Minor quibble, but surely once the drink leaves the character's lips the vial should then be empty?
I don't like how the staff changes hands at the start of the animation... but that's just a small problem. :P
Also, minor friendly admin note: if you can try to avoid double-posting that would be good - if you post something then find you need to add extra content to the post, there's an "edit button available for the purpose. :)
I've never had serious page load problems with Exilian, the site software itself is pretty lightweight.
If your animated GIFs are really long, though, why do them as GIFs rather than YT videos out of interest?
Anyway, onto more interesting stuff; yes, that is a very lovely sword swoosh and is appropriately swooshy :D
Can the shields be destroyed if you smash them enough?
Do any potions have negative effects, and can they be thrown or only drunk?
This seemed really ambitious for a one person team so I was doubtful and I was expecting a 100% science based dragon mmo style situation, but this actually looks really cool.
Any words on a price? If the gameplay feels as good as these animations look, I'll make sure to check it out once it's released.
Will the locked rooms just be treasure piles? Or will there be other sorts of special room like in, say, pixel dungeon if you've played that?
Will there be many mage-type enemies too?
Can't remember if I already asked, but will you be able to have multiple potions active at once?
Also, "peaceful" has only the one l at the end unless I'm mistaken. :)
I'd be interested to see more gameplay with the camera shake - it feel like it might be vibrating at slightly too high a frequency at the moment, but I'm not sure whether the gif is a good indication.
Nice :) Though if that's the goblin shop, the pedestals do look a bit oddly neat compared to everything else the goblins make!
And goodness, 60 sounds a fair number - how many rooms do you play through in the forest levels?
Could you make that have a green fire anim? That would be doubly cool.
Lovely stuff, and a nice animation!
Will all the runestones be purely positive, or will you get "decrease damage increase range" type ones too?
Also, to let you know, decided to do a cross-side newspost for this month which featured this thread: http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4517 :)
Two things look odd to me. Firstly the dust should maybe settle downwards rather than in a band. Secondly the eyes look odd somehow, I'd probably have them closed. Or maybe making the cartoon xs bigger might work? Not sure.
Is it just a non explosive spiky hazard if you tread on it? If so it maybe counts as a sort of caltrop? Not sure.
Hah, nice :) I've played other games with similarish systems - can you sell items to the merchants, assuming they're alive/friendly?
What's the magical life-giving fairy triggered by? :P
Nice! Are you going to have any cutscenes/voice acting etc as the plot advances, btw?
Only one thing which struck me - the brothers if anything look older than their mother.
Does this have the same bodyguard system as the merchants?
On the initial trailer line, have the speech bubbles pop up one by one rather than appearing statically - keep people having something to look at. Though I guess you may want to actually move the characters around during that sequence in later versions anyway.
Menus - when I hit w to input a name I ended up also typing a w at the start of the name. A silly thing but I bet players will end up with unwanted characters called things like "wAragorn" and so on :P
In the village: during dialogue, it was pretty unclear when a conversation was supposed to have ended, and I missed several bits of advice on my first character as a result. I think you do need a [w for more]
I think more explanation of when you can do powered-up attacks etc would have been good too, and possibly some kind of very gentle test-run fight beyond attacking the villagers. I'm still working some of the mana/etc levels out. The goblins are pretty tough opponents to hit right at the start of the game. About six dead characters so far can testify! (Or could testify if they weren't corpses)
I do like the general systems, though, it seems to work well, plays smoothly, looks good and I've found it good fun so far. Will report back soon with more thoughts and when I've explored the possibilities a bit more :)
Have now completed the forest level as both characters, both times by using the barrel transformation on the boss. I guess my current feeling is that it's a bit too random - if you get the perfect item or sheer luck you've got an OK shot
Maybe script in some limit to ensure you can't get two shamans in one room, especially if there's much in the way of obstacles to stop you getting to them then having two is just a frustrating death sentence.
The knight's sword has enough reach to cross low walls, but goblins don't attack back across them, which makes for perhaps overly easy kills any time you have a "trapped" goblin in the centre of a room.
Your rage builds up when you attack the guys in the village - as such I always end up tagging back there between fights to build up my rage counter
There doesn't seem to be any way to check what stored potions and scrolls are without dropping them and picking them up again
Regarding conversations, I think at the end of every conversation box except the last one you need [w for more] or something in small writing, then it'd be reasonably clear.
Could you have an extra keypress option (z maybe) that brings up a popup extra box with stats/info on the thing currently in your active inventory slot? That would seem like the best option to me. I'd like to be able to check my character's Mag/Rng/Combat percentages too, so that could follow a similar system.
- Have a training dummy, and make the rest of the characters non-attackable or even penalise the player for attacking them (you can have the dummy able to be knocked over, or have a second knocked over one as well). It's possibly just me, but in general I admit I find "joyfully whack your fellow peaceful villagers in the face with a sword" slightly odd simply from a storyline perspective.
Looking forward to being able to play through some more - I used this as my test stream for our twitch channel, I'll let you know if I stream another playthrough at some point :)
Are you going to be at EGX for all the four days?
I could certainly at least look after some monitors for you and keep them in a cupboard/borrow them for events occasionally (or indeed allow you to remotely handle re-selling them to someone else if you wanted to do that).
Also, if you've got any plans to come to ExiliCon, please drop me an email (megadux@exilian.co.uk) - it's quite a small event to come so far for from your point of view
One thing on MMAW that I just noticed; when I'm the knight and can't identify scrolls, I can ID them when I have a temporary magic boost (the +50% in next battle one). However, I "forget" what they are when I lose that again. It would perhaps make more sense if once the scroll had been identified it stayed identified, even if you were able to do so only with a temporary stat boost.
One more thing that I've been trying to test but not managed - what happens if you have a run of "speed up, max health down" potions enough to make your max health hit zero? Do you die?
The medusa arrows...on the boss is actually a bad idea unless having real problems
Upvoted :) Are those pet chickens and pigs on the greenlight video?
Two further questions on this topic:
1. Is that a tiny obese giraffe?
2. Can I have a pangolin?
That's fantastic news, well done!
I'm looking forward to seeing a few more different enemies on the battlements
The dragon is a good boss. I think what it needs is possibly a few more options that make the fight easier without being an auto-win
2x Gamble to turn it into a goblin
A 2-3 battle potion of fire resistance, or a pet that confers fire resistance
I can't keep my fingers resting on the same set of keys, it makes it miles more likely that I'll accidentally trigger my special ability when I don't want to, the fact I need to hold it down makes it harder to concentrate on running/dodging whilst I'm doing that, and I'm not really sure what it adds.
It may well be different when using controllers
I've almost entirely stopped bothering to pick up bows/arrows when those were my favourite things to use in the older build I had.
I think speeding up the attacks from the goblin warriors was a good call, I definitely have a rather healthier respect for them as enemies now!
I really like being able to do tactics that involve very quick weapon switches (fire poison/ice arrow then switch to melee for example), which are less intuitive when you have to hold down X or C to shoot
I think you used to be able to just tap the D key once to start firing the arrow
Could you just have "enable d key to fire ranged weapons" as an option on the main menu "settings" screen that's disabled by default but which people can turn on if they want to?
The fox can't always be moved into position to unlock chests
The item-fetching dog, if it's placed after one of the scout animals (tiger or chicken) in the queue, will carry items to its place in the queue, not to the player, so it will just pick up things and run away to whichever door the chicken/tiger is scouting, which can make it worse than useless!
I don't think there's ever much reason to use the dog in the forest levels - in the castle there are some things behind fences that you can't blow up, but it's pretty rare that there's anything you can't get at in the forest.
I like the look of the new stuff :) If there's immunity to petrifying that presumably means there will be petrifying enemies - does that basically mean one hit will kill you from those if you don't have the pendant?
if you use the sunset scroll on lvl 2 it affects the ogre & battering ram
Is the lighting staff affected by orb split potions, or do the bolts not count as orbs?
I'm just still being smug about topping the first monthly leaderboard :P
Mjolnir + Infinite rage potion should possibly be nerfed a bit somehow.
With the element boosts I'd make them rarer - there seemed to be quite a few of them around, and my character didn't have any weapons that could use them so it felt a bit flat that there were so many items and "upgrades" I was getting that did nothing. I'd also consider making some of them upgrade the weapon rather than the player?
I don't think infinite rage is overpowered on any of the non-throwing weapons or bows
I'm definitely finding the mjolnir the most powerful weapon at the moment
If you have a bomb or escape scroll, you can drink your potions, start a battle...
feels odd that the crossbow isn't a weapon in itself.
Could a quiver or bracers be used as the "boost" item instead, that would feel like it made more sense?
