Dungeon Rats - first impressions and general feedback

[Black Angel]

He has 2 man party which is the weakest setup possible. It's weaker then solo, and of course 4 man party.

I don't know about it being weakest setup, tbh. Theoretically, get one man going full defensive to lure and tank, and the other one to deal all the damage. From all the fights I can remember, very few would necessitate the need to heal every time we're done with an encounter, so if you're good at positioning so only one guy gets damaged all the time, I'm sure you won't be wasting THAT much healing items.

How would I know if I was wasting healing or not?

I won each fight as it appeared, that's the game, right?

Or is the game to reload even if you win a fight until you decide whether you've lost the exact right amount of HP during that fight?

I don't know, you tell me. Your previous reply appeared as if you need to heal every time a character take damage.

Also, nowhere in my previous post did I ever imply that I progressed through the game "without healing of any kind...", so I can't understand what you're talking about.

 

[Parabalus]

Is there somewhere some info about game?
I mean, I don't remember already (as usual becaue I tend to forget such details quickly) anything about stat canisters - how many of them? 3?
And condition how to get them.
I rememebr one needs crafting, and other need Con. How many crafting?
Started hour ago as blocker with a hammer, just eliminated wounded scolopendra with 7 block.

I just need to know where to go - crafting for stat canisters or alchemy....

I'm still at a loss as to how one somehow wasted all the healings not even midway through the game....

He has 2 man party which is the weakest setup possible. It's weaker than solo, and of course 4 man party.

There are 3, two behind crafting/lockpicking after worms(6)/meteorite(8) constructs, 3rd is in deep caves scorpio fight behind a str9 or str6+con8 check.

Which TB RPG do you consider harder? KotC is easier tbh, UR too.

UR, tbh. Since you need to gain few levels before you can do special attacks. Meanwhile, go full hardcore in DR, and you can still get decent THC even if you go aiming at people's limbs.

I'm still at a loss as to how one supposed to progress without healing of any kind...

I'm still at a loss as to how one somehow wasted all the healings not even midway through the game....

There were 2 patches, one was released a week later in Nov, the other in December, so the Dec version is the final. The third patch added French and Polish but didn't touch anything else.

The only way to really change the difficulty is to increase the enemies' stats, skills, and numbers. We didn't do that.

But you did, in Update#2, all of those - including notably drastically reducing alchemy reagent amounts+effects, changing SP rewards/balance and messing with some fights.

It's definitely harder than the release version. I don't think it's too hard or anything, but it's a noticeable jump.

What enemies' stats, skills, and numbers are changed? I vaguely remembered the last time I booted the game, but it was certainly in latter half of 2017. Other than the changes to Axe's passive and what you mentioned (although I disagreed the fights are 'messed'), the difficulty are pretty much the same.

UR is much easier, since it's open world you can always cheese (approach differently) a fight tbh.

Alchemy and crafting bonuses got decreased at high ranks, alchemy reagents and food numbers got reduced.

Messed with = changed, didn't mean anything else by that, eg. the scorpio fights got merged so you can't have the better armor until after the berserker, stuff like that.

But you did, in Update#2, all of those - including notably drastically reducing alchemy reagent amounts+effects, changing SP rewards/balance and messing with some fights.

My mistake, we did actually *lower* enemies skills.

Dunno why you're trolling, you changed a lot more than that in Update#2 and the game's a bit more difficult because of that.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I don't know, you tell me. Your previous reply appeared as if you need to heal every time a character take damage.

Also, nowhere in my previous post did I ever imply that I progressed through the game "without healing of any kind...", so I can't understand what you're talking about.

Yes, you heal a character after they take damage... well, duh. There's nothing to gain by going into the next fight on lower health, you either use 10 after the first fight and 10 after the second or you use 20 after the second, it makes zero difference. Can you give me an example of why you shouldn't heal all your health? Aside from not wanting to use a 25 HP pot to heal 5HP, OBVIOUSLY.

I didn't imply you did go through the game "without healing of any kind...", you are using the phrase "wasting healing" like it's some magical conundrum that only experts know how to manage, so, erm, yeah, how about it's you who explains what the fuck you're on about... yes?

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm still at a loss as to how one somehow wasted all the healings not even midway through the game....

How would I know if I was wasting healing or not?

I won each fight as it appeared, that's the game, right?

Right. As long as you win fights, you should be (or should have been) fine, regardless of damage taken and healed. Clearly, that's not what you've experienced but I can't say why.

& the whole point of Dungeon Rats & the philosophy of even having it's crafting and consumable agenda is precisely because people like VD bitch about regular RPGs where people end up with a cart-load of unused consumables at the end of the game & how the game doesn't demand you use them. And what does he make? A game where you're supposed to need to use your consumables each fight because they're somehow crucial while at the same time you're supposedly dumb for using them because... you might need them in the next fight! … the very thing he was supposed to be discouraging, duh.

For the record, I bitched about games like the BG series where you're given tons of consumables you don't really need, you keep saving them for that rainy day but it never comes so you finish the game with 6 crates of scrolls and potions. Dungeon Rats is pretty much the opposite.

Dunno why you're trolling, you changed a lot more than that in Update#2 and the game's a bit more difficult because of that.

