/5

Great architecture, obviously. Daikatana E3 is not my favorite medieval texture set, but I won't fault the maps for it. I will fault them for repetitive and at times boring monster composition and placement: there are just too many fights consisting of just one enemy type at a time. Variety goes a long way to making large maps not feel like a grind, though granted the scenery in these has enough variety to mitigate this.

There are at least two ways to break progression in the first map through the kind of clever jumping you would use to reach secrets, one of which is near the very start and makes the level impossible to finish.

What a great episode! One of the best custom Quake maps I ever played. The new music tracks play extremely well with the ambience. Architecture is outstanding. With every map you dive in deeper.

This is a MUST play!

Thank you very much Mike for your onions, garlics and shallots :) Hopefully one day we will see new vegetables from you.

Thanks for pointing this out. The texture set, the interactive music, the custom monsters, the amazing architecture. It all plays together really well.

I enjoyed this map pack a lot! All thumbs up.

For Lane Powell: how did you break the progression in the first map? I have used two early short cuts (that I know of) and can still finish the map. The lack of additional weapons makes it difficult but achievable on easy - I haven't tried on hard where I suspect lack of ammo and a multitude of enemies could make it impossible.

@Mike Woodham (spoilers for everyone else, obviously):

It's the lava pit near the beginning, where the (iirc) yellow armor secret is. IIRC the intended progression is to ascend a staircase, and eventually find a button that opens a big door, and there is a side path past the door that leads down to the lava, where you can look up and shoot a button that reveals the armor.

The problem is, it's actually possible to jump down from above the lava into the opening just above its surface, even though the opening isn't particularly big. It's tricky, but it's possible. The problem is if you haven't unlocked the big door you can't backtrack to the previous part of the level, from what I can tell. Is that one of your early shortcuts?

I don't remember the other way, sorry. I somehow managed to break the spawning triggers for the arena combat, but I can't recall what I did to mess things up. If I get a chance I might take another look at it. I kind of like breaking maps honestly....

Lane,

Thanks for the update. That was one of the shortcuts that you can resolve (there is an earlier one if you have found the RL secret). However, it is made difficult becaue you may not have picked up enough ammo or better weapons - but you can do it i.e you can finish the level.

For the arena battle, it is possible to slope-jump and bypass the proper arena battle and silver key door. I was not aware of this until I saw a demo and by then I had released the map. (I never learned all the 'trick' stuff in Quake) However, although the arena battle does not work as intended - the monster jumps are not activated - you could still drop into the arena and pick off the monsters crowding on the bridge above, get the silver key anyway, and go on to completet the level as normal.

The monsters are triggered only when you attempt to get the silver key so if you don'r drop into the arena, you cannot finish the map with a cheat-mode of some kind because you cannot cross the unextended bridge.

That was the last of my mapping days and I even have now lost the original map files so cannot 'correct' any flaws anyway. But thanks for the feedback; I just was curious (and pleased that the map was still being played).

Mike, if this was the end of your mapping days, you certainly went out with a bang! You have my gratitude for what you contributed to this community, and my best wishes for whatever it is that you're doing instead these days!

Hear, hear!

This is the kind of pack that makes you re-rate all your previous 5 to a 4, and all your current 4 to a "Below Minimums". I claimed on "this onion" (original entry) the many ways I found to cut the map and still saying it's wonderful. "This Garlic" has twice that ways and many lead not to a dead end but to a dead player, and I was so mad to finish that map that I failed half of the secrets or so, and still is a great map that makes me proud to keep playing this game. But "this Shallot" simply excels all of them, the perfect balance of exploration, tight corridors and open halls, indoor and outdoor fighting, intensity and cold determination, and so low on ammo and life all the game that I really felt like I was fighting to death on every stage of the road, because in fact I was. The rune hunting was pretty interesting, and quite fair since they are not the only way to finish the level. (Unless you are such kind of crazy person that wants to play fireball with a football team of shamblers and drolles just for fun, in such case you really need that white, long-sleeved shirt) . So in short, a masterpiece worth every minute of every replay.
From now on, when facing onions, garlics and shallots “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”

Nice episode. Like for very rare feature - levels are really parts of one world, not a separated pieces. From each level we can see next levels. But there are some passing errors. Somewhere I can use simple direct untricky jump and go to the place, where I must be later, but cant go back, becourse some famous doors are still closed. And from 1st level I can go to the rocky beach and go directly to the 3rd level, but after level changing I will be on 2nd. About last rune - it is in the secret. So unsecret passing is to get pentagramm and go through crossfire?

Which runes have you found - we can then tell you which ones you are missing.

You can't get to the rocky beach in map one without by-passing the vermis kill, unless you use a 'soft-cheat' of some kind. I don't think that was accounted for.

Map01 seemed okay, but the other 2? No way. Has this even been playtested for NM difficulty? You loose all your guns from the previous level and how are you supposed to kill Deathknight after Deathknight?

Anyways, I'll talk about Map01. Visually it is very appealing. The bigger cave area, which appears to be the connector to everything, is very cool. There is also enough ammo around and ofcourse tons of secrets.