Also with staffs for the wizards, I'm finding I always just keep using the poison staff in preference to others.
The fire staff is too much of a liability if everything's happening fast - I might use it in the very, very rare case that I was fire immune but not otherwise
and I don't think (correct me if I'm wrong) that there's much point in using the life staff on solo runs.Quote
Well, if you like risk/reward situations, you can use it to drain HP from the bosses. Stock some mana potions and you can do it multiple times per battle. Not really useful for mages, but as a Knight/Archer you can use it as a good healing item and boss HP drain.
There will be some more uses like petrified statues you can bring back to life and also stopping the petrification process against the Medusa boss, but that's the future...
I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate you Bigosaur on your work. I have enjoyed several hours of gameplay now, and intend to enjoy several more when I get the time.
Excellent work. :)
I guess there may be some tactics with those staffs.
The executioner gets very upset and gets stuck in one place if you try to burn him .... His legs disappear and he goes a bit glitchy.I'm not familiar with the game, but in general this sounds like quite reasonable behaviour if you try to burn someone. I think I too would get very upset and go a bit glitchy; depending on the level of damage I might well get stuck in one place, especially if I had no legs left.
In runs where the bear is present (I think it's only when the bear is present), boxes and barrels sometimes break randomly and spontaneously regardless of whether the bear is near them or indeed whether you have the bear as a pet at all. Had that happen on a few occasions.
The executioner gets very upset and gets stuck in one place if you try to burn him (it may also be when he tries to do a specific attack after being burned, it's quite a hard one for me to test thoroughly). His legs disappear and he goes a bit glitchy.
I recently had a run where, after picking up the guard captain's sword on the battlements (as wizard), I got text saying "press d for quick attack" which turned up next to me every time I wielded the sword and wouldn't go away.
QuoteThe executioner gets very upset and gets stuck in one place if you try to burn him (it may also be when he tries to do a specific attack after being burned, it's quite a hard one for me to test thoroughly). His legs disappear and he goes a bit glitchy.
do you have any idea how?
Also, it would be good to somewhere have a list of what actually gains how many points in the daily challenge, as I'm still not quite clear...
OK, a question - is there a good tactic for rooms with sky-wizards (esp if there are 2), several guards, and no goblins? That's one of my biggest current issues; especially if there are two of them, the speed boost becomes quite OP if there aren't any goblins around to fight back, unless I'm missing something.
sometimes it's just so fast/so many enemies
I don't have time to cross a room, bomb a door, and escape
you don't currently seem to get the achievement for beating a boss if you barrel-roll-scroll it, I don't know if this is intentional!
I'll have a think about undeath - something like immunity to knockdown like the orc-thingies have would be a big and interesting change?
Immunity to poison would make sense too, hard to poison a skeleton!
Piggles :D
I've had some good runs lately (sadly not during the daily challenges in the last few days, but ah well), and worked out some nice tactics with the retaliator - if you can get poison immunity and the retaliator, and either some health potions or toughness potions or both, you can currently stand in front of a poison firer for a bit, take say 30pts of damage then heal up before going into the executioner level, and be doing some very, very big hits when you get there!
Will the other levels each have some special rooms possible as well?
especially pushing me to drink extra potions etc to get points
Agreed with Glaurung :)
I got killed by the troll in the daily challenge again... I should really get over my pride and actually pay the fee sometimes, I just keep fighting the thing and dying because I don't want to pay :P
Also - I'm not sure there are enough things to counter poison at the moment. The two potions that do it aren't that common, and the number of poison shooters in the third level is quite large potentially...
if you didn't get the amulet, antidote, or dragonfire
I'm liking the sorceress for playstyle btw - super powerful when combined with the retaliator and the standing-in-front-of-an-ice-shooter trick!
I think "triggers" is probably best. All the others also mean "cause something to start", but (in a typical English-language way) each one has a subtle shade of meaning that's not quite right for earthquakes.
I still think you should add a "tavern" shop that has a different look/set of items but always sells at least 2-3 beer, with other options maybe including the goat, the dog, a basic bow, and a key (and consequently remove beer from the potion shop's options, it feels odd to me buying booze from a potion seller for some reason and it could be done quite nicely to a theme). :)
Could you have a hireable companion in the tavern room that changed partly depending on level? So a tavern in the forest would give you the chance to hire someone fairly useless, but one in the castle would give you the Bushido option...
(I also still think that poison shooters in the castle level are OP and should be more like poison 5b rather than permanent poison, just got caught by them on another run - I really do think there needs to be a 4b/5b limit which would actually make the player feel incentivised to fight on with low health rather than just feeling like they may as well give up, which is how I usually feel in those circumstances.)
It's interesting how much some of these tweaks change my strategy - I used to regularly run and do the boss level for forest as soon as I saw it
head-bowling, which it doesn't do that often
I think the bag of bombs costs is one or two too high
the royal sceptre perhaps a little low?
I'd be more inclined to switch and have a permanent poison effect coming from the hornet queen's sting and only a temporary one from the shooters, because the boss feels more appropriate as a really powerful effect that the player should prepare and use inventory slots for, whereas a really powerful effect that you need to actively prepare for coming from a regular bubble-shooter just feels embarrassing.
The summoned guard didn't seem to have a health bar which confused me a bit?
will the strawberry wand/staff be available other than as that specific character? It could make for some nice combos with other characters (as it allows keeping a boar alive much longer) if it was available as a rare item in chests or rocks or something.
I need to get more cautious on daily challenges. I think I've played so many of them that I tend to go for broke and try and build a really powerful character very fast, so either I get right through and have a very solid character by the end or I die really early doing something stupid like trying to rob a shop with almost no bonuses... :/
Occasionally I can do it - for example, if there's an item like a relevant scroll it's often just possible to shoot an arrow then run down, grab the scroll and use it just before the bushido gets to you. But it's difficult!
P.S. I accidentally hit "modify" instead of "quote" and at first edited your post :( instead of creating a new reply. Sorry about that. Is there some way to revert it to the original?Not that I'm aware of, unfortunately - I don't think the forum software maintains an editing history for posts. If you find you've accidentally gone into "modify" in future, use your browser's Back button to exit without making changes.
If you find you've accidentally gone into "modify" in future, use your browser's Back button to exit without making changes.
I had an excellent gamble recently - gambled a pair of viole(n)t knights into an ogre mama and an ice dragon, which was good fun and complete mayhem :P
the lack of ability to deal real hard hits makes the CW a bit less vicious than most of the other bosses.
If you have two replicator scrolls (which I did) you can literally keep using one to replicate the other forever which completely breaks the daily challenge system. I just got bored after about 10,000 points of doing it...
last I played it you can still get the blood mixer (which is useless)
it spawned the Ogre Mama & her hut within a regular room a couple of times for some strange reason.
I often play as the archer & hadn't been finding it too bad; I'll let you know how I do with the new version. I think the archer had been under-powered on easy mode more than in main game (because of the lack of variant-type arrows which are usually pretty vital for archers).
Reaction: I think the anim change is good, but I think the damage boost is larger than it needs to be - it doesn't make much difference but looks/feels a bit OP on early rooms.
I guess I tend to think of a butcher initially in the sense of a friendly person who sells you bits of meat in a shop rather than its meaning as a killer!
What attacks does it have, out of interest?
Ah, awesome. In Serbian we have two distinct words: the man in the meat shop is "mesar" and the man who actually slaughters the animals is "koljač" and we often translate "butcher" to the "bad" one.I really like "Simerian Butcher" as a name - you could just use "The Butcher", but I quite like names that give a sense of place & space, it gives more of an impression of depth to the world of the game :)
Yesterday I set the name to "Simerian Butcher" because the "Butcher" felt too short. I guess with this prefix it would seem like a notorious killer, right? Looks like it would be better to simply have Butcher or "The Butcher". Is that true?
Don't you like surprises? :)I've played this game long enough to know that surprises have a high tendency to kill me :P
I've been playing really badly recently, I'm too tired and keep dying early from loss of concentration so I'm rarely getting to the fourth level. :/
I once had a thief try to jump me near a doorway and manage to jump outside the main play area box
When you kill the violet knights...does the death animation again.
Also found the new hippo/rock breaking pet - the descr said it'd break three rocks per room but it only broke one in practice...
I like the idea, and having it as a quote from the sage/mage guy I think is a great idea :) Mainly I'd make the text much bigger/bolder and the illustrations less so. Right now it feels very busy and my eyes would be all over the place: people need to see & read the text first and then look at the illustration.
