KickStarter Stoneshard - open world roguelike RPG - now available on Early Access

[rusty_shackleford]

I will say the lack of manual saves does add some spice to the game. You are forced to prepare carefully when venturing into the wild, that's for sure.

 

[Fedora Master]

I will say the lack of manual saves does add some spice to the game. You are forced to prepare carefully when venturing into the wild, that's for sure.

What? Did the high fructose corn syrup affect your eyesight? You can't just start a new game with a fresh character now, because there is no option to do so before you play the rather long and elaborate tutorial.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/news...g-8u8cGiyeA-fOlxSlWU5nIWU3JbwBNnjw4LWseofIPsI

0.7.0.0 “City of Gold” is out!

Spoiler

MAIN ADDITIONS

- Global Map and Rumor System

The size of the game’s world has grown almost 10 times - from 17x10 tiles to 40x40. You’ll be able to track your journey across it with a new global map menu that will also feature a character marker.

In your travels you’ll have a chance to encounter many Points of Interest, including monster dens and a handful of new unique locations.

- Brynn

The first major city will open its gates before you. It consists of four separate districts, each with their own vibe and special traders.

- Saving on Exit

Your progress is now saved automatically upon exiting the game. However, these saves are deleted upon loading, so in case of your character’s death, you’ll be brought to the latest “hard” save made by sleeping.

- Rumor System

Instead of being marked on the map from the get-go, Points of Interests are now discovered by learning rumors about them. You’ll be able to learn gossip and news from certain characters - some of it will end up leading you to an interesting location.

- Crime System

Theft, assault, and disturbing order within settlements is now a punishable offense. The punishment includes fines, jail time, and being executed on the spot.

- Bodies of Water

The game’s world will now feature rivers, allowing you to fill a waterskin in the wild or just take a dip.

- Changes to Combat

- Protection values from different items no longer stack, instead affecting only the body parts they are actually equipped on.
- Fumbled attacks now have their Stun, Daze, Knockback, Immobilization, and Bleed Chance set to zero.
- Dodge Chance now turns successful melee attacks into fumbles, and fumbles - into misses.
- Block Chance received an additional sub-system: successful blocking now costs some Block Power, which takes time to recover.
- Changes to the Accuracy formula: Accuracy and Dodge Chance now have two separate rolls, but their extreme values (Accuracy over 100% and Dodge Chance below 0%) will still have an effect on each other.

- Improved Leveling and Trainers

- Decreased Stat Point gain per level to 1. Main Attributes cap at 30 points.
- Attributes grant larger bonuses to a smaller number of stats.
- Each 5 points invested into an Attribute grant a special bonus to three additional stats.
- Reworked the structure of every Ability Tree: each of them received more starting paths. Unlocking powerful spells and skills will now require you to first learn all the abilities connected to them.
- Abilities now have Attribute requirements as an alternative way of unlocking them.
- You can now learn the first tier of Ability Trees from trainers - for the right price.

- Artefacts

These are powerful relics of the past that possess unique properties - some of them require activation, while others grant their boon directly from your inventory.

You’ll have a chance to acquire them from distant dungeons - particularly dangerous locations, situated far from the settlements.

- New Enemies

Encounter three new enemy types: Crawlers, Harpies, and Deathstinger Swarms.

- New Throwables

Three new bombs: Nistrian Flame Flask, Spider Blood Flask, and Deathstinger Jar.

- Playable Lute

Recreate your favourite songs!

- 41 Steam Achievement

Will you be able to earn them all?

AND ALSO

- A special quest in the beginning of the game.
- Reworked dungeon progression.
- Most dungeons won’t have a fixed difficulty level - it can shift back and forth during subsequent repopulations.
- Added special distant dungeons: there are no roads or contracts leading to them. They have the most dangerous enemies and the most valuable loot.

