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

[DemonKing]

Finished a couple of days ago - took me 44 hours after doing every quest available apart from one where I couldn't be arsed with going all the way across the map to be rewarded with a +2 dagger. I hit the level cap about 4/5ths of the way through. Up until level 8 or so I found the game to be pretty balanced and I was still hitting occasional encounters where I had to reload. From level 9 on everything was a cakewalk including the final battle.

The combat is the main attraction here - the storyline, animations, dialog and voice acting are all ordinary at best. The world map is nice but the travelling is laborious - I'll definitely switch off random encounters if I replay. Environmental graphics are very nice, although the designers are a bit too fond of having rubble floating everywhere in mid air. Remember that one tower in Icewind Dale held up by Eldritch magic in the Severed Hand and how memorable it was? Well that's pretty much every second environment here.

Overall though this is a top notch D&D combat simulator without a romance option to be found. Looking forward to seeing what the developers can do next with an expansion/sequel.

 

[HoboForEternity]

and tbh the characters having different lines and flavor dialogue depending on their background / personality trait was interesting concept I admit. it felt like they are premade characters instead of custom party. the writing are still flat so they didn't pull it off as well as it could, but as much as I prefer just regular dialogue in isometric view like pathfinder, it was a nice, novel concept.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I am upset that after I brought Sorak head to the council, the "I am definitely not Sorak" Council member didn't reveal himself by sorrowfully declaring that the head you brought belonged to his mum. If you do camp, go all the way in.

 

[HoboForEternity]

which faction sells primed armor again? i increased by arcaneum rep and they only sell primed weapons

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Icewind Dale but with...

negative:
Two magnitudes less build options

You are out of your mind. 2E is nice for what it is, but almost nothing has less build options than 2E, let alone 2 magnitudes less. Even with Solasta not having multi-classing, you've got more character direction by Level 3 than a 2E character will have at 20.

 

[Cryomancer]

but almost nothing has less build options than 2E,

Are you crazy? 2E with the kits allow a hell lot of customization. A lot of things that are now classes was "kits" on previous editions. Warlocks? The first apparition was in the complete wizard's handbook as a Witch, it also bought rules for making and modifying your own magic user kit. Berserker/Barbarian? Was a fighter kit. And this doesn't mentioning the kits specific for a setting, like Dark Sun setting.

Those are the 2E kits for wizards only on Dark Sun setting in a single supplement "Defilers and Preservers". As you can see, since there is no wave on Athas, magic works completely different, with "sources of energy" and instruction on how to role play as a Athasian Wizard(spoiler : Pyromaniacs would not last a single session)

And on 5E, do we have variety among wizard class? All non evocation spells are worthless. A lv 20 necromancer on 5E can't even raise a ghoul, just CR 1 skeletons/zombies that will not gonna last one round. And has zero OHK nasty spells. Wail of the Banshee got removed and Finger of Death just dishes a bit of damage, less than what a Paladin can dish. They picked the WORST lv 9 necromancy spell, made it worse, nerfed it, made enemies with far more hp and called it a day. Power word kill is the worst lv 9 spell and the unique one.

Even with Solasta not having multi-classing,

2E allowed multiclass, however, multiclassed characters often have a lot of downsides. A Fighter/Mage would be mid level while a pure Fighter or pure Mage would be high level.

 

[Ruchy]

Yes but aside from choosing your kit at the start of the game that is sadly where the options end in 2E.

 

[Fedora Master]

So its exactly like 5e.

 

[Volourn]

"but almost nothing has less build options than 2E, let alone 2 magnitudes less."

"Yes but aside from choosing your kit at the start of the game that is sadly where the options end in 2E."

Bullshitz.

BG is not full 2E. They included weapon proficiencies but no non weapon proficiences. Or secondary skills. These are 2E's equivelant to skills.

So, why do you fukkin' lie? Because of 2E ignorance.

2E's multi class and dual class adds a lot. The kits add alot of choices.

BIO (and other 2E game developers) could have added more including stuff from the complete books for races and classes. Not to mention more than just 3 specialty priests in BG2. They fukkin' forced demi human races to choose human gods for FUKK SAKES. FOR FUKK SAKES. FOR FUKK SAKES.

2E is also awesome because it reveals the idiotic whining morons who can't do simple math and find thaco 'too hard'.

FUKK OFF.

If you cna't handle simple math like subtratcion you don't deserve to play D&D.