Hm, sure. I'd still strongly consider making the text bigger, I think - you could give a very slight fade to the game image too, the aim should definitely be to draw the eye to the text first and then the illustration I think. See what the feedback from others is like though, this may just be me :)
For daily challenges, I'd add significantly increased bonuses for completing a level/winning boss battles and completing the game as a whole. I feel like the aim should be to encourage people to get to the end, whereas currently there's a strong bias towards spending lots of time firing off extra bombs and working out what useless potions you can drink in order to get points and it's often just as worth trying to do more extra regular rooms even if you don't end up managing to do the boss battle or advance further as a result.
The video-game style "ping" for picking up coins really annoys me and I'd like a more metallic jingle or clink when you pick them up. This might just be me though.
An NPC in the castle tavern room would be really nice to have, it just feels weirdly empty at the moment whereas having someone to say "welcome to the tavern" or similar might give it a nicer atmosphere for the player even if the NPC doesn't really have any function
Idea for a new scroll type, transformation - turns any bow, hand weapon, runestone, potion or staff into a randomised different item in the same category. So it could be great, or it could just turn something into something else even less useful.
Also just to confirm - it is definitely meant to be impossible to rob shops on the dungeon level, yes?
"Son of a Witch" will be easily confused with/misheard for the phrase "son of a bitch" which might not be ideal either!
parents buying it for their kids
Also, one continued bugbear of mine - would it be possible to let players use lower case as well as upper case letters in their player names? It aesthetically bugs me that I can't.
I'll do my next few runs with the sorceress and let you know :)
EDIT: Of course having said that I just got my first sorceress killed super fast from mis-timing a shop robbery :/
I got this "dark orbs" thing in the dungeon which I think is new, I bought the upgrade for 300 coins but I wasn't really sure of the point, it didn't seem to do anything or make any difference as far as I could tell.
Ahh right, OK. Yes, I think reading "stun" made me expect a bigger effect than just that little momentary knockback, I'd usually associate the word with meaning "knocked unconscious or barely conscious" so was looking for a larger effect than that very momentary pause. I'm not quite sure what else to call it...
If you go with a knight, you could have one who starts with a lower base stat (say 80 health and only 90% combat) but gets a mount of some sort from the beginning. That would add a significant uniqueness (and you could then use "Chevalier" or "Cataphract" or some such term for a specifically cavalry trooper).
Alternatively, go for a "Paladin" who gets 10hp auto-heal after every battle as a free ability (should be balanced I think, though quite nice if combo'd with the Giraffe). Or you could have a tank-style character "Champion" or "Defender" with a sword where each kill gives +1 to the shield ability. Or switch to a more damage-focussed character ("Varangian" or "Barbarian") who drops 10% off each of archery and magic and goes down to 80 health in favour of starting at 110% combat and using an axe.
I still think that avarice should have a 10 or 12 time limit on it like tracker delusion does. The whole game just grinds into inventory management once it's been triggered, which is a pain.
I also think that generosity feels a strange name for a potion that's 100% negative, as being generous usually has good connotations. I think I'd call it "extravagance" instead.
The warbreaker hammer getting the +mana ability with each kill makes it awesome, possibly too awesome when combo'd with the retort or the magical chest. It also feels an odd match of ability to name - having a "Wizard's Mace" or something with the mana ability feels like it'd make more sense.
It currently feels a bit too hard to keep the boar alive into fourth level unless you're the chanter. This may of course be intentional, but thought you should know.
Would it be possible to make the level jumps from 2-3, 3-4, and 4-5 trapdoors, so you walk on it then trigger the trapdoor with W? Tiptoeing around the 2nd level exit trying to gather items blown out of the rocks whilst also trying not to fall in just feels a bit of a pain and I'm not sure it adds much to the game to have occasional times when you fall into the next level early by pure accident.
Will the ice dragon start appearing at any point?
I've seen it occasionally via gamble scrolls, but it never turns up in game, and it'd add a bit of variety, having to do the hornet queen too many times just gets a bit of a drag.
Purely so you know, I've now switched back to my tactic of always doing the level 1 boss fight as soon as I find it - I can now beat the golem with basic weapons pretty reliably.
Also I've started doing some skins themed around some of my actual academic work, I've got a second one coming soon: http://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5214.0
Hope all's well! I'm now based in Vienna, so I'll have to take a trip down into the Balkans sometime :)
Son of a Witch is actually really quite a hard game to play a tank in as
the damage values are quite high.
Interesting that you usually play pyromancer - I relatively rarely use it, as it's so hard to "safely" test potions early on (too high a chance of ending up with super-low max health). I try and vary character type so I can test all the fighting styles properly. :)
The Dragon rider stole the artefact along with the necromancer (both are more or less native to the kingdom in this version, and both intending to ultimately be the sole user and betray the other)
Once you defeat the Necromancer, you get a short sequence where the Dragon Rider escapes with the Tar using a super powerful teleport scroll/system
Having rescued your mom...she can also explain the real use of the Tar & why you need to follow the dragon rider
At the end, you can return the Tar to the goblin shamans who will take it back to a secret goblin location for safekeeping, and you get to go home to your village.
Certainly you may want to make the extra money not count for extra in points, or it'll become broken for the daily challenges.
One request though wrt the "subplot quests" - have the characters reappear at some point! It feels weird that you only get to play the quest until you complete it and never find that subplot again. Like the woman you have to transport to the castle could sometimes optionally turn up in the castle tavern if that appears or something?
the woman who gives you the duck
Also, bug report: I just robbed a scroll shop with petrify arrows in a daily challenge but the prices didn't disappear.
The skeleton archer quest levels I'm less sure about; I think the number of wizards/curses is often too high, such that unless you're a wizard of some sort that deals damage exceptionally quickly, by the end of one room you probably already have so many curses that any other tactic is very hard to use, especially because all your mana-using items quickly end up useless because they use the distraction curse so often. I'm not sure what to suggest with this. I'd consider giving the undead wizards a more restricted range of curses possibly, so the player has some vague idea what to prepare for and feels a bit more in control. I'd also exclude distraction & extravagance from their curses, unless you're planning to time limit or add more things that can "cure" them. The trouble with any curses like those that require dragonfire potions to remove is that you then have to sacrifice all your status effects, which for some characters (depending on what potions the game has) can feel like you're undoing the whole game's work.
(They also seem to "curse" you with fire immunity occasionally which is a bit weird, or at least I'm pretty sure I saw the fire-immune symbol appear above my head at one point?)
A couple of minor bugs to report:
1. I hit the undead pig with an orb from the healing staff and it didn't let me ride it afterwards.
3. not sure why, but he seems to have an automatic left-facing, so it's really hard if not impossible to get him to shoot right. No idea why.
2. I took the skeleton archer (NPC version) in to fight the necro-twins, they "killed" him and then raised him on their team. This doesn't make any sense given that his whole backstory is "that one undead guy who's immune to their mind control".
The main reason I managed the whole thing as the skele was that I got the giraffe pet early. As the main big disadvantage of the skeleton seems to be physical fragility, without many ways at all to restore health, the giraffe is an excellent pet to combo with that character.
Sunset scrolls are now massive no-brainers most of the time in how you use them, except on the final level; I just always fire them all off at the end of a level before moving to the next one, so I get all the benefit without ever having to fight in the dark.
Is it now intentional that hidden forest-level rooms can have skeletons in?
Will they always do so?
Unless I'm very much mistaken, you seem to be able to get items from the dead pile when you start the castle level by turning them all into barrels. Are you meant to be able to do that?
What is it that actually triggers the bone arrow drops? Is it just being the skeleton archer, or is it actually holding/using the bow?
OK, fair enough :) Are the catacomb levels officially released now?
- You're missing an article in the mom's final dialogue, it should be "to the goblins"
- I let off a poison cloud scroll at the end of the castle, then jumped in, and when I got to the dungeon after the cutscene I had no health. My guess is that the poison cloud was continuing to kill my character during the cutscene, which probably should be fixed.
I like the new cutscenes though :)
if player is in the hole ignore poison effectsYes, this would seem the obvious solution I guess.
Hope that helps :)
The long jump is nice, but I didn't feel like I'd gone very far at all from the look of the jump on-screen despite getting both items, which felt a bit strange.
I'd consider making the second item require more speed so you don't always get both?
Also, which cyclops is Ugh and which is Ogh? ;)
Crazy over mad I guess... though I'd rather give a more different name/version, I can't help feeling that Santa will be great as a Christmas thing but then feel kind of odd the rest of the year.
The healing staff is, I think, overpowered at the moment. 8 damage + poison removal and heal, given how dangerous poison is, makes it a no-brainer as my main attack staff any time there's a shop I can rob one from on 1st or 2nd level (which is a fair chunk of the time). It's frustrating because I like using the others, like shepherd and turret especially, a lot, but at the moment, in most games the healing staff is just always the better option. I'd drop it to 6 or even 5 damage, so people will still cart it around as a curing tool but it's not automatically the best fighting-power option around if you find one on first level.