System changes go both ways, but overall path #2 made it easier. I clocked 57 hours testing the game after release (path 1 and 2). Notable changes:

- Ant chitin armor weighs less and requires less material to craft (so you can craft it earlier)
- Doubled the bonus to vsCS from CON (protects your party better)
- Whirldwind effect for daggers, swords and 1h spears is bleeding instead of knockdown; higher chance to score.
- Constructs are now affected by knockdown, bash, attack and dodge penalties but they are a bit harder to bash or knockdown than human enemies (now it's easier to fight them using aimed attacks)
- Doubled the antidote's effect (makes your life easier)
Etc.

 

[Black Angel]

UR is much easier, since it's open world you can always cheese a fight tbh.

Why would I want to cheese? Or maybe you have different definition of cheese. If you ask me, cheese in UR's case would be abusing transition zone to wait out cooldown on meds, drugs, and spells, and also waiting for debuff such as adrenaline's after-effect fatigue etc etc. I wouldn't want to do any of that, especially since UR already had an innate anti-transition zone abuse by making previously hostile enemies becoming immediately hostile if you re-enter the zone.

eg. the scorpio fights got merged so you can't have the better armor until after the berserker, stuff like that.

I'm pretty sure you can have access to scorpion carapace by killing those near the lone canister after the fight with three ant warrior/something and the place where you're ambushed after clearing ant queen, but unfortunately I don't have DR installed at the moment so I can't confirm if those scorpion carapaces which are available early are enough to craft at least Light Scorpion Armor.

But you did, in Update#2, all of those - including notably drastically reducing alchemy reagent amounts+effects, changing SP rewards/balance and messing with some fights.

My mistake, we did actually *lower* enemies skills.

Dunno why you're trolling, you changed a lot more than that in Update#2 and the game's a bit more difficult because of that.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/dungeon-rats-update-2.112685/

Improvements

• Added tanning racks to get more leather
  
• You can select your characters during the placement phase by clicking on the combat queue.
  
• The Crafting screen now separates schematics by weapon type and armor material and orders them alphabetically.
  
• You can now select techniques without the required materials, to preview the bonuses.
  
• You can see the THC, CS and ADC on area of effect attacks.
  
• You can now change where your character is facing during combat for 1 AP. Left click on the character and hold to choose direction.
  
• The textbox can be moved and resized.
  
• You can use the highest Crafting skill from any companion while in camps even if they aren't in your party
  
• Clicking on Loot All moves to the next body with items.

Changes

• Increased Hieron's block to 4 from 1 and CS to 5 from 4
  
• Changed Roxana's xbow/throwing to 6/6 from 5/7
  
• Increased Yngvar's CON by 1, decreased INT by 1, lowered his Axe and Block to 8 from 9.
  
• Ant chitin armor weighs less and requires less material to craft
  
• Killing Roxana grants SP.
  
• Tweaked gorza's (the new hammer) stats.
  
• Replaced the fight with 5 ants in the deep caves with a wounded scolopendra.
  
• Doubled the bonus to vsCS from CON.
  
• Tweaked CS formula calculation for aimed strikes.
  
• Ranged weapons use perception for aimed arms and legs
  
• Whirldwind effect for daggers, swords and 1h spears is bleeding instead of knockdown; higher chance to score.
  
• Constructs are now affected by knockdown, bash, attack and dodge penalties but they are a bit harder to bash or knockdown than human enemies.

Balance

• Base block is increase to 25 from 15.
  
• Increased chance to fully block attacks.
  
• Increased regular shields hardness.
  
• Increased crude shields vsRanged.
  
• Shields vsRanged no longer added when dodging (it's taken into account if block + vsRanged is higher than dodge).
  
• Increased base critical rating to 15 per CS point.
  
• Changed the berserk potion progression (Max is 40/10 from 50/5).
  
• Doubled the antidote's effect.
  
• Made the acid vial's effect stronger and available earlier. Now all of them do HP damage. Reduced throwing range. Increased AP.
  
• Splash Acid adds AoE similar to bombs.
  
• Increased Hammers' armor damage to 2.
  
• Increased Swords' bleeding damage to 3.
  
• Increased Bows' passive chance

New SP System

The new system makes reaching higher levels more costly, but enemies have lower skills, so the investment gives a better pay-off. Intelligence gives much higher rewards than before, and some SP rewards have been increased.

• Intelligence now gives flat bonus points per combat.
  
• Increased skills costs for levels 5 and higher.
  
• Increased SP rewards for some fights.
  
• Lowered the skills of all enemies to match the new gain from the player.

Bomb Changes

• Tweaked bomb critical formula. Center of explosion adds more bonus, but each point of CON over 6 protects more.
  
• 25 + Center of Explosion Bonus - (Victim CON-6) x25
  
• Center of explosion adds 50% to CS chance. Distance from center of explosion lowers this value.
  
• Increased damage and vsDR bonus.

Fixes

• CS facing bonus works correctly now.
  
• Fixed the chest near the crystal caves' forge.
  
• Opponents using Throwing weapons use correct APs.
  
• Mobility bonus is now disabled for knocked down characters.
  
• Fixed the disappearing construct issue if sent to the forge before activating the ancient facility.
  
