Let's talk combat

[jack1974]

Also this: Double Attack is a little gimped because you lose the Hide in Shadows buff between the first and the second attack.

Yes I know about that, not sure though if I can solve it I think I'll need to change the description!

Oh and my hunter is once again doing more damage with melee attacks than with bow. Bow damage can't compete with dual wield damage. It's only useful for attacking the back row.

My ranger, who was supposed to be the tank, is in the back row restoring people's health and mana. My hunter has almost no use for a bow. I love betas :D

Haha maybe I should switch the two heal/restore of the Ranger with two skills of the Hunter

[yayswords]

Yeah sure, gimme email so I don't have to upload :P I have a save right before I talk to the ratmen so you can reroll their inventory till you find an awesome weapon. Or you can do what I'm doing now and continue the story with the intent of trying again at level 6.

Double Attack fix: Just make it one attack for 250% damage, double if hidden, and call it something else. Same effect, no problems with Hide in Shadows :P

[jack1974]

Sent you an email to your email address now
Yes I probably will still call double attack but not make it an ACTUAL double attack. After all what matters is the damage

[jack1974]

I'm thinking to do this: swap the Hunter Hawk Eye skill with Ranger's Invigorating player. Having both HP AND SP regen skills to the ranger would make him look like a mage more than a tank At least in this case the Hunter could stay in the back row to pump up the SP of the frontline fighters. I believe is a good change...

[yayswords]

Yeah, it is a good change. I mean it doesn't make things worse, but it doesn't really solve the big problem either. And that is that - I hope I am wrong - you can't play nightmare without those two abilities. So yes instead of forcing one twin to be a ranger, it now probably forces one to be a ranger and one to be a hunter. They are great longevity spells, but there needs to be other ways to win too. Until there is, nightmare sucks no matter which class has one or both of those spells :P

[jack1974]

I got your saves, but I'm already uploading 0.74, which has a LOT of fixes, including that skill swap. I haven't tested it but I think should be more balanced especially after the changes I did to druid spells.
Anyway, since in later chapters you have a full party you don't need to base your impressions TOO MUCH on this first season. I hope to have the second ready soon, since you get to 6 characters early (Krimm and Riley) and then finally in the 3rd part there are all the characters available

[jack1974]

OK haha I tried one of your saves, I don't even know how you guys can play Nightmare it's totally impossible for me, I don't even know how you managed to win before!!
I think the problem is simply in this encounter, and not really much in the classes/skills (as said later in the game you have more characters so is different than now). Will make this giant snow spider less troublesome

[yayswords]

Yeah I want to think longterm too. But I should like the first season nightmare mode to be beatable with some liberty in terms of skills taken. The real nutbusters should come when you have all the characters at your disposal; at that point foresight with skills and attributes should be necessary.

And I saw your post Anima, I really hope I am wrong and that someone is conquering 0.73 nightmare mode without relying on longevity spells and will tell the tale :)

I am hoping to read that 0.74 has dramatically lowered some defenses on nightmare mode :P

BTW I really like these mechanics like Vaelis' stances and hunter bonus damage if Hidden in Shadows. I don't think we had anything like that in Loren. It would be cool if all the twin classes had something like Hide in Shadows that boosts some of their other spells. Then you could take it even further and have two "Twinteraction" spells for each class. Like say druid has something called Overgrowth: slows all enemies for 3 turns. If your twin is a hunter, they will automatically hide in the vegetation and gain Hide in Shadows for free. Or they can use the spell for free while the Overgrowth is active. Something like that. I'm just ranting but it would be cool if they had something unique for cooperation after having grown up together.

I actually don't know how I managed to win before either, it felt even tougher on this playthrough. But I know it involved overzealous overhealing and outlasting the spider's mana :P maybe stat derivation had something to do with the difficulty difference too, if that mechanic is in place.

[jack1974]

In the 0.74 I'm uploading, the attack/speed is slightly more, but defense is definitely lower. I think should make battles shorter I've also tweaked the giant spider, before was red (3 levels over your party) and now is orange. I think just lowering his level by 1 was enough, now is hard but possible to win I think.

The mechanics of Hidden in Shadows and such are good indeed. I don't think can add more right now though, since the Druid has all the slots full with the single/area of effect damaging spells. The Ranger has many skills influenced by the type of weapon used though, I think that was cool too

[Anima_]

All of this is for version 0.72. Nightmare is actually quite fine. Though I agree with yayswords that the Hunter is too weak. One problem is that it starts with a useless skill. Hide in Shadows is useless without the other skills it allows. The bigger problem is conceptual. The Hunter doesn't do anything the Druid isn't already doing better. Ranged damage and burst damage both go to the Druid, Support as well. Though the druid spells are actually pretty useless for that, they take too long and are too expensive. And I need my Druid for killing things anyway. So in practice the Ranger ends up as the support character. That doesn't have to be a problem, but something tells me that this wasn't the design intent.

In general the skills are a bit on the expensive side. Most of the time you need to go eat or sleep after a single battle in Nightmare. That's not very fun and at least I think it takes away from what the SP mechanic was designed for in dungeon crawlers. It also makes SP regeneration values on equipment a joke. If a simple skill costs 20 SP, having one point of regeneration is useless. Of course it works in the other direction too, having 20 SP regeneration would result in infinite SP.

Enemies were actually quite fine. It usually didn't take ages to kill them and they did serious damage. My impression was that they're a bit too fast at times.

The most frustrating part were the shops. I didn't get a single healing potion in the entire chapter at the shops. Some items were simply to expensive to be useful, mostly the chain mails. And then they were pretty much no two handed weapons in the shops. Let's not even talk about good ones. That wouldn't be much of a problem in Loren, but with the fighting styles here it is a serious one. In addition all the two handed weapons were pretty much crap. The starting two handed sword is at 18 damage, but it's not difficult to find one handed swords with 14 or 15 damage and much better values in the other attributes. Finding a two handed weapon with more damage than the starting weapon was also really difficult.
In summary I don't think a completely random shop works very well.

The positioning system worked great, I was changing positions all the time. An indicator for the differences would be cool though.
In general there isn't enough feedback from the system. Most of the time I wasn't sure if what I did actually made a difference. Though I also rarely paid attention to the info panel at the left, having a stagger value indicator on the mainview might be a good idea.

This may sound quite a bit critical but I did have fun with the game so far, some battles were pretty challenging. Though the low number of abilities and skill uses do limit how much strategy can be used in a battle. The positioning system does make a huge difference though.

All that said I still stand by my previous post. Don't rush balance changes. Collect reports from different people and sessions first. Otherwise everyone will talk about a different version and some things are changed that were only a problem for a specific play style or strategy.