Why is the lightning from the staff so weak compared to the lightning from the sword?
This doesn't make a huge deal of sense to me, especially considering how high-mana the lightning staff's ability actually is.
Is there any way at all for the skeleton archer character to get rid of curse effects like distraction and avarice, given that they can't drink dragon fire potions?
I've not had this come up, but what happens if you try long-jumping while riding a boar?
Are you meant to be able to resurrect Undead King Salamis and have him follow you around?
Btw, I'm compiling a three-part guide to the game in the rest of this subforum, so if you ever get a chance to check I haven't said anything stupid in those threads please do take a look :)
Btw, I'm compiling a three-part guide to the game in the rest of this subforum, so if you ever get a chance to check I haven't said anything stupid in those threads please do take a look :)
I wonder if "soldier" might be better than "defender" though, given they're mostly trying to attack things throughout the game!
In terms of dungeon unit names, I think my idea of Bandit maybe works better than Thug
Defender does make some logical sense - I guess I'd associate "defender" with defending something else/external, though, beyond just shielding themselves, which is why I'm a bit less sure about it?
The ranged secondary on throwing weapons generally doesn't build range up
You could rename the goblin warrior to "Goblin Thug" or "Goblin Grunt" (both of which would I think imply low skill), and then rename the defender to warrior?
- Could we get a visual dark version of the snow orbs?
I managed most of it as an archer but lining up for shots with the sliding effect is hellishly tough
maybe a "snowshoes" item that occasionally turns up?
provides protection from hypochondria, avarice, extravagance, and distraction
Also note, current game still has "Raindeer" as the name of the Reindeer pet, I can't remember if this was intentional for some reason or if it's just a typo?
Also I think I've just about finished the equipment guide now... I'm sure I've missed some things, but I think I've got most of them!
I got the achievement for beating the Santa :) Still not met the big yeti, though seen some little ones - they do 40dmg + freeze, right?
One of the most bizarre runs I've done (and first time I've completed the ice level as a non-mage character).
One graphical thought - the younger Yetis look a LOT less furry/hairy than I'd expect them to... they look fine, but I guess the way they look doesn't shout "yeti" to me, and if I didn't know they were meant to be yetis I might just generally assume they were some other kind of mountain orc/troll thingy.
or just avoid that room turning up in DCs?
rather than dying out of control and sliding all over the place accidentally
some players may still choose to try that for Daily Challenges rather than keep going onto the ice.
Will there be any equivalent "area effects" in the sand level, out of interest?
And will there be more fire used, considering that the prev level is ice themed and poison is fairly common earlier on in the game?
and health
Solid 120,000+ score in the bag :)
Also, one thought from today - the blowfish blows up too frequently at the moment, I think. When you're down to 1 enemy they often just get pinned in place because as soon as they get up they get knocked down again, to the point where it's actually annoying (because e.g. they're being repeatedly slowly knocked down on a spike trap and to actually finish the battle without waiting ages you need to go and get yourself spiked to make the stomp attack). I feel like it should be a slower/less regular effect.
Why did you change the minions to ice mages, btw?
if I'm right from observation, the rocks in the long jump rooms currently never have items in.
"Every hit's a crit" would be my suggestion :)
What does the stickiness on the slime king actually do?
Also I just got caught and slowly killed between two ice shooters - given I had a lot of health, this took AGES, and I had no way of stopping it. Worst death ever :(
Those two in one of the treasure rooms? Yes, it's a trap.]Those two in one of the treasure rooms? Yes, it's a trap.Yes, I figured that out now :P Was just a pity to lose such a good character in the process!
I think all three of the guides are mostly up to date now, anyway, so they should be useable - there'll be more ideas to add, I'm sure, and especially I need to add an overview of the character classes to the general gameplay advice guide, but for now I think they're functional :)
Also, do you have a list/spreadsheet of monster health values?
I will create a list for you now
Fantastic, thankyou for the list! :) Undead Boar and Hornet seem to be missing still.
Only thing I'm wondering is if it might make robbing shops too easy if there's an always-knockdown attack
Why does the portable foundry have no mana cost? It's way more powerful than the magic chest, which does.
Does "special attacks" on the cushion just mean rage attacks?
I feel like the bomb effect on the miner's shield should maybe be a removable status effect or something?
I dunno, it feels a big playstyle change for what appears to be a not terribly uncommon item.
Are we going to get a scroll of summon monsters at some point? It's a bit of a classic of roguelikes etc and it'd work quite well in this game, I think.
There's now a whole bunch of dwarven or plausibly-dwarven items (spinner, ring, miners' shield, foundry) - but no dwarves. I was thinking that using dwarves as the ice mountain shopkeepers might fit thematically quite well?.
Decided to try and see how do-able the "In A Rush" achievement is. Took me most of the evening and a LOT of runs to complete it - it's one of those achievements where you need to actually go out achievement hunting and even then you need to be very lucky
If you tweak magic chest, I'd increase the gold amount given - I agree it's quite low at the moment compared to other things I could use that mana for.
So does the cushion give invulnerability to wizards only during their casting action, or for as long as the spell is in play? Seems super powerful if it's the latter.
Regarding summon monsters - basically I was thinking it would spawn (maybe on the other side of the room) a small number extra monsters, ideally some of the bigger/more monstrous ones (and maybe a couple of bonus ones if the art budget stretches that far). These would then fight both you and the enemies, but might give you some useful cover/distraction, especially in boss fights. It would also be a fun surprise if you tried reading it at random in forest level and suddenly accidentally summoned three yetis or whatever.
I suspect 100 for the chest will be too high - I was thinking more like 50.
Yes, I eventually completed In A Rush with skele ranger + magic map. I still think it takes a good degree of luck - though of course it's probably the worst achievement for me to attempt, since it's the most alien to how I normally play the game! I think it usually takes ten minutes for me to get past the forest level...
I was just thinking that the summoned monsters would be "wild", not allied to the player, and would be part of the battle so wouldn't follow you around
(on which note, I feel like the mana cost for the sceptre may be too high, I never use it atm because the soldiers just always walk straight into traps and get poisoned and die), but that wasn't how I was thinking of Summon Monsters being implement.
if you're reading a scroll someone else inscribed you wouldn't necessarily know what it summoned or have an ability to control it.
Also, the cutlass keeps having its effect on spawned goons in the boss fights, so you can currently "farm" them and keep notching up your combat stat forever.
This should not happen. I just checked the code. Perhaps the bug is that I forgot to flag some of the spawning enemies as such. Do you remember which fight it was?
Fix suggestion: could you turn off the "teleport spots" that appear for the teleport staff when the player no longer has the staff equipped? It's kind of annoying seeing them if I only picked the staff up once several levels ago.
Couldn't you let people know that via the loading screen suggestions/tips though?
as a more experienced player it's really annoying.
You could do something like add an achievement for teleporting to multiple hidden locations in a game, and then switch the teleport signs off when you're not holding the staff after the player gets that (& thus "proves" they know how to use the staff), but that might be quite complex to do I guess.
Also, check out the stats from a neat Money Is Power + Barebones + Chest combo in a recent DC (this is from a couple of days ago:
I've had some good runs lately - though today's was marred by the fact that I had a super powerful character (knight class) who completely cleared out the catacombs, was in good shape, had both King Salamis AND the Vampire Lord as bodyguards... and then just got demolished by the snowman :(
There was no mammoth amulet in the game, or any protection from ice slippage, and I just got caught and gunned down by the ice wizards in the boss fight (who also completely neutralised the two undead with freezing).
Also, what HP do the baby dragons have?
Yeah, those sound do-able. You'd need a stack of avarice potions plus, say, the foundry, for 50K, so it'd be a case of just loading games until you got the right combo I guess.
And yeah, I noticed that recently when the dratted thing killed me yet again. :( I need to add it to the guide still.
I'm finding that the rabbit is increasingly a "take this above all others" pet for all character classes.
I switched back to playing archer for a bit lately, and I'm finding them quite weak compared to the melee & magic characters currently. I think the new set of items has decreased the relative frequency of things like the crossbow, fletcher's emblem, full metal jacket and other archery-specific items, whilst adding things that will boost your melee (cutlass) or magic (apprentizer)
Felgin and the Trickster are both particular death to archer-mains too
change to add a hand knife is good, but in general the regular archer I think is just lacking in power at the moment
I guess also I'm mostly playing daily challenges, for which I presume the drop probabilities are fixed for everyone?
And speaking of archers, I finished another bonus skin:
https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5515
I was able to keep fairly far from the enemies (as such I don't actually know what most of their attacks are yet :P ).
