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 I hope you like stock art, this game's got a LOT of it. Being an indie title does have its drawbacks... In a world with Across the Obelisk and Monster Train and Griftlands and a dozen other games taking the genre in exciting new directions, an indie roguelite deckbuilder really needs to do something special with the formula to stand out. Erannorth Chronicles does this by being an open-world RPG. Rather than give the player a set path to tread, they're released into the kingdom of Folkswave to do as they will, traveling between towns, completing quests, collecting loot, leveling from a scrawny weakling into a nigh-immortal god and maybe getting around to finishing the main questline sooner or later, probably. It's a game with thousands of unique cards, hundreds of events, dozens of locations, and even with several hundred hours of playtime, I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface of certain systems. That sounds complicated... Erannorth's sole developer, Spyros Thalassinos, also known as [ER] Raven, has done his best to introduce new players to the game, creating both video tutorials and Steam guides, and being quite active on the series's official Discord. However, simplifying or streamlining the core design for the sake of mass-market appeal has never been on Raven's agenda; EC still retains the energy that only indie games can have, of something being made both by and for a single person, something that only that person could make, every inch covered with the fingerprints of their personal design philosophy, and what they want to make, regardless of how anyone else feels about it. It's a game I love dearly, one of my favorites ever, and that love alone would be motivation enough to LP it, and expose more people to this wonderful system and world. However, EC is also a very difficult game for a new player to get into. Even many prospective fans who aren't put off by the game's complexity and lack of in-game tutorial might become frustrated as they die over and over again with only a vague understanding of what they did wrong. As such, this will not just be a showcase of a game I love, but also an Informative LP, starting with the absolute basics of how to play, eventually expanding outward into everything from high-level deckbuilding strategies to the intricacies of the crafting system, and even modding, all with the aim of making Erannorth not just more visible, but more approachable. If even one person comes away from this thread motivated to give the game a try, or take another shot at learning it, I'll consider this a job well done. So how's this gonna work? EC is a game with many different difficulty modes and options how to play, and even more are added over time, as Raven continually works to create more content and address the game's shortcomings. As such, rather than focusing on a single run or a single character, I'll be taking a relatively brisk pace with each character's journey, success or failure, expanding outward with each run to explore the games from more angles, including slowly adding in the several major DLC added to the game since its release. I'll be picking our first character from one of the game's existing preconstructed builds, using it as a sort of 'tutorial run', introducing the very basics of the core systems and mechanics, before opening up a reader vote about how I'll be proceeding into the game proper, both regarding what kind of character I'll be making and how I'll be playing them. Anything else? My fellow Erannorth players, please, please resist the urge to "well, actually" my descriptions or explanations if I oversimplify or skim over something complicated, either mechanically or about the lore. There's so much depth to this game that if I don't make constant use of Wittgenstein's Ladder, we're going to get lost in the reeds forever and accomplish nothing. If I'm actually incorrect about something, or you have a question or need me to clarify, absolutely post it, but try to avoid over-explaining; avoiding information overload is the point. Though for new players, if you decide to pick the game up and have any sorts of comments or questions about the game, absolutely share those! I'll gladly do my part to help. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Jan 14, 2024 |
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Table of Contents Chronicle #0: Bethany, Seelie Monster Hunter (Quest) 0-00, Part 1: Character Sheeit 0-00, Part 2: Heart of the Cards, Guide Please! 0-01: A Girl and Her Dog 0-02: It's Only Natural Standalone Explanations Character Sheet Breakdown and Card Anatomy (Also included in Chronicle 0-00, Part 1 & Part 2) Town and Shop Screens (Also included in Chronicle 0-02.) External Links Erannorth Chronicles Steam Page Erannorth Chronicles Lorebook girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Apr 14, 2023 |