But there's just so many problems with it. You get the Grenade Launcher pretty early, which enables you to sequence break the entire thing pretty much. You won't have enough ammo to defeat the map boss though. Played normally I was missing the Nailgun. There was ammo for it everywhere but not the gun. You get a Super Nailgun a bit later. There is some kind of arena encounter, but the enemies can't get to you. They are stuck on that upper platform and start infighting pretty soon. Was the idea that they should jump down? So you continue on and get to the boss. I guess the idea is to just back away and kill it from a distance, because theres no way to dodge around it. Or if you were lucky you found the Pent Powerup and can do some close range damaging until it runs out.

Cool, I didn't expect a warp zone to bypass the second map ... but in the end I wouldn't want to skip it. I found a shortcut as well in map 2 that let me exit the map pretty early (with 37/85 kills), but I just went back for more exploration. This was great anyway, I was able to take completely different paths from the first time I played it.

Just completed this again in Nightmare and it gave me a run for my money. I'm now exploring the last map to find the missing secret and I suspect possibly whole secret areas. Without reading Tronyn's review I would not have noticed that the last map was visible from the first map (too busy trying to survive!). That was a great idea.

Fans of this ought to try "Something Wicked This Way Comes".

Nice fourth-wall breaking with the music switches. I missed one rune but was able to finish the level without cheats (!). Awesome pack. The last level has about everything in the right dose, including some creative, intricate progression that manages to feel different from most maps without being annoying.

I'm replaying this yet again with secret hunting in mind, but unfortunately I've discovered the same shortcut as Lane Powell and have now locked myself out of the first part of the map (behind a door that needs two buttons to be opened, close to the gold key). As a result, I can still finish the map (I've already cleared the last room and every visible enemy in what I can still access), but I find myself taking completely different (and sometimes backwards) routes, including those that lead to secrets. I'll have to replay this again because I probably won't be able to complete more than 7/12, so let this be a warning to other secret hunters. Speedrunners could have fun with these numerous shortcuts (and probably already have), I've found a few and there are probably many others.

On a side note, I noted that some angles in the first map allow the player to get rid of even the toughest enemies without any reaction from them (I'm not saying which ones to avoid spoilers, those who've played the map will be able to guess).

I can't get enough of this episode. Would be great to see an extension (map jam or otherwise), although it's hard to imagine how to top the final level or how to keep going from there.

fmb fan: (spoiler)

... Vasya shkolnik is right, if you find the RL secret Mike Woodham alludes to, you can bypass the gold key door and then access another secret which will enable you to swim in lava to the rocky beach, allowing you to exit the map without fighting the Vermis.

(I) Thanks very much, Maestro Mike for the Episode!(I) Would a Q-professional, please, do a 100% run of the entire episode and upload it on YT Please, help me to find all the clever and crafty secrets. Map 01: * At the bottom of the first stairwell there is a Yellow Armour in a niche. I shoot the Red Cross button beneath to extend the small platform from the niche, but the Armour stays in and out of reach! * There's a grating on the floor of one of the rooms. The secret room is beneath the grates. How do I get there?

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Map 01: This was intended as a secret hunter's secret. It is not possible to see the shootable button from where you first get to see the armour; you don't see it until later in the map unless you take the short cut at that point by scaling down the wooden frame work. However, now you know that, if you scale a short way down the framework, there is a point where you can just see enough of the target to shoot it. The platform with the armour comes out slowly enough to give you time to jump back up the framework and grab the armour.

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2nd secret query: you have to shoot two of the hinges off the grating. This is not always necessary because I found that sometimes, fighting the ogres there, their grenade splash-damage would set off the hinges "accidentally" but I left that alone as a sort of bonus.

Thanks for playing my map after so many years :)

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Thanks very much for the tips, Mike.

• Hinges secred - behaves as per... You've saved me a millenium of contemplation.
• Armour secret - as you described, too.

But! A warning needs to be uttered: On Quakespasm - all behaves correctly. On Darkplaces - the platform slides out but the Armour itself doesn't! That's what got me overheating not too little at its time. Still, despite that, your Herbs Trilogy is the best-balanced seasoning ever.

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When I was mapping and playing Quake I only used Fitzquake, and never tested my maps in other engines.

The problem you mention about Darkplaces is one of the reasons I stopped; there was no definitive 'common engine of use' and I did not have the interest to create a map and then go and test it in x number of other engines. I had nightmares about changing something because it didn't work in one engine only to find that that change now stopped it working in another engine. But it was all a long time ago: the bulk of the map was completed in 2007 even though I didn't release the 2nd and 3rd sections until 2013.

Glad you enjoyed it anyway.

Best regards, Mike

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Somehow the brightness or gamma in this version is f..ked up. The Onion Release is normal but this version is cranked waaaay up...

Possibly an engine issue: see previous replies above (Jan 2021)

Gamma issue has very simple solution - all You need just remove gfx/palette.lmp from mod's pak0.pak