For the boss fight, I went in and made turrets everywhere (like 10+ of them) and then just ducked and dodged until they did the job for me.
How will you deal with alternate desert bosses in terms of the storyline? I feel like it kind of breaks the plot if it doesn't end with the dragon master being defeated...
I also had a weird small bug at one point on the battlements level where I was cycling through inventory items whilst drinking a potion, and ended up with a key disappearing from my inventory instead of the potion, which was a bit odd.
Also, I got a frontpage announcement done:
https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5518
And I started updating the guides with info on the new enemies, the stoneheart sword, and the thirst effect :) Out of interest, what do you call the beasts in the desert?
Or a sand-wizard who could cast a range of different spells to force you to vary tactics mid-battle somehow.
Thanks! What are the numbers for the three "minor" enemies?
I do have replays on, but only two saved at any time, so I've lost it now - sorry, I should've thought sooner. :(
In the MM I currently have them as "Desert Swordsman", "Jackal-Gorilla", and "Stoneheart Assassin" (to go with the sword name). I'm sure there must be a better choice of name for the swordsman, but I'm not sure what yet.
Also, here's a shot from today's daily challenge - again, the best way to defeat the dragon master proving to be "let some friends do it for me" :)
I've now completed the game as a close combat character
I also got the two achievements I hadn't got yet, so I'm 100% on those again until you add some new ones :)
So, I'm trying to turn him into "pustinjak", which literally means "man from the desert" in Serbian, and translates to Hermit in English. However, I feel like the desert connection is lost with the "hermit". Is it?It is, I think. "hermit" implies an individual who's deliberately isolated themselves from people, usually to practise their religion without human distractions - but that could as easily be on an island off the Irish coast as on a pillar in the Syrian desert. I can't immediately think of a generic English word for "desert dweller", though that might just be my erratic memory letting me down.
Here are some ideas I have for the name, but cannot really sense which one is good:I don't have any better ideas; of your suggestions, I'd go for "Desert Reaper" - anyone with a scythe like that has got to be a reaper. If he actually looks after cactuses, then maybe "Cactus Reaper"?
- Son of the Desert
- Cactus Harvester
- Desert Reaper
- Desert Gardener
Which one do you like the most and do you have some better idea?
I don't have any better ideas; of your suggestions, I'd go for "Desert Reaper" - anyone with a scythe like that has got to be a reaper. If he actually looks after cactuses, then maybe "Cactus Reaper"?
I think "gardener" and "harvester" sound quite peaceful... I wonder about "Thorn Reaper" if cacti are his thing?
Also, the red beard/hair interests me - I associate red hair very much with northern Europe and pale skin aka people who would burn easily in a desert, so that seems odd to me, I dunno.
Would a darker shade be possible?
Also, the red beard/hair interests me - I associate red hair very much with northern Europe and pale skin aka people who would burn easily in a desert, so that seems odd to me, I dunno. Would a darker shade be possible?
Does the gamble scroll work on the dragon master
Can it summon the dragon master to replace other bosses?
I kind of feel like you shouldn't be able to gamble him away, since he's the final boss...
I had a quick run as the chanter (unusually quick since I used the quick-jump to the catacombs and somehow survived), and beat the medusas... though I had an elven shield & medusa amulet so I was basically perfectly kitted out to beat them!
In today's daily challenge, I checked that "gamble" definitely works on the dragon master fine :) Had the medusas again, one of them shot me but again I had the amulet... I suspect they'd be really difficult bosses without it, but we'll see I guess!
I quite like "Compendium". I'd also consider "Bestiary" which I think works quite well for a mode where you get all the different monster/enemy types?
Let me know when they're up on the beta testing branch and I'll take a look :)
I've now tried and failed at all 12 challenges
I suspect they're all do-able, but they'll all take a lot of runs/practice to complete I think
Stomp attacks seem to be super important in IatK and the Bomb-throwing one, but unless you're carrying a voodoo doll everywhere (and you rarely have the inv space) then the boss battles are horrible to deal with unless they're human-size bosses.
in fact, I didn't do much fighting the Butcher, I dodged around and let the ice wizards get on with the job...
A room with 15 or so ice wizards is really unpleasant/jarring to play with, the only thing you can do is run around with massive screen shake until they kill each other off, and you just have to be staring at a constantly juddering, rattling screen for ages running around waiting for that to happen... it pretty much gave me a headache doing it.
I've only ever got as far as the dungeon level, because the fights there, especially the Trickster and Felgin, usually rely on a certain amount of attrition, which you just can't do easily with the way the game is at the moment - there are too few "regular" rooms where you can get small health potions etc.
I think I managed to hit 1314 damage in a single regular close-combat hit by the end of the game.
kept one regular swordsman alive so I could go back in and get stabbed by him a few times to boost the retaliator back up
And yeah, that's a good point, I need to get better at using dolls in several of these. It took me several runs to work out that you basically need to use the bomb in compendium to bypass the shaman room
I was on somewhere in the 1000% region by the end
I had a LOT of soldiers, too - the game started glitching several times because there were too many of them on screen
King Salamis accompanying me until he got petrified in the desert. I find it weird that petrified ally troops still follow you door to door rather than staying where you left them.
I will probably need a couple more tries, but I feel like Compendium should be doable with this change.
Yeah, I agree that Compendium will now be do-able, will take a while though. Same with most of the remaining ones, just need to get the right run and be focussed enough. I doubt I'll do much more on them for a bit now, though, I'm really tired at the moment and struggling to focus on anything...
I did try some 2-player runs yesterday, Caradilis (who you might have seen around the forum) came over and she has a controller and I played with keyboard as usual... we managed to win the game on run #5, which is good going given she'd never played before. There was a LOT of carefully timed use of the life staff and having to finish battles literally as the timer ran out, as I was often giving up extra health to keep her character going, and I gamble-scrolled both the last two boss fights, but it was fun. :)
Query - why are ice level characters treated as being the same "team" as castle level characters? This is apparent whenever you use gamble scrolls, but it's never really explained.
Ah, OK. I might add that to the notes for the gamble scroll next time I update the guides.
EDIT: Compendium complete, knight with mjolnir, got plenty of runestones on it + dwarven spinner. I also had a deadwood bow which I used often - the whole elephant boss fight I just completed with a massive stack of ice arrows I'd built up. The big inventory definitely makes it a vastly more do-able challenge.
EDIT: Also, I think I found a bug with voodoo dolls. I had a room (we'll call it room A) where I got doll-tagged, left it via a bomb, did a couple of other rooms so I should have been untagged, opened the locked room and got tagged with a doll in there by a shaman I couldn't reach, so I left. Then I returned to Room A (my only option)... and got killed with a voodoo doll in there. :(
I reached the desert again in magic casters with an archer who could one-shot any of them, then in the second room there I dealt with a goblin shaman then got frozen by a skeleton wizard and shot to death by three crystal wizards before I could move :( I really can't see how to defend successfully against everything in the desert level of that quest, unless you happen to have a really good set of immunities so you can mostly ignore the skeleton wizard curses - you can't take them out particularly quickly, because as a close combat character you'll probably hit a doll targeted on you and as a ranged character you need to be dodging the necromancers etc. I guess it may just take me making enough runs until I get lucky and get fire, poison and ice immune on the same run.
I'm wondering if there is a tactical solution, but what you actually need is a really high damage mage with many exploding or bouncing orbs. I've not managed to get a wizard past the forest level yet - the 4+ shaman rooms always kill me - but I feel like a mage of that type could be the answer to damage all the wizards in a room fast enough. There are no shielded enemies after all. The trouble is that my wizards die on level one so often that it's hard to test this out!
I had an elven shield so that was fairly simple
That leaves me survival (which I think may mainly be a case of reloading until I get gold diet potions)
Master Blaster (which I guess must be do-able with the right set of support gear, I just really hate that bomb stick by this point
Yeah, I can see how to do all the others, I think it's just getting pretty grinding working through the different frustrations of each challenge. Like, they're a good "ultimate test of skill", but I don't think I'll be re-playing many (probably any) of them once I've done them.
Two left, and I feel like I've probably done the hardest ones now. I hope the barbarian is worth it after all this :P
you didn't tell me that "immune to explosions" doesn't actually make you immune to the exploding presents
I've had a couple of crash to desktop issues since the most recent version came out - it seems to be triggered when I hit/press a movement key during the game's initial loading screen, though I'm not 100% sure yet.
And we're done!
Though I got a "this dinosaur ate your game" crash immediately after finishing the final challenge. Logs attached.
Yeah, that's when the crash happened - I did see the cutscene, I think. On the menu loading CTD I don't get the "dinosaur ate your game", it just goes white and then the program stops.
