Demise: Ascension - is anyone else here playing it?

[Belthazor]

New models for existing monsters:

Outcast - Expelled members of the Thieves' Guild who don't like to work the streets,
they combine strong-arm tactics and light fingers in an attempt to liberate possessions from novice adventurers.

 

[Belthazor]

Another little feature added to the automap system.
Whenever you annotated the automap on a specific cell (x,y,z) in Ascension you could read it with right mouseclick and choose Read Annotation from the popup menu.
In Revenge when visiting the annotated square the text is now automatically displayed.

Annotating the square at 19,10,2.

Visiting the square at 19,10,2 - The note is automatically displayed.

If you annotate a square that already has a floor message, they're both displayed. First the floor message then the note.

 

[Mortmal]

Dude makes Pierre look like a sales expert.

They are obviously kindred spirits, while the 3D presentation never was top notch even in 1999 inspiring itself from everquest, it ages poorly and looks especially bad today. Even with good gameplay a new 2023 iteration will sell an hundred of copies at best.

 

[Dorateen]

in an attempt to liberate possessions from novice adventurers.

Enemies that steal items and gold from the party deserve death.

 

[Belthazor]

The number of monsters were increased in Revenge, especially for weak monsters.

My adventurer is alone and up against 12 Goblies divided in 3 groups.

She lost 5 hitpoints in the battle but slew them all.

 

[Belthazor]

In Revenge the status of where you last cast Establish Mystic Portal is now displayed when you hover over the red question mark.
This spell works in unison with Open Mystic Portal which ages you four weeks and teleports you back to the set location.
If you don't have the spell Open Mystic Portal which requires the Grimoire of Portals to be found and donated to the guilds, you can use the item Crystal of Mysticism ("greenie").

Here my Sorcerer hasn't set the spell Establish Mystic Portal, so it displays No Sanctuary!

After setting the spell Establish Mystic Portal the location is displayed.

Later on, when you are quite advanced, other statuses will also be displayed when you hover over the red question mark.

 

[covr]

When I last played this almost 20 years ago, there was very little information provided by the UI/tooltips within the game itself. But there was handy html guide with important info on races, classes, skills etc. It was kind of integrated with the game? Or my memory does not serves me well. How it look like with Revenge? Is there some any kind of Demise encyclopaedia in-game?

 

[Belthazor]

When I last played this almost 20 years ago, there was very little information provided by the UI/tooltips within the game itself. But there was handy html guide with important info on races, classes, skills etc. It was kind of integrated with the game? Or my memory does not serves me well. How it look like with Revenge? Is there some any kind of Demise encyclopaedia in-game?

Yes, there is an extensive helpfile in html-format that accompanies the game.
You can access the helpfile for Demise: Ascension online at: https://www.decklinsdemise.com/help/html/findex.htm

There is no helpfile online for Revenge yet.
The game is not yet released.

There is an official encyclopedia here: https://www.decklinsdomain.xyz/
But that one is very limited (5 pages).

In game information would be the library. It lists the monsters and items you've discovered so far.
Items and monsters have various stages of identification, for example Weapon, Dagger, Iron Dagger, Iron Dagger [n].
The problem with the library is that information is not sorted alphabetically and there isn't a search function.

If you want more information about items, monsters, spells and maps for Mordor II: Darkness Awakening and Demise: Ascension you can visit my site at https://www.city-of-marlith.com.
When Revenge is released I will add information for that game.

 

[Belthazor]

In Revenge Protection (the Spell) now stacks with Protection from items.
And the value is visible when you hover over the Protection icon.

From inventory
Ki'ushapo's Suit = 5 protection
Ring of Recuperation = 8 protection
Ring of Recuperation = 8 protection
Total Protection from items = 21.

21 protection from items.


Now my Sorcerer at Guild Level 10, Spell Level 5 casts Protection on the character.
At that SL it gives 3 protection.

