Watching the movie carefully, the misses were because of hide in shadows, forgot about it

Yeah I play the combat at double speed, but obviously I had mad defense with pimped out gear + Hide in Shadows and on a few turns I even had Defend thrown in.



But yes you could buff nightmare a little.



And Vaelis doesn't heal after the goblin fortress waves but the twins do, in case you missed that

I think the twins heal because they level up, because if I call the "group heal" then also Vaelis should

Good though, on next update will raise difficulty just a little and then I'm going on Act 2. The new tilesets for Dingirra should be ready soon and I'll have some work to do. Luckily is more fun than doing this difficulty optimization!

It's not because of level up. It happens consistently. In this video, it is the first fight I take on since the goblin fortress, and Shea dings 6 AFTER the battle, so he cannot possibly have just dinged 5 off the goblins, yet he is at full health/mana at the start and Vaelis is crippled.



I don't think the heal happens "after the last battle". I think it happens "at the beginning of chapter 3", when Vaelis is not a party member

Yes it's there indeed! Will make sure he is healed too thanks

I still don't understand Strike Through, or maybe it's crits I don't understand.



Normal attack: 48-55

Strike Through: 53-62



How much bonus damage is a crit? This is on the primary target BTW.



Also the melee damage penalty from the backrow seems kinda low. Like 10% max. Makes it a bit too easy for a wounded character to retreat back and let someone else tank without losing much damage at all.



Vaelis' Recover says it should give 10 SP per turn but gives 5. Also if possible I would like it to restore mana from attacking instead of just from passing a round... because I can manadance with that



Also... I don't think I ever want to play without a hunter again. And this time I haven't taken IP! I just love the versatility.



Nice job fixing the bonus xp for completing 8 quests (has to be the explanation), my twins dinged 7 just before the season ended I also tried soloing a wave of Dingirrans with the hunter but you'll be happy to hear it didn't happen

How much bonus damage is a crit? This is on the primary target BTW.

Oops forgot to set a flag

Now on my test does:

normal 43-50

strikethrough 58-66

SLIGHTLY more powerful!

Also the melee damage penalty from the backrow seems kinda low. Like 10% max. Makes it a bit too easy for a wounded character to retreat back and let someone else tank without losing much damage at all.

Yep, I can lower that more indeed, will do.

Vaelis' Recover says it should give 10 SP per turn but gives 5. Also if possible I would like it to restore mana from attacking instead of just from passing a round... because I can manadance with that

Ah is a mistake of the text, though I'm not sure if 5SP a turn would be enough or perhaps too low?

Nice job fixing the bonus xp for completing 8 quests (has to be the explanation), my twins dinged 7 just before the season ended I also tried soloing a wave of Dingirrans with the hunter but you'll be happy to hear it didn't happen

Good, you had me worried for a moment!

At a 15 SP cost and 5 SP a turn it takes 4 turns before it's even given me SP. And after 7 turns I can afford one ability. Not very exciting



I am pretty sure I suggested the increase already actually... think you thought you could fool me by just changing the tooltip eh?

Damn you discovered me!!

Yeah probably I changed the text, and then forgot to change the code. I've also lowered the cost to 10, so after 2 rounds is profitable.



About the "manadance", a solution would be to increase the cost of moving on the battlefield to the same as a basic melee attack not sure if could have any bigger repercussion though. Would make the push attacks more powerful because the pushed character has to spend time to regain position...

Well I can still dance at the end of a battle with one mob alive then, but yeah, it's still an idea. You could solve the Push issue by making Push itself give a 1 turn speed boost to the character that ends up in front. Though that might defeat the issue of Push



BTW manadance becomes less effective once you have a 6 man party, because as far as I can tell, switching positions with another character gives both of them the 3 delay.

Yes true, will wait second act before doing changes like this then.

BTW I checked and melee attacks from the back have -40% penalty except for the polearms that have -25% (since have a higher reach). So definitely not just 10% penalty.

Hmm, I checked again and indeed your numbers seem right. Maybe stagger was involved in my earlier observations.