If I have any more end-of-game crashes I'll let you know.
OK, so what's "hard mode" going to look like? I kind of assumed it would bulk out numbers of enemies mostly, but that already happened in overdrive...
By "poison is permanent" do you mean "poison is incurable" or just "poison never wears off until you cure it"?
The main plan all seems reasonable, though I'd consider +20% damage dealt rather than +20%HP - that would keep things fast moving, and make the later level regulars a much tougher combat challenge, rather than just making all the ice level battles really slow as it'd then take ages to plug through all the high HP enemies.
I feel like the hiccups thing could just get annoying - like, a hard mode should make the game trickier, but I don't think making it more frustrating would help. I think the food -> thirst thing could work fine though. :)
Regarding HP/Damage, you could try with half and half, 10% HP and 10% damage per level? I'm just worried that the ice level potentially gets quite slow if it's just an HP boost. I guess I feel like it might make the desert level enemies more of a threat, as especially if you have the medusa amulet they're just not that dangerous atm.
You could just remove the potentially OP potions - adding hiccups to them would work in terms of game balance, but hiccups just aren't a very fun effect to play with. I find it fair enough if I get them because I got caught by a skeleton, as that's the game "punishing" me for not playing well enough, but I think being forced to have them to advance your character might just get annoying. Hiccups also penalise melee characters way worse than ranged characters, and archers way worse than wizards, so it would heavily change the balance between the character types I think.
I'll get round to finishing writing them and updating with the new bosses at some point :) I also realised that I really need to update the unofficial monster guide with a list of which monsters & bosses are immune to which effects like poison etc...
Also, some recent fun. On a daily challenge, I got to the desert with a shepherd staff and about 100 mana left in stock, and I just thought, hmm, maybe...
I feel like there should be an achievement for turning 50 enemies into sheep or something :P One room even ended up with a sheep statue after a stoneheart petrified a sheep before being sheep-ified herself.
And then I went into the cyclopes boss fight and got *the perfect* shot:
(https://i.imgur.com/OkSkK6G.png)
Beautiful double statue with archway :D And got them both with the one arrow on a rage shot, too!
I think the new achievements are good, I was wondering if they could be given more fun names? It feels oddly underwhelming for the achievement to be just called, e.g., "Knight" When it could be, say, "Knight Errant" or "Knight of the Round Table" or something a bit more evocative.
Also, shouldn't the new achievements work with daily challenges? I completed one as a knight yesterday and didn't get the achievement...
I've got four of the new achievements now - I decided to start with the hardest and work down, so I've now done Skele, Pyro, Barbarian, and Knight - Enchantress, Druid and Archer still to go :)
I guess it just feels like another challenge mode at this point (also in that I think I'll probably play it until I get the achievements and not much further).
Out of interest, is the hard mode achievement "complete the game" or "kill the dragon master" - in other words, do I still get the achievement if I barrel-roll or gamble the dragon master fight?
Up to date with achievements again!
I might note down a bunch of general thoughts/ideas I had for things you could add after leaving early access, sometime soon?
Petrification achievement triggers when allies get petrified too, not sure if this is intentional but I managed to get it by taking an army into the desert and them getting casualties from the stonehearts.
Achievements gained in offline mode seem to disappear when you go online rather than sync. I went achievement hunting yesterday on the plane, but they all disappeared today :(
both avarice and money is power potions combo'd
EDIT #2: Also, I dropped you a PM about some stuff :)
I just hadn't got round to replying yet, I'm being a bit slow with things (in my defence, I'm on medical instructions to cut down on things a bit, I've finally managed to actually make myself ill from doing too much).
If you go on your messages inbox, there's a button on the left hand side saying "messages", next to "actions" and "preferences": mouse over that, and there's a dropdown with "Sent Items" at the bottom of the list. I think you need to check a box below messages when you send them to save them there, too.
And yes... maybe I should write a guide to how to use the messaging system, we have a section for site tutorials and that might be useful for people...
I got "Challenger", "Necromancer" and "Takeover" in a single Daily Challenge run today. Challenger and Necromancer are both heavily reliant on having the lower catacombs present, I think.
The F1 key thing to test for the Dracula achievement - what does that actually test for/require? Necro staff + Lower Catacombs, or just Necro Staff being present?
I don't think you need the lower catacombs for the achievement, unless it's changed - I'm pretty sure I got it by raising the same vampiress ten times in a row.
OK, but please don't wipe my having already got the thing, saving that vampiress from petrification took some effort :P
I'm really struggling with the barbarian axe achievement, I've been trying it on the Overdrive challenge but I still can't seem to get above the mid twenties...
I know it doesn't take that long to look, but with a 1/20 or so chance that's still a lot of useless 5 minute runs around the forest.
Did shepherd this morning, so 5 achievments to go - Gonzales, Shortcut, Foxy, Friends 'til the End, and Burglar. The latter should be easy, Foxy should be fine sometime when I start a run and get the fox on the first level. FttE I've definitely done once or twice in the past (I think as the barbarian oddly enough)... speed-running isn't my forte though so the others may be trickier!
EDIT: And that's all of them done, the last two were pretty simple
Congratulations! I'll have to try and get the guides up to date, I'm in the US at the moment but I'll have some braindead time getting over jetlag this weekend when I'll hopefully be able to do it.
What're the plans now - more system ports, more features, or another project?
Bug report - it seems that you can smelt the Tar of Akhall with the portable furnace, which seems like a thing the game shouldn't allow you to do?
EDIT: Also, can I get HP numbers for the three desert bosses?
I think you should change it simply because it breaks the game. I think it's fine to say "you can't smelt this it's too magically protected" or whatever, it's literally meant to be the final super-powerful endgame item that we've been pursuing for seven levels, it feels more weird if it *isn't* special.
Right, I've added more to the monster manual, still got some flavour text to write.
I've not got all the numbers on damage of different boss moves, I've got a fair percentage of it by testing but not there yet.
Yeah, fixed that smiley code and marked all the stats I'm missing (I think) :)
Query - do all the achievements still trigger in all the barbarian challenge modes? I'm wondering if for some of the catacomb-clearance achievements "try this in a One Shot game" would be good advice to give?
I came across the new version of the quiver in today's daily challenge as the archer, but it didn't appear to have any effect at all, my total damage was still 55 on the bow before and after picking it up :(
Also, I think archers may now be a bit over-powered.
Anyhow - I've finished the guide section on achievements and challenge modes, so that's another thing done :) I'm still meaning to write a short feature suggestions list now the main version is done, I'll hopefully finish that in the next few days and finish adding the flavour text to the monster guide as well.
EDIT #2: I finally got round to writing up my "random ideas for the game" list: https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5636
Hmm, I feel like losing bow damage just makes bows less different to staffs and thus a less unique/interesting weapon to play with. I think a better fix might be to just make the base archery stat upgrades a bit less large?
What's the best way to turn a replay file into a video? Do I just have to re-run it with a screen capture program, or is there a better way?
And yes, the more I think about it, the more I agree on the archery upgrades. At present because they give such a huge upgrade kick, if a player found a crossbow early on (especially with 1-2 replicators) then it could very easily become the case that switching to an archery playstyle made sense regardless of character class.
Yeah, the quality isn't so much the issue as the time - I was going to get a video of my 100000+pt challenge run from yesterday, but it took over two hours and I don't have a two-hour slot when I can give up my computer in the next few days!
I just played a game for the first time in a while. I can still pretty smoothly cruise through a regular game despite being out of practice, which is nice :) Had a knight and did a standard sweep + stop setup. Ice level/snowman boss was a bit tricky as I had no immunity or footing, but I was pumping out so much damage that it didn't matter too much.
I noticed a bit of glitching in the latest version, when playing the daily challenge - not a consistent slowdown, just the game freezing for a quarter-second or so, once or twice a minute, long enough to be noticeable.
I got some gltching again in today's Daily Challenge.
EDIT: just started today's daily challenge and this one's really glitchy :(
Is Vampirism a status effect, and does it stack?
Maybe it slowly loses you health (speed similar to hunger) if you have the effect active on any of the outdoor levels (1, 2, 6, 7) without a darkness scroll/staff activated.
I like the sound of confidence - again, stacking?
Regarding the sticky bombs... I wonder if having a pet that dropped what are basically mines would work, where they go off as soon as an enemy walks onto them? (Or even an enemy or friend, if you wanted to make them a bit more dangerous!)
120 gold really feels a lot for something that only affects one room, gives no permanent bonus, and can't be used on bosses, but that may just be me?
If you put some of the things on a testing branch thingy on Steam I'm happy to give them a couple of runs for you :)
Regarding general game balance, could the portable foundry become a rarer item?
