Caves of Lore - turn-based pixel art RPG inspired by classics

[Nikanuur]

I can see this not being very appealing to many people. I just really like this so far (almost at 40 hours now). I think what hooked me in was the exploration element is just done so well for me. Also it's something you can just jump into.

Not that it would've dissuaded me from playing, but the graphics style felt a bit off-putting at first. At least for me. I had a hard time grasping what I saw on the screen, or something like that. And I usually dig the 'VGA' graphics, so it was all the more strange.
However, be it me getting used to it or the graphics getting progressively nicer, I must say the game has started to look much, much better after a while.
Other than that, it's a fairly good RPG with bright moments and neat exploration (which is actually a lot in these RPG troubled times).

 

[Nikanuur]

Better news:

Anniversary Update!
It's been a year since launch and a lot has changed!

It's been a year since Caves of Lore launched. A lot has changed in that time. Players like you have been a big part of additions and improvements to the game. Below is a small summary of changes since launch.

Controller Support, Achievements and Stat Respeccing.
New Starting Character Options, including Female hero option.
New Lore, New Secrets and Quest Notes.
New Abilities, Traits, and Spells.
Adjustable Casting Levels, Key Rebinding and Difficulty Settings.
New Books and New Conversation Keywords.
New Items, Unique Weapons, Equipment Sets and Enchantments
Balance Changes, and many other QoL updates.

Today I am adding a Female Hero option, along with new Spells, Abilities and some other minor changes.

I've worked on Caves of Lore pretty much every day since launch. It's been a wild ride as a solo dev with no previous experience, but this community has been more than I imagined it could be. I couldn't have done it without you, and I'll continue to do so for as long as I can.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2227130/view/3952539375957225939?l=english

I believe I saw as much as 5 updates and upgrades over the last two weeks. That's crazy amount of work, incline!

 

[Serus]

I can see this not being very appealing to many people. I just really like this so far (almost at 40 hours now). I think what hooked me in was the exploration element is just done so well for me. Also it's something you can just jump into.

Not that it would've dissuaded me from playing, but the graphics style felt a bit off-putting at first. At least for me. I had a hard time grasping what I saw on the screen, or something like that. And I usually dig the 'VGA' graphics, so it was all the more strange.
However, be it me getting used to it or the graphics getting progressively nicer, I must say the game has started to look much, much better after a while.
Other than that, it's a fairly good RPG with bright moments and neat exploration (which is actually a lot in these RPG troubled times).

I love good exploration, I saw the graphics and don't care. What about combat, is it interesting? Is there any challenge?

 

[Nikanuur]

I can see this not being very appealing to many people. I just really like this so far (almost at 40 hours now). I think what hooked me in was the exploration element is just done so well for me. Also it's something you can just jump into.

Not that it would've dissuaded me from playing, but the graphics style felt a bit off-putting at first. At least for me. I had a hard time grasping what I saw on the screen, or something like that. And I usually dig the 'VGA' graphics, so it was all the more strange.
However, be it me getting used to it or the graphics getting progressively nicer, I must say the game has started to look much, much better after a while.
Other than that, it's a fairly good RPG with bright moments and neat exploration (which is actually a lot in these RPG troubled times).

I love good exploration, I saw the graphics and don't care. What about combat, is it interesting? Is there any challenge?

My experience with medium difficulty is that it was okay in the beginning, and at around 10-15 hours I started to snowball everything.
The problem was, I got kind of addicted to the sounds, the fast pacing, the aaaaah feeling of leveling up of skills during the fights, even though the combat itself got quite repetitive. I truly believe it was ingeniously designed this way. That this isn't just my situation
There is A LOT of combat and you can rest whenever you want on normal.
Talking about frying the dopamine circuits, indeed

After realizing that, I changed to hard, and I started to notice some challenges again, even defeats, and some frustrating moments of not being able to deal damage until I consulted the bestiary or tried a different weapon, etc.
I suppose Brutal is even better. I'm about to play it now because I started to snowball everything, yet again.

I definitely advise to tweak around the difficulties for both the combat and camping limits. Hard / Difficult at least, soon after the beginning. You can always change it back.

