Empire of Ember: A fantasy Mount and Blade(?)

[Sandsch]

I will have to try with a melee weapon later

If you decide to check it out, then would like to hear how impactful the melee actually feels.

 

[Galdred]

I will have to try with a melee weapon later

If you decide to check it out, then would like to hear how impactful the melee actually feels.

It is better than it seems on the YT video, but I haven't tried it much, and I haven't played that many FPS melee games.

Anyway, I had quite a hard time passing level 3, but after some points in necromancy, long storyline battles and dungeons have become much more manageable (it doesn't help much in small skirmishes, though).

Regarding management, there is a huge gap between tier 1 and tier 2, so I got 1 of every T1 building, but I am ages away from having the resources to upgrade my wizard tower to T2.
I have not been under siege yet, so I don't know whether it is implemented. I didn't bother with city walls as my research budget was too tight.

The battles do have a nice Mount and Blade vibe, not because of the gameplay, but because that many reminded me of the time I was down to single digit HP on my horse with my lance, with all my soldiers unconscious or dead.
The battles here are pretty different actually: The skirmishes are smaller, you don't have much damage mitigation (no shield and no armor), and your lower mobility (no horse) means that you don't use as much of the map.

Dungeons have been varied enough so far, and pretty tense, as I haven't found any with a way to recover HP.
Large battles can have HP fountains, but I still suffered horrible casualties.

I did try a few of the elemental spells, and the vortex ones (fire and crushing vortex). The elemental ones either had super short range (incinerate), or super long casting time. The vortex have a hug mana cost, and can be a pain to aim (if you don't want to hurt your own characters), but can clear quite many opponents if used on bunched up enemies, so both have their use, but can be tricky to use well (while raising skeletons is much easier, but you have limited charges per battle).

Overall, I had quite good fun, and I think the game has a good potential. The challenge felt right (I played on the standard difficulty setting), but I haven't played that many similar games recently (ie mage FPS).

My minor issues is that it can take a bit long to find an acceptable position to place buildings with the UI, I have no idea about whether I am doing well or not (you are supposed not to waste too many days doing nothing, but I don't know how far I am compared to the time left), and the troop UI was not super practical to use (but this is being worked on).

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/980640/view/2993179431512145437

Empire of Ember Launches
Empire of Ember launches into Early Access

Florida, USA – March 31st 2021, Independent developer Poleaxe Games today announced that its action RPG, Empire of Ember is now available on Steam early access for PC. Empire of Ember is a first-person action-RPG featuring player-created cities, destructible environments, and procedurally-generated dungeons. From today RPG players and fans can experience first-person ranged, melee, and magical combat during its pre-launch phase, and help provide developer Poleaxe Games with constructive feedback in time for the games expected launch late summer.

Players will have the opportunity to loot dungeons, lead armies in overland combat, command the defense in siege combat, and quest through pre-designed levels. Poleaxe Games will be providing regular updates to keep players in the know on all aspects of the games development, including all ongoing improvements made through player feedback across its Steam and Discord community channels.

Empire of Ember includes a light RTS strategic element where players can unleash the might of an army of NPCs to fight alongside in hundred-unit battles, all of which is tied into the game's persistent world with a script by former Telltale Games lead writer Patrick Kevin Day.

Add to that an ambitious city builder feature where players can design and create their own city from an asset pool of over 2500 cosmetic and functional structures including wizard towers, libraries, blacksmiths, stables, taverns and houses in order to put their own creative mark on their game. More importantly, these player-created cities can be shared in an asynchronous multiplayer mode, in which players can download another player’s city, defeat the defenders, and sack it.

Empire of Ember will be launching on Steam late Summer 2021 and welcomes player feedback throughout its early access phase. An early access launch discount is available for launch week for any RPG fans looking for their next adventure.

