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

[V_K]

I've also found the Twin Blades feat fairly useful for dual-wielding rogue - this way he gets both two attacks and a +3 to AC in the unlikely event an attack goes through.

 

[Nortar]

God that Aksha fight is the most retarded one in this game yet. Her Legendary Action Darkness spell overrides my Daylight (despite it being the other way around in the rules) and she doesn't even have tho hold concentration on it. I am passing that dialogue check for now.

Yeah, Aksha was one mean biatch for my pointbuy/scavenger party.
But it seems there's a bug - if you break window shutters, there's no visible light coming from them.
I even thought that the game correctly tracks outdoor daytime for this.
But even without visual effects, the natural day light seems to be there, at least Aksha has suffered from it.

 

[Lacrymas]

In normal 5e play dual wield is pretty shit, here it is ok. But not significantly better than the rest, except for rogues. It is really good for them, since it gives you a second chance at sneak attacking.

Paladins actually get quite a bit from dual wielding - Divine Favor gives damage to both attacks and you can smite 2 times in 1 turn.

 

[V_K]

But it seems there's a bug - if you break window shutters, there's no visible light coming from them.

I just checked that fight earlier today, and there was bright light coming from the windows.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Just beat Aksha on my current run, first try. Really easy stuff. My Party is a Human Fighter, High Elf Wizard and two Sylvan Elves (Rogue and Cleric). Despite the current party comp being objectively worse than my previous one (Pala, Ranger, Cleric, Wizard), the game isn't really that hard if you know what to expect. Still a lot of fun. Can't wait to get to where the EA ended tho so I can see the new content.

 

[Thac0]

Ok now that everyone got a good taste of this game, what difficulty is the best?

I am on max, and it is too much. Doubled HP makes some fights grindy, +3 to saves was so dumb I turned it off quickly. The +3 to hit and 50% extra damage from enemies feels nice and balanced tho. I need to open all fights where it is possible with a surprise turn to have a chance at winning on my first try, although stuff got a lot easier on lvl 5 with lvl 3 spells. Point buy, no rolling.

I assume Point Buy/Scavenger/No surprise turns will end up being the optimal and most fun way to play the game, at least that is what I plan on doing on my second run as soon as we get more classes.

 

[Spectacle]

Also 4 AC is a lot...

A 20% decrease in hit chance for your enemies. If you assume that they have the average hitchance 5e is designed around of 60%, this cuts them down to 40%. A +2 magic shield is a 33% increase in survivability, a good off hand weapon can't hold up with that.

That's a poor assumption, if you build for AC you can the the typical enemy's hit chance down to a lot less than 60%. And don't forget that AC gets better the more you have. If an enemy needs a 12 to hit and you increase that by 4 to 16, you've reduced the incoming hit rate by half! If you can give the enemy disadvantage on top of that you'll almost never get hit.

 

[The_Mask]

Might be one of the rare occasion party building matters more, the oath of tirmar paladin was protecting my group, all of them packed together, blocking most of those legendary actions , then sun cleric cast sun spell in the room massively disadvantaging and damaging them .Dont forget to break all of the windows too . Had no trouble at all on this fight.

This is what I was going to say as well: I've roleplayed Solaire as a Cleric of the Sun, and that fight becomes a bit easier with one such cleric around.

I almost never find a use for TWF: with a Ranger I just equip a shield because I'm already using my bonus action to move Hunter's Mark around so I'm never attacking with my secondary weapon, with a Fighter I want a two-handed weapon because that's the way to get the most out of Action Surge, and in general a two-handed weapon benefits more from Haste and that's a big deal to me, since that's probably the spell I use the most.

Also 4 AC is a lot...

Anything that increases AC and the feat that allows "advantage" on Initiative rolls are gold, imo.

 

[Thac0]

Also 4 AC is a lot...

A 20% decrease in hit chance for your enemies. If you assume that they have the average hitchance 5e is designed around of 60%, this cuts them down to 40%. A +2 magic shield is a 33% increase in survivability, a good off hand weapon can't hold up with that.