As for the 'interesting', I'd say yes. You've plethora of weapons, weapon groups, skills, support skills, myriads of spells, passives. I would say it's interesting. You can definitely build a true tank, a true nuker, opportunistic sneak-attacker, etc. I have only one slight gripe here. I tried to build an evasive thief, and I just can't seem to do it. Even though their dodge is twice as high as any other, they still get hit 50–60% of the time by normal monsters, and the tough monsters hit them most of the time. Much better than others in dodging, no denying that, but sadly, no ninja-untouchables. At least not yet

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Not that it would've dissuaded me from playing, but the graphics style felt a bit off-putting at first. At least for me. I had a hard time grasping what I saw on the screen, or something like that. And I usually dig the 'VGA' graphics, so it was all the more strange.
However, be it me getting used to it or the graphics getting progressively nicer, I must say the game has started to look much, much better after a while.
Other than that, it's a fairly good RPG with bright moments and neat exploration (which is actually a lot in these RPG troubled times).

I have visceral reactions to this art style, and the only game with pixel graphics I didn't have this with was some Dragon Ball game on the Gameboy when I was a little kid. Just gotta push through if the game is good enough, and fortunately this one is which is a breath of fresh air. It still had issues from my point of view, going through inventory was a pain because it was hard to distinguish things on top of the human models being pretty shit (but the non-humans were well done imo).

My experience with medium difficulty is that it was okay in the beginning, and at around 10-15 hours I started to snowball everything.
The problem was, I got kind of addicted to the sounds, the fast pacing, the aaaaah feeling of leveling up of skills during the fights, even though the combat itself got quite repetitive. I truly believe it was ingeniously designed this way. That this isn't just my situation
There is A LOT of combat and you can rest whenever you want on normal.
Talking about frying the dopamine circuits, indeed

I think you hit the nail on the head as to why I didn't get completely tired of everything. There was one quest I got stuck on for a while because I missed some bullshit despite passing by it multiple times and knowing somethings there, but my assumption was it was due to my awareness stat. Either way, I still 100% cleared all enemies I encountered even if it was just the same things over and over again, something about it was satisfying. Either way, I took that samey-ness to figure out the most efficient ways to dispatch everything.

On another note, does bestiary stuff unlock the more you fight something or do you have to actually figure out their weaknesses in combat for them to unlock? There were some monsters I killed a bunch but never got any notes for weaknesses.

 

[Nikanuur]

On another note, does bestiary stuff unlock the more you fight something or do you have to actually figure out their weaknesses in combat for them to unlock? There were some monsters I killed a bunch but never got any notes for weaknesses.

Good questions. If it were the former, I would have supposed there would've been only one bar of 'knowing the creature'. Why are there even four sometimes? I don't know. But it would fit your reasoning pretty well.

 

[belated]

On another note, does bestiary stuff unlock the more you fight something or do you have to actually figure out their weaknesses in combat for them to unlock? There were some monsters I killed a bunch but never got any notes for weaknesses.

I'm pretty sure it's just the number of enemies you fight? So some info can even already be filled out the first time you meet a new monster, provided you've fought enough other monsters of its type/body before. At least that's how it seemed to me.

 

[Nikanuur]

EDIT: I'm nearing the end and the fights have become a frikkin chore even on brutal. But I try to take it as 'that's life'. I wouldn't change my opinion about the whole just beacause of that.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Which section are you at? The only time the game really dragged for me was looking for the librarian; Crypt + Library + Bleak Halls + Infested Chambers back to back was brutal. End game wasn't bad as I got lucky and my build/party comp was melting those new end game enemies.

 

[Nikanuur]

Which section are you at? The only time the game really dragged for me was looking for the librarian; Crypt + Library + Bleak Halls + Infested Chambers back to back was brutal. End game wasn't bad as I got lucky and my build/party comp was melting those new end game enemies.

I am glad for you. I now know my problem was that I experimented with too many skills and spells on too many characters. I ended up with only two decent damage dealers (specialized builds).
It started sometimes during the second half of the Bleak Halls. Enemies weren't able to beat me easily; I stacked defenses well and used positioning and situational debuffs well, but for the unsatisfying amounts of damage even on Brutal... that was the issue.
I confess to lowering the difficulty to the easiest one for the last two levels. Not because I wasn't able to beat the enemies, but because I got tired of the drag and just wanted to see the ending.