Check out the games Steam page here:
Main Site: www.empireofember.com
Empire of Ember on Discord
Empire of Ember on Facebook
Empire of Ember on Twitter
Empire of Ember on Twitch
Empire of Ember on Reddit

 

[Jinn]

Wishlisting this because Galdred generally has good taste.

 

[Delterius]

This seems like it could be good earnest fun.

 

[Galdred]

I made it to the D+1 patch notes.

Spoiler

Empire of Ember

Suivre

MagasinCommunautéForum

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Player feedback patch #1

Sorry for the delay, this was finished yesterday but Unity's addressables system will randomly get stuck in infinite loops while trying to make builds.

Requested by Toonarmy: Added invert look to general tab of preferences.

Requested by Galdred: Buildings were too expensive to build and were not economically useful for about 100 days. Halved costs of player production buildings, increased the cost of buying resources from the market directly, and the market produces more gold

Requested by Galdred: Fixed markets not replenishing player equipment

Requested by LVVRunner: Moved debug key off F12 which conflicted with the Steam screenshot key

Requested by LVVRunner: New method to show telekinesis throw destination

Requested by sir0die: The red icon on the minimap for enemies is now brighter

Requested by Tchey: Added a camera section to the controls menu

 

[Cryomancer]

A Wizard Noble simulator, with full city building and destruction.... I just need to play it.

 

[Cryomancer]

Purchased, was so hyped, did the tutorial, leaved my city, killed some guys, when was going back to my city, the game just crashes... I had to try it 3 times till the game din't crashed but is not game's fault. My PC is far bellow the minimum requirements. So far, my unique problem with the game is that I wanna research new spells and have no clue about how to get that requirement.

I also researched a dungeon, but the quest indicator keeps pointing out to my city and the tutorial showed a lot of obvious information but sadly nothing about how to open quest journal, how to gather resources to research spells and so on. There are a 300 days indicator but no clue about what happens in the 300th day. The game is very fun, but really liked the game.

Using telekinesis to kill enemies at very long range is so fun. Sadly IDK how to get other spells. And dungeons are just too hard. A "very hard" open encounter is a cakewalk compared to a "very easy dungeon". enemies are at melee range surrounding you on all sides before you can do anything. How I learn more spells?

 

[Galdred]

I agree, dungeons are much harder than battles. I can only do the very easy it easy ones.
For spell research, it is misleading. These are just skills and spells you unlock on level up, and maybe with some events(I think upgrading your Wizard tower the first time provides a spell point).
For spelunking, necromancy, incineration and the projectile ball whose icon looks like fireballs have been my go-to spells.
Incinerating slows enemies down and DoT them, letting you Dodge opponents backwards.
Necromancy gives you more bodies to tank, but their AI can be dumb at times, and stairs can be more difficult for them to handle than for opponents...
The projectile ball has a huge mana cost, but can kill a lot of opponents.
I was underwhelmed by lightning and push.
I went with 2/3 willpower, 1/3 Constitution.

 

[Cryomancer]

I an using mostly chain lightning now. Amazing damage, amazing range, hit enemies instantly, no need to concern about friendly fire and can generate a lot of corpses fast consuming little mana.

For necromancy spell, I prefer to use corpses instead of using without corpses, cuz it generally raises a skeleton archer which is much better since it can hit enemies at longer distance and the zombie is too slow.

 

[Galdred]

I will give it another shot then! Finishing dungeons with the wand because I burnt all of my mana is tense...
The developer told me weapon handling also improved damage in the wand, do maybe I will also up it, because my mana pool is too low for larger dungeons.

 

[PoleaxeGames]

(Hint) If you have both telekinesis and raise dead at the same time there's something you can do with the bodies to get more higher level undead.

I reduced mana burn in the next patch from 20% to 15%. If mana burn is too low the player can recover all mana between each battle and there is less reason to put points into willpower, and weapons become less necessary since it's easier to kill enemies with magic. If it's too high, you can't last through long dungeons (as you saw)

 

[Cryomancer]

Yep. This is why I love necromancy. If you can get a lot of corpses, you can raise like 5 skeletons with 100 mana and they can kill a lot of enemies while you stay in back saving mana and health. The problem of chain lightning is that some times you hit nothing but you don't lose mana when it happens.