• Scolopendras now have attacks of opportunity.
  
• Fixed the projectile collision on long bridges.
  
• Fixed extreme friendly fire with ranged weapons in crowded fights.
  
• Enemies will not bash creatures that are immune to bash.
  
• Fixed the issue with the AI and doors.
  
• Fixed the passable wall in rock bottom.
  
• Fixed the loop in crevice text interaction.

Which part of these you'll argue that it make the game harder?

Yes, you heal a character after they take damage... well, duh. There's nothing to gain by going into the next fight on lower health, you either use 10 after the first fight and 10 after the second or you use 20 after the second, it makes zero difference. Can you give me an example of why you shouldn't heal all your health? Aside from not wanting to use a 25 HP pot to heal 5HP, OBVIOUSLY.

What if using it NOW means you're running out of healing items/ingredients, when the next check point where all the loot are waiting is through the next two fight? I don't see the reason to immediately use your rations and salves immediately if you're not down to 75%-50% HP at least.

I didn't imply you did go through the game "without healing of any kind...", you are using the phrase "wasting healing" like it's some magical conundrum that only experts know how to manage, so, erm, yeah, how about it's you who explains what the fuck you're on about... yes?

Nope. YOU are the one who needs to explain to me what the fuck you're on about. All I'm saying is that all you need is to git gud, and suddenly you came at me with, "I'm still at a loss as to how one supposed to progress without healing of any kind...". Hence, why I deduced that you must've been 'wasting' all the healing items from my perspective, even if from your perspective it's 'normal' to use up all the healing items without caution.

 

[Fenix]

I don't know about it being weakest setup, tbh.

According to my exp it's like that - solo you get more SP, and you are stronger due 2 stat. 4 man party is just like a tank.
I was straggling with my crossbow+ Marcus party, maybe it's because my main had no dodge at all, dunno.
But instead I could eliminate any threat very fast.

PS Perished from warrior ants.

PPS And again.... blockers have hard time I guess.

 

[Parabalus]

I'm still at a loss as to how one somehow wasted all the healings not even midway through the game....

How would I know if I was wasting healing or not?

I won each fight as it appeared, that's the game, right?

Right. As long as you win fights, you should be (or should have been) fine, regardless of damage taken and healed. Clearly, that's not what you've experienced but I can't say why.

& the whole point of Dungeon Rats & the philosophy of even having it's crafting and consumable agenda is precisely because people like VD bitch about regular RPGs where people end up with a cart-load of unused consumables at the end of the game & how the game doesn't demand you use them. And what does he make? A game where you're supposed to need to use your consumables each fight because they're somehow crucial while at the same time you're supposedly dumb for using them because... you might need them in the next fight! … the very thing he was supposed to be discouraging, duh.

For the record, I bitched about games like the BG series where you're given tons of consumables you don't really need, you keep saving them for that rainy day but it never comes so you finish the game with 6 crates of scrolls and potions. Dungeon Rats is pretty much the opposite.

Dunno why you're trolling, you changed a lot more than that in Update#2 and the game's a bit more difficult because of that.

System changes go both ways, but overall path #2 made it easier. I clocked 57 hours testing the game after release (path 1 and 2). Notable changes:

- Ant chitin armor weighs less and requires less material to craft (so you can craft it earlier)
- Doubled the bonus to vsCS from CON (protects your party better)
- Whirldwind effect for daggers, swords and 1h spears is bleeding instead of knockdown; higher chance to score.
- Constructs are now affected by knockdown, bash, attack and dodge penalties but they are a bit harder to bash or knockdown than human enemies (now it's easier to fight them using aimed attacks)
- Doubled the antidote's effect (makes your life easier)
Etc.

UR is much easier, since it's open world you can always cheese a fight tbh.

Why would I want to cheese? Or maybe you have different definition of cheese. If you ask me, cheese in UR's case would be abusing transition zone to wait out cooldown on meds, drugs, and spells, and also waiting for debuff such as adrenaline's after-effect fatigue etc etc. I wouldn't want to do any of that, especially since UR already had an innate anti-transition zone abuse by making previously hostile enemies becoming immediately hostile if you re-enter the zone.

eg. the scorpio fights got merged so you can't have the better armor until after the berserker, stuff like that.

I'm pretty sure you can have access to scorpion carapace by killing those near the lone canister after the fight with three ant warrior/something and the place where you're ambushed after clearing ant queen, but unfortunately I don't have DR installed at the moment so I can't confirm if those scorpion carapaces which are available early are enough to craft at least Light Scorpion Armor.

But you did, in Update#2, all of those - including notably drastically reducing alchemy reagent amounts+effects, changing SP rewards/balance and messing with some fights.

My mistake, we did actually *lower* enemies skills.

Dunno why you're trolling, you changed a lot more than that in Update#2 and the game's a bit more difficult because of that.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/dungeon-rats-update-2.112685/

Improvements

• Added tanning racks to get more leather
  
• You can select your characters during the placement phase by clicking on the combat queue.
  
• The Crafting screen now separates schematics by weapon type and armor material and orders them alphabetically.
  
• You can now select techniques without the required materials, to preview the bonuses.
  
