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

[just]

i regret buying this game like no other
wish i could give it to someone but cant even do that
no refunds

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/625960/Stoneshard/

Devlog: Survival​

Hello everyone!

Over the last couple months, we’ve received a lot of feedback and justified criticism about drastically increased travel times and long distances between Points of Interest.

We’d like to assure you that the current version of the global map is far from final. In addition to obvious tweaks to distances between locations, which will happen in the next major update along with the saves wipe, we also plan to implement a number of systems and mechanics focused on making the open world exploration less time-consuming and tedious. One of these additions is the Survival tree that will soon be introduced to the game.

Spoiler

The main purpose of this ability tree is to help your character weather the hardships of mercenary life, giving them a better chance of surviving the wilderness without a sizable stash of supplies. It’s worth mentioning that over the course of development Survival and Medicine ability trees were merged together, allowing us to remove unnecessary fluff and fully focus on the synergy between some of their skills.

Let’s start with the ability tree’s overall structure. It consists of 6 active and 5 passive skills:

Survival skills are acquired in the usual manner - first, you need to unlock them by finding a corresponding treatise or improving relevant Attributes, then you purchase whatever you need with Ability Points. There is a caveat though: the first tier of Survival is unlocked for every character by default.

On top of that, Survival skills have much lower Attribute requirements than other ability trees: in order to unlock the second tier, you’ll only need to invest 3 Stat Points into relevant Attributes, and the third tier becomes available right after you spend 5 SP.

Active Abilities

• “Skinning” was moved to the Survival tree where it belongs, and you’ll need to spend an Ability Point before you can use it. At the same time, we greatly increased the price of most pelts, making hunting so much more profitable.
  
  With the exception of these tweaks, the skill remains the same - the chance to harvest a pelt still relies on the damage type you kill a creature with.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• “Campfire” allows you to start a fire at any suitable location. To do so, you’ll need four sticks - a new item that is aplenty in the woods. This campfire has the same functionality as the ones you find when exploring the world: it can be used for cooking, drying your clothes, and to empower some of the ability tree’s skills.
  
  The campfires you make only exist for a limited amount of time: they go out after 6 in-game hours.
  It’s the only skill in the ability tree that doesn’t need to be purchased with Ability Points - all characters start with “Campfire” already learned.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• “Make a Halt” allows you to combine a pelt, a length of rope, and some straw to craft a new single-use consumable - a sleeping bag. Sleeping bags give you an option to sleep and save your progress in suitable locations far enough from dungeons, settlements, and points of interest.
  
  Sleeping this way is rather uncomfortable and doesn’t provide the benefits of resting in an actual bed: you’ll suffer a penalty to Health Restoration, won’t replenish Morale and Sanity, and won’t receive the Vigor effect. Additionally, there’s always a distinct possibility of being ambushed by brigands or wild animals that can stumble onto you while you're asleep…
  
  Investing into this skill is completely optional, and it is possible to purchase sleeping bags from some traders. Still, being able to craft them yourself will save you money and inventory space - it’s fairly easy to find the required items while exploring, and the materials themselves don’t take as much space as an actual sleeping bag.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• “Cauterize Wounds” is great for emergencies: this skill allows you to instantly stop all Bleedings, suffering some Pain and slightly damaging affected body parts in the process. Using this skill will also temporarily increase your Bleed Resistance. This bonus becomes stronger and has a longer duration if there’s a lit campfire nearby.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• “First Aid'' teaches your character the procedures necessary to set a dislocated limb or clean a wound without outside help. This skill stabilizes all your Injuries, but raises Pain and reduces Morale.
  If there’s a lit campfire nearby, this skill slightly improves the condition of Injured body parts.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• “Will to Survive” replenishes a small amount of Health and removes all physical and mental debuffs. This skill also affects persistent Conditions (effects caused by Hunger, Thirst, Pain, Injuries, etc), removing them for 10 turns.
  
  If there’s a lit campfire nearby, using this skill additionally replenishes some Health for every removed negative effect.

Passive Abilities

• “Pathfinder” improves the “Examine Surroundings” basic skill, granting it new functionality.
  Firstly, when used on the surface, it allows you to spot tracks left by beasts and other enemy types, making it much easier to locate them on the map tile.
  
  Secondly, “Examine Surrounding” lets your character to closely listen to what’s happening around them, displaying hidden creatures as question marks in a large radius. This skill works in dungeons as well, allowing you to better prepare for dangers that lurk behind closed doors.
  
  And finally, “Pathfinder” greatly increases your character’s passive chance to hear nearby creatures.
  