That's a poor assumption, if you build for AC you can the the typical enemy's hit chance down to a lot less than 60%. And don't forget that AC gets better the more you have. If an enemy needs a 12 to hit and you increase that by 4 to 16, you've reduced the incoming hit rate by half! If you can give the enemy disadvantage on top of that you'll almost never get hit.

Yeah I speculated with the absolute minimum. In practice on anything with a remotely high AC like a fighter even a mundane nonmagical shield outperforms dual wielding hard. A +2 shield is better than any offhand and borderline gamebreaking.

But dual wielding is actually pretty good in this game, since you can make the bonus action attack first, and then even use your action for a spell. This is much more generous than the written rules. My archer ranger uses two weapons as a backup for melee.

 

[Jenkem]

just read fanta's review... BIG OOF.. glad I went w/ Biomutant instead. Now that's a fun game.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, between Biomutant and this thing, I'm going with this.

 

[fantadomat]

just read fanta's review... BIG OOF.. glad I went w/ Biomutant instead. Now that's a fun game.

Didn't even leave a brofits,you are worst than a gypso,kwan!

 

[whydoibother]

Is there any reason to hoard those jewels labeled just "metal" - the golden bracers, silver combs, etc. Are they ingredients for anything or only vendor trash?

 

[Lacrymas]

Vendor trash.

 

[Larianshill]

There are 9 hidden achievements I didn't get in this game. I wonder what they are.

 

[Volourn]

One is being able to see a female figure curves that actually has b00bies. Rarer than a mystical ancient super crown with super stats that forces itself on your character and mind rapes you... because the game actually has one of those... but no b00bies. LMAO

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Also krumped Aksha pretty easily. Jizzy's journal mentioned bloodsuckers early on so I made sure to take a long rest and have my cleric prep the daylight spell, then that fucked up the vampires with constant damage and everything being at disadvantage while the fighter smacked her twice a round and the thief sneak attacked her and the bimbo chucked magic missiles and hasted the thief. Cleric mostly just kept the baby vamps off the bimbo. The super-darkness was pretty weird and the "Legendary action" thing was odd (I assume that's some 5e boss fight stuff) but it was fun. Was surprised the head necromancer didn't have legendary actions too. Enjoyed that whole dungeon/side adventure. It is unfortunate that the manual of wisdom I found is apparently bugged and nobody can read it though.

The fire elemental fight to go get the inscriptions off the crown's pedestal was surprisingly smooth sailing though. Recommended level 6 and I started it at 6th level but I figured I was gonna get fucked up since I didn't have protection from elements memorized but it went absolutely fine. Is it really RAW that thieves can sneak attack undead and elementals and shit? That doesn't seem right to me but I'm still getting sneak attacks on them. Maybe 5e allows it since sneak attacks don't get as many dice as 3rd edition.

 

[Thac0]

Is it really RAW that thieves can sneak attack undead and elementals and shit? That doesn't seem right to me but I'm still getting sneak attacks on them. Maybe 5e allows it since sneak attacks don't get as many dice as 3rd edition.

Yep

"Legendary action" thing was odd (I assume that's some 5e boss fight stuff)

Yep.
But usually it comes into play much later, most units with Legendary actions are meant for level 10+ (meaning you can start fielding them against your player at level 7 usually)
But good low level bosses with Legendary actions are some of the best homebrewing a DM should do, they make for better fights by spreading the bosses damage out over the entire turn.

 

[Lacrymas]

I bumped it up to scavanger difficulty with max AI - still auto-attacking and cantrip-ing my way to victory through the Dark Castle. I used my spells only in the room with the resting zone because who cares by then.

 

[jackofshadows]

Ok now that everyone got a good taste of this game, what difficulty is the best?

I am on max, and it is too much. Doubled HP makes some fights grindy, +3 to saves was so dumb I turned it off quickly. The +3 to hit and 50% extra damage from enemies feels nice and balanced tho. I need to open all fights where it is possible with a surprise turn to have a chance at winning on my first try, although stuff got a lot easier on lvl 5 with lvl 3 spells. Point buy, no rolling.

