Solasta Solasta: Crown of the Magister Thread - now with Palace of Ice sequel DLC

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

These are beyond barbarian ken, however.

I got spell reflect. Its called preemptive magecide.

I cast axe!

into your forehead.

His forehead is so strong that the axe will bounce right back at you, and hit your nose. Your nose is so big that it will hit the left side, and then hit Cripsy, chopping off his left ear.

Why is the axe-casting barbarian giving Crispy piggyback ride?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

These are beyond barbarian ken, however.

I got spell reflect. Its called preemptive magecide.

I cast axe!

into your forehead.

His forehead is so strong that the axe will bounce right back at you, and hit your nose. Your nose is so big that it will hit the left side, and then hit Cripsy, chopping off his left ear.

Why is the axe-casting barbarian giving Crispy piggyback ride?

We're talking about Cripsy here

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

These are beyond barbarian ken, however.

I got spell reflect. Its called preemptive magecide.

I cast axe!

into your forehead.

His forehead is so strong that the axe will bounce right back at you, and hit your nose. Your nose is so big that it will hit the left side, and then hit Cripsy, chopping off his left ear.

Why is the axe-casting barbarian giving Crispy piggyback ride?

We're talking about Cripsy here

So you formed that Master Blaster -duo?

 

[Nortar]

These are beyond barbarian ken, however.

I got spell reflect. Its called preemptive magecide.

I cast axe!

into your forehead.

My face is my shield!

 

[mediocrepoet]

These are beyond barbarian ken, however.

I got spell reflect. Its called preemptive magecide.

I cast axe!

into your forehead.

His forehead is so strong that the axe will bounce right back at you, and hit your nose. Your nose is so big that it will hit the left side, and then hit Cripsy, chopping off his left ear.

High level damage resistance.

I was actually referring to barb anti-wizard tactics, but I see the risks of trying to reverse that one.

 

[Lacrymas]

I don't think the AI can into spells like Spike Growth and the like, so they just gleefully move through them in a straight line. I suspect this is because these types of spells weren't in the game originally and the devs didn't update the AI to take them into consideration.

 

[GloomFrost]

I don't think the AI can into spells like Spike Growth and the like, so they just gleefully move through them in a straight line. I suspect this is because these types of spells weren't in the game originally and the devs didn't update the AI to take them into consideration.

I second that. Spike growth is an absolute OP weapon of mass destruction in Solasta. Turns a lot of challenging encounters into "story mode."

 

[Lacrymas]

Initial impressions of Lost Valley are somewhat positive. I like the setting more than the og campaign. I just got into the city and the encounters were nothing to write home about, though.

 

[Grunker]

Initial impressions of Lost Valley are somewhat positive. I like the setting more than the og campaign. I just got into the city and the encounters were nothing to write home about, though.

Just wait until you realize the game has a minuscule amount of crafted content, about one cool location and almost all side content is copies of the same location sprayed around willy-nilly.

It’s kind of funny, because Lost Valley is essentially their attempt to make Solasta more open-ended, which is what they’re purportedly going for with the sequel, and Lost Valley is like a horror study of how to do open world poorly. Almost everything apart from the “main path” (quotation marks because you can technically skip most of it) is utterly worthless.

It’s a shame too because a couple of the set piece encounters shows the potential of the engine that an encounter-focused title could realize, but they refuse to do that.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Initial impressions of Lost Valley are somewhat positive. I like the setting more than the og campaign. I just got into the city and the encounters were nothing to write home about, though.

They attempted to create a non-linear scenario but in the process created many encounter areas even smaller than those in the base Solasta campaign; eventually in Lost Valley you'll journey to locations merely to experience a single combat encounter with zero pretense of exploration. Worse than either the base campaign or the higher-level sequel to the base campaign, IMHO.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Initial impressions of Lost Valley are somewhat positive. I like the setting more than the og campaign. I just got into the city and the encounters were nothing to write home about, though.

They attempted to create a non-linear scenario but in the process created many encounter areas even smaller than those in the base Solasta campaign; eventually in Lost Valley you'll journey to locations merely to experience a single combat encounter with zero pretense of exploration. Worse than either the base campaign or the higher-level sequel to the base campaign, IMHO.

I bounced off towards the end of LV despite enjoying the beginning because I got bored.

 

[Lacrymas]

Good thing I'm on ironman then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Grunker]

What bums me the most about Lost Valley is the Pyramid area. That area is like a vertical slice of how cool Solasta could have been if the scope had been something like a single, massive dungeon crawl. It has tons of entrances, battlemaps, and approaches (in terms of how you want to deal with everything). The area itself is hit or miss, but as a showcase of what the engine is capable off it's very cool.

 

[whocares]

Beat Lost Valley. It has the feel of a first draft of what could've been a fun adventure. But it's all too disjointed and rushed. Feels like an even more barebones version of Storm of Zehir in a way.

Started PoI - it told me if you import your OG party your choices carry over so now it's back to OC classes for me. And here I wanted to try out Warcock and Sorcerer, and maybe that new not-Drizzt Ranger subclass. Well, alas. Let's see if I even remember anything of the OC to recognize those carried over choices. The "last time on Solasta" recap was charming.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I finally got this working on my Linux distro. It might be the strong couple of pints that I've had, but I'm enjoying it. It feels authentic D&D. I'm getting strong Storm of Zehir vibes, which is a good thing. I think I will purchase all of the DLC so that I have the complete experience. I'm torn between creating an optimal party and a thematic one. At the moment I have a party composed of Dragonlance characters. Strum (Paladin), Tanis (Ranger), Raistlin (Wizard), Tasslehoff (Rogue). My inner munchkin wants to depart from this though. I'm very glad to have this working. It's been at the top of my backlog for awhile.

