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Right, what I said about a hunter/x party and minimizing downtime. Hunter/ranger was... awful. I might have been too much of a miser because I took all the stuff at level 1 and went will/con etc. Couldn't really kill anything. Is stat derivation in place for like everything BTW? Might have just imagined that my next party with less health faced lower health monsters...

Anyway hunter/druid right now is a slaughter machine. It's as effective as my original ranger/druid party for avoiding having to rest/visit the tavern, but it kills tons faster. Of course different beta build, but. Vaelis mans up and tanks while endless mana druid obliterates and de-obliteras (heals) from the back row. The hunter though, is pretty useless when there's no mana to restore. Usually there is. Also has HiS and Bandage to take over the frontline if Vaelis falls. The party is mostly susceptible to backrow nukers so it's not invincible. Still, I have 7/8 quests completed with two days left until it's goblin fortress time (corrected). And most the resting has been forced, like waiting for dusk for the rats, and later resting my fully healed party until sunrise so I could take the Kodiak quest :P

Oh also, I never realized Stun does a basic melee attack worth of damage too. Should be in the description.

Some good points
Premise: I wanted to have two hybrid classes because in the past (Loren) people complained that was impossible to use a Thief in frontline, and that sucked that the Warrior were so poor with ranged weapons. People also suggested that pickpocket would have been a nice "folklore" skill for the Thief.
People were wrong apparently!

Jokes apart yes I think I probably exaggerated a bit. Replacing the pickpocket with another skill won't be a problem (could move the Barrage from the Ranger).

About the Ranger weapon specific skills I liked the idea, but probably you're right that in the long run you could be annoyed. You can have two setups, a good single 2H weapon, a weapon and shield and two weapons, however it would limit the possible skills. At this point since I don't want to redesign that class from scratch, I think I can have just ONE weapon specific skill:
2h - sweeping strike (strike through will be available to all)
2 weapons - crosscut (wide slash will be available to all)
1 weapon and shield - invincible (ward will be available to all)

I'll also move barrage to Hunter and replace the poor pickpocket skill (I admit was just funny but not much useful). And make another Ranger specific skill. If you have any suggestion for it I'm all ears. I was thinking something like Hide in Shadows that could empower the other attacks might be nice, or just something else.

For Hunter, HiS leading into Critical Hit gives them something worthwhile to do, when not playing mana battery.

Franka wrote:For Hunter, HiS leading into Critical Hit gives them something worthwhile to do, when not playing mana battery.

Admittedly I was confused what my hunter's role would be outside of mana battery so he has like a little of everything when it comes to stats, almost no strength though. He doesn't really hit hard compared to the other two... but I think the primary concern here is, how are you able to spare two rounds before someone cries for mana? :P

I took Choke to make the druid nukes even better... although it doesn't seem to be making a difference.

Anyway I think druid single target nukes vs. whole row nukes needs to be looked at. I think the single nukes are almost always the better choice, and frankly the single nukes have consistently been my best source of damage, not even counting that they can hit anyone at all. I don't think it would be uncalled for to nerf them.

P.S. Finished with hunter/druid but I might just try that party again just to see if I can milk so much exp out of the first season that I reach level 7 :P

I was thinking something like Hide in Shadows that could empower the other attacks might be nice, or just something else.

Yes, I like that skill interaction too. It is completely rudimentary, it's 1+1 where the big games have quantum rocket surgery, and still it's new compared to Loren

There are many things I could suggest but first I would like to know what the game is capable of. For example can you make it so that if you hit a certain target, that target will automatically hit you back (doesn't use or delay their turn) and/or put a debuff on you?

Is it possible to have a cooldown for abilities? Combat could be so much more interesting like that.

Nope, no cooldown for abilities, that means a complete rewrite of the engine Basically the cooldown in this case is represented by the SP availability.
There's a riposte skill already that Krimm has, so if she parries an attack she will counterattack the enemy. Though now that I reduced the % of the parry/block that skill is less useful (will need to tweak it).
Anyway, going to move the barrage to Hunter and think about another Ranger skill, but I'm thinking to make something like Hide in Shadows, a "status effect" that will empower the other attacks somehow. Maybe just a damage bonus, or even a vampiric (steal HP) though that would be a bit weird for a Ranger (not that the ranger of this game is anyway similar to the "usual" fantasy class). But I want to make it so having a Ranger in the front row is very worthwhile.

Riposte is good. Is the riposte itself just a normal attack? We can do plenty with this mechanic alone, at least if it can trigger any kind of attack.

Like my idea for empowering Invincible was that the shield would also grow thorns which would cause a bleed effect to attackers.

Krimm sounds like a badass tank by the way. I hope we can recruit her early in the second season! If nothing else, then because the back row can't be protected without a ranger.

The "damage shield" is interesting indeed. I'll see if I can add a skill like that, seems cool and definitely a good reason to keep the Ranger in the frontline

I'm glad you like it but now that I know that this is possible I think it's been underused! To use a classic spell from various other games. Ice Armor: Increases the target's defense by X. Attackers are slowed for Y turns.