LMFAO

 

[TumblingTorin]

In pre-3e D&D, since you don't get new feats on level up, the best way of customizing your character was loot. There were a bunch of weird magic items. I think there were even magic items that lets you do stuff like talk in draconic. And all those cursed items that made identifying very important, very much like those roguelikes like Dungeon Crawl. Hell, wasn't Diablo based of the creator's D&D experience where he just killed shit and took their loot? That's one thing that 5e annoyed me with is the attunement system and how almost every magic item required it. If I had to chose something gimmicky or reliable to attune with, I'll chose the reliable one.

 

[Volourn]

"In pre-3e D&D"

You are fukkin'; idiot. Of course you didn't get feats. You got PROFICIENIES every few levels based on class. Warrior types got more WP and mage/rogue types got more non combat skills. These proficiencies covered A LOT of ground - the same grounds that skills/feats may cover later on.

HOLY FUKK NUTZ. People think these things became thing out of the blue. LMFAO

BG is NOT pnp D&D. Just because BG didn't have it doesn't mean pnp 2E didn't have it.

 

[TumblingTorin]

Proficiencies were optional. It says it in giant letters in it's section. Not everyone played it. A few of the 2e games I played didn't. Just like in 5e, feats are optional. I've played 5e games that didn't have feats.

 

[Volourn]

The entire books are optional, retart. They tell you that right at the beginning of the book. Afterall, you can have a campaign that has no dwarves, elves, bards, or paladins. You can have a world with no metal equipment.

HOLY FUKK NUTZ.

Bottom line 2E had this shit before 3E+. the claim was it didn't. That was a plain old fashion fukkin' lie. DON'T FUKKIN' LIE.

 

[Cryomancer]

since you don't get new feats on level up

And 99% of Feats are worthless on 5E. Volourn nailed it. "BG is NOT pnp D&D. Just because BG didn't have it doesn't mean pnp 2E didn't have it." I wish that I had a 2E group, sadly never played it(only a retroclone and 3.5E). But readed a lot of books from 2E times and honestly, most video games aren't that faithful adaptation of 2E. Example? Half Giant food/water consumption on Athas is the greatest race drawback. It is not present on either Dark Sun CRPG's. Casting spells without worrying about masking it as psionics can lead to a lot of trouble on Athas, but this doesn't exist on the game.

The proposal of TSR D&D was to have a relative simple ruleset and a lot of optional rules for those who wanna more variety. Only because a video game ignores some of this optional rules, doesn't mean that it is lacking on 2E.

 

[Thal]

Can someone summarize this game, good combat + mundane story/world + low lvl cap / slow progression?

-Good combat
-Skill checks for extra loot and information
-Boring story and quests, cardboard characters
-No quests aside from kill quests
-Pretty much no exploration

Basically it's a modern gold box game. Worth playing because of the combat.

 

[Thac0]

Icewind Dale but with...

negative:
Two magnitudes less build options

You are out of your mind. 2E is nice for what it is, but almost nothing has less build options than 2E, let alone 2 magnitudes less. Even with Solasta not having multi-classing, you've got more character direction by Level 3 than a 2E character will have at 20.

Are you out of your mind? This is a question of math. Solasta has six classes, and you fill four slots with them. IWD has 11 and you fill 6 slots with them.
The way I play my rpgs I do not take a class twice.
Here is a simple calculator you find out the total amount of possible party loadouts from that:
https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/discretemathematics/combinations.php
Icewind Dale N=11 R=6 Answer = 462
Solasta N=6 R=4 Answer= 15

Most of the depth in developing your character in DnD while leveling (at least without multiclassing in modern editions) is spell selection, and that is roughly equal. IWD adds the element of weapon specification, do you stick with your starting weapon or start raising an off weapon upon finding really good weapons in it. That is not much, but 5e has not that much choice either, it only delays the subclass (kit) choice onto later levels. You can't convince me that that one subclass choice with minimal effect at level 2-3 makes up for having less total possible party combinations by a factor of 30.

 

[Reinhardt]

I see codex honeymoon ended. That was fast.

 

[fantadomat]

Icewind Dale but with...

negative:
Two magnitudes less build options

You are out of your mind. 2E is nice for what it is, but almost nothing has less build options than 2E, let alone 2 magnitudes less. Even with Solasta not having multi-classing, you've got more character direction by Level 3 than a 2E character will have at 20.

