KickStarter Serpent in the Staglands Thread

[ArchAngel]

And the combat! LEEEEL. THIS IS HARDCORE MAN. LIKE A HARDCOAR RPG. YOU WILL CRY BECUAUSE IT'S SO HARDCORR.

Come on. You're shitting me. Not a single engagement has been challenging what with luring shit 1 NPC at a time and bullshit healing from Vilhelm with no downsides. Tactics? What tactics. Click on shit and wait.

It never ceases to amaze me when people use their brain to figure out a way to make combat easier and then claim the combat is brainless. Surely if you were dumb and the combat was dumb then you'd just run into battles roaring like a madman and engage in a brawl, but no, you used your brain and applied a bit of stealth logic and the game permits you to do this... and then you complain. I do hope you're not one of those retards who, on another thread, will lambaste cRPGs for not proving 'Stealth Mechanics'...

Certain battles, if you haven't worked out the lure technique, are pretty much impossible. If you are feeling OP then you can rush in and brawl to make everything move a bit quicker. At least the game provides choice in this regard, something most shitty games don't. In fact, a sure way to spot a shittier game is by noticing whether you can apply alternative tactics, such as lure, amongst other options, and if you realise the game only offers a brawl or not system then, normally, it's a pretty dumb game. I'm looking at you games where the only defining 'options' in combat is whether you've got a 10% or 20% improved sword to clusterfuck with.

I am not sure, but did this just become another POE thread? :D :D

 

[circ]

Well, regarding later combat. I gave up on this game a few weeks ago. Because after farming xp for a bit until 4-5 I started traversing across the map a little more. Didn't pay much attention to the story other than to go by some mine at one point. Anyway, the game started throwing high xp encounters in my face up north. I started off with luring techniques 1-2 at a time and by the time I was level 9 or so I didn't even have to bother with luring anymore because I was unstoppable with all my equipment and skills. At one point I came across a ruined town overrun by some military force. They told me to stop, which I didn't so they attacked. I thought - oh shit. Nevermind, they dropped like potatoes. It wasn't quite as breezy as PopeAmole made it out to be, I suspect some of the bullshit skills got nerfed a bit by a patch, but not breaking a sweat still. And that's without bothering with the abilities even.

Is that using my brian or is the encounter and combat design really crap?

 

[Infinitron]

Wow! http://steamcommunity.com/games/335120/announcements/detail/289752337996108699

Faster Load times and optimization: version 17 now available!
22 DECEMBER - WHALENOUGHTSTUDIOS

In celebration of the Winter Solstice and Necholai’s worst after party, we’re ready to release update 17! We’ve been poking at Shroomers and Serpent for a while now to optimize a lot of the behind-the-scenes systems, especially load times. The engine has been updated and with some heavy optimization to art and loading structures we’re looking at 60-70% speed increase. Maps should load in at ~5 seconds, depending on your system or how large the map is.

Besides that we’ve had some other system updates for stability and content tweaks listed below.

We have some art and content for the expansion, A Banquet For Fools, that we’re planning on releasing next year. There is the perfect amount of monks, mead and illuminated manuscripts.

Merry Christmas!
Joe & Hannah

Update log:

System

• Load time optimization
  
• Revamped ammunition system — for fringe cases of some equipped ammo disappearing on game loads

UI

• Cursor can move off the edge of the screen in windowed mode in Windows

Gameplay

• Stabilized fringe cases of temporarily de-syncing party order in inventory screen when a member is removed in certain conversations
  
• Seraphim will allow you to retry to let him in your party after refusing him.
  
• Various dialogue and NPC inventory tweaks

This version is up on Steam, and GOG should be as soon as they push it live on their end. If the game was purchased on our site DRM free you can also re-download it from your purchases page — that's automatically updated with the latest version for you.

We're depreciating our old patching application, but if you prompt the download on startup it will instead contain an updated game you can swap with your existing one, there's some brief instructions in the folder if needed.

 

[an Administrator]

• Load time optimization

YES!

 

[Geckabor]

Tempted to give this game another try now that the loading times are improved, but the filler combat/trash mobs really demotivate me to continue after a certain point. I hope the patch is up on GOG soon.

 

[Lhynn]

• Load time optimization

YES!

Time to actually play this shit.

 

[Fenix]

It is very good pen test for first serious large game.

 

[sstacks]

Sweet like a mug

 

[Merlkir]

I started playing, as good a time as any. (heh, going through credits I realized I even kickstarted this, but never played due to waiting for the expansion to come out.)