  Passive bonus: +1 Vision
  
  
• “Huntmaster” significantly improves the chance to successfully harvest a pelt. In addition to this bonus, it allows your character to extract rare ingredients that can later be sold at a high price (in the future they will have alchemical uses). Right now there are three rare ingredients: Bear Fat, Crawler Eyes, and Harpy Stomachs.
  
  “Huntmaster” also grants your attacks +15% Weapon Damage and 10% Crit Chance when fighting beasts. As a side note, the Ancient Troll counts as a beast.
  
  Passive bonus: +3% Accuracy
  
  
• “Adaptability” is a skill for those who want to shrug off anything that life throws at them. It passively improves the rate at which you recover from Pain and Intoxication, decreases the duration of Poisonings, Bad Trips, and Drug Aftermaths, while also removing Restoration penalties when using a sleeping bag. Other than that, “Adaptability” improves your Morale when resting near lit campfires.
  
  Passive bonus: +10% Fortitude and 10% Intoxication Resistance
  
  
• “Austerity” makes your character less reliant on food and water, raising the thresholds for negative Conditions caused by Hunger, Thirst, and Pain by 10% (these Conditions will activate only upon reaching 35% / 60% / 85% thresholds rather than 25% / 50% / 75% ).
  
  This skill also decreases Hunger and Thirst gain by 20% and makes resting near campfires more beneficial, granting Healing Efficiency and restoring Sanity.
  
  Passive bonus: +15% Pain Resistance
  
  
• “Ever Vigilant” is perhaps the most “combat-oriented” skill of the Survival tree. Once learned, it lowers the Accuracy of enemy attacks by 5% and halves their Crit Chance (this is particularly useful when hunting bears).
  
  It also halves the chance of ambush when using a sleeping bag, doubles the chance of evading a trap instead of activating it, and reduces the Vision penalty while in the Rest Mode.
  
  Passive bonus: +5% Dodge Chance

==========

That’s all for now. As mentioned above, the Survival tree will be added with the next intermediate patch, so you’ll soon have a chance to test it out for yourself!

 

[Sykar]

i regret buying this game like no other
wish i could give it to someone but cant even do that
no refunds

Guess you bought it from this guy

Big mistake!

 

[Tyranicon]

After spending some time on this, I'm amazed by the engine and its potential (I believe it's some custom version of GameMaker Studio?). Especially when combined with the stellar pixel art.

I would pay a very pretty penny to license their dev version of GMS wholesale, but that's not gonna happen.

That being said, what's the codex opinion on the combat and skill tree? It seems rather lacking... and that's strange considering the meat of the game is combat (outside of being a left click simulator).

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

I would pay a very pretty penny to license their dev version of GMS wholesale

It's just GMS2 with marketplace extensions and in-house code that has some really questionable quality when it comes to optimization, dude.

 

[Tyranicon]

I would pay a very pretty penny to license their dev version of GMS wholesale

It's just GMS2 with marketplace extensions and in-house code that has some really questionable quality when it comes to optimization, dude.

Brb, going to hire some pixel artists and make a gazillion dollars.

 

[Tygrende]

I would pay a very pretty penny to license their dev version of GMS wholesale

It's just GMS2 with marketplace extensions and in-house code that has some really questionable quality when it comes to optimization, dude.

Brb, going to hire some pixel artists and make a gazillion dollars.

I'm confident that if you put effort into it, you can make Stoneshard before Stoneshard devs.

 

[Sykar]

How long ago did they add pyro and geomancy again? 2 years? How many trees are missing? 6? And in total? Can the developers maybe start finishing ONE aspect instead of being all over the place?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

PIXEL DUCKS? Where!??? SCREENSHOT QUACK!!!

 

[The Wall]

Compared to Realms Beyond and most of Steam Early Access games , Stoneshard's development is turbo-alive. Received dozen+ patches and content updates in past year, map grew in size 10×+, new skill trees added, new quests, first big city, bunch of new immersive sim-like mechanics etc. Game is fun and playable

Kenshi was in development for 10+ years, Starsector is being developed for 9+ years, Stellar Tactics is for 6+ years in Early Acces, Underrail has been in full development for 6+ years and in Early Access for 3+, same for Age of Decadence. Grimoire was carried in mother Cleve's womb for 20+ years. My point? Game exists, can be played for 20h+, bunch of content is already there, regular updates and communication with community, clear road map exists, and most importantly is: fun. Devs could work on their focus, but they've been for exactly 2 years in EA on Steam. What's the origin of doom & gloom in thread? Learn patience or I dunno, get a job/bitch to fuck/job/life. If Stoneshard is your entire life, while hundreds of other games exist, I dunno what to tell you. Especially considering many Codex darlings were 2×/3×/10× longer in development

 

[The Wall]

More and more completely irrational behaviour, turbo autism, and aggressive sperging is happening on Codex. People arguing for 9 pages about definition of "blobber" in Top 10 Vintage RPGs thread, mad shit like that. Probably toll of living in Age of Mad Clown

Anyway: Stoneshard is alive, fun and developing towards greatness. Devs have unusually large balls for game Devs: zero SJWism and very little listening to cries of Steam Babies about game being haRRRd. Play it

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

More and more completely irrational behaviour

Such as double posting instead of editing a post.

turbo autism

Complaining about people complaining.

and aggressive sperging is happening on Codex.

