ELEX ELEX RELEASE THREAD

[Abu Antar]

I knew I wasn't hallucinating. That's how it was for me, too.

 

[Shadenuat]

Hard to judge from this example about "multiple" hits since it's basically 2 hits. One before combo one after, and then monster has no health.

 

[Murk]

Risen 1 worked the same way, though in its case every hit did more damage than it's predecessor. Some cases you could one-shot an enemy if you landed only the third hit but not if you only landed the first or the second hit.

Hard to judge from this example about "multiple" hits since it's basically 2 hits. One before combo one after, and then monster has no health.

You're welcome to use a mid tier weapon on a higher HP enemy and see how it goes.

I think on higher difficulty with stronger enemies one maybe could try it when using a mid tier weapon so as not to kill them too soon.

 

[Shadenuat]

Too many times I was hitting some fat thing on higher difficulty in long combo chains without any real noticeable difference before using Q attack which took half of it's hp.

Well, I give up, I just don't understand how shit works.

 

[Murk]

I think the hard threshold of how flat armor reduction works causes a lot of situations where things _seem_ to work differently because of how the threshold changes.

Ultimately, having some idea (like damage numbers) would be great, but eh. The game's combat isn't so terribly nuanced that knowledge of this level is necessary for effective or fun play. Point is, get stats to acquire weapons then kill shit with flamethrower plasma grenades anyway.

 

[Zerth]

Basically the story arc is about how someone who seems crazy retard from minute 1 can reveal just how more crazy retard they can be, a masterpiece about human nature

Her character was easily the worst written. Everything about her. She is the best fighter and goes down on the ground in her own challenge fights after 10 seconds. PC kills the monsters and she stands up and screams how that wasn't a worthy challenge.

Yup. It's like devs are self aware of this since jax admonishes her to refrain from going all in retard against obviously unfavorable matches. But acts as a typical animu character by telling him to stay outta her way if you're not to give her a challenge.

She reminds me that guy from gothic 2 that belonged to the mercenaries and was always behaving all bossy and as he was a bigger deal than Lee. When you're doing the dragon slaying quest, you stumble upon him before entering the tundra area where the frost dragon is. He accompanies you with his thug across the area doing jack shit and refuses to advance until you're busy killing everything nearby. He and his thug eventually attempt to kill you in order to take all the credit of slaying the frost dragon. No sooner He learnt the hard way that is a poor idea to try to bully the main character way long after reached PB's powerspike ( which in this case was the belial claw).

 

[RK47]

Yup. It's like devs are self aware of this since jax admonishes her to refrain from going all in retard against obviously unfavorable matches. But acts as a typical animu character by telling him to stay outta her way if you're not to give her a challenge.

I wanted to kill her. Not sure why PB lets some get killed by Jax while others are excluded.

 

[imweasel]

Because Nasty is an essential NPC.

She also has a nice snatch.

 

[T. Reich]

Jeez, no wonder people think that combat is trash in this game - even the seemingly simple things are so hard to understand sometimes.

Chaining attacks does increase damage per hit. The increase in damage comes from filling up the combo bar (bottom left).
Filling up the combo bar beyond the "special attack" threshold does add a noticeable damage bonus per hit, as well as attack strength (chance to stagger enemy on hit).
You will need to learn to time your swings, of course, in order to fill up the bar as fast as possible. Mindless button mashing will get you nowhere, as per original G1+2 combat design.
However, the flat damage reduction threshold of enemy still has to be overcome in order for that damage increase to be visible in the first place.
Needless to say, it's retarded to expect to see any good results vs a skull-grade enemy while bashing them with an iron bar; you still need a good weapon that can penetrate DR in the first place.

When doing long attack chains (5+ successful consecutive hits), I've definitely seen an increase in damage per hit - IF I timed the swings correctly to fill up the combo bar + IF I was fighting against gear-appropriate enemy. It was easily noticeable because I was using a non-enchanted (no DoT) weapon at the time.

EDIT: play-tested it to prove my words. Results - negative.
Went in vs Ripper (a lizard, 60 exp) on Difficult.
Used a zerker 2-hander + (55 dmg), no enchantment, melee I skill (+10%).
A successfully-executed combo of 5 consecutive light hits WITH filled-up combo bar (filled to 60% approx) took it down to 1/3 of its health.
Then I did the same, but with button-mashing. Again, a successful 5-hit combo with an almost empty combo bar got it down to exactly same amount of health (I took screenshots and compared the two life bars).
For a final test, I hit that ripper 5 times, but not in a combo - a hit, then empty the combo bar, then hit again. I took it down to merely 2/3 of its health.

For me, that means two things:
1) Successfully chaining several hits in a combo does significantly increase the damage dealt per consecutive hit.
2) Filling up the combo bar does not add any damage on top of that. Whether it still adds attack strength (aka stun chance) as it fills up - I don't know, but I will still assume that it does.
Corollaries:
1) You can get away with some degree of button mashing with a 2h weapon since it allows to stun-lock most opponents while you perform a combo. Risks: you can't easily stop a button-mashed combo, meaning you WILL get fucked vs multiple enemies or enemies with high parry strength if you button mash. 1h weapons can't stun as well, so you definitely need to be more careful in order to pull off those multi-hit combos.
2) If you want to deal good damage in melee, you pretty much have to learn how to chain-hit enemies.