• You can see the THC, CS and ADC on area of effect attacks.
  
• You can now change where your character is facing during combat for 1 AP. Left click on the character and hold to choose direction.
  
• The textbox can be moved and resized.
  
• You can use the highest Crafting skill from any companion while in camps even if they aren't in your party
  
• Clicking on Loot All moves to the next body with items.

Changes

• Increased Hieron's block to 4 from 1 and CS to 5 from 4
  
• Changed Roxana's xbow/throwing to 6/6 from 5/7
  
• Increased Yngvar's CON by 1, decreased INT by 1, lowered his Axe and Block to 8 from 9.
  
• Ant chitin armor weighs less and requires less material to craft
  
• Killing Roxana grants SP.
  
• Tweaked gorza's (the new hammer) stats.
  
• Replaced the fight with 5 ants in the deep caves with a wounded scolopendra.
  
• Doubled the bonus to vsCS from CON.
  
• Tweaked CS formula calculation for aimed strikes.
  
• Ranged weapons use perception for aimed arms and legs
  
• Whirldwind effect for daggers, swords and 1h spears is bleeding instead of knockdown; higher chance to score.
  
• Constructs are now affected by knockdown, bash, attack and dodge penalties but they are a bit harder to bash or knockdown than human enemies.

Balance

• Base block is increase to 25 from 15.
  
• Increased chance to fully block attacks.
  
• Increased regular shields hardness.
  
• Increased crude shields vsRanged.
  
• Shields vsRanged no longer added when dodging (it's taken into account if block + vsRanged is higher than dodge).
  
• Increased base critical rating to 15 per CS point.
  
• Changed the berserk potion progression (Max is 40/10 from 50/5).
  
• Doubled the antidote's effect.
  
• Made the acid vial's effect stronger and available earlier. Now all of them do HP damage. Reduced throwing range. Increased AP.
  
• Splash Acid adds AoE similar to bombs.
  
• Increased Hammers' armor damage to 2.
  
• Increased Swords' bleeding damage to 3.
  
• Increased Bows' passive chance

New SP System

The new system makes reaching higher levels more costly, but enemies have lower skills, so the investment gives a better pay-off. Intelligence gives much higher rewards than before, and some SP rewards have been increased.

• Intelligence now gives flat bonus points per combat.
  
• Increased skills costs for levels 5 and higher.
  
• Increased SP rewards for some fights.
  
• Lowered the skills of all enemies to match the new gain from the player.

Bomb Changes

• Tweaked bomb critical formula. Center of explosion adds more bonus, but each point of CON over 6 protects more.
  
• 25 + Center of Explosion Bonus - (Victim CON-6) x25
  
• Center of explosion adds 50% to CS chance. Distance from center of explosion lowers this value.
  
• Increased damage and vsDR bonus.

Fixes

• CS facing bonus works correctly now.
  
• Fixed the chest near the crystal caves' forge.
  
• Opponents using Throwing weapons use correct APs.
  
• Mobility bonus is now disabled for knocked down characters.
  
• Fixed the disappearing construct issue if sent to the forge before activating the ancient facility.
  
• Scolopendras now have attacks of opportunity.
  
• Fixed the projectile collision on long bridges.
  
• Fixed extreme friendly fire with ranged weapons in crowded fights.
  
• Enemies will not bash creatures that are immune to bash.
  
• Fixed the issue with the AI and doors.
  
• Fixed the passable wall in rock bottom.
  
• Fixed the loop in crevice text interaction.

Which part of these you'll argue that it make the game harder?

Yes, you heal a character after they take damage... well, duh. There's nothing to gain by going into the next fight on lower health, you either use 10 after the first fight and 10 after the second or you use 20 after the second, it makes zero difference. Can you give me an example of why you shouldn't heal all your health? Aside from not wanting to use a 25 HP pot to heal 5HP, OBVIOUSLY.

What if using it NOW means you're running out of healing items/ingredients, when the next check point where all the loot are waiting is through the next two fight? I don't see the reason to immediately use your rations and salves immediately if you're not down to 75%-50% HP at least.

I didn't imply you did go through the game "without healing of any kind...", you are using the phrase "wasting healing" like it's some magical conundrum that only experts know how to manage, so, erm, yeah, how about it's you who explains what the fuck you're on about... yes?

Nope. YOU are the one who needs to explain to me what the fuck you're on about. All I'm saying is that all you need is to git gud, and suddenly you came at me with, "I'm still at a loss as to how one supposed to progress without healing of any kind...". Hence, why I deduced that you must've been 'wasting' all the healing items from my perspective, even if from your perspective it's 'normal' to use up all the healing items without caution.

In UR you can always approach the fight differently, get more levels, consumables, etc. Open world design means you have limitless resources.

The patch also did a bunch of undocumented stuff, including:

Scorpions can now stagger for -2 ap.
Nets work for 1 round (2 round if crit), target lose 6 ap.
Amount of bombs/alchemy for them is greatly reduced.
Amount of whetstones is greatly reduced.
Amount of food is greatly reduced (conserving cassava roots is key).
Also, if you think changes to CS was a buff to player, think again. Enemies like enforcer reliably even 150 CS defence. This means 4 con chars in light armor will be crit 100%.
Doors in first ant fight (and other ant fights nearbly) are closed now.