Just imagine that I quoted your first post here.


I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to get at here, you listed a bunch of games with long development schedules (okay?) and a few that were in early access (and got shat on for years until they were basically compl- wait a minute).
I'm pretty sure you could even take your own advice of "Learn patience or I dunno, get a job/bitch to fuck/job/life." and come back to the thread when the game is fully done, and it'll probably be all sunshine and rainbows with people discussing how much fun they're having.
Until then, it's "Stoneshart update.. bad!" till the morale content improves.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Such as double posting instead of editing a post.

The guy can't afford to edit.

 

[Naerydan]

Turbo autism, what a concept. I love this forum.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

"hey Rembrandt, why make 2 paintings, just fit them into one lol"

Don't knock that notion so easily, we're talking a 50% reduction in canvas and framing costs here.

 

[Agesilaus]

Replaying this game with the new patch, ironman of course. It's a fun game, I agree they definitely should have implemented more than 2 magic schools by now, and the survival skillset is less than inspired, but whatever game still good. I am playing a geomancer right now, interesting playstyle and much different than my two handed sword character (who died horribly to some overpowered, halberd wielding undead).

 

[almondblight]

Starsector is being developed for 9+ years

Not sure what your using as a starting point, but the pre-order for Starsector (then called Starfarer) started about 11 years ago.

 

[Agesilaus]

KILLED BY BULLSHIT SPIDERS FUCK THIS GAME

 

[Brickfrog]

After spending some time on this, I'm amazed by the engine and its potential (I believe it's some custom version of GameMaker Studio?). Especially when combined with the stellar pixel art.

I would pay a very pretty penny to license their dev version of GMS wholesale, but that's not gonna happen.

That being said, what's the codex opinion on the combat and skill tree? It seems rather lacking... and that's strange considering the meat of the game is combat (outside of being a left click simulator).

I really like the status effect management and limb damage system. I play a lot of dungeon crawl stone soup and I love that stone shard asks the player to manage severe maluses that come with combat with a darkest dungeon style limited inventory of necessary tools/items. It makes the traditional "bump until one of you dies" roguelike gameplay about a million times more dynamic. I think they made a mistake by leaving in placeholder icons for unimplemented skills. It's just a huge cocktease.

I think everyone here pretty much agrees that the foundation of stone shard is good and cool, right? No one complains about slow development of shit games after all.

I agree with Wall. The game is clearly being updated consistently and people talking about waiting two years as though it's a long time for this genre are being a bit impatient.

 

[notpl]

The thing is, with every passing year in development, the odds increase that the game simply won't be finished at all. Realistically, how many years can a person go before a catastrophic life-changing event? Just dropping dead of a heart attack? Wife gets cancer? I've seen both of these things cause games to be abandoned in my lifetime. It doesn't even have to be something bad. If the programmer gets offered a 300k/year coding job at google, do you think he's going to keep working on this crap? If I paid for a game in 2018, and there was no realistic chance of it coming out before 2025, I'd be pretty nervous.

Mind you, I didn't pay for the game, because I'm not an idiot who buys theoretical games, but I think complaining about slow progress is perfectly valid. The games which come out after 7+ year waits are the notable exceptions, not the rule. Entropy usually wins.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

If they post consistently and show their progress then that is infinitely better than what Stirring Dragon does by shitting on their investors and showing nothing. I'll scratch my head at Stirring forever.

Stoneshard I have belief it will get finished (but who knows...)

 

[Tyranicon]

If the programmer gets offered a 300k/year coding job at google.....

IIRC, the dev is a small team in Russia. Game is selling very well, probably near the top for small team cRPGs. They've already made millions, so I don't think money at least is an issue right now.

I'd be much more worried if their artist gets poached.

 

[Brickfrog]

The art is so absurdly good by the standards of the genre

 

[Tyranicon]

Harthwain

https://steamdb.info/app/625960/graphs/

 

[Tygrende]

The game is clearly being updated consistently and people talking about waiting two years as though it's a long time for this genre are being a bit impatient.

It's not impatient to expect features to be delivered on promised time and to be annoyed with endless delays. There's a subtle difference between taking long and being late.