Anyway, will put some screens on screenshot thread

 

[Cryomancer]

Finished the EA. I will be back in future(or past)

Extremely good. The lv cap is 20.

 

[Jinn]

Finished the EA. I will be back in future(or past)

How many hours did you get out of the Early Access?

 

[Galdred]

Finished the EA. I will be back in future(or past)

How many hours did you get out of the Early Access?

It depends on how many "side battles/dungeons" you play, but I would say between 10 and 20 hours (some have cleared it faster than 10h, though).

The negative reviews mostly come from stability and performances, but these depend a lot on your configuration.
It worked flawlessly on my win7 desktop, but I got a ton of crashes on my Win 10 laptop(maybe the game doesn't like Intel integrated GPUs), but the developer is churning out one patch every 2 days, so it should be fixed soon.

 

[Cryomancer]

Finished the EA. I will be back in future(or past)

How many hours did you get out of the Early Access?

9 hours according to steam.

 

[Cryomancer]

The game got a lot of updates. Anyone here played after the updates? Worth re playing it?

 

[Galdred]

The game got a lot of updates. Anyone here played after the updates? Worth re playing it?

There has been 4+ updates/ week (compared to one single update in 3 months for king Arthur: Knights tales...).
The developer has done mostly rebalancing and performances/bug fixing. I read that melee was improved. If you played magic and had little stability issues, there may not be much changed. He just added a few more storyline missions in the latest update though. I haven't tested it yet.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Cryomancer]

The game had A LOT of updated. Did it changed much?

 

[c u in da ballpit ashren]

"Make decisions that can change the story and lead to different game endings. Features a story written by Patrick Kevin Day, a former lead writer from Telltale Games."

So in other words, the decisions don't matter and the endings are so similar and inconsequential it doesn't matter

 

[Galdred]

The game had A LOT of updated. Did it changed much?

I was crunching on my own game, so I could not retry it, however, I followed the discussions on Discord, and here is what I gleaned:

- Large rebalance changes between skills and weapons
- Rebalance of economic buildings
- 3 to 5 storyline missions added
- Cities added (they replace assaulting other player bases)
- A few skills added

Overall, I would say if did change a lot.
But note that the main tester on Discord plays a lot, so he may have a warped view of balance (I'm pretty sure I cannot pull out what he does...) :D

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/980640/view/4694423802185144054

Dev Blog #6: The commander mode
In this week’s video dev blog, we explore the tactical mode further
Greetings Lightbringers!

Another week has passed, and here is another video dev blog of Empire of Ember made especially for the occasion.

Last time we talked about the game’s highlights (check last week’s dev blog if you missed it!), and today we will take a more detailed look into the combat system, specifically into the commander mode.

As you know, Empire of Ember features large-scale combat in which you will lead your army in first person, in battles of up to a hundred units. You can join the fight directly in real-time, and these hundred units will fight using the same tactics as the player, being able to block, dodge, pick up weapons, run away, and select the best range for their various attacks and abilities.

However, if you prefer a more tactical style of combat, you can also enter commander mode. This combat feature is a real-time strategy mode that allows you to select specific units and give orders to your troops from a safe distance, like moving to a location, attacking or sieging enemies, holding positions, following the player, and so on. The right orders can give you the upper hand in engagements and allow you to win your fights easier, so do not underestimate them!

Watch the video for more information on the combat mode, and stay tuned for more developer updates.

Also, we would like to invite you to join our community on Discord, our Steam forum, and follow us on our social media channels: Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. Please wishlist and follow the game, and tell your friends about it!

We will come back next week with more news in dev blog#7.

Until then, stay safe and have a great week!