Nature's Kiss: Each time the target takes damage, it is immediately healed for X.

Doubt: Whenever the victim lands an attack, they become scared for X turns.

It might be a bit late to wish for it now but it would really have been cool if the druid had some spells like this, and some more of general utility, instead of two times four spells that are almost the same. Speaking of druid spells though, I like what you did with Speed of Eagle (has no one nitpicked this name yet? Speed of the Eagle if anything, but I would go with Eagle's Grace), it feels like you've hit a good spot with it now.

Wish I had noticed this thread earlier instead of scattering comments in the bug thread. I made it to Chapter 2 on Nightmare as Druid/Ranger which is a night-and-day difference over Hunter/Ranger. Everyone else has mentioned it, but the hunter hits for really weak ranged damage, and you can't upgrade his gear early unless you get a really lucky shop and a bunch of gold - which is hard to earn when he does really crappy damage. I haven't tried some of the other crazy ideas with him yet.

In terms of difficulty, I'd rank the first chapter fights like so:
1. The ratmen stealing carrots. Seriously, I have not figured out how to do this yet. Everything takes two hits to kill and the cleric can just restore all. A few times I have managed to down to cleric, but I have to ignore the mage to do so, and his AoE damage adds up.
2. Fights against super wolves early on. Lethal if not careful thanks to pounce.
3. The necromancer fight. This felt like a Loren boss fight on Hard. Not too easy, but not too tough either. Though at the end, the necromancer ran out of mana and just defended, but had regeneration on him, so it took a long time to whittle him down (I was out of spellpower at that point).
4. The super bear fight.
5. Most minion spider fights, just because they have so much cleave damage.
6. The bandit fights.
7. Pretty much everything else.
8. The Giant Spider Queen. You might have over-nerfed this one, it was incredibly easy. Sure, she paralyzed two of my characters the entire fight, but she only did like 2 damage to them, which was plenty of time for my druid to whittle her down. The spider fights leading up to her were more difficult.

In general, I've noticed a lot of cleaves and poisons and slows in this chapter. On Loren, maybe one or two characters would get debuffed unless you were against a lot of enemy casters, but here I regularly have people at 10+ stacks of something bad so it doesn't feel worthwhile to try and remove them. I don't even defend (unless paralyzed), because it won't make a significant difference compared to continuing to burn mobs down.

Some character skills are definitely way better than others. I've only played 0.7.7, but I do like that I can pick my skill. I don't have a lot of information when picking that skill though, so it seems very easy to pick something you can't use for a few levels, which certainly makes the opening fights harder. (Try doing the first couple levels with no heal, and you'll see a massive difference in difficulty.) The ranger heal seems to be the best early on (if only because he doesn't need to use mana on anything else and my druid needs it for offensive spells), but the eagle skill is nice in some situations too (though "Speed of Eagle" could use an English tweak - maybe Eagle Speed?). I have not used the mana restoration one, but I did use a scroll once to skip having to rest again just to regain mana.

The AoE skills were awesome in Loren, but aren't so effective right now. This might change with a full party, but having one character do split damage doesn't work as well when the other character's can't. It's better to quickly just focus mob downs so you face less incoming damage sooner. I worry about people falling into a "trap" of picking something that sounds good (like Nature's Touch, as an example, or one of the fire/earth AoEs), but doesn't quite have use early on. One way to balance this out might be to have say four skills "locked" until level 4 or something - the AoE skills on a druid, the weapon-specific skills on a ranger, and I don't remember the hunter, just so people don't take them first and get into an unwinnable game. That way you still have a lot of flexibility with your first choice.

In terms of stats, dumping everything into constitution for front row characters and will into my druid until 20 has made fights immensely easier. Higher hp allows you to absorb those special attacks (Pounce) without getting KOed in the first round, like I was when I originally went for a balance of skills. I honestly haven't noticed a significant effect on the other skills now that I'm backfilling everything to 20, except my magic missile hits for an extra 4-5 damage. I guess they let me unlock some traits? (Which do seem like a neat idea.)

I do agree with the comment that defense values seem a little high in some places, which makes the offensive druid more powerful than the other characters. As I get gear, it's balanced out a bit, but the first level or two were pretty rough on non-magical attacks. If you make a change here, perhaps just limit it to level 1-2 mobs (when you don't have the gold to really use the shop yet)?

Fight difficulty also does vary with gear. I got lucky with a +2 HP regen ring from the shop, and that took a lot of pressure off my healing ranger when he was keeping up Vaelis through all those cleaves. Still looking for a +SP item and then I won't have to rest after six ice spikes. I've gone from maybe 1-2 fights per rest session at low levels to 3-4 fights before I drop by the tavern for a top-off or two.

Overall, Nightmare difficulty with my setup feels like Loren on Hard (or PS on Hard if you want to go back that far). I don't know what your intended difficulty target was and maybe this level is OK for the opening chapter. It certainly feels better to only have to retry a tough fight a couple times instead of being stuck unable to kill anything while fully rested like I was on my first game (which was on Hard, no less).