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jack1974 May 05, 2014
Yes the necromancer is harder, it should be normal because more enemies are almost always a tougher challenge than single boss battles.

I've already increased the Kodiak and Spider again, I think now they should be good. Just uploaded 0.8.2 :)
yayswords May 05, 2014
The goblin blockade is quite impossible. Ranger/druid. They all get to act before I do. On twenty restarts, the druid dies EVERY time, the ranger is on half health, and if I'm lucky he is only staggered.



Is this new? I can just go home and sleep and the blockade disappears, but then when I go to see Shagala it's night again. Well regardless, I don't stand a chance against the goblins.



Also I'm declaring war on agility, at least as a speed increase. I'm gonna try not touching it at all when I'm sometimes 30 speed short of being faster than an opponent.



Right, I managed to beat them. But only after pulling every trick I did and didn't know, to reach level 2 before fighting them. After that I could barely, barely beat them, requiring one ounce of luck (1 blocked attack by the ranger), winning with no mana left and one digit of health. The druid still died before I could do anything but I got her health high enough that the archers had to attack her twice to kill her.



Strike Through: Can you explain the reasoning behind "critically striking" for half damage? :P



Okay, I keep forgetting to keep saves before a fight but so far. R/D: Goblin blockade way too strong, Mormont was a good fight. Had a fully rested party fight him and I slowly crushed him. Ratmen seem a nightmare, I think a hunter would do far better than a druid here. I can take maybe 40% health off a back row mob with a nuke, hell my ranger does more damage with an aimed shot. However the mage nukes my party for 60 damage which is brutal. Maybe a bit less magic on the cleric and mage. But I am gonna try again later and should hopefully remember to keep a save.



Giant Snow Spider died to a pretty crippled party. I used 1 heal and 1 axe throw only, plus normal attacks. I might have needed to reload a few times had it decided to use different attacks though. Did keep save :P



Okay it has become "later"! And I tried the ratmen again. After some select purchases (and a level up) my druid can now nuke their back row pretty hard so it got a little easy. Believe me, dinging level 2 before the goblins also involved some (well, with that budget, one :P) select purchases. Buying gear makes all the difference, but not so much that the random selection can fuck me over. Just some upgrades are enough, they don't need to be perfect items. Did keep save...



Kodiak easy, but did keep save. Yay for me keeping all these saves!



Vaelis' axes do a lot of damage, especially considering he's running sword and board. They tend to oneshot frontliners. However I'm noticing they don't put the bleed on bosses, where it would actually be useful. They could do a bit less upfront damage and put the bleed on bosses.



Goblin fortress waves seemed okay tuned, the last victory was a close call but I could have prepared better.



My ranger can oneshot backrow mobs with aimed shot. He's a little too good with the bow I'd say.



All in all though I think the game has been okay since I got past the blockade. Yes some bosses have been easy, but I have been picking my battles nonetheless and I haven't been just licking the map clean. Then again r/d is not the setup to do that with, so wait for a future h/d verdict.
jack1974 May 06, 2014
The goblin blockade is quite impossible. Ranger/druid. They all get to act before I do. On twenty restarts, the druid dies EVERY time, the ranger is on half health, and if I'm lucky he is only staggered.



Is this new? I can just go home and sleep and the blockade disappears, but then when I go to see Shagala it's night again. Well regardless, I don't stand a chance against the goblins.

Yes others reported this, I'm removing one of the Goblin scouts since the problem is that they do too much damage :lol:



Strike Through: Can you explain the reasoning behind "critically striking" for half damage? :P

Is written badly indeed :) What I mean is: critically hit a target, and the corresponding target in the back row sustain 50% of damage. How can I explain it better?



Okay, I keep forgetting to keep saves before a fight but so far. R/D: Goblin blockade way too strong, Mormont was a good fight. Had a fully rested party fight him and I slowly crushed him. Ratmen seem a nightmare, I think a hunter would do far better than a druid here. I can take maybe 40% health off a back row mob with a nuke, hell my ranger does more damage with an aimed shot. However the mage nukes my party for 60 damage which is brutal. Maybe a bit less magic on the cleric and mage. But I am gonna try again later and should hopefully remember to keep a save.