So, currently playing v0.85 in Hard-mode, combination Ranger + Hunter. Not quite at the end yet. The difficulty seems to be a bit closer to normal than hard, really. Most boss battles (Necromancer, Kodiak, Giant Spider) the twins have managed to sail through if not on the first try, then on the second. Considering that this is the first Act, I guess that's Okay. On the other hand, I remember getting somewhat frustrated playing Loren in Hard-mode, when I encountering Grob for the first time at the inn. Of course I'm not suggesting making Hard-mode the new NM-mode and turning the NM-mode into Impossible-mode. Anyway, here's a link to either Hunter-awesomeness or Hunter-overkill. No statuses on the goblin, Hunter is hiding in the shadows, aiming to double-hit at level 5, Strength 22, Attack 27. Kaboom!



http://oi58.tinypic.com/1si3hu.jpg

Yes is the first act so I don't want to scare people away being too difficult. I might raise VERY SLIGHTLY the Hard in next update, but something like +2% attack/defense, so shouldn't change much now (but will have more importance later with bigger numbers).

The Hunter right now probably is a bit overpowered, because of the double damage with hiding in shadow, so might reduce a bit the damage, even if that one is a weak opponent, on the Huge Kodiak does less damage, but still good.

Warrior = Tank, Hunter = damage dealer, Druid = nuker/healer

I made my dream come true!

Well, I'll be curious how the challenge of Hard-mode will turn out to be in the upcoming versions! I guess another sign for a slight imbalance just now is that I managed easily to do all the other quests except the polar bear-one, of course, before Chapter 2 started. That's too easy for Hard-mode, in my opinion.



Thank you for the Nuke-Druid, I love a powerful mage in an RPG. It's like getting to control Raistlin.

I will probably increase the encounters of the sidequests, in particular the boss battles a bit but not by much

Well, I'll be curious how the challenge of Hard-mode will turn out to be in the upcoming versions! I guess another sign for a slight imbalance just now is that I managed easily to do all the other quests except the polar bear-one, of course, before Chapter 2 started. That's too easy for Hard-mode, in my opinion.



Thank you for the Nuke-Druid, I love a powerful mage in an RPG. It's like getting to control Raistlin.

Beating all the battles should be fine, as long as the difficulty is enough that you have to use your special abilities judiciously and you take advantage of board location. I don't think the aim is to "not be able to beat X unless you have all the best gear" but rather "wow, I beat that fight [on my first try?] but it was really close." There should be some risk of failure, but not complete failure.



Of course, I'm still not 100% sure I understand the intended difference between Hard and Nightmare.

Well, is like Hard, but harder

Jokes apart an extra difficult setting for people who find Hard "too easy" like happened for Loren. The problem is that is probably the hardest to balance.

By the way, fabulaparva, you don't actually deal the displayed amount of damage with HiS+ Double Attack. The mouseover calculates it as though HiS boosts both the attacks but it will only boost the first, so you will do 75% of what it says there. Which is still a lot of course



On a different note, I think Strike Through might be the currently strongest attack against the back row. At least it hurts more than the bow. My hunter did however NOT acquire some superbow, 18 damage only, and the ranger's hammer is 25 or something. Maybe with Take Aim things would be different. Druid nukes not accounted for. And then bear in mind that Strike Through is going to hurt someone in the front row too

I want to talk about agility and skill. I have not taken agility at all for several playthroughs now. Speed is, by default, up in the hundreds. To take a point of agility is less than a 1% improvement. Sometimes I compare my characters to mobs and notice I would need like +30 speed to get faster than them. So not going to happen. I know it gives crit too but that doesn't help it enough.



Now skill. On this ranger/hunter playthrough, I went heavy str/con (on Vaelis too), but I did take some skill. Mostly because I had 1 point left after raising them both over 20 and wanted to spend it. Anyway I look at my characters' attack values. They're all around 30. With 22-23 strength on everyone, clearly strength has done a huge part of this. Then I look at defense (my toons have ~14 skill). Like 20 base... and then at least 80 with gear. How exciting does that make skill? Strength constitutes 3/4 my attack but skill constitutes 1/4 my defense, if even that much.



For agility I'd like no change to the attribute but rather divide everyone's current base speed values by 10 or so, and points here would feel like they make a difference. For skill I'm reluctant to suggest a % defense boost as that could easily get out of hand. But maybe +5 per point instead of +1.



P.S. I can't bring myself to make a ranger/druid party. Hunters have gone from ticklers to mana batteries to the coolest class in Loren and SotW combined. Druids are, even if sufficiently powerful, extremely bland right now. I might be spending my day sporadically thinking of a remake of the druid skill tree.