You could get the armor before the updates, there were 2 scorpion fights there, now it's just one.

I'm not arguing from notes (they are incomplete and obscure), but my playthroughs. I did 2 on release (10 CHA xbow, solo spear/dodge) and 2 after the patches(2 man+solo), and the difficulty increase was very noticeable, less SP and alchemy stuff.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

What if using it NOW means you're running out of healing items/ingredients, when the next check point where all the loot are waiting is through the next two fight? I don't see the reason to immediately use your rations and salves immediately if you're not down to 75%-50% HP at least.

Nope. YOU are the one who needs to explain to me what the fuck you're on about. All I'm saying is that all you need is to git gud, and suddenly you came at me with, "I'm still at a loss as to how one supposed to progress without healing of any kind...". Hence, why I deduced that you must've been 'wasting' all the healing items from my perspective, even if from your perspective it's 'normal' to use up all the healing items without caution.

It makes no difference to anything when you heal. Can you please read this sentence properly:

If you heal 10 after the first fight & then heal 10 after the second fight, it has exactly the same result as healing 0 after the first fight and 20 after the second fight.

The only thing which effects how much you need to heal is how much damage you take in combat. Ergo, how do you 'waste' healing? The only way you can 'waste' healing is to take too much damage in combat. Ergo, I asked you how much damage is one supposed to take in combat for the healing mechanic to actually function properly.

Do I need to start using capitals?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Right. As long as you win fights, you should be (or should have been) fine, regardless of damage taken and healed. Clearly, that's not what you've experienced but I can't say why.

While you're here:

Why did you think it would be a good idea to combine the Healing resource with the Stat-Rejuvenation resource AND the Bleeding Resistance?

And then put Bleeding in every fight & the potential for stat reduction in every fight & then severely limit Healing products?

What was your thinking there? Or was it a case of no thinking?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

I'm pretty sure you can have access to scorpion carapace by killing those near the lone canister after the fight with three ant warrior/something and the place where you're ambushed after clearing ant queen, but unfortunately I don't have DR installed at the moment so I can't confirm if those scorpion carapaces which are available early are enough to craft at least Light Scorpion Armor.

In the deep caves there are 3 Scorpions defending the Oil deposit. Upon killing them you get 8.0lb of Scorpion Capace, the lightest of the two Scorpion armours costs 10.0lb to forge, so, no, you cannot have any Scorpion Armour before even Roxanna & by the time you can craft it you'll have rather a lot of other options available as even heavy scorpion armour is only 5 DR, which is quite low by mid-game standards & it doesn't offer any other particularly attractive counter-incentives, having weak CS & terrible penalties & not very good hardness.

 

[Parabalus]

I'm pretty sure you can have access to scorpion carapace by killing those near the lone canister after the fight with three ant warrior/something and the place where you're ambushed after clearing ant queen, but unfortunately I don't have DR installed at the moment so I can't confirm if those scorpion carapaces which are available early are enough to craft at least Light Scorpion Armor.

In the deep caves there are 3 Scorpions defending the Oil deposit. Upon killing them you get 8.0lb of Scorpion Capace, the lightest of the two Scorpion armours costs 10.0lb to forge, so, no, you cannot have any Scorpion Armour before even Roxanna & by the time you can craft it you'll have rather a lot of other options available as even heavy scorpion armour is only 5 DR, which is quite low by mid-game standards & it doesn't offer any other particularly attractive counter-incentives, having weak CS & terrible penalties.

Yes, this is what I'm referring to, before the updates you could make the armor before killing Barca. In the current version it's completely useless, you even loot the armor from the berzerker's goons before you can make it.

Not too important for balance but just very sucky.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Right. As long as you win fights, you should be (or should have been) fine, regardless of damage taken and healed. Clearly, that's not what you've experienced but I can't say why.

While you're here:

Why did you think it would be a good idea to combine the Healing resource with the Stat-Rejuvenation resource AND the Bleeding Resistance?

And then put Bleeding in every fight & the potential for stat reduction in every fight & then severely limit Healing products?

What was your thinking there? Or was it a case of no thinking?

It was a carry over from AoD where there was less focus on healing. Changing the existing design is always time-consuming so we wouldn't do it unless people demand it. Since nobody demanded it...

Overall, the right difficulty balance is always tricky and always subjective. Our first version (the beta) was rejected by the beta testers as too easy with too many consumables. So we increased the difficulty and reduced the consumables until the testers were pleased. Thus the final word on the difficulty belongs to the testers and since the testers come from the Codex (nothing else beats the experience), the final word belongs to the Codex. Obviously, we wouldn't have released the game had the Codex thought it was unplayable for any reason.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

It was a carry over from AoD where there was less focus on healing. Changing the existing design is always time-consuming so we wouldn't do it unless people demand it. Since nobody demanded it...

Overall, the right difficulty balance is always tricky and always subjective. Our first version (the beta) was rejected by the beta testers as too easy with too many consumables. So we increased the difficulty and reduced the consumables until the testers were pleased. Thus the final word on the difficulty belongs to the testers and since the testers come from the Codex (nothing else beats the experience), the final word belongs to the Codex. Obviously, we wouldn't have released the game had the Codex thought it was unplayable for any reason.