Yes I increased Magic resistance on them, so you could see that the Druid isn't so strong against enemies with high Magic resistance ! I see though that you managed to beat them later. Is fine, that's what Nightmare should be: tough battles, equip yourself better, learn new skills, try again, win :) otherwise, the only solution to make the battles ALWAYS interesting was the stats-derivation :wink: but we don't want to touch that anymore, right? :lol:

My ranger can oneshot backrow mobs with aimed shot. He's a little too good with the bow I'd say.

Ah true, I gave Thief a 25% damage bonus with ranged but when was using stats-derivation. Now they don't need it anymore. I'm also considering if to reduce the damage to the back row? could make sense, easier to hit a target in frontline than someone hiding in the back row, will make some tests :)

All in all though I think the game has been okay since I got past the blockade. Yes some bosses have been easy, but I have been picking my battles nonetheless and I haven't been just licking the map clean. Then again r/d is not the setup to do that with, so wait for a future h/d verdict.

Yes I think now is good. Is the first act, so as Anima suggested is better to lean towards the "easy" side than the "hard" (impossible!) one. Don't want to piss players off before they reach the end of the demo :o :wink:
yayswords May 06, 2014
Is written badly indeed :) What I mean is: critically hit a target, and the corresponding target in the back row sustain 50% of damage. How can I explain it better?

When I used it it did same (low, so I guess 50%) damage to both. I understand the first target is supposed to take a crit, but the second target takes 50% the crit's damage or 50% a normal attack's damage? After that I can think of a better wording :P


Yes I increased Magic resistance on them, so you could see that the Druid isn't so strong against enemies with high Magic resistance ! I see though that you managed to beat them later. Is fine, that's what Nightmare should be: tough battles, equip yourself better, learn new skills, try again, win :) otherwise, the only solution to make the battles ALWAYS interesting was the stats-derivation :wink: but we don't want to touch that anymore, right? :lol:

I like the impact of gear, but I think maybe damage, both magical and physical, can swing a lot depending on the offense vs. defense ratio. Maybe it would be better if high attack against low defense didn't result in crazy numbers and low attack against high defense didn't result in pitiful numbers.


Ah true, I gave Thief a 25% damage bonus with ranged but when was using stats-derivation. Now they don't need it anymore. I'm also considering if to reduce the damage to the back row? could make sense, easier to hit a target in frontline than someone hiding in the back row, will make some tests :)

Nononono! It's the ranger that is too good with the bow, not the hunter! Well maybe the hunter too but definitely the ranger, who is already tank, melee macho and hobby healer.



And I wouldn't wanna reduce dmg to back row. I always thought that was the strength of thieves.
Troyen May 06, 2014

Strike Through: Can you explain the reasoning behind "critically striking" for half damage? :P

Is written badly indeed :) What I mean is: critically hit a target, and the corresponding target in the back row sustain 50% of damage. How can I explain it better?

Critically strike a target, with 50% of the damage also dealt to any creature behind the target.



(I'm assuming if I crit the front target for 100 damage, the back target takes 50 damage, but that may not be how it works?)



If you wanted to be fancy, you could try to work in "pierce through" somehow, but I can't think of a non-awkward way of saying so right now.
yayswords May 06, 2014
The day you remove Invigorating Prayer I will probably be happy. I mean I use it a lot, but only because it's so damn powerful at reducing downtime. I wish it sucked or didn't exist because the playstyle is not fun, even if effective. I have now accomplished the feat of killing everything on the first day and everything on the first night (admittedly that was a fun challenge). And I specifically reloaded until every trap gave me a fight. I dinged level 3 from curing Morran.



It required precision with the attributes and the traits. I stole the hat from my hunter and gave it to my ranger, and bought some better shoulderpads. The defense increase helps so much. And then a lot of turtling and reloading vs. the beasts. I could not beat EVERY trap encounter so I would sometimes reload there, usually to get a lone grey wolf. BTW why do wolves have a slight tendency to use Defend?