24 Protection from items and spell.

What does Protection do?
Decklin said: "Protection essentially enhances your Defense, previously it was the highest of the total protection given by items OR the cast value. It is now the sum of all."

 

[covr]

And he is just 17 years old Troll!

 

[covr]

Also, Revenge was supposed to be released...yesterday. As Decklin promised on... 9th April 2023. I've stopped counting how many times he was unable to deliver this expansion on time.

 

[Belthazor]

Also, Revenge was supposed to be released...yesterday. As Decklin promised on... 9th April 2023. I've stopped counting how many times he was unable to deliver this expansion on time.

You are absolutely right. He shouldn't mention (release)dates unless he's 100% sure he can make it.
We've been waiting for Revenge since 2015...
But on the bright side he's very close to a release. I would guess within 2 months.
After the initial release I expect there will be a 3-6 months period of extra bugfixing and releases, because many players will play Revenge for the first time.
It's a very big game and it takes time to test it all.

For example:
Every cell in the dungeon is basically a cube with 6 sides and textures: north, east, south, west, top and bottom.
90x90x6x45 = 2,187,000 textures for the game. Minus some areas that are completely rock. Say that leaves 1,500,000 textures.
Good luck testing them all!

But Revenge is very stable (build 123) and it plays real smooth and fast. Faster than Ascension.
For example: spinners/rotators used to take you out of "momentum", now they're almost instantly and don't interrupt playstyle anymore.
Opening chests is instantly and getting your reward after battle also.
Battle is faster that in Ascension. Perhaps too fast.
Movement in the dungeon and turning around on the spot, its all instantaneous.

 

[Belthazor]

The amount of Health - and Mana Regeneration can now be viewed in Revenge when you hover over the Heart and Spellbook icon.

The Warrior's Amulet gives 7 hitpoints regeneration.
The Ring of Recuperation gives 2 hitpoints regeneration.
The Ring of Recuperation gives 2 hitpoints regeneration.
Total hitpoints regeneration is 11.

11 hitpoints regeneration every 20 seconds from equipped items.


The Ring of Recuperation gives 2 spellpoints regeneration.
The Ring of Recuperation gives 2 spellpoints regeneration.
Total spellpoints regeneration is 4.

4 spellpoints regeneration every 20 seconds from equipped items.

 

[Belthazor]

New images for existing items:

Left: Apprentice's Staff in Ascension
Right: Apprentice's Staff in Revenge

Wlk 36
A6/D12 [1.1], Staff (Class Restricted)
Stats: 9 str, 14 int, 14 wis, 14[+2] dex

Two-handed Item, 1 swing
Casts 2x "Killing Power" at a Spell Level of 20
Modify Spells(10)
Resistances: <NONE>

Exasperated with the constant flow of apprentices into the Healing and Resuscitation Halls, Assistant Guildmaster Helered crafted this staff to give fledgling Warlocks an edge in survival.
Although it doesn't inflict quite as much damage per hit as some other staffs at this level, it provides significantly more protection.
Even more important, it refreshes mana so that its bearer is less likely to be caught short of spellpower in a pinch.
To help out when a Warlock is still low on mana, this staff can also cast the spell Killing Power a few times.

 

[Belthazor]

Hot news:
Revenge now supports mousewheel scrolling.
Apparently this will also work for the (older) games Demise: Ascension and Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan.

That will make it easier to search for items and monsters in the library.
And don't forget looking through bounties!

 

[Belthazor]

There are considerable changes made to Rings in Revenge.
Not only can you now equip two rings, but their item properties have also been changed to better support different roles.

You just created a new character?
Equip 2 Shimmering Rings for +2 dex.
A little bit higher in level, equip 2 Ring of Traps for +2 dex and 2 x 35 "Identify Trap" spells at SL 35.


You want some more Armor and Protection in the early stages?
Equip 2 rings of Defending for +18 Defense and 30 Protection.