& did any of them ever play it again when it was made harder? A handful?

Some interesting perspectives from the Steam reviews:

You had a hugely positive welcome, from the usual crowd, one suspects, an overwhelmingly positive Day 1 review dirge that still to this day keeps the Steam summery as Very Positive.

And yet, if you go by date...

From 27th Dec 2016 to 24th Mar 2018, the time period where all the secondary players gave it a shot, the people who came from word of mouth, by just taking the reviews from this date, then the summary is, oh, there's a surprise, Mixed. That's quite a contrast, eh.

The negative reviews have cleared up a bit since march, I guess people are more aware of what they're getting into by this point & the random word of mouth people have dried up, since April the overall rating's for 'since April' are just Positive, with no adjectives.

Looks to me like your BETA testers screwed you over something chronic there. Looks to me like they all had their whale of a time & then promoted making it harder so that their future boasting could be more valuable. At the expense of your profits. Or maybe that's how you wanted it too?

 

[Saduj]

No, no Bronze Armour before Barca, unless there's some in the various stashes around the boss-insects on the lower level, which you wont do if you fight Barca before going down there, which is the more sensible course of action.

Challenging Barca first is meant to be the harder option. Going into the deep tunnels gives you skill points, reagents, rations, a good armor and a better weapon for Marcus.

Yes, in real life it is the better option but in an RPG, skipping early game content to skip to a boss fight is going to make that fight hard. Barca fight is easy if you don’t skip content.

 

[Vault Dweller]

It was a carry over from AoD where there was less focus on healing. Changing the existing design is always time-consuming so we wouldn't do it unless people demand it. Since nobody demanded it...

Overall, the right difficulty balance is always tricky and always subjective. Our first version (the beta) was rejected by the beta testers as too easy with too many consumables. So we increased the difficulty and reduced the consumables until the testers were pleased. Thus the final word on the difficulty belongs to the testers and since the testers come from the Codex (nothing else beats the experience), the final word belongs to the Codex. Obviously, we wouldn't have released the game had the Codex thought it was unplayable for any reason.

& did any of them ever play it again when it was made harder? A handful?

They did, of course. The changes to difficulty and consumables were made while the game was still in beta, before it was released. We even added more testers in the final week to try that final version.

From 27th Dec 2016 to 24th Mar 2018, the time period where all the secondary players gave it a shot, the people who came from word of mouth, by just taking the reviews from this date, then the summary is, oh, there's a surprise, Mixed. That's quite a contrast, eh.

Naturally. First come players who either heard about it or look for this type of games, then come random players, which is always mixed (expected more, too difficult, too linear, nothing but combat, etc).

Looks to me like your BETA testers screwed you over something chronic there. Looks to me like they all had their whale of a time & then promoted making it harder so that their future boasting could be more valuable. At the expense of your profits. Or maybe that's how you wanted it too?

I don't think we could have sold more if the game were easier. Plus there are two extra difficulty modes, although they didn't really make that much difference - most complaints about the difficulty came from people playing on Hard. The beta testers' feedback is always subjective, of course. We take a group of very experienced players and adjust the Hard difficulty based on their feedback. It's risky but what other choice is there? Take random testers with random skills? What would that tell us? When we consider feedback we look at the stats, savegames, endgame screens, and such.

 

[Fenix]

I guess the only blocker buld that viable is that gimping Dex like this https://steamcommunity.com/app/531930/discussions/0/154644705025644164/ and I'm going to try it.
Not talking that it only viable if you dump Dex to 4, but that's looks like most stable thing.

Btw this ant doesn't attack me.

Spoiler

And - why first ants could poison my 10 Con char - 20 and 30 HP versions for 1 point of poison damage, but ants in queen ant nest poison for 0 damage, except warrior 40 HP version?
Is it intended?
It's like I forget something or it smells like bug?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

No, no Bronze Armour before Barca, unless there's some in the various stashes around the boss-insects on the lower level, which you wont do if you fight Barca before going down there, which is the more sensible course of action.

Challenging Barca first is meant to be the harder option. Going into the deep tunnels gives you skill points, reagents, rations, a good armor and a better weapon for Marcus.

Yes, in real life it is the better option but in an RPG, skipping early game content to skip to a boss fight is going to make that fight hard. Barca fight is easy if you don’t skip content.

Can't say I've ever found Barca particularly difficult, even with just two dudes with zero defence, it was the next fight that was hard, but only with 2 dudes with zero defence, regular parties have beaten them ok, just with a lot of health loss, however, if you do the boss insects first, they will accumulate a lot of health loss as well & going back to do the insects after you get Roxanna makes them all pretty much zero health loss fights.

This goes back to what I was saying about the health system generally, with zero natural regeneration it really doesn't matter how and when you take the big HP losses, whatever fight you're in it's just about reloading until you're happy with the amount you've lost.

I started a new game, basically redoing the first game I tried but with meta-knowledge. Meta-knowledge is great isn't it. I stuck two arrows in a regular 30HP Fire Ant using that bow skill which gives the victim -25 to their THC, next turn the ant has 2 strikes at my dude who has a defence Dodge value of 78, the Fire Ant, of course, hits with one of its two strikes... so... one reloads, right? Cos even though one did everything right, one can't help the fact that RNG completely dominates all forms of skill in this game, right.