Anyway the point is I now have Vaelis and I expect I can now lick the map clean and get among the highest xp and loot possible for the season, because that has always happened before with IP parties. And I see no reason it wouldn't continue in future seasons because our mana pools will only grow but spell costs won't. I liked the ranger/druid party much more. They had to pick their battles and yes, it was maybe a little saddening that I couldn't use abilities more often, but it's closer to what I would consider a good game experience than this is.



Invigorating Prayer spits in the face of all downtime :)
Nightsnow May 06, 2014
I found the easy way to deal with Mormont as long as you have a hunter (I assume that hunter is the thief class). Makes sure that Valis have a ranged weapon and have some light bombs.



Valis fires a aimed shot at the necromanter and Shea (my hunter) threw the light bomb - whole back row went down in those two moves and Mormont only got one spell in. The skeletons in front went down fairly easy without a back up healer. Bombs also was the only way I could defeat the ratmen (I had got my hand on a heavy bomb and used it on the front row).



Which does makes me worried for the future. Right now it is fine that bomb is so effictive, but when we get to later seasons heavy bombs does 150 points of damage to a whole row... That's going to be a lot unless the enemies gets a lot of hp. Or will there be some kind of resistance to them? As I remember it bombs in Loren was a bit overpowered.



The boss fights are still somewhat easy, but right now I think the difficulty is fine. You only got three party members after all and I don't think it is possible to get beyond level 6 and the amount you can level grind/money grind is limited. So if you can't defeat some boss in this season that is it. You can't try different pary set up (without starting over) and you only have so many item and skills.



And I think it is important that any ranger/hunter/druid combination of twins is viable even in nightmare.
Nightsnow May 06, 2014
But you sort of need Invigorating Prayer if you like me I unlucky and never gets mana potions in shops. This time one first turned up when the traders came (And that was after all that was named boss fights - except polar bear of course).



Does the Prayer gives sp per percent or a set number? Because it if it gives by a set number as our manapol grow larger it will become less important.



Or maybe it should simply cost more to cast and/or shouldn't be useable on the user so that we can't get a situation where the hunter can keep both themself and the party eternally filled with sp/mp.
yayswords May 06, 2014
I've completed games without IP or mana potions (I've never used a mana pot or a bomb in this game actually) or recuperating at the tavern. But if you use them, you don't have to skip any battles. And IP is the only free way of doing it. It restores 50% the target's SP.



If you make it cost more it would just take longer to become useful. Making it useable only on the hunter works a bit but it can also mean that minmaxers don't use their hunter's mana for anything else than IP. Oh and he could actually restore his own mana through Perfect Balance, I would at least pick that under those circumstances. But the hunter shouldn't be a mana battery at all.



And for extra clarity, yes all my games have been nightmare mode, only my first game ever was normal :P
jack1974 May 06, 2014

Critically strike a target, with 50% of the damage also dealt to any creature behind the target.

Thanks that's what I meant :)
Invigorating Prayer spits in the face of all downtime :)

OK, I need to reduce the effectiveness then! Not eliminate it, just reduce the SP amount.


Which does makes me worried for the future. Right now it is fine that bomb is so effictive, but when we get to later seasons heavy bombs does 150 points of damage to a whole row... That's going to be a lot unless the enemies gets a lot of hp. Or will there be some kind of resistance to them? As I remember it bombs in Loren was a bit overpowered.

Yeah, that's my worry too. I think I should probably eliminate them. I want the battles winnable by just using the normal skills. The bomb screwed up Loren a lot so don't want to repeat the mistake here!


The boss fights are still somewhat easy, but right now I think the difficulty is fine. You only got three party members after all and I don't think it is possible to get beyond level 6 and the amount you can level grind/money grind is limited. So if you can't defeat some boss in this season that is it. You can't try different pary set up (without starting over) and you only have so many item and skills.