Your stats are all 400 or 500 so the 50% difference between your melee and magic isn't so relevant any more)
Your stats are all 400 or 500 so the 50% difference between your melee and magic isn't so relevant any more)
Maybe I should change the way it works?
Instead of adding up percentages, it could apply the percentage to the skill level. Example:
100 magic, 30 melee, 70 archery + 500% money is power would give +500% magic, +150% melee and +350% archery, so the skills would become: 600/180/420.
I could do the same for Darkness and Confidence as well.
If you put some of the things on a testing branch thingy on Steam I'm happy to give them a couple of runs for you :)
Which level is the rogue unlock quest on? I just did a playthrough and didn't find it.
I'm not getting shown the new skin for the vampire hunter, it's still showing the usual castle guard and I don't know why.
She usually gets pinned down by the bats, and cutting the bats out from round her without killing the vampiress.
The only thing I found odd here was them all having the same name on the ice level.
The new guy looks fine anyway :) Though I feel like he could maybe do with a face-scarf, and perhaps a different skin tone or something, to make him a bit more different to the other characters so far? I can always add those to my version of course!
It feels off that the sneak attack doesn't work with throwing weapons
I always ditch the throwing knife
I feel like something should be done to stop throwing weapons actually being really underpowered as an option for the rogue compared to swords.
I can see the elite skin, it looks right (and blue), but the game seems to be using the base (non elite) file. I even tried replacing the regular captain with a skin of my own, and the vampire hunter still switched to that, so it just seems to be using the wrong file.
I forgot to mention the keys - they're kind of fun, though I almost never use them.
Also, why don't vampiresses drop silver coins when you buy all their stuff? It's odd that they're the only ones not to.
The new guy looks fine anyway :) Though I feel like he could maybe do with a face-scarf
It feels off that the sneak attack doesn't work with throwing weapons
I exhausted myself doing too much at a politics conference and my reaction times are now too slow and my muscles too taut to play games properly, I've got fatigue symptoms so I keep messing up simple stuff :(
Managed the rare combo of bare bones + mana canteen + necro staff recently :) Having a full size undead army of 50 or so units is really fun - and impressive too, getting a volley of arrows and then the warriors rushing forward, with King Salamis plodding along behind to deliver bigger punches.
That's actually happening not too infrequently lately :/ I'm not sure if there's an optimisation problem somewhere or if my computer's just slowed down a bit.
I've not noticed it yet, so it may be fixed, I'll let you know :)
I still think the vampire hunter quest is too hard - I've still not completed it, even when I carefully remove all the bats the Vampiress seems to be able to just happily take down Jolanda :/ I feel like at the moment it would be the right difficulty for eg a character unlock level quest, but to me it still feels too hard for a regular sidequest, especially as you can't resurrect Jolanda with the life staff if she dies.
I've finally got the VIP customer achievement - just reloaded the game a ton of times until I got the chest as my starting item, that seems to be the key to it.
I should probably update the guides with the new stuff...
Major bug report, I finally got Jolanda to kill a vampiress... and didn't get the achievement. :( It was in the lower catacombs so that may be why? Also I think confusion was in play, so that may also explain it.
kite-ing the Vampiress without killing her is usually far too tricky to reliably do in one attempt for me
Could you maybe give Jolanda some level of immunity to the Vampiress' knockdown attack such that she shields herself and can block it? That would improve her odds a lot as long as you can get her one-on-one with the Vampiress. I still think you should be able to rez her with the life staff, too.
What I don't understand is how you get the Vampiress to chase you when you go back in with Jolanda if you're not attacking her?
I feel like she should have some post-battle dialogue if that's possible, like e.g. the princesses do? Just like a "Thank you" or a "Here's a reward for your help, good luck on your quest!" or something.
One of the oddities of the new multiplier system is that in some cases you can get absurd scores even higher than you used to be able to
Yes, exactly. With that combination of potions plus bare bones amulet everything gets easy - the difficult bit is surviving a while after you use the BB amulet until you can boost your minimum health again, though if you have rabbit amulet + iron flesh potions (which I did here) that actually becomes quite easy as well.
I mean, I don't think it's actually necessarily a problem - the new system is more balanced on average, it just gets very, very broken if you can get the sort of really good combos I was working with there :) But I don't think it's much more broken to have 30,000 than 3,000 in a skill - once you're working with being at several thousand percent on something, you can just one-hit nearly everything anyway.
Undead Heist sounds fine but isn't necessarily all that catchy. I actually quite like Quest for the Golden Duck
Would this be separate to your eastern-theme storyline idea?
And how many levels would you imagine for it?
OK, how about something like this as a schema (may be too big an idea, but):
That's maybe overly large, though.
Nice, I ought to get a copy of that and test it. Looking forward to seeing what new SoaW stuff is coming :)
> You said three modes - RPG and Endless Tower you mentioned, but not the third?
I wonder if the alchemist should have something that changes potions to a random other type - maybe a low damage staff that has that as a 1 mana ability, or even a hand weapon with it as a rage power since randomising it generally shouldn't be that powerful I think.
Summoning golems with rage would be good and would make for a very new game dynamic I think as no other class gets allies early on
I think the trouble with turning stuff to gold is that you already have the portable foundry and I'm not sure the game needs more ways to get rich.
I played a game of SoaW yesterday. It was not good news
I doubt I'd manage any of the harder modes any more
I just hope it gets better soon, but I doubt it since I keep having to do desk work which makes it worse again. :(
It's RSI, probably tendonitis rather than carpal tunnel form, but it's taking a long time to heal. I have got a new ergonomic keyboard and wrist rest, and a new upright mouse, as well as various savles and a wrist brace and things, so I'm doing everything I can for it :)
I may get a controller at some point but I just spent quite a bit of money on the new keyboard & mouse setup so it can't be the highest priority at the moment.
I look forward to testing it some time when my arms are hurting less... the injury is improving a bit, but it's slow, especially as I can't wholly avoid a lot of the actions that were causing the original damage.
I am using exercises :) It's just going to take time. I'm feeling quite optimistic about it, I think I'll be fully recovered in another month or so. Nerve damage just takes a particularly long time to heal.
Query - is it possible to lose in RPG mode?
My main quibble is that I find it weird that the golem for the alchemist just walks through rocks - I think it should have the same pathfinding as everything else, it's not like it's a flying creature or anything.
The new challenge room in the ice area is good - I'd do a recoloured chest or something just to tip players off not to expect a normal blue-chest set of contents.
I'd also leave the alchemist room appearing even after you have the alchemist - it's a fun enough challenge that I think it'd be worth having as a regular feature with some kind of reward available.
Also, you know the lower catacombs room where there's two statues blocking the entrance to a gated area with a gold chest in it? I did a sweep attack with a sword, somehow got into it from the outside, and then had no way out again. I don't honestly know how, but consider this a bug report that that's possible.
Endless Arena I think feels too random?
I'd just feel like I'd got lucky rather than feeling like I'd accomplished something, which isn't ideal.
I also found that I bought most of the useful stuff from the shops pretty fast, so money stopped being interesting after about wave 20
I was just sitting there hoping that each next cursed key wasn't going to kill me.
You could make the shops restock with new random goods once you've bought all the things in them. This would create some interesting incentives and provide another way for the player to get new random good stuff.
I'm not sure if making all the keys cursed is really necessary. You're already trusting to fate a huge amount given that 50% of the chests will be near or totally useless. Also skeleton mages are quite common so it's not like having regular keys would leave the player without the threat of random spell effects.
QuoteAlso, you know the lower catacombs room where there's two statues blocking the entrance to a gated area with a gold chest in it? I did a sweep attack with a sword, somehow got into it from the outside, and then had no way out again. I don't honestly know how, but consider this a bug report that that's possible.
There's special logic that allows you to go through stuff when you use dash attack. This is what allows you to dash through big boss enemies like Ogre Mama, Executioner, etc. And there's also some logic that allows you to move away when you get stuck "in" another creature, but it only checks for living creatures. I'll look into it, maybe to still allow checking for petrified enemies as well.
feels more of an endurance fighting slog with quite a lot of luck than a particularly fun new challenge
The bigger battles get to a point where I just can't process the information on the screen or even sometimes see where my character is
which I don't really find enjoyable (I suspect I don't do split second decision-making etc so well as you do).
By wave 200
I decided that I'd done enough once I got to 200. There's nothing the arena can really throw at a character this powerful, and because my HP regen is based on vampire blood and I have the lizard pet, I can't even run out of supplies.
Oh, and one major thing I noticed - there really ought to be something to tell you that you have bomb immunity.
Would there be any way to spawn a few obstacles that only exist for some five-wave sections?
