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I've just uploaded 0.78 which has a ton of changes - to see the new Hunter/Ranger skills set unfortunately you need to restart the game. Hopefully though this is the last time I'll change something requiring a restart!
Needless to say, I'll need new saves at end of this act with this new setup, so if /when you reach the end with 0.78 and you want to email me a few saves, I'd appreciate it
I'm curious about the new Ranger skill. I limited the turn to 5, and every time it gets used the turns counter decreases by 1, otherwise if you had a full row of enemies attacking with melee they could get -25% of total HP attacking your Ranger which was a bit too much (the ultimate powerful skill!).

Also, now the Hunter has an interesting skill combo: Take Aim + Barrage means could annihilate a row of enemies rather easily. In this first act is hard to fight against many enemies but in later battles yes. I think will probably need to tweak this down a bit, seems rather powerful too

Found a bug in 0.75 and still there in 0.78:

when you choose a trait for Shea at the very beginning of the game, it actually affects Althea's statistics! So Althea starts the game with both the traits choosen for Althea and Shea (found this bug while playing with Shea)

Just finished the preview and already excited for more I don't think I got any bugs/errors that haven't already been pointed out, so I'll just give my (tentative) overall impression.

The first act was a bit shorter than I would have liked, and I'm a little bummed that we didn't get to meet many of the characters/party members, but it is only a preview so I can't really complain I was playing on normal difficulty for the time being, and I think it was a pretty decent challenge level, at least enough so that I couldn't just go picking fights whenever I felt like it (which is a good thing!).

So far, though, the characters, particularly the twins, aren't quite as memorable as, say, Loren's characters. I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that they're interchangeable as protagonists? I only played as Althea so I'm not sure, but it kinda seems like their dialogue is nondescript enough that it's interchangeable as well, with the result of both of them feeling kind of like the same character. With Loren you were able to avoid that because we weren't looking at Saren and Elenor side by side like we do here, so it wasn't as noticeable. Hopefully we'll see more of the twins' distinct personalities later on in the game, when we've had the chance to shape them via branching dialogue. Again, though, I haven't seen enough to give my full impression.

Oh, and the justification for going into Act 2 made me SO ANGRY. That's not a criticism of the writing, it's just the whole time I was watching it play out I was like, lol this is some bullsh*t.
So, to sum it up: Shae, Morran, and those idiot soldiers, you all fail. Good day.

*ahem* but yeah, getting an emotional response out of a player is a very good thing overall I enjoyed the preview, and I'm looking forward to seeing more. Keep up the good work!

Xantas wrote:Found a bug in 0.75 and still there in 0.78:

when you choose a trait for Shea at the very beginning of the game, it actually affects Althea's statistics! So Althea starts the game with both the traits choosen for Althea and Shea (found this bug while playing with Shea)

Grr... I thought I fixed this!!! OK will look at it again

Asonder wrote:So far, though, the characters, particularly the twins, aren't quite as memorable as, say, Loren's characters. I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that they're interchangeable as protagonists? I only played as Althea so I'm not sure, but it kinda seems like their dialogue is nondescript enough that it's interchangeable as well, with the result of both of them feeling kind of like the same character. With Loren you were able to avoid that because we weren't looking at Saren and Elenor side by side like we do here, so it wasn't as noticeable. Hopefully we'll see more of the twins' distinct personalities later on in the game, when we've had the chance to shape them via branching dialogue. Again, though, I haven't seen enough to give my full impression.

Yes this unfortunately is the consequence of having an interchangeable main character. The other characters have a very distinct personality though. Also there's to consider that the twins are young (NOT UNDERAGE! but still young as snow elves) but they lived in Ninim and don't know much about the outside world. They've never been with someone (there are some fun dialogues in the romances about this) and so on. All they know is how to hunt and fight. So are totally inexperienced about the outside world, had a hard education (hope is the right word), Morran is not the best father of the world and so on.

Maybe the ranger icon shouldn't be a freaking bow

Also what's this new advice. Heals are good throughout the game. Just recommend picking the heal because it's a safe bet. BTW can't you make it so that if rangers pick a first skill that depends on a certain weapon setup, they start with that weapon setup.

Yes that should be possible, will try it now

There's something wrong with the attribute calculation in 0.78. Althea, starting with 18 Strength has only 14 attack, while Shea with 10 Strength has 11. Shea has 11 Agility but only 107 Speed, while Althea has 10 Agility but 111 Speed.
My guess would be that the background traits are not applied to the derived values. You might have call the derived stats method again after the backgrounds.

Ah ok thanks will check it (on the first level up they should get back fine but is still wrong).

Just uploaded 0.79. I think for a while won't update anymore unless there are critical bugs, but not about balancing so I can get more opinions (as Anima said I can't change it too often otherwise people play different versions and feedback is useless). Besides if I update I can't go on with next act

Hi, posting some feedback (previous attempt gone to ByteHeaven, don't know what I messed up in my first post ever here).
Managed to beat Beta v0.78 in Nightmare mode. Reached level 6 in the last fight. I wouldn't say it was easy. Used combination Ranger for Shea and Druid for Althea. After teaching Althea ice spike and hail as the first skills, I finally got past the twins' father falling ill and with a LOT of saves, got it through.

Possible bugs:
Not sure if this is how it was supposed to be, but after raising attribute points to 19 in any trait, every additional step eats up 2 attribute points instead of 1.
I got a list of 8 completed quests in my quest book, but the counter on top of the screen shows 7/8 even just before launching the final event.