computer games forum

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

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.

yayswords wrote: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

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

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?

yayswords wrote: 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 but we don't want to touch that anymore, right?

yayswords wrote: 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

yayswords wrote: 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

jack1974 wrote: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

jack1974 wrote: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 but we don't want to touch that anymore, right?

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.

jack1974 wrote: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.

jack1974 wrote:

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

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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

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

Thanks that's what I meant

yayswords wrote: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.

Nightsnow wrote: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!

Nightsnow wrote: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 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 I need to move on Act 2.

Nightsnow wrote: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.

yayswords wrote: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