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Right. Just finished a ranger/druid nightmare run, and the tuning feels pretty okay. No fight had me breaking my keyboard, but there was reloading and there was careful consideration. All quests done. However! I also couldn't lick the map clean without resting or using the tavern, not nearly. This is worth an extra edge if you can do, since a tavern visit is money that could be spent on equipment, and sleeping with traps unvisited means they can't re-trap something while I rest, so that is money and possibly xp lost.

With my painfully boring longevity party that was much less of an issue. I do however think, and hope, that leaving a few traps unvisited isn't very impactful at all. But, if I do run a ranger/hunter party, I would probably take the longevity spells really early, because after all they're really good spells given they restore a % and will be relevant throughout the game probably - the heal for sure will - and that way ache my way through the slow killing just so I could get the most gold out of the season :P

Finished at level 6 again for the record.

P.S. I still think spiders are OP, if I could make the twins spiders I would :P

jack1974 wrote:Haha yes the defense is applied to the defender , not the defended! though maybe can also give another bonus to the target, like more speed or attack. Need to see

About the stagger, I raised a bit the stagger value in Nightmare in last update, so maybe went up too much: I'm going to try lowering that again, since that doesn't need to be too high.

Yes it's too high. Why did you think that it was too low in the first place?

yayswords wrote:However! I also couldn't lick the map clean without resting or using the tavern, not nearly. This is worth an extra edge if you can do, since a tavern visit is money that could be spent on equipment, and sleeping with traps unvisited means they can't re-trap something while I rest, so that is money and possibly xp lost.

Well that's good since I really didn't design it to be winnable without using resting or tavern!

Anima_ wrote: Yes it's too high. Why did you think that it was too low in the first place?

No clue it's one of those things that are so obvious when you think about it, that you have to come up with an excuse to justify it. My excuse is that yesterday was too tired On 0.76 I'll put that back to normal!

jack1974 wrote:Well that's good since I really didn't design it to be winnable without using resting or tavern! :)

Yeah, but you may have struck some awkward middle ground with that effort. Right now the only feasible way to circumvent it would be with a hunter/x setup (since both the other classes can heal), but later on with SP regen gear and maybe certain skills from new characters, you can probably turtle out a fight when there's one weak opponent left so you can regen to practically full.

If you just want to prevent grinding you have already accomplished that. There's nowhere you can go to fight monsters repeatedly, you are limited by trap spawns and the sidequests :)

With my current game I had bad luck with traps (and was sleeping _all the time_) and wasn't even able to unlock the location and quests XP boost - no idea what I missed, though...

But it is possible to finish Winter season without reaching level 6 ;)

Yes of course, I think if you skip all the sidequests, you can finish it even level 4 maybe though with the encounters autoleveling system I've implemented shouldn't matter. In practice you could play the main plot without doing any sidequest and still win (except in Nightmare ).

okay, I meant "unintentionally finishing below level 6 while doing all quests I found" ;)

but I'm a little bit baffled: I did more quests in the current game (the new 0.76 graveyard extension and all formerly known quests)

You missed the level 6 by not much, probably you didn't discover all locations and that was an extra 250XP. But about this there shouldn't be any bug, since the XP is given during fights and I didn't change that, and quests and I didn't change the quest XP reward either

-If the Hunter is supposed to be the bow-focused class, why is the Ranger the one who gets Barrage? Seems like this should be moved to the hunter (probably in exchange for Pickpocket or Perfect Balance. Pickpocket is cute, but seems entirely useless--especially since you fight mostly animals in this season, and I don't imagine it will return enough to make a noticeable impact on how you can equip yourself in later seasons. It also doesn't make sense from a character perspective--if they've spent their lives carefully toeing the line to avoid making anyone in the village upset, where did they learn to pickpocket?)

-The hunter is just...not very good with the bow currently, considering that's supposed to be their thing. A bow-focused skill could help, as mentioned above. But the bow has a longer delay AND does less damage than dual-wielding, and even though I've been putting a lot of points into Agility Hunter!Althea still doesn't move as often as Ranger!Shea or Vaelis. This reminds me of the start of Loren, where all the rogues' points in Skill didn't seem to have much impact on speed for a while, then SUDDENLY ZOOM (okay the sudden jump was always the point where Rei gets Headshot 3, but still, presumably Agility points will eventually pay off in SotW.) Maybe the bow just doesn't have a chance to shine in this season because there are so few enemies in the back row, but Hunters feels weaker than the other classes. (The fact that the stores never seem to have better bows in stock doesn't help.)

-On the topic of Hunters being kind of lame--since Hide In Shadows gets dispelled as soon as you attack and is part of a combo with a number of the hunter's other skills, it seems like it should have a shorter delay.

-Since there are so many Ranger skills focused on using a specific type of weapon, will they start running out of options once they get to higher levels?

If the Hunter is supposed to be the bow-focused class, why is the Ranger the one who gets Barrage?

I actually liked that, conceptually, but that was also when my ranger had two restorative spells and sat on the backline. He did freaking awful damage with that skill however. And I think you are right with the concern about rangers and skills requiring specific weapons. Let's say you want your ranger to be purely the 2h massacre monster. Sweeping Strike, Strike Through. Next we have Cripple and Hawk Eye, because they fit the niche at least. And that's it - and I don't think Hawk Eye is very exciting to begin with. After this you could take some traits yeah, but skill-wise there's nothing left, and this is just at level 6. Cross Cut doesn't say it requires two weapons but it sure isn't designed to be used otherwise. For tanking we also have four skills - Taunt/Guard/Ward/Invincible, although I don't think anyone would mind adding the heal to the package here. For DW it's even worse as Wide Slash and Cross Cut both suck against bosses, although DW has an extra relevant trait.

I don't recall exactly how many skill points we're supposed to get before finishing the game, but the max level was 30 so that's 8 more after level 6. I think you would find yourself picking only among the traits as a ranger sooner than the other classes. Like with the druid I feel like I could use every skill, and with 14 skill points I can get that plus 2 traits if I want to. So yeah I think you have raised a good point here, Barrage should go away and I think we should get an allpurpose attack instead. Also I think one of each 2h-only and DW-only skills should be removed and replaced with abilities that work with either weapon style. For example Cross Cut (rename it) could hit with however many weapons you have, so maybe it does more damage as DW, but it leaves a bleed that is as good for everyone.

An additional concern here is that even if you are okay with four skills and then traits, with nightmare stat gains I'm pretty sure you couldn't even theoretically have two stats at 30 by level 9. And then another at 30 by level 12. Food for thought: No requirements for the traits. I will think on that.

And now for Pickpocket. I will just say, good observation, haha. I think I should like to see the ability replaced.

As for HiS (not arguing with you here, just since the topic was raised anyway). There's really no reason you shouldn't use it before every attack that is improved by it, unless you can't wait for two actions or lack the SP. The SP/delay is lower or the same as the dependent abilities and it doubles their damage and adds an effect. Therefore I would like to see it maybe even being free SP-wise, and if need be make the benefiting abilities cost more. Either way maybe we want to ask ourselves if we want the hunter to just mindlessly rotate HiS and an ability for as long as there's SP. I was thinking perhaps the benefit shouldn't be so big that you do more damage per delay by using it (like ability + normal shot should do better), but you can do it to set up burst. For example on a backrow target that will get guarded/healed if it goes low... so you kill it before they can react with a hunter hard hit combined with some spells from a caster ally etc. Add to this the huge defensive benefits of HiS and a fast hunter (I think hunters should be fast) can use it at the start of the fight to come out quite unscathed of the opening wave of abilities from the opponents.