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/980640/view/2970671580627371793

Dev Blog #7: Magic in Empire of Ember
In today’s Dev Blog we explore further the magic system of the game

Spoiler

Good day Lightbringers!

Welcome back to another episode of the weekly dev blog, where we share more news on the development of
Empire of Ember
with you. This time we would like to talk about the magic system in the game.

Magic is an essential part of
Empire of Ember
. The game takes place in a fantasy universe where magical shards rained down from the sky, granting their use to certain individuals called Lightbringers. Being one such Lightbringer yourself, magic is an innate ability in you. Use it to rule your kingdom and all those who defy your authority.

A Lightbringer is not exactly a wizard, as wizards are typically portrayed as fragile but powerful individuals that require a lot of preparation. Most spells in
Empire of Ember
better fit the role of a battlemage, a character class that uses both magic and weapons to fight. However, the system is flexible and the player does have the option to invest their skills and attributes in a way that allows such specific playstyles to exist if they wish it.

Magic is also a fundamental addition to the combat system. With sufficient skill and strategy, players can defeat most enemies with their staff, sword or bow. However, it is just one person against hordes of enemies, and in these situations magic can be the key difference between life and death.

You will find a great variety of spells in the game, which can be used in conjunction with your weapons during combat to achieve the best results in battle. These spells allow you to do things such as conjuring different elements to use them to your advantage, summoning objects or allies to help you in the fight, infusing your weapons with new powers for a short period of time, and so on.

Spells are categorised into three types -each related to the different weapon archetypes- through which you can specialise or diversify as you level up. The player can research and discover new incantations and then upgrade most of them multiple times. Also, it is possible to enhance the spells with certain amulets or rings from your inventory. Some pieces of gear can for example give your bow a damage buff, or a speed increase for charging shots, while others can increase the blocking efficiency of your melee archetype.

Bear in mind that the use of spells is limited by mana, the amount of which will increase as you put attributes in willpower. The more powerful spells also have their own use limits or cooldowns that can leave you vulnerable at certain times. Furthermore, consistent use of the spells also results in an energy drain that lowers your overall mana pool. The idea is to not spam the powerful abilities, but use them tactically during combat.

Spells interact with each other in interesting ways which are for you to discover! For example, the spell Necromancy/Dark Resurrection summons an undead unit. You can only raise undead creatures from corpses a limited number of times per mission, but there is no limit on the number of bodies this can affect in a small area.

Telekinesis is a spell which can be used to throw objects or enemies at high velocity, or into destructible objects. It offers a great deal of possibilities, such as placing exploding barrels strategically as traps, propelling enemies that have been knocked down on to spikes, or even throwing dead enemies into the still-living ones, knocking them down and dealing damage.

From a dev’s point of view, designing and implementing the spells in the game has been fun. However, Telekinesis has also been quite a challenge due to issues brought about by the interaction between magic and physics in the game. You need to project how an object of arbitrary size and mass will collide with the world so the player knows where to throw. Being able to pull shields and weapons away from enemies requires custom animations while being able to handle if the shield you are holding breaks. In addition to all of this, it is hard to determine how much impact force an enemy should take while in ragdoll, or to resolve multiple hits against different body parts. It’s sort of like an iceberg- you see a small part in the form of a usable spell, while the underlying design and mechanics needed to work can be a lot more complex.

Another popular spell is Throw Fire/Fire Blast, which lights enemies and surfaces on fire, and that is slightly easier to channel when wielding a staff. It’s a really enjoyable spell to cast, as it feels like having a built-in flamethrower instead of hands. The spell also invokes the chance per damage tick to cause enemies to run away, so it naturally includes a fear mechanic.

And this is all about the magic system for today! For more news, updates, or a friendly chat about the game, join our community on Discord, the Steam forum, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit. Also, please wishlist and follow the game, and tell everyone about it!

We will come back next week with more dev news. Until then, stay safe and have a great week!

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Looks charming.