Unfortunately since I discovered I screwed up the level increase/decrease of stats, on next update things will be different :oops: but I don't think by much, I'm playing all the bosses with saves by yayswords and I can win them all, though some are more challenging now.

Anyway after this next update, I really DON'T WANT to touch this again, tweak skills sure, but not the encounters :lol: I need to move on Act 2.


Does the Prayer gives sp per percent or a set number? Because it if it gives by a set number as our manapol grow larger it will become less important.

Refill 50% of SP, so yeah maybe I can make it fixed or simply reduce the amount to 25% maybe. It could be enough to not make it overpowered :) Or as you suggest have more delay or not be usable on the Thief himself.


But the hunter shouldn't be a mana battery at all.

That's probably true. I can change that skill, changing an existing skill is much less work than creating a new one. I could have it give some sort of bonus or do other stuff. Will think about it a bit before next update :)
yayswords May 06, 2014
As long as you are paying a static amount to restore a %, growing mana pools will keep that ability overpowered. If you make it restore 25% all you accomplish is delaying its glory. But if you say "okay it's getting replaced" you don't have to immediately throw something in, I'll be happy playing with the other 11 abilities and the knowledge that this powerful but boring spell is getting removed :)



In fact I have a suggestion, pretty much stolen from WoW (even the name is), that could do nicely in that slot if programming allows it. Misdirection: For the next X turns, all hate caused by the hunter is redirected to the target. You cast it on your tank (hopefully lol) and help him get aggro :)
Nightsnow May 06, 2014
Well, if you want to keep it to % you could dump it down to 10%. I still think that 25 % might be too much.



And I still don't see the problem in the principle with the hunter having the option of function of a mana battery. As long as it is just not a game breaker mana battery. It is unusal for a thief class sure, but the druid is busy with healing and nuking and the warriors can buff them self (and debuff enemies too with the right skill set). So I think it is fine the thief support abilities is for sp/mp.



I still think that the game breaker might be the bombs. As said the right use (stock too many heavys) and you just might be able to handle any thing. At least I don't think we should be allowed heavy bombs in season one, because very few enemies can withstand those.
Troyen May 06, 2014
Well, hold on. Remember that you're dealing with small battles right now, like 3 people vs ~3 creatures. I'd wait and see how IP works out in larger parties before massively overhauling it. (Disclaimer: I've never actually used it.)



Saren had that power in Loren which could restore a bunch of SP, but when you have 12 characters in a battle, an individual character goes less frequently so that delay can potentially make a difference.



If IP is still powerful, it's likely because the difference between using a skill for damage and using a normal attack is pretty huge - so much so that it's almost worth giving up a turn of battle to do triple damage the next round. Exacerbated by the high SP costs for relatively low SP pool (with no SP regen) in Act 1.



I'm starting to get worried that we're over-tuning characters for the first act and not seeing how those changes have propagated to the later acts. Yes, the first act is important to get right because it's the demo that gets people to buy the game, but I think we'd have a better picture on how stuff worked with some encounters in a different section. Jack may still need to make changes to the early game balance, but at least then it would be easier to target changes so they don't disrupt the mid and late game.
Nightsnow May 06, 2014
I agree tend to agree Troyen, Elanor (who had a skill much like that in Loren) couldn't keep up with the sp loss for all characters once we had a full party. And I honestly I just hate to see the only SP filling skill go.



I still think keeping the % between 10-20 would be best, because 25 is a quarter which just sound like a lot. But perhaps it is fair. It is hard to say.



And I also don't mind the none of the player characters a pure thief/fighter/mage, because these a player characters and I think it is nice to have them so flexible that they can fullfill different roles.
jack1974 May 06, 2014
OK for now I'll put it at 20% then. The value can be tweaked in later chapter without need to start again luckily :)

And yeah I'm removing the bombs completely. They really make no sense :mrgreen:



edit: I had an idea, will reduce the damage of bombs a lot but have them cause bleeding. This way they can still be useful but not overpowered as they are now.
yayswords May 06, 2014
The Energy spell in Loren cost far more mana than this does. But it was much rarer in Loren to not heal to full between battles. Here it is the rule. I don't think IP is overpowered for a single battle. I think it is overpowered for 15 battles in a row. Typically I don't even start the regen dance until the enemy team has one guy left and I just tank him.