P.S.: I suppose I could also test the influence of the combo bar on the attack strength for 1h weapons, since 2h weapons in general can stagger most enemies from the 1st hit onward. Plus, I can also try to check how much damage consecutive hits in a combo add. I have an unenchanted 1h regent sword ++ (64 dmg), so it should be able to inflict noticeably more raw damage per hit vs dem ripper lizards than a 55 dmg 2-hander. Will check it once I get back from work.

 

[Haplo]

Jeez, no wonder people think that combat is trash in this game - even the seemingly simple things are so hard to understand sometimes.

Chaining attacks does increase damage per hit. The increase in damage comes from filling up the combo bar (bottom left).
Filling up the combo bar beyond the "special attack" threshold does add a noticeable damage bonus per hit, as well as attack strength (chance to stagger enemy on hit).
You will need to learn to time your swings, of course, in order to fill up the bar as fast as possible. Mindless button mashing will get you nowhere, as per original G1+2 combat design.
However, the flat damage reduction threshold of enemy still has to be overcome in order for that damage increase to be visible in the first place.
Needless to say, it's retarded to expect to see any good results vs a skull-grade enemy while bashing them with an iron bar; you still need a good weapon that can penetrate DR in the first place.

When doing long attack chains (5+ successful consecutive hits), I've definitely seen an increase in damage per hit - IF I timed the swings correctly to fill up the combo bar + IF I was fighting against gear-appropriate enemy. It was easily noticeable because I was using a non-enchanted (no DoT) weapon at the time.

EDIT: play-tested it to prove my words. Results - negative.
Went in vs Ripper (a lizard, 60 exp) on Difficult.
Used a zerker 2-hander + (55 dmg), no enchantment, melee I skill (+10%).
A successfully-executed combo of 5 consecutive light hits WITH filled-up combo bar (filled to 60% approx) took it down to 1/3 of its health.
Then I did the same, but with button-mashing. Again, a successful 5-hit combo with an almost empty combo bar got it down to exactly same amount of health (I took screenshots and compared the two life bars).
For a final test, I hit that ripper 5 times, but not in a combo - a hit, then empty the combo bar, then hit again. I took it down to merely 2/3 of its health.

For me, that means two things:
1) Successfully chaining several hits in a combo does significantly increase the damage dealt per consecutive hit.
2) Filling up the combo bar does not add any damage on top of that. Whether it still adds attack strength (aka stun chance) as it fills up - I don't know, but I will still assume that it does.
Corollaries:
1) You can get away with some degree of button mashing with a 2h weapon since it allows to stun-lock most opponents while you perform a combo. Risks: you can't easily stop a button-mashed combo, meaning you WILL get fucked vs multiple enemies or enemies with high parry strength if you button mash. 1h weapons can't stun as well, so you definitely need to be more careful in order to pull off those multi-hit combos.
2) If you want to deal good damage in melee, you pretty much have to learn how to chain-hit enemies.

P.S.: I suppose I could also test the influence of the combo bar on the attack strength for 1h weapons, since 2h weapons in general can stagger most enemies from the 1st hit onward. Plus, I can also try to check how much damage consecutive hits in a combo add. I have an unenchanted 1h regent sword ++ (64 dmg), so it should be able to inflict noticeably more raw damage per hit vs dem ripper lizards than a 55 dmg 2-hander. Will check it once I get back from work.

Very interesting findings. Would explain why I'm often dealing solid damage, even though I often fail to fill the combo bar.
I support the opinion there is definitely combo-based damage scaling. That was the only way I was able to damage the barkeep in Goliet with a rusty hatchet. Single hits would deal no damage, but 3rd hit chipped him slightly and 4th did visible damage as far as I recall. But it's interesting if this is disconnected from the so called "combo-bar" - which would then only serve charging the "Q" special attack?

 

[T. Reich]

That bar is supposed to increase your "attack strength" (chance to stun, calculated vs parry strength), if I understand correctly.
It's pretty irrelevant for 2-handers because they get a very high innate bonus to attack strength (+75, if some guys' findings are to be believed) and are able to stun most things from the get-go.
(This, coupled with increased weapon reach and wider arc of attacks makes 2-handers my to-go weapon type in Elex; lower attack speed is a relatively minor drawback for me.)
Now, 1-handers have a pretty low base attack strength, which makes it hard to stun-lock enemies with 1h attacks.
For them, increasing attack strength is pretty important.
Accordingly, it's worth to test attacks with 1h on filled (at least 50%) bar and on empty bar and see if the same enemy gets stunned more often with a filled bar. Obviously, it's gotta be a mid-sized enemy, because the large critters have a pretty high parry strength even vs 2-handers.
I'd appreciate af someone would properly test this - I'm terrible at timing my swings to fill up the bar.

 

[Darth Roxor]

a guy after 3 playthrus still can't tell whether comboing adds damage or not

#justelexthings

 

[RK47]

B-but comboing three grenades didn't add damage for me.