You are a Fighter and lack healing and mana recharge items?
Equip 2 rings of Recuperation: Modify Hits(4) and Modify Spells(4), +16 Protection.


You are a Thief?
Equip 2 rings of Invisibility: +4 dex, +6 Protection.
Equip 2 rings of Unlocking: +4 dex, +10 Protection.


You are not a Thief but want to open chests?
Equip 1 ring of Entry for 15 x "Magical Entry" at SL 90, +1 dex, +10 Protection.


You need Poison protection?
Equip 1 ring of Venom for 90% Poison Resistance.


You want to cast spells?

• Equip 2 rings of Death for 2 x 5 "Word of Death" spells at SL 35.
• Equip 2 rings of Frost for 2 x 5 "Arctic Blizzard" spells at SL 35.
• Equip 2 rings of Power for 2 x 5 "Killing Power" spells at SL 25.
• Equip 2 rings of Flames for 2 x 5 "Burning Air" spells at SL 35.
• Equip 2 rings of Disruption for 2 x 20 "Draining Touch" spells at SL 35.

You are a Mage and want to charm monsters?
Equip 2 rings of Bedazzlement: +2 int, +2 wis, +10 cha, +40 Protection.


You are not a Mage and want to charm monsters?
Equip 2 rings of Entrapment: +2 cha and 2 x 15 "Soul Domination" spells at SL 35, +20 Protection.


You are a caster?
Equip 2 rings of Wonder: +10 wis, +30 Protection.


Utility rings can be carried and equipped when you need them:

• Ring of Revelation: 15 x "Map Area" at SL 35.
• Ring of Teleportation: 10 x "Teleport" at SL 35.
• Ring of Elven Magic: 15 x "Heal" at SL 35.
• Ring of Levitation: 15 x "Levitation" at SL 90.
• Ring of Breathing: 5 x "Amphibious Breathing" at SL 30.
• Ring of Brightness: 5 x "Brightness" at CSL.

* Where there are 2 rings mentioned their properties have been doubled.
The Ring of Protection and Lamurian Ring weren't increased in power and will become somewhat less used, perhaps become obsolete.
But all in all very good changes I think. You can mix and equip ring(s) to your heart's content!

 

[Belthazor]

In Ascension when you clicked on the items tab, the map would black out.
In Revenge you are now able to see both the map and items at the same time.
As well in fullscreen mode as in windowed mode.

Fullscreen mode - map and items both displayed

Windowed mode - map and items both displayed

 

[Belthazor]

The demo for Demise: Revenge of the Tavern Keeper build 129 (April 21, 2023) is available!
See: https://www.city-of-marlith.com/general/buy-or-download.html


Will you be playing with your old party from Demise: Ascension?
Or even earlier? Revenge will allow you to import characters from:

• Mordor: The depths of Dejenol
• Mordor II: Darkness Awakening (version 0.992b)
• Demise: Rise of the Ku'tan
• Demise: Ascension

Or will you start a new party and discover all changes made from level 1?
One of the strongest dual-guild combo's is Warrior/Warlock:

• Warrior gets 2nd best item-use (after Artisan)
• Warrior gets best A/D of all guilds
• Warrior gets the best end gear (weapons and armor)
• Warrior gets the 3rd best XP-factor (after Artisan and Thief)
• Warrior gets the 2nd best Critical Hit Ability (after Barbarian)
• Warrior gets 3 extra swings (after Ninja and Paladin)
• Warrior gets the best Fighting Ability
• Warrior gets the highest hitpoints till level 25
• Warlock gets the highest hitpoints till level 38
• Warlock gets all Resistance spells
• Warlock gets movement spells
• Warlock gets the highest language ability
• Warlock gets the Protection spell (other is Sorcerer) which stacks with protection from items
• Warlock gets healing from Morkal Spells
• Warlock can blast with Word of Death, Terminate Existence and Impending Doom
• Warlock gets the best mana regeneration

Races: Dwarf, Human


What is missing from the Warrior/Warlocks combo?