 

[Parabalus]

No, no Bronze Armour before Barca, unless there's some in the various stashes around the boss-insects on the lower level, which you wont do if you fight Barca before going down there, which is the more sensible course of action.

Challenging Barca first is meant to be the harder option. Going into the deep tunnels gives you skill points, reagents, rations, a good armor and a better weapon for Marcus.

Yes, in real life it is the better option but in an RPG, skipping early game content to skip to a boss fight is going to make that fight hard. Barca fight is easy if you don’t skip content.

Can't say I've ever found Barca particularly difficult, even with just two dudes with zero defence, it was the next fight that was hard, but only with 2 dudes with zero defence, regular parties have beaten them ok, just with a lot of health loss, however, if you do the boss insects first, they will accumulate a lot of health loss as well & going back to do the insects after you get Roxanna makes them all pretty much zero health loss fights.

This goes back to what I was saying about the health system generally, with zero natural regeneration it really doesn't matter how and when you take the big HP losses, whatever fight you're in it's just about reloading until you're happy with the amount you've lost.

I started a new game, basically redoing the first game I tried but with meta-knowledge. Meta-knowledge is great isn't it. I stuck two arrows in a regular 30HP Fire Ant using that bow skill which gives the victim -25 to their THC, next turn the ant has 2 strikes at my dude who has a defence Dodge value of 78, the Fire Ant, of course, hits with one of hits two strikes... so... one reloads, right? Cos even though one did everything right, one can't help the fact that RNG completely dominates all forms of skill in this game, right.

I sacrificed the 3 garbage NPCs on Barca+elevator fight, if they die you still get full SP.

Deep caverns after is better since Roxanne can (almost) solo it without any consumables/hp and you get SP. If you're taking Hiernon, he hits Crafting 8 after berserker fight+caverns clear (so just as you're going back to regular progression).

I guess the only blocker buld that viable is that gimping Dex like this https://steamcommunity.com/app/531930/discussions/0/154644705025644164/ and I'm going to try it.
Not talking that it only viable if you dump Dex to 4, but that's looks like most stable thing.

Btw this ant doesn't attack me.

Spoiler

And - why first ants could poison my 10 Con char - 20 and 30 HP versions for 1 point of poison damage, but ants in queen ant nest poison for 0 damage, except warrior 40 HP version?
Is it intended?
It's like I forget something or it smells like bug?

There are many diagonal attack mysteries, funny one is on berserker fight, you can bomb the center square (all 3 enemies) from his left, but not his right.

Ant thing probably bug, maybe leftover from when poison was changed.

It was a carry over from AoD where there was less focus on healing. Changing the existing design is always time-consuming so we wouldn't do it unless people demand it. Since nobody demanded it...

Overall, the right difficulty balance is always tricky and always subjective. Our first version (the beta) was rejected by the beta testers as too easy with too many consumables. So we increased the difficulty and reduced the consumables until the testers were pleased. Thus the final word on the difficulty belongs to the testers and since the testers come from the Codex (nothing else beats the experience), the final word belongs to the Codex. Obviously, we wouldn't have released the game had the Codex thought it was unplayable for any reason.

& did any of them ever play it again when it was made harder? A handful?

They did, of course. The changes to difficulty and consumables were made while the game was still in beta, before it was released. We even added more testers in the final week to try that final version.

We're talking about the shift from release to update#2, not beta.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

They did, of course. The changes to difficulty and consumables were made while the game was still in beta, before it was released. We even added more testers in the final week to try that final version.

No, we've established that lots of changes happened after BETA.

Naturally. First come players who either heard about it or look for this type of games, then come random players, which is always mixed (expected more, too difficult, too linear, nothing but combat, etc).

And yet Knights of the Chalice nor Blackguards nor Underrail or 'pick any other popular 'more hardcore' or 'more combat/tactical focused' cRPG or related genre game suffer from this kind of 'problematic weird random casuals' aspect.

I don't think we could have sold more if the game were easier. Plus there are two extra difficulty modes, although they didn't really make that much difference - most complaints about the difficulty came from people playing on Hard. The beta testers' feedback is always subjective, of course. We take a group of very experienced players and adjust the Hard difficulty based on their feedback. It's risky but what other choice is there? Take random testers with random skills? What would that tell us? When we consider feedback we look at the stats, savegames, endgame screens, and such.

It is easy. However, simply removing consumables doesn't make it harder, it makes it more obnoxious. Making a 'hard' game is a quite pointless goal if you have to rely on cheap tricks to do it. There are hard tactical games out there I've no doubt that don't even use consumables at all. If you object to having consumables 'making things easier', then why have them at all? You just want people to have one easy fight and then one hard fight? You want to deliberately confuse the player's sense of rhythm? Confusing people isn't 'hard', that's something that normally happens in what people call 'broken' games. & yes, I've noticed there's an element on the codex that just loves broken games

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

And here we go my lovelies:

All Fire Ants defeated for zero health loss... oh, wait, uh-oh that one last regular Ant has manged to survive with just one HP left... oh well, it's ok, it's at -25 THC, what could possibly go wro… oh, it just critical striked Marcos for 8 damage..