Also I don't think it's very constructive to decide which % you think sounds the prettiest :) a spell that has a static cost for a % restoration will be looking at the following scenarios: First, one where it costs more mana than it restores. At that point it would be a real emergency tool when it's really crucial that someone else has mana but the hunter can afford not to have it. However ATM that would only happen if people had under 30 maximum mana and no one ever does. I don't think you would take the skill for a what-if scenario like that even, unless maybe hunter skills were so bad and their attack damage so crap that they had nothing better to do than hand out their mana. Neither is the case.



The next scenario is where it restores as much as it costs. Happens at 30 mana. So again, it never happens. As soon as you have anything over 30 mana it's only about how much mana you need to spend surviving that last mob while you wait for the hunter to fill the blue bars up. The more mana the hunter has, the less he needs to use it on himself (because he loses a smaller % of his mana per cast, but he gets 50% minus 15 back for every selfcast). The more mana the healer has, the less he needs to use it there, because the heal too has a static cost. And mana pools grow with every level.



I do not think we should fiddle with the numbers here. The spell has a slider. Sucks - neutral - overpowered. Playing with the numbers will change where the "neutral" happens, but it is ever a small portion of the slider.



20% restore? Grats, you moved the neutral slider to 75SP :P at least that means I won't be using it in season one anymore.



Oh also, the more SP regen you get on the hunter the easier it is for the spell to become OP.



Just as a last side note, I am not breaking furniture* demanding this spell to be changed/removed, but I do think it's the demonstrably most overpowered ability currently. I post my thoughts as they enter my mind. It may very well be something we should take a look at in a month and not today :)



*stat derivation ran me out of furniture to break :(
jack1974 May 06, 2014
So you think the best is to replace it?

I wonder if I could code it so that is a one-time use per battle...maybe raising it to 100% restore. That would be better, right? Otherwise I like your idea of a skill that increases aggro/hate on a party member :)
yayswords May 06, 2014
I think it's better to replace it than trying to find some magical %. I also don't like the idea of hunter as a mana battery. But if we want to allow that, maybe there is some smart way to change the spell. I think Troyen is right either way that it doesn't urgently require your attention. Maybe I'm the only one bothering to exploit it even. In which case it would be needlessly evil to nerf it.



If you actually can code once-per-battle spells I'm afraid I will be spending the rest of the day posting my ideas for fancy abilities. You said we couldn't have a cooldown :P



Do you think maybe you could introduce a second resource? Call it Awesomeness for now. Characters have very little Awesomeness, but it always heals to full between battles. There is no other way to restore Awesomeness than winning a battle. Then you could have some big fancy abilities using Awesomeness. I guess this is a little too much of a change by now though :P
jack1974 May 06, 2014
No adding another resource would be too much work for sure. Cooldown not sure, I could try but perhaps is not a good idea at this stage indeed :mrgreen:

OK will think about a replacement for this then :)
yayswords May 06, 2014
BTW I think Perfect Balance has come some way, but it's overshadowed by IP. If I didn't have IP I might consider this:



Druid/Hunter

1) Druid gets a little more constitution and a little less will than usual

2) Hunter casts PB on druid

3) Druids casts Eagle's Grace (you didn't rename it yet pff!) on self

4) Druid now has some powerful regen but not more than it could possibly spend, while Eagle's Grace largely negates the health loss



PB would probably turn out a nice way to always have SOME mana. With IP I can have pretty much full mana and health for every fight. I think I'm gonna try this party actually, I don't need to torture myself more with IP abuse :D



I also think I'd like PB to have no SP cost. Anyway what I just posted feels like nice synergy as long as I can fight off the thought "why not just go IP" :P



I will need to wait for next build though because I don't want to imagine what it's like to fight the goblins with d/h, I've beaten them with d/r and h/r, but it's been the ranger doing the killing every time.