Ps: Complaints of herpdy-derp potato faces were not exaggerated. These characters are comically fugly.

 

[Lacrymas]

The game is excruciatingly easy, so it doesn't matter what party you run.

 

[whocares]

I liked the OC, I didn't outright hate Lost Valley. But Palace of Ice - PoI? More like PoS. Not sure if I should finish it or just drop it and try Artoyan's campaigns.

The only good bit about it us the winter locale, which as proven by Icewind Dale is the best RPG setting. The very first real fight with your party all split up was honestly great and promising. Dwarves who are Finnish for some reason are amusing. And we now finally have the technology for top-down conversations, making it unnecessary to have every dialogue be a cutscene that gives you a close-up shot of your potato party.

Despite that last part, there are still so many cutscene conversations. Half the time one of them throws you right into a scripted battle. Making all your sneaking around and positioning pointless. Game actually doesn't even have the decency to let you click on NPCs to talk to them. You just get in the general vicinity and it's cutscene time.

It's also perhaps the single most linear RPG campaign I've ever seen. It's an actual straight line. That at some point turns into a Bioware style - go to 4 corners before it's back to linear path. I don't think there's a single side quest in the whole thing. There's one quest that masquarades as a side quest, but is actually just alternate reward for a main quest.

There's no exploration, no dungeon crawling, no treasure. Every once in a while game throws a powerful artifact at you on the critical path, and that's that. Rest of the loot is downright schizophernic with every single pile of garbage containing some arrows, food, and assortment of crafting materials.

Quest and encounter design is real bad too. Just now I come to a camp, they all scream we're under attack help us. And then they send me to light some beacon and optionally clear a few assaults. They keep screaming to light that beacon. I dun know what the hell a beacon looks like, where it is, or how to find it, but they keep screaming. It tells me to go north. I go straight north using game's terrible compass and come up to one of those optional assaults. It's listed as eastern assault for crying out loud. I clear it out, stumble around bit more, finally find a beacon. Start clearing out a path to it, and then game has the audacity to pull a Dragon Age 2 on me and spawn additional waves of enemies straight out of thin air. One second my archer sitting in the back sniping. The next there are like 8 dudes within arms reach. It didn't even try to obscure this. And if you think that at least makes things challenging, think again cause most of them die to a single hit.

This whole campaign is offensively bad. If you value your sanity - stay away.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

I am stricken with beginning OCD paralysis. I have too many cool party concepts that I like and can't decide what I'm going to do. I bought the DLCs like a chump, so I have a lot of options. My gut instinct says to do a balanced and conventional group, but I'm no rookie. I don't need to play it safe. I need to make a choice quickly though so I can get the most out of this Christmas holiday.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I am stricken with beginning OCD paralysis. I have too many cool party concepts that I like and can't decide what I'm going to do. I bought the DLCs like a chump, so I have a lot of options. My gut instinct says to do a balanced and conventional group, but I'm no rookie. I don't need to play it safe. I need to make a choice quickly though so I can get the most out of this Christmas holiday.

Paladin, cleric, mage, thief

 

[Crichton]

I am stricken with beginning OCD paralysis. I have too many cool party concepts that I like and can't decide what I'm going to do. I bought the DLCs like a chump, so I have a lot of options. My gut instinct says to do a balanced and conventional group, but I'm no rookie. I don't need to play it safe. I need to make a choice quickly though so I can get the most out of this Christmas holiday.

From a practical standpoint, you can't go wrong with:

Paladin
Cleric (battle)
Ranger (lowlife, swiftblade)
Wizard (sells word, court mage)

But the game isn't difficult, so feel free to try whatever. I'm currently trying 4x snow dwarf spellcasters (bard, wizard, cleric, druid) in the main campaign whenever I'm at loose ends. Slow start, but they'll be right at home if they ever make it to place of ice.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Paladin
Cleric (battle)
Ranger (lowlife, swiftblade)
Wizard (sells word, court mage)

My first concept was something close to this. Then I thought of swapping out the cleric for a bard and the ranger for a warlock. This would make a neat arcane themed party.

Wizard (Loremaster, CC focused)
Bard (Hope or Lore for psuedo-cleric and party face)
Warlock (Lowlife for rogue replacement)
Fighter (Spellblade, Main Tank)

It's a bit squishy, but with the right races and backgrounds I should be able to overcome that. The idea is to be very offensive and CC minded. I can also lean on crafting to help overcome some of the divine short-comings. My biggest concern is that the characters in this party will all be a bit too similar.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Paladin
Cleric (battle)
Ranger (lowlife, swiftblade)
Wizard (sells word, court mage)

My first concept was something close to this. Then I thought of swapping out the cleric for a bard and the ranger for a warlock. This would make a neat arcane themed party.

Wizard (Loremaster, CC focused)
Bard (Hope or Lore for psuedo-cleric and party face)
Warlock (Lowlife for rogue replacement)
Fighter (Spellblade, Main Tank)

It's a bit squishy, but with the right races and backgrounds I should be able to overcome that. The idea is to be very offensive and CC minded. I can also lean on crafting to help overcome some of the divine short-comings. My biggest concern is that the characters in this party will all be a bit too similar.

All wrong. What you want is one barbarian for each subclass.