 

[Darth Roxor]

shoulda laid 3 down as proximity mines and lured some git to them

 

[Haplo]

Bone marrow soup is quite the game changer. +10 armor can mean the difference between being one-shotted by some nasty critters and barely surviving, while the huge regen will get you back in top shape in no time.

 

[Lambach]

I'm dead broke now, barely over a 100 shards to my name. I upgraded my Plasma Rifle to the third tier, high-tech'd my Regent Sword with Electric damage and bought Regent (Paladin) armor for 20 large. I can still lose fights against really large groups of enemies (Moloch + 2 Slime Drakes + several Rotmolochs + several Mutants), but overall I'm kicking serious ass. Quite a far cry from that bitch boy that got his ass handed to him by a chicken.

Re: Ulbritch's offensive. The great field commander's skills consisted of charging in a straight line, swearing a lot and going down almost immediately as the fight starts. PB should stop trying to make these "cinematic" battles, they don't have a fucking clue how to pull them off. Even in goddamn Skyrim the civil war battles felt much more like actual battles and not just two packs of idiots running straight at each other through a corridor.

 

[Shadenuat]

EDIT: play-tested it to prove my words. Results - negative.
Went in vs Ripper (a lizard, 60 exp) on Difficult.
Used a zerker 2-hander + (55 dmg), no enchantment, melee I skill (+10%).
A successfully-executed combo of 5 consecutive light hits WITH filled-up combo bar (filled to 60% approx) took it down to 1/3 of its health.
Then I did the same, but with button-mashing. Again, a successful 5-hit combo with an almost empty combo bar got it down to exactly same amount of health (I took screenshots and compared the two life bars).
For a final test, I hit that ripper 5 times, but not in a combo - a hit, then empty the combo bar, then hit again. I took it down to merely 2/3 of its health.

Yep. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. You can totally get away with just mashing R1 no problem without ever comboing attacks - just need good weapon. With berserk buff or outlaw drug may not even need that, depending on difficulty. And combos don't help a lot with overleveled enemies either. Sometimes. But sometimes they do. mystary

Re: Ulbritch's offensive.

Main quest is where writing in Elex just falls apart. Things just don't make sense and some jumps between quests are completely retarded.

 

[Haplo]

Well, it does matter early on. Like that duel with the Oren barkeep guy. Couldn't defeat him without combos and/or much better gear, but combos made it possible with a regular Hatchet (was too long/difficult for me with a rusty one). Kinda sad that there are so few solo challenges like that which really make the combat system shine. The system is the most balanced and fun in early level duels, when the enemies are a big challenge, but beatable in melee (well, could use a bit more stamina and armor penetration... and less enemies one-shotting you).
Gothic 2 had plenty of those. Here there are barely any.

Sadly most fights end up as Benny Hill crowd clusterfucks and later on you overpower stuff regardless.

 

[Zlaja]

I haven't originally bought into the ELEX meme magic

 

[T. Reich]

Well, frankly, I've got the impression that they kept a variant of their tried-and-true system - overcoming flat damage reduction matters, A LOT.
As such, every point of base damage matters. And then, my guess is thatconsecutive hits in a combo add some +% added damage, similar to passive damage boosts from skills.
Therefore, in borderline cases, you can get in a situation when base attacks don't penetrate the base DR, but the +% damage boost from combos will add up to breach this DR and actually damage the enemy. That's my hypothesis anyway.
It's obviously useless with the skull-grade enemies. I gotta say that the skull-grading is a bit of a hit-and-miss for me. At various points of the game, some of the skull-graded enemies are easier than the non-skull graded ones, and they can even give less exp as well!

 

[Zerth]

Gee, seems most ppl (mine included), went for the regent sword as cleric melee option instead of the 2h warhammers. And energy as enchantment.

 

[Lambach]

Gee, seems most ppl (mine included), went for the regent sword as cleric melee option instead of the 2h warhammers. And energy as enchantment.

I found 2-h stuff way too slow, I was having a really hard time getting hits against quick enemies (Moloch, Chimera) without getting interrupted first.

 

[Whisper]

Entering Doomed City felt pretty derpy.

Spoiler

You get fake ID from Hunter after doing a quest with him, then go to gate and buy a real ID even after telling me I can't enter at all in the first time.

Dont blame game retardness for your own.

You can avoid buying entrance to city, i am sure i did.

 

[RK47]

Gee, seems most ppl (mine included), went for the regent sword as cleric melee option instead of the 2h warhammers. And energy as enchantment.

I found 2-h stuff way too slow, I was having a really hard time getting hits against quick enemies (Moloch, Chimera) without getting interrupted first.

Fire plasma ball.
Swap.
Swing.
Swing.
Swing..

 

[Darth Roxor]

Gee, seems most ppl (mine included), went for the regent sword as cleric melee option instead of the 2h warhammers. And energy as enchantment.

Hammer for cleric doesn't really have gud synergy with the other stuff. Clerics are mostly centred around int and dex (guns, some psi) - one handed swords have low-ish STR+DEX reqs, which is gud and fitting, while hammers have high STR+CON, neither of which are particularly useful for a kkklerikkk.