Apparently I imagine all this shit, that happens so often you notice it in a short game with barely any fights, but fights where the amount of HP you lose IS the game

So let's grin & bear it & do what the game wants and now we know from META knowledge that 8 HP loss here is unacceptable, let's … woo-hoo… reload for the third time, doing exactly the same thing! :

And finally. Oh look, I didn't even need to 'waste' an Antidote either

 

[Vault Dweller]

We're talking about the shift from release to update#2, not beta.

They did, of course. The changes to difficulty and consumables were made while the game was still in beta, before it was released. We even added more testers in the final week to try that final version.

No, we've established that lots of changes happened after BETA.

Minor system changes that didn't affect the difficulty. No changes to consumables. Like I said, once we start testing, we make changes based on feedback, nothing else. Since nobody said the game was easy in Nov, we had no reason to make it harder in December.

Naturally. First come players who either heard about it or look for this type of games, then come random players, which is always mixed (expected more, too difficult, too linear, nothing but combat, etc).

And yet Knights of the Chalice nor Blackguards nor Underrail or 'pick any other popular 'more hardcore' or 'more combat/tactical focused' cRPG or related genre game suffer from this kind of 'problematic weird random casuals' aspect.

They are full scale games that offer a lot more than 50 fights. It's also worth noting that Blackguards is sitting at 63% which, if I have to guess, can be attributed entirely to casuals.

It is easy. However, simply removing consumables doesn't make it harder, it makes it more obnoxious. Making a 'hard' game is a quite pointless goal if you have to rely on cheap tricks to do it. There are hard tactical games out there I've no doubt that don't even use consumables at all. If you object to having consumables 'making things easier', then why have them at all? You just want people to have one easy fight and then one hard fight? You want to deliberately confuse the player's sense of rhythm? Confusing people isn't 'hard', that's something that normally happens in what people call 'broken' games. & yes, I've noticed there's an element on the codex that just loves broken games

We didn't rely on the consumables to make it hard. I'd say it would still be a hard game even if we insta-healed you after every fight. In Realms of Arkania your party can be weakened by common cold and then killed by low level enemies, yet it's not a cheap trick, is it? Admittedly, RoA is a much more complex game but still...

 

[Fenix]

Cos even though one did everything right, one can't help the fact that RNG completely dominates all forms of skill in this game, right.

RNG here in 9 out of 10 only allow to win hopeless fights, and 1 out of 10 it bright clearly negative results, in other words it's the last straw game throw at you.

Apparently I imagine all this shit, that happens so often you notice it in a short game with barely any fights, but fights where the amount of HP you lose IS the game

Yeah, that happen with me too today - ant that recieved fair share of "aim arms" strikes crited my char. So what? Better count how many times you hit the target with 30-40 THC.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

No, no Bronze Armour before Barca, unless there's some in the various stashes around the boss-insects on the lower level, which you wont do if you fight Barca before going down there, which is the more sensible course of action.

Challenging Barca first is meant to be the harder option. Going into the deep tunnels gives you skill points, reagents, rations, a good armor and a better weapon for Marcus.

Yes, in real life it is the better option but in an RPG, skipping early game content to skip to a boss fight is going to make that fight hard. Barca fight is easy if you don’t skip content.

Here ya go, the Barca fight before you go down the deep caves:

Consumables used: the poison vial & whetstone you pick up (ie: not crafted) & a net & as you can see, Marcos needs 40 HP healing. The other guy who needs healing can be ignored as I probably wont use him again. I need 4 HP healing, making a grand total of 44 HP lost. I wouldn't say it was particularly hard, per-se. Seems about appropriate for the level. I dunno though, is 44 HP too much to lose here? Do you think I should reload and try again? What's the recommended HP loss for this fight, either before or after the Ant Queen?

 

[Fenix]

Aaaaand game crashes in Ismail fight.
Couldn't take screenshot because my machine was unresposive, there was "Fatal error, CPathfinder" and somehting about "couldn't find path" or something.
As I remember it's not the first time game crashed there.

Went surprisingly good - the only real death was in fight with wounded scolopendra, where random once killed char even with antidote, and on second try left hi with 30 out of 60 hp.
All fights were won from first try up to Ismail, though Reinard left me with 1 HP lol.

What's the recommended HP loss for this fight, either before or after the Ant Queen?

As less as possible as usual.
Dunno, I try to arrange fight in a way that every trash campfire guys died in fight so I don't need to share SP with them. )

 

[Saduj]

I dunno though, is 44 HP too much to lose here? Do you think I should reload and try again? What's the recommended HP loss for this fight, either before or after the Ant Queen?

Depends on what kind of supplies you have but if you're running out of supplies every time you play the game, I'd say save and try again to see if you can take less damage. I've never tried the fight without doing the ant tunnels because I consider the ant tunnels a net positive as far as rations go. Your team has better skills and gear if you do the ant tunnels first as well. After doing the ant tunnels, it is pretty easy to take very little damage against Barca unless the RNG fucks you. I use poison and a net. The next fight is much tougher, IMO, and I'd want the better gear from the tunnels for that.