MECHANICS

- Rebalanced most passives and some active abilities.
- Rebalanced all Injuries and Conditions.
- Being Knocked into an occupied tile now applies Daze instead of Stun.
- Fixed and rebalanced Durability - it now functions as intended.
- Bows now have an Accuracy penalty when shooting at targets within 1 or 2 tiles.
- Ranged weapons receive Accuracy penalty for shooting at distant targets: -2% Accuracy for each tile beyond half the maximum Range.
- “Sudden Lunge” and “Seize the Initiative” have an increased Range when used with a spear.
- “Seize the Initiative” now properly works with bows and crossbows, using the Range of an equipped weapon.
- Each firebolt from “Fire Barrage” now has a separate chance to hit.
- “Petrification” will now remove Bleeding.
- “Ensnarement” and “Immobilization” will either decrease Dodge Chance by 25% or set it to zero, whichever is more impactful.
- Tweaked caps of many secondary stats.
- Abilities’ hovers now properly display the Attributes that modify them.
- Increased damage from Knockback.
- Decreased the chance for curses to trigger their effect.
- Shouting now generates less noise.
- “Stun” will also grant Stun Resistance to reduce the possibility of stunlocks.
- “Wetness” now has stacks, the number of which depends on the duration of the effect.
- Dungeons will take twice as long to repopulate.

ENEMIES

- Birds can now be hunted.
- Rebalanced the Troll: decreased its Resistances and increased its Max Health. The Troll also gets weaker when low on Energy.
- The Restless received higher Bleed Resistance.
- Archers can now drop their melee weapons on death.
- Rebalanced the chance of enemy spawns - it now depends on the nearby dungeons, hunting grounds, and the hidden wilderness factor.

ECONOMY

- Rebalanced prices for most items.
- Increased the amount of valuables inside NPCs' homes.
- Rebalanced the price of arrows and bolts.
- Rebalanced money and reputation rewards for completing contracts.
- Tweaked reputation values.
- Rebalanced merchants’ stock.
- You can now request a starting weapon from the sergeant in Osbrook.
- Added 2 Catacomb and 3 Brynn-specific contracts.
- Changed rewards for completing tasks.
- Reduced the Mannshire scribe’s stock.
- Changes to the Troll quest: it can now be accessed only after reaching level 10.

ITEMS

- Added lots of new dishes.
- Added new items.
- Increased the base chance of triggering “Battle Rage” with Henbane.
- Antitoxin no longer completely removes Aftermaths from drugs, now only reducing them by half.
- Mindwort no longer completely removes Drunkenness, only decreasing its duration by a few turns.
- Increased the spawn chance for herbs.
- Added spoiled milk.

OTHER CHANGES

- Added pop-up speech lines for casting spells.
- Ability trees now have hovers with a short list of their strengths and effects.
- Numerous changes to in-game texts: item descriptions, characters’ bio, contents of treatises, etc.
- You no longer need to earn entrance to the Mannshire castle.

 

[Jenkem]

damn .7 huh? only 3 more updates until it's done

 

[mediocrepoet]

damn .7 huh? only 3 more updates until it's done

I think the .0.0 is pretty meaningful here. So... 300 updates. Give or take a decimal place or two since the second .0 might just be truncated for ease of typing.

 

[Jrpgfan]

So... has anyone tried it yet?

 

[Contagium]

So... has anyone tried it yet?

I keep going to the store page and am ever so close to parting with $13.99 during its current sale. The early access info states the game will go up in price, but I've seen it on sale a lot more lately

 

[jackofshadows]

Can't skip the tutorial now. That's nice.

It's probably due to the brand new build. Pretty sure you're suppose to finish it just once.

 

[Fedora Master]

Can't skip the tutorial now. That's nice.

It's probably due to the brand new build. Pretty sure you're suppose to finish it just once.

Of course, but its still annoying, especially when it CAN easily kill you.

People on the Steam forums don't seem very happy about the new skill system and balance changes.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Can't skip the tutorial now. That's nice.

It's probably due to the brand new build. Pretty sure you're suppose to finish it just once.

Of course, but its still annoying, especially when it CAN easily kill you.

People on the Steam forums don't seem very happy about the new skill system and balance changes.

And this is one of the things that let's me really question the devs: This feature has been requested for years, by players who actually still play the game. It doesn't seem too hard to create a 'Skip Tutorial' button (or a basic Character Creation) that puts you right in the tavern where you speak to tutorial guy. A simple skip. If they want to be fancy, create a screen with the backstory in between.

But if you ask them now, the answer will be something like 'We have a Skip Tutorial button planned for autumn of 2027, we can't possibly antedate this without adjusting the menu color pallet first'.

 

[Raghar]

Hold on, they did a whole mumbo-jumbo about how a save system is impossible in this game and then they implement saving on exit? What's stopping you from copy-pasting the file / quitting whenever you want to save and stashing the file somewhere?