I think it'd make the arena more tactically interesting, and things like the ghost orb, astral projection potion, and teleport staff could become much more useful then. Ghost orb feels pretty pointless in the arena atm.
Another thought, either replacing a current room, or opening as a special reward after wave 50, give players the favoured enemy room from the castle as a bonus. I think that wouldn't be too game breaking but would let the player feel they had more choices.
The Paladin meanwhile I think is OP compared to the other characters. At present she has the same start melee skill as the knight, a different balance, but also the paladin invulnerability aura and double damage to undead which collectively are miles better than the knight's starting 25 shield points. I think her starting melee skill should be dropped to 80 to compensate, and would make her more clearly the defensive "tank" character.
I still feel she makes the knight feel a bit too redundant.
I wonder if she should have some other restriction outside her main area (literally not allowed to use bows, say, or starts with distraction like the barbarian, so you keep the power but lose some tactical options that knight players keep)
I'm not sure losing bows would make combat so 1-dimensional - she'd still have access to staffs, so she can always use the ice staff or either of the ice-related weapons. I switched to a staff a few times in my last paladin run and I had one or two changes of sword with me for different tactics, I didn't use a bow once and didn't find it limiting. I think the main thing it would count out would be using slow arrows to rob shops on early levels (which makes sense, one of my other thoughts would be just to ban paladins from starting shop robberies, they are paladins after all). So I still think that'd work, and it'd be something quite clearly unique to the character. Short of that, banning throwing weapons would be a lesser form of the same thing that would sort of make sense (in terms of the internal logic I'm basically thinking of paladins being super honourable and disliking sneaky ranged fighting).
I'm finally back to 100% of the achievements got - decided to try a game for the first time in ages, and got the ninja achievement - elven shield early plus a really really high powered archer character with the three-arrow bow :)
Maybe sometime later in the summer you & I could do a stream + chat about the game, that could be fun?
I think this is the first time I've had two Undead King Salamises following me around in the same game
Oh wow! Let me know when things need testing :)
Will you have any additional rooms for current levels? I think one or two of them could maybe do with extra possibilities for special rooms, which would help freshen up the replayability.
especially the dungeon which only & always has the wolf wheel thing, and the desert which doesn't really have any unique special rooms.
Another thing which I think I mentioned ages ago is whether "rare enemies" would be a way to give some fun variation/random tactical complication without too much work. So you have a small chance of spawning a rare enemy somewhere on a level which is basically a reskin of something else with a single difference ability.I could happily make relevant variant skins (and would have done already if I had ). I know you have tons to do so it might be too much of a stretch though :)
- Goblin Captain - like the goblin shielder but can move.
- Knight - like a really down-powered version of the Violet Knight
- Fire bandit - like the regular poison sword bandit but with a fire knife OR Shadow Thief - has a fade-out skin so hard to see/aim at, and deals 20dmg when it jumps on your back.
- Less sure about skeleton variants one could do as just reskins...
- Berserker - ice level spearman but has unusually low health and high damage.
- Maybe a poison sword version of the duellist on the last level?
Also I found another bug - at least sort of - recently while playing with friends. We went to the special gold shop from the second level, bought all the stuff in it to get the coin to get back, then killed the Bushido which got us another coin. However, we'd only taken two players and the other had all the keys. So we zipped back with one coin, brought the player with the keys back... then we were out of coins and trapped and had to give up the game. So maybe the teleport to the special shop needs to only be accessible once to stop players trapping themselves there?
Ooft, that is a lot of resources. Will you need to have found a blood runestone, or will donating a health bar also do it?
Hard mode <The King doesn't drop the sceptre> ;D
blood runestone,Maybe change to reduce the upper limit of health by 66??
Ooft, that is a lot of resources. Will you need to have found a blood runestone, or will donating a health bar also do it?
A blood runestone will be guaranteed to be dropped by one of the bosses on levels 1-5 or found in the gold chest. I will have to filter out some treasure room configurations where it's hard to get to the gold chest (like where you need to teleport, etc.) so that it's doable every time.
That would seem to significantly drop the utility of the teleport staff. Could you create a third sort of chest for the isolated/teleport needed chests in treasure rooms maybe?
Ooft, that is a lot of resources. Will you need to have found a blood runestone, or will donating a health bar also do it?
Also, how much do the names matter, given they never get seen on-screen?
Rhadamanthus simply because it's such a cool name.
Ooft! Is there any downside to it? That seems very powerful!
dwarfs and bards as characters
I wonder if the mana ability should keep the raised arm anim or not? It' looks a little odd that the character raises the bow and the bolt flies out at an angle.
the extravagance sound effect is the single most annoying thing in the game (plus it means you should make a lot more careful calculations about routes around the level
If one were to do a bard
I think the hourglass and Faustian ring are not designed very well.
Maybe add some negative effect or decrease the value appropriately.
HP-40,Skills+100-120 or HP-20,Skills+80
Speed-2,Skills+100-120 or Speed-1,skills+80
Cooper's Ring+Evergreen Oak Branch=Infinite loop. Money is Power+Claw Hammer、Apprentizer、Mana Canteen、Philyra's Necklace+Ironclad
Those two started with "double damage" instead of "skills +100" so it felt like a nerf to me, but you are right. Very OP items. Maybe I should just lower it to "skills +50" and see if that is underwhelming.
Sorry, I did not consider other low-level players.
Also, hell is really cool! >:D
I tried 4 times, but there was no reward for destroying the demon legion.
The reward for hide-and-seek is only 2 blood runes, is that too few?
Is it a bug? Start at 57:16
BTW, I love how you replaced the music files with the one from Monster Boy and it switched automatically in the boss fight :)
Sorry! Forgot that I was recording a video. The music is not authorized.
Now that the problem is resolved, I decided to delete it. :-\
not feeling super well
My TV is too big to display game content normally, is there any solution?
3840x2160
My TV is too big to display game content normally, is there any solution?
3840x2160
Sure.
There are two ways to make it work. One is to make the TV scale the graphics up, and the other is for game to scale the graphics.
1. Go to Settings, Experimental features and set "Pixel-perfect grahics" to "no".
OR
2. Force 1920x1080 true fullscreen mode and TV will up-scale the graphics. It is done like this:
Settings, Graphics, Set Resolution, Custom
Fullscreen: Yes
Width: 1920
Height: 1080
Window border: hidden
Hope this helps.
OK, unlocked the new character, had an absurdly OP run. I feel like the bonus for shields potion should be per 2 shields, not per 1, because it can get immensely OP especially for knights if you have the blacksmith hammer or toughness potion.
Also important feedback, the bonus for shields and toughness potions need to have different symbols so they can be told apart in the bottom bar.
I'm not sure I like the "Victory?" at the end... it's kind of funny, but at the same time the game presents it to you as "you could do this route or the standard route" so then it doesn't feel good as a player to do the standard route and then have the game say "actually maybe you didn't really win", if that makes sense. And I think that might be worse for newer or younger players where you really want to feel a sense of achievement when you complete a run (SoaW is not that easy a game after all even in its regular form, unless you get amazing RNG on items/potions).
Recolouring variants could do the job fine with the icons I think.
Just did a run where getting cursed with extravagance didn't seem to work - I got cursed with it by a skeleton wizard, and the only impact it had was a single -5 going through the door into the hell portal room. None of the other catacomb or hell rooms deducted me any money.
Hm. I had transferred cash to my other player, so maybe I just ran out of money and wasn't paying attention.
Oh, that's cool, I'll have to take a look :) I never really got round to finishing all the post demon slayer achievements too, maybe I should go back and try again sometime...
Also, a friend of mine's halloween costume this year was based on a custom SoaW paladin skin I made for her, so that was a nice Halloween-SoaW moment too!
Is there a converse /hwon for turning Halloween on at non-Halloween times of year?
- start the game
- go into the hero selection screen
- press T to open the chat box and enter the following command: /hw
D'oh, sorry, didn't look back far enough in the thread. My bad!
1) Is there any indication to where the princess is hiding in the carrot achievement?
2) For the pacifist achievement, you can complete it as long as you (the player(s)) don’t actually kill anything yourselves?
For example, if they run into spiked balls, that’s fine?
Thank you so much! Keep it real, Bigosaur.
Oh, and my little brother wants to know what the inspiration for the spear-thrower’s 180 degree turn and throw move is. It never fails to hit him, haha.
Had my first solo game in a while today, which unfortunately turned out incredibly frustrating, since I did the thing of finding a blood runestone on the battlements, using it, and then realising only on the catacomb level that actually I'd needed to keep hold of that thing the whole time for the hell portal :(
Out of interest, why did you make it specifically giving a blood runestone
which is basically equivalent
It's one of those things that I've usually found OK doing it on my own & focused