Surprised to see typos in the very first conversation with a peasant in the first town. Also the music switches to a short outdoors sound effect very rapidly, that's a bit annoying.

 

[Mustawd]

Yah, typos are a big weakness in their stuff overall. Their game has it, their kickstarters had it, and pretty sure their new game will have it.

Super annoying, but I just live with it.

 

[Merlkir]

I hate to be negative about the game, but bloody hell. The same thing I complained about in some ancient beta version is exactly the same - after loading up a save, monsters spawn up randomly.
So I load a save surrounded by 5 imps (or better yet, 24 dogs) and die instantly. Brilliant.

edit: This is bullshit. The solution? To just run. Run through the pack of monsters and run off the edge of the map. (because of course they relentlessly pursue, but only to the edge!)
This is cheesing, it might sound like I'm whining about a situation I got out of, but the game should not work in a silly way in the first place.

 

[Fenix]

As far as I know it was conscious decision of devs.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

Seriously though, I've completed the main quest and haven't found any TRULY hair-pulling situations. Well, maybe apart from [spoilers]

Spoiler

the Bloodless lair. And even then it was just because I didn't realize I needed a special sword.

 

[Geckabor]

Okay so there's a difference that I noticed and I don't see it anywhere in the changelog, so I'm not sure if this is a bug and whether I'm the only one experiencing this problem: When I start a new game and a new character, I don't have any skill points. I can distribute 2 during character creation on my stats, but I have 0 left for skills/magic/aptitudes. I tried different races and starting choices and I always get the same problem. I checked let's plays of the game to see if I was just misremembering the start, but you do indeed start with 2 skill points available to distribute. This is quite an annoying bug since I don't think there are that many levels and especially the early game is quite tough. I'm playing on the GOG version of the game, and I downloaded the new patch when it asked me to check for updates in-game. So is anyone else experiencing this problem?

 

[ArchAngel]

Try uninstalling and then downloading the whole game instead of just a patch.

 

[Merlkir]

The same happened to me. I tried quickloading and re-opening the character sheet. That seems to have fixed it.

 

[Geckabor]

Oh, my regular save didn't have the points but the quicksave did. Strange, but thanks.

 

[LESS T_T]

Additional Performance Optimizations: Update 18 live

We're ready to push out the second part of some optimizations we've been testing to follow up with our last update.

Of note:

• Some maps causing occasional performance hiccups have been fixed
  
• Combat performance update
  
• Herbology UI has been updated
  
• Polymorph Wolf no longer utilizes range of missile weapons equipped
  
• Sound and Music levels balanced since last update

Cheers!

http://steamcommunity.com/games/335120/announcements/detail/276242807875482991

 

[HoboForEternity]

cool. maybe i'll go back to this game after all/

 

[Jarpie]

I can't recruit Serafim, does he have some requirements or tricks required?

 

[sstacks]

My guess is that's a bug. The only thing I can find online about Serafim (I didn't recruit him) is how great he is to have in the party.

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

I can't recruit Serafim, does he have some requirements or tricks required?

He requires a particular Aptitude level to have join a party.

 

[Jarpie]

Whalenought_Joe Would it be possible to add switchable setting for scaling to the settings menu? it'd be pretty handy so the players wouldn't have to play with the window size to get optimal scaling.

 

[Jarpie]

Whalenought_Joe One of the merchants, Vlad in Orfs Bridge has gotten stuck, he doesn't move and I can't start conversation with him, when I click it with the cursor (it changes to one when I could start conversation) my characters just moves next to it but nothing happens. Is there anyway, like console command or editing save files to reset it?

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

Whalenought_Joe Would it be possible to add switchable setting for scaling to the settings menu? it'd be pretty handy so the players wouldn't have to play with the window size to get optimal scaling.

We could look into that for a future update, not sure if that would have any repercussions — you'd like just fixed size options along with the current manual scaling window? In the interim you could fullscreen and change resolution to stick with one you'd want in particular — there's 1x,2x and 3x scaling to jump between, though that's sort of a pain. The point of that was to allow players to choose their optimal size manually.

Whalenought_Joe One of the merchants, Vlad in Orfs Bridge has gotten stuck, he doesn't move and I can't start conversation with him, when I click it with the cursor (it changes to one when I could start conversation) my characters just moves next to it but nothing happens. Is there anyway, like console command or editing save files to reset it?

Weird, we haven't had this happen before — merchants or dialogue hadn't changed in the last two updates either. Are other merchants working, or did something in the area happen to him that could have triggered his unresponsiveness (combat, enemy sighting)? I think he was just a random merchant so I know he didn't have any particular dialogue branches or anything.