• Healing. Can be solved with Morkals, regeneration items, healing items (rings, crystals) or another partymember.
• Thieving. Can't open locked chests unless with items (rings) or another partymember.
• Charming. Can't charm monsters unless with items (rings) or another partymember.

What is a good alternative dual-guild combo?
Ninja/Sorcerer

• More swings
• More thieving
• More blasting
• Cheaper resistances
• No top gear
• No movement spells
• Weaker fighting

Races: Human
See: Guild and Race statistics for more choices.


Ideal party:

• Warrior/Warlock: Dwarf or Human
• Warrior/Warlock: Dwarf or Human
• Thief/Warlock: Dwarf or Human
• Warrior/Cleric: Dwarf or Human

This party got very strong fighting skills, blasting, movement, thieving, healing, resurrecting party members, language skills for talking with monsters.
Warriors get 3 extra swings. Might even make the Thief/Warlock a Warrior in the end.
This party will make it all the way!

(p.s. use guest/demise to login).

 

[litk]

90x90x6x45 = 2,187,000 textures for the game. Minus some areas that are completely rock. Say that leaves 1,500,000 textures.
Good luck testing them all!

This is one of those great ideas of this project to make a game and fill it halfway with stone.

 

[Belthazor]

This is one of those great ideas of this project to make a game and fill it halfway with stone.

It's not half, it's closer to 1/3 or 1/4.
And it's to simulate it being a mine filled with rock. Not all of it is carved out.
The game is big enough as it is.


Battles
I have a much bigger problem with battles in Revenge. The speed and the lack of tactics!
In Mordor I and II and the previous Demise games you could read the battle as it was progressing and could act upon it. As a player you were involved.
In Revenge if you're in party and you have the Thief selected and you encounter monsters the whole fight lasts just 2 seconds.
You press 'f' and boom the battle is over. It feels empty.
You can't see during the fight what happens, only when you pause, or read the combat log afterwards.
I had a character die suddenly on dungeon level 6 and needed to read the combat log to found out what happened.
Turned out he was hit by a Spitting Centipede. Their spit does acidic damage well over 100 hitpoints damage depending on your acid resistance.
95% of the battles require no tactics, just ultrafast swings and you need to fight, and fight, and fight, and grind a lot in this game! (Which is ok, but make it fun again!)

Where are the tactics?

• Monsters summoning other monsters for reinforcements.
• Monsters healing the frontline like Goblin Shamans or Orc Priests.
• Monsters buffing each other.
• Monsters debuffing a spell from your party.
• Monsters draining your mana spellpoints.
• Monsters following you to the next room.
• Monsters dividing the party by pushing a partymember of a cliff, down a chute or in a pit.
• Why are spells divided in combat and non-combat spells? I can heal a partymember but not in combat?
• Etcetera

Initiative
Why does the party has the initiative 95% of the time?
You only need one partymember with high dexterity. The other partymember(s) with 0 dexterity get to swing before the monsters?
By the time 4 party members have acted the monsters are completely decimated.
It should be characters and monsters all mixed up depending on their individual dexterity.

Swing speed
And this ridiculous swing speed. Why can't we control it?
Give us a choice, either slow, medium, fast or a slider.

Mode
And gives us a choice how battles play out.
Turn based mode if you want to follow each step and control each action and be engaged.
Or real-time with pause for mindless killing.
And let us switch whenever we like.

 

[covr]

Important thing to mention that despite 123214 years of development the game is still not compatible with newer versions of Windows and should be played in compatibility mode. It is really a product of 1999, updated in 1999 fashion - so a lot of conted added but almost not QoL, interface changes, etc. Even the fullscreen is not really working.
In order to run this game (and I mean 2023 release) you have to type /nondirectx into the target path. Without that game will run in software mode with limited automap visibility.