 

[OSK]

I am glad for you. I now know my problem was that I experimented with too many skills and spells on too many characters. I ended up with only two decent damage dealers (specialized builds).
It started sometimes during the second half of the Bleak Halls. Enemies weren't able to beat me easily; I stacked defenses well and used positioning and situational debuffs well, but for the unsatisfying amounts of damage even on Brutal... that was the issue.
I confess to lowering the difficulty to the easiest one for the last two levels. Not because I wasn't able to beat the enemies, but because I got tired of the drag and just wanted to see the ending.

You can respec.

Are you not taking advantage of crafting? It's really easy to create absolutely broken gear. I was having a similar problem until I started upgrading my weapons.

 

[Nikanuur]

I am glad for you. I now know my problem was that I experimented with too many skills and spells on too many characters. I ended up with only two decent damage dealers (specialized builds).
It started sometimes during the second half of the Bleak Halls. Enemies weren't able to beat me easily; I stacked defenses well and used positioning and situational debuffs well, but for the unsatisfying amounts of damage even on Brutal... that was the issue.
I confess to lowering the difficulty to the easiest one for the last two levels. Not because I wasn't able to beat the enemies, but because I got tired of the drag and just wanted to see the ending.

You can respec.

Are you not taking advantage of crafting? It's really easy to create absolutely broken gear. I was having a similar problem until I started upgrading my weapons.

Which difficulty did you play on?
I didn't know that. Nice! But that means only the attributes and not the levels of abilities, I suppose? I know that it was possible to grind those on the 'portal monsters'...

As for the broken-kind-of-strong gear—not exactly my experience. Maybe I did something wrong, but I did utilize the crafting. And even though I cared about not spreading my resources too thin, I wasn't able to upgrade the weapons to anything remotely close to a wow factor. It was just too resource-demanding.

The enchanting felt similar. Only during the late game, suffixes like +5 fire/shock/holy/etc. damage started to appear on stuff. Before, it was hardly +2. Stripping the enchantment off of the magic items or having enough gold for enchanting wasn't the problem. It was the manatite itself. Most scarce of resources. Hardly enough to upgrade like 7-10 items with two effects, and you could forget about buffing an already present effect. That usually costed twice or even triple as opposed to just adding a new effect (strange...).

Armor, on the other hand, I could have easily doubled or tripled in sturdiness by using relatively small amounts of ore. So, that was the way I went.

 

[OSK]

Which difficulty did you play on?
I didn't know that. Nice! But that means only the attributes and not the levels of abilities, I suppose? I know that it was possible to grind those on the 'portal monsters'...

As for the broken-kind-of-strong gear—not exactly my experience. Maybe I did something wrong, but I did utilize the crafting. And even though I cared about not spreading my resources too thin, I wasn't able to upgrade the weapons to anything remotely close to a wow factor. It was just too resource-demanding.

The enchanting felt similar. Only during the late game, suffixes like +5 fire/shock/holy/etc. damage started to appear on stuff. Before, it was hardly +2. Stripping the enchantment off of the magic items or having enough gold for enchanting wasn't the problem. It was the manatite itself. Most scarce of resources. Hardly enough to upgrade like 7-10 items with two effects, and you could forget about buffing an already present effect. That usually costed twice or even triple as opposed to just adding a new effect (strange...).

Armor, on the other hand, I could have easily doubled or tripled in sturdiness by using relatively small amounts of ore. So, that was the way I went.

I was playing on hard. I didn't actually try the respec since I was happy with my party, so I'm not certain.

I didn't upgrade armor at all. I just focused on weapons and had a dedicated healer to keep everyone alive. I also stripped every enchantment I came across. Ones that gave bonuses to things like strength were rare, but, if you found one, you could amplify it to pretty high levels. I was sitting on a ton of ores and elder stones by the time I started upgrading my weapons.

 

[Nikanuur]

Which difficulty did you play on?
I didn't know that. Nice! But that means only the attributes and not the levels of abilities, I suppose? I know that it was possible to grind those on the 'portal monsters'...