So like...the engine limitation thing was bullshit?

Thread.stop(...)
Thread.stop(...)
Thread.stop(...)
Copy memory.
Flush to HDD
...

Totally impossible to get memory state until you stop all these threads. But when you stop them, game stops working, and you can't just save... How could you make the game to run again without starting it from fresh?

(Also when you'd be able to just save, wouldn't it destroy the challenge?)

 

[Raghar]

Can't skip the tutorial now. That's nice.

It was the best part of the game, if I remember correctly.

Because it was actually finished.

Actually, it's because it's free.

 

[Salvo]

Hold on, they did a whole mumbo-jumbo about how a save system is impossible in this game and then they implement saving on exit? What's stopping you from copy-pasting the file / quitting whenever you want to save and stashing the file somewhere?

So like...the engine limitation thing was bullshit?

Thread.stop(...)
Thread.stop(...)
Thread.stop(...)
Copy memory.
Flush to HDD
...

Totally impossible to get memory state until you stop all these threads. But when you stop them, game stops working, and you can't just save... How could you make the game to run again without starting it from fresh?

(Also when you'd be able to just save, wouldn't it destroy the challenge?)

Not a coder so don't know how this works but, if you are able to have a stable save-on-quit, what's stoppying you from copying the savefile? And if you CAN indeed copy / store savefiles, then isn't that a save system?

The challenge part isn't the point

 

[oscar]

Sounds like there's some very severe bugs in this build (Brynn is a ghost town due to NPCs not spawning correctly). I'd probably give it a few days (at least).

 

[Fedora Master]

I guess that's what happens when you rush the devs.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I guess that's what happens when you rush the devs.

you must be feeling proud of yourself.

 

[Fedora Master]

I guess that's what happens when you rush the devs.

you must be feeling proud of yourself.

's a joke dude, calm down.
I'm sure they'll patch out the problems in a timely man...

 

[jackofshadows]

Yeah, that's not only bugs. The content IS missing, they've admitted it.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/625960/discussions/0/3195862342469270066/

Внутренности зданий и оставшихся НПС планируется постепенно добавить в ближайшие пару месяцев.

(the interior of the buildings and the remaining NPCs are planned to be added over the next few months)

They obviously didn't want to postpone yet again so now we see... this. It's such a huge fucking mess.

Oh yeah and now some skills require certain level of attributes to unlock. Build variety you say?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I bought this game cheap back in early 2020 when it first came out. Seemed like a shell of a future game.

I realize it's still probably a long way away, but you guys think it will be good in like 2023?

 

[jackofshadows]

It's really tough to say even if we assume for a second that devs are 100% honest, making their dream game, just lack of experience or whatever is the reason for delays, reworks etc etc. The thing is that the game is fun even as is (bugs and other rawness aside) - that's true but level and I imagine even gear progression are intentionally flattened for testing purposes... or so they say. Which means if let's say they finally added x locations, quests and whatnot and progression would be smeared down all over that - overall impressions might change quite a lot, it could get simply boring and grindy. The quests, dialogues and all that seems fine for now but it's the Diablo-like progression and the combat what makes it fun, first and foremost.

Then again, that's assuming the best of them in mind. By assuming the worst there will be no game in 2023 either, just one or two more cities and more promises. Not like it bothers me personally that much, but I'm starting to see even watching this game's development as a complete waste of time.

 

[Salvo]

The constant delays were a red-flag already... don't want to shit on the devs but they should focus more on their game and less on twitter art teasers

 

[Jedi Exile]

I think the game was fun enough already even before the new update. I remember having a blast with it after I finally figured how to play properly. Would be sad if they never finish it, because it has a potential to be a modern classics.

 

[Tygrende]

I'm sure they'll patch out the problems in a timely man...

They sure are trying, game version went from 7.0.0 to 7.0.7 in a matter of 2 days. All hotfixes. I wouldn't call that early access at this point, more like paying for the privilege of alpha testing. But it is good they're fixing it fast, at least.

 

[Fedora Master]

That's actually good to hear.

 

[oscar]

Devs need a little bit of a kick in the pants to focus on what needs to be done (though I suspect a lot of the annoyingly trivial additions were just the result of having surplus artists still on contract with nothing else to do while the actual core content guys were stuck on something) but I'd hate to see them get discouraged and burn out too because this really has a huge amount of potential to shape into something awesome.