Game is bigger but slower, not optimized at all. I guess that decklin just added more legacy-like spaghetti code into already something very 'legacy looking'. That guy is unable to code html, Demise/decklin's page is unfinished, latest news is from 2014, a lot of stuff is not working.

I love this game, but I feel it is missing some very basic content like a proper UI for monster interaction interface, party interaction interface, tooltips and description & refactoring of all legacy code. Just imagine this being upgraded to modern standards, with full screen high resolution, you could fit so much more info, separate tabs for each team member, bigger automap, a proper lightning system, upscaled textures with bump mapping.

One can only dream.

 

[Belthazor]

Important thing to mention that despite 123214 years of development the game is still not compatible with newer versions of Windows and should be played in compatibility mode.

Yeah, that's true, it's still Visual Basic 6 and Visual C++ 6 for the dungeon view and you need to set Windows XP2 or 3 compatibility.
But you only set it once in your shortcut and then you're done. Not really a problem.

so a lot of conted added but almost not QoL, interface changes, etc.

There are a lot of Quality of Life improvements. See all the posts above.
And some of the biggest complaints were addressed:

• You can now recover drained hitpoints (from Undeads) overtime.
• And you can get more than 2 levels xp before you pin. Now upto 5 or 6 levels worth before you pin.

Even the fullscreen is not really working.
In order to run this game (and I mean 2023 release) you have to type /nondirectx into the target path. Without that game will run in software mode with limited automap visibility.

The fullscreen is working perfectly (I'm using Windows 7). Agreed, strange that in fullscreen mode you can't enlarge the map anymore like you could in Ascension.
For windowed mode it's /nodirectx (not /nondirectx) and you can doubleclick on the map to get a separate window for it.

Game is bigger but slower, not optimized at all.

Not true. Combat is way too fast for my taste.
All is fluid. I reach 195 fps all the time (use Alt-f to measure framespeed) and my pc is from 2011!

I love this game, but I feel it is missing some very basic content like a proper UI for monster interaction interface, party interaction interface, tooltips and description & refactoring of all legacy code. Just imagine this being upgraded to modern standards, with full screen high resolution, you could fit so much more info, separate tabs for each team member, bigger automap, a proper lightning system, upscaled textures with bump mapping.

I love the game too. All of the things you mention will not happen while Decklin develops the game, he seems afraid to change anything GUI related.
For instance increasing the bank size (40 slots to 100 slots) and that you can view more than 10 items at once, there's room to display way more bank items at once.
And then again I'd rather see the battles improved with added tactics and corrected iniative than the 3d models and how the game looks.

 

[covr]

I have played this 20 years ago with 32 MB of RAM, Celeron 333 mhz and Permedia 2 - graphic card that was already outdated in 2001. The game could start up in 5 seconds. Right now, on at least 100 x faster machine, it is about a minute, or almost minute just to get to main screen.

 

[Belthazor]

Yes, that's true. Loading Revenge takes a long time.

 

[Belthazor]

More complaints
Everytime Decklin makes a change to the dungeon system, even if it's just one tile or one texture, the whole dungeon needs to be reset.
You loose everything you mapped. And when asked to keep the map and you say yes: you loose all observations like anti-magic, anti-teleport, stud square etc.

When there's a new spell or change in existing spells:
You loose all donated treatises, codexes, grimoires and librams and need to hunt again for those lost spellbooks.

When there's a new or updated quest:
You loose your quest progress for Lord Gherrick and the Tavern Keeper.

And when a new item or monster is created apparently this mixes up the internal array index in the item or monster list.
Screwing up item conversion with character imports from earlier games.
Resetting your store and confinement.

Why not a partial reset? Keep of list of what has changed and only reset that.
Or remember what the player has achieved and reenable it.

It's wise to NOT update your game too often. Only do it when you have to, when either the game is expired or when there are new interesting updates.
And when you do update make sure afterwards you make a manual backup.
This will give you a solid restore point. (If you don't and restore and old backup from before the update you wipe out the update).