I assume Point Buy/Scavenger/No surprise turns will end up being the optimal and most fun way to play the game, at least that is what I plan on doing on my second run as soon as we get more classes.

I enjoy setting up ambushes way too much to reject getting surprise rounds. So in order to keep the challenge, playing on max since 5lvl (exept for Aksha). It's grindy in terms of enemies hp yeah but that's what requires to squeeze every available damage output which is also a thing that I enjoy. The system is tight enough, at least it seems to me that way atm. Compare this game to Wasteland 3 where I bitched about lack of challenge on the highest difficulty and by lack I wasn't being arrogant it was really a cakewalk since some point because the system there is far more clumsy so surprize rounds every time completely break the game there. Incoming damage is also fine. It becomes more rng dependant ofc but again, the system provide a bunch of tools to negate that even if it's a simple AC stacking.

As for +3 save throws - not sure at all about turning it off. W/o them contol spells must be really powerful so killing enemies one by one even with bonus hp doesn't seem too tough. So maybe even this blunt approach serves its purpose. I have to play more with them to judge though.

Overall - feels really hard (mostly referring to the recent fire elemental fight in the crown room), I'm ok with my setup but need to optimize the gear more. Went to that Mal ruin blueprint vendor and in order to check various crafting recipes I had to buy them out, learn and only then check for reqired ingredients. That is so retarded, I wonder whether it's intentional of a simple UX fuck up. Highly annoying. And if you're crafting something already you have to abort it in order to check something else, jeez.

 

[V_K]

Was surprised the head necromancer didn't have legendary actions too.

Well, Akasha says that he basically has Alzheimer's, so that makes sense.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Yep
Yep.

Interesting. Both of those kinda make sense. The sneak attacks 'cause of how 5e seems to handle scaling up in levels and the legendary actions for boss fights. On one hand it's kinda gamey to have a boss just have extra actions like that, but on the other hand who gives a shit AND because of 5e's weird scaling that's how you can have a more dangerous opponent since levels alone don't matter as much. Thieves in general seem a bit weak in 5e especially if other classes can get proficiency in tools (Talking tabletop, since I know they can in Solasta) but being able to constantly dash and/or disengage while still attacking is pretty nice. The mobility's cool, even if the sneak attack doesn't scale up very much.

I probably should nab the 5e PHB and look at it at some point since I'm digging it in Solasta. Not like I'm going to be playing tabletop but it seems like a good beer and pretzels system.

Well, Akasha says that he basically has Alzheimer's, so that makes sense.

'spose that's very true too. IIRC he had a hell of a lot of HP for a wizard so presumably he's high level, but being so scatterbrained could explain why he wasn't particularly deadly.

 

[Larianshill]

So, anybody else fucking hates Zealots?

 

[Volourn]

"On one hand it's kinda gamey"

HOLY FUKK NUTZ.

A game based on DnD - a game - has'gamey' stuff.

HOLY FUKK NUTZ.

Imagine that. Whining that a game has something that is 'gamey'.

There are things to complain about with games but being 'gamey' shouldn't be one of them. LMAO


That said, legendary actions - while seeming 'unfair - makes sense for legendary creatures. It is why they are legendary. Afterall, they could just give her 5 actions on her turn and tell you to SUCK IT UP. But, I guess... that would be 'gamey'. Just be glad these are wussy 5E vamps that don't drain 2 levels per hit.

L0LZ

 

[Lacrymas]

Killed Aksha on the second try (scavanger difficulty + max AI), I wasn't ready for her legendary actions on my first try. She's definitely more difficult than in EA. However, she can't outlast the ridiculous smite damage two paladins can dish out even with her healing. The most problematic thing is the dark veil actually, but you can brute force it. I can get to like +12 attack rolls, so even with disadvantage I can hit her semi-reliably. She likes to stay in the light, however, so yeah, the devs might want to look into improving AI a ton. With that said, it's the only encounter I actually like up to now. A single additional dark apprentice would make this fight ridiculously brutal btw.