Are you out of your mind? This is a question of math. Solasta has six classes, and you fill four slots with them. IWD has 11 and you fill 6 slots with them.
The way I play my rpgs I do not take a class twice.
Here is a simple calculator you find out the total amount of possible party loadouts from that:
https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/discretemathematics/combinations.php
Icewind Dale N=11 R=6 Answer = 462
Solasta N=6 R=4 Answer= 15

Most of the depth in developing your character in DnD while leveling (at least without multiclassing in modern editions) is spell selection, and that is roughly equal. IWD adds the element of weapon specification, do you stick with your starting weapon or start raising an off weapon upon finding really good weapons in it. That is not much, but 5e has not that much choice either, it only delays the subclass (kit) choice onto later levels. You can't convince me that that one subclass choice with minimal effect at level 2-3 makes up for having less total possible party combinations by a factor of 30.

2e is shit for non fighter combat builds,3.5e was clear improvement. But yeah,5e is worst than 2e by a long shot.

 

[Strange Fellow]

which faction sells primed armor again? i increased by arcaneum rep and they only sell primed weapons

The Arcaneum sells primed armour as well. Maybe they update their stock after a certain point in the game?

- For christ sake, I want to have an animation slider. I can use cheat engine, but can't just devs include it as a part of a normal game? Lack of the slider is also annoying outside the combat when the game wants me to do jumping and pseudo platforming and I want so speed it up.

In case you don't know, holding down the space bar in combat speeds up enemy turns. I only found about about it after I went into the settings to find out why the space bar didn't end turn, like it does in most games.

I dislike how wizards now have only a little less hp than other classes and how fire bolt cantrip is better than a lot of melee weapons. Be honest with me : did they flatten the power difference on the other side of leveling curve and blowing up things on higher levels will be less fun than in previous editions?

I dislike those things too, and yes they did.

the designers are a bit too fond of having rubble floating everywhere in mid air.

This stuff appears in so many games, and it's unbelievable how derivative it is. In Solasta's case the bit with the Ego is especially egregious. I just don't know what the designers are thinking. They get to design a location in a strange alternate dimension or as a visual representation of someone's mind, where literally anything goes, but no, floating platforms every time. It's getting so bad that these locations are actually much less likely to have a theme you haven't seen before than just plain old cities and wilderness. It's madness.

 

[fantadomat]

Proficiencies were

Poorly done,only fighter could get 5 points and didn't make sense that other classes couldn't specialize in their class centric weapons. Should have made them rarer for different classes but still able for a wiz or druid to get 3-4 points in staffs,or rogue getting high daggers points. It was interesting idea but poorly done.

 

[Reinhardt]

wiz to get 3-4 points in staffs

 

[fantadomat]

wiz to get 3-4 points in staffs

Nice,one of the best animes,glorious joy to watch! The best wiz for sure,ERYFKRAD would like it.

 

[jackofshadows]

Any suggestion on builds? Im starting this tomorrow

All you (kinda) need are: a guy with thief's tools proficiency, a guy with manacalon rosary + arcana proficiency, also is very nice to have wizard/shadowcaster with identify spell and you would want some strong ranged characters in general for this game like ranger/wizard. Pala/cleric seem crazy strong for some encounters but not necessary overall (I'm playing without them on cata). That said, on default difficulty I believe that literally any setup could work.

. You can't convince me that that one subclass choice with minimal effect at level 2-3 makes up for having less total possible party combinations by a factor of 30.

Actually, subclases have 3 features each, not only at 2-3 lvl. But that doesn't change much.

In case you don't know, holding down the space bar in combat speeds up enemy turns. I only found about about it after I went into the settings to find out why the space bar didn't end turn, like it does in most games.

It speeds up player's turn as well. I learned about this feature only yesterday and bound spacebar at the start for ending turn as usual already so now I have to smash it carefully in order not to skip turn by accident.

The dev that came up with this 'holding business' shit for additional info and speeding up is fucking nuts, how hard was to just add two more options instead? 'Let them hold spacebar at all times, keke!'.

 

[NJClaw]

The dev that came up with this 'holding business' shit for additional info and speeding up is fucking nuts, how hard was to just add two more options instead? 'Let them hold spacebar at all times, keke!'.

They're French. They probably did it intentionally to make our lives miserable.

 

[Larianshill]

The dev that came up with this 'holding business' shit for additional info and speeding up is fucking nuts, how hard was to just add two more options instead? 'Let them hold spacebar at all times, keke!'.

Remember how in Dragon Age Inquisition, you had to hold down the attack button at all times?