As for the broken-kind-of-strong gear—not exactly my experience. Maybe I did something wrong, but I did utilize the crafting. And even though I cared about not spreading my resources too thin, I wasn't able to upgrade the weapons to anything remotely close to a wow factor. It was just too resource-demanding.

The enchanting felt similar. Only during the late game, suffixes like +5 fire/shock/holy/etc. damage started to appear on stuff. Before, it was hardly +2. Stripping the enchantment off of the magic items or having enough gold for enchanting wasn't the problem. It was the manatite itself. Most scarce of resources. Hardly enough to upgrade like 7-10 items with two effects, and you could forget about buffing an already present effect. That usually costed twice or even triple as opposed to just adding a new effect (strange...).

Armor, on the other hand, I could have easily doubled or tripled in sturdiness by using relatively small amounts of ore. So, that was the way I went.

I was playing on hard. I didn't actually try the respec since I was happy with my party, so I'm not certain.

I didn't upgrade armor at all. I just focused on weapons and had a dedicated healer to keep everyone alive. I also stripped every enchantment I came across. Ones that gave bonuses to things like strength were rare, but, if you found one, you could amplify it to pretty high levels. I was sitting on a ton of ores and elder stones by the time I started upgrading my weapons.

Elder stones? I never understood how to use them. I only used manatite which was really scarce. Care to explain?

 

[OSK]

Elder stones? I never understood how to use them. I only used manatite which was really scarce. Care to explain?

Take the elder stones to Corvin and he'll sharpen your bladed weapons (improving the stats). Also, the ores should respawn over time and you can farm certain enemies for them.

 

[Nikanuur]

Elder stones? I never understood how to use them. I only used manatite which was really scarce. Care to explain?

Take the elder stones to Corvin and he'll sharpen your bladed weapons (improving the stats). Also, the ores should respawn over time and you can farm certain enemies for them.

It would seem I really did miss out on this. Oh well. Thanks, man.

 

[Yosharian]

Just picked this up. Is there any drawback to dumping SPI/MND for a fighter character? Documentation is awful

 

[OSK]

Just picked this up. Is there any drawback to dumping SPI/MND for a fighter character? Documentation is awful

In game, if you hit Escape to bring up the main menu, you can click the Info button and it will give you details like this. It's not in an intuitive spot and I was pretty far in game before I found it.

 

[Yosharian]

Just picked this up. Is there any drawback to dumping SPI/MND for a fighter character? Documentation is awful

In game, if you hit Escape to bring up the main menu, you can click the Info button and it will give you details like this. It's not in an intuitive spot and I was pretty far in game before I found it.

View attachment 46722


View attachment 46723

Yes I see all that on the character creation screen, it doesn't explain things enough

Will 3 Mind make my skills unusable? Will I have less skills? To what degree will I be vulnerable to fear spells?

I need to know the effective difference between 3 Mind and 10 Mind in order to determine how much I care about this stat

 

[mediocrepoet]

I remember a time when people used to read the documentation whether in game or out of game and play it themselves to figure things out. It was a better time.

 

[OSK]

Yes I see all that on the character creation screen, it doesn't explain things enough

Will 3 Mind make my skills unusable? Will I have less skills? To what degree will I be vulnerable to fear spells?

I need to know the effective difference between 3 Mind and 10 Mind in order to determine how much I care about this stat

I don't think you're going to find the level of information you want. This an indie game and the developer hasn't revealed any formulas or anything. There's a wiki, but it's really sparse.

It's a party-based game, so other members in your party can focus on non-combat skills. Fear is mostly just an annoyance and there are ways to help mitigate it. Once you get far enough into the game you can respec. If you're worried, don't try to min/max. I recommend just jumping into the game.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Luckily the mobs that deal fear are easily dispatched by the arcane (I think that's the name?) spells.

I was one shotting those mobs with my mage I built.

 

[Yosharian]

Oof this game is a bit overwhelming with all the systems and icons that don't have tooltips lmao.

It's pretty cool though.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

You can find hints or places the game straight up tells you what the vast majority of things mean, it's just not in the form of a pop up tutorial. Pure Incline.

 

[Yosharian]

Grah I can't stop playing this! It's very addictive somehow