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Character Sheet Breakdown (Also included in Chronicle 0-00, Part 1, skip this if you haven't read that yet.)  That's a lot of information at once, but it gets easier if we break it down a section at a time. On the left, mostly cosmetic info, with Order being your law/chaos alignment and Karma being good/evil, which can matter for a few events. Your name or appearance can be changed at any time, but your gender is locked (which mostly just means you can't swap back and forth from 'generic stock female voice' to 'generic stock male voice'.) Along the top are the different character screen sections we're break down one at a time in a moment, but below those are all of our Attributes and Skills.  The three left-most icons are our Mastery, Erannorth's only metaprogression system. By completing areas, dungeons, runs, and so on, you earn Mastery Points. Get enough Mastery Points, and future characters that share a Race, Class, or Organization with the previous characters will receive extra points for raising their starting attributes and skills, in amounts that are minor by late-game, but very nice for getting a new build off the ground a little faster. There are no unlocks behind this system, it exists solely to encourage you to try making small tweaks on existing builds (and thus learning what you did wrong) rather than starting over with something completely different. Hit Points are about what you'd expect; when they hit 0, you die. Bethany starts with 69 HP, which is funny! That's the weed number!  Action Points are spent to play cards, usually between 0 and 3 AP per card, but some can go higher, occasionally even into double-digits. Bethany has a maximum of 16 AP, restoring up to 9 of it at the start of each round, with no modifiers currently raising or lowering that. Ally Limit was covered previously, but it should be mentioned that 2 is the default, though there are a few ways to lower it and many, many ways to raise it. Deck is our current deck size. The minimum size of your deck is decided by your race, class, and sometimes a few other factors, but is usually somewhere between 24 and 36. Handsize is the number of cards you draw from your deck at the start of each turn, up to that limit. So if Bethany already had two cards in her hand at the start of her turn, she'd draw three more. The minimum is 4, and the maximum is 7. Your main Attributes, basically the same six that everyone's been using since D&D was invented, impact many of your stats, including HP, AP (and AP/Turn), and even Handsize, but it also impacts how much damage your cards do. More on that when we get to Affinities. Mousing over each stat's little icon will tell you what it's used for, AND whether any of those modifiers will increase the next time you raise the stat. Next to that are your Skills. There are dozens of skills in the game, each with its own completely unique card pool, ranging from less than 50 for the smallest and most niche skills, to over 200 for some of the largest ones like Combat, Necromancy, and Nature Magic.The higher your skill, the more cards associated with that skill are accessible to you. Both Attributes and Skills are raised with Level up Points (LP), costing 1 point per stat or skill, with some caveats. For Attributes, from 17 and up, it costs 2 points to raise a stat, rather than just one. For Skills, you can't raise a skill level higher than your character level. (Both of these rules are ignored during character creation, which is how Bethany has 2 Marksmanship despite only being Level 1.) You usually gain 2 LP per level-up, as well as getting some through other rewards, including the fore-mentioned Mastery. Bethany started with 5 extra LP due to my Mastery, all of which I sunk into Attributes at the very start so I wouldn't have to explain them until right now.  Compared to all that, Affinities and Resistances are very simple. Your Affinities increase how much damage your own cards deal with the various elemental damage types, while Resistances reduce how much damage enemies deal. It's very late and I've spent longer talking about the sheet than I wanted so I'm going to leave it at that and break it down another time.  Perks include everything from your character's species and starting traits to various qualities they've picked up over the course of the game, and as such they can do anything from raising skills and unlocking or adding new cards, to changing the effects of those cards, to entirely unique effects you can't get anywhere else. Thankfully, you can hover over that little book above the word 'Modifiers' and get a nice, summarized list of all the changes your perks are making to your cards. Right now we don't have much, but we do have enough Perk Points to pick up a Level 1 Perk. I don't feel like explaining all of them and I'm sure you don't feel like reading them, so let's come back to that after we see what kinds of cards we have and what sorts of effects we might find valuable.  Progression seems like it'd be about meta-progression, but all these rewards are actually individually unlocked per-character, and include things like completing a certain number of challenges (quests/locations), or defeating a certain number of enemies. Just remember to check them whenever you level up and you'll probably be fine.  Equipment are cards you draw automatically at the start of each turn, and aren't factored into your handsize limit. Some play themselves as soon as they're drawn, while others you need to play yourself. They're formatted the same as any other card, so if I'm going to explain how equipment works, I should probably break down what all these numbers and symbols mean. Erannorth Card Anatomy (Also included in Chronicle 0-00, Part 2.)  Rather than bouncing around describing things in an order that'd make more sense explainedall at once, we're going to start at the very top of the card and work our way down. Then, I'll summarize again at the end. Once you get your head around how the cards work, everything else becomes much easier to fit into that puzzle. Along the top row, most cards have one or more gray gems. These gems are the card's Tier, which have different current and maximums levels on a per-card basis. In short, cards gain Action XP when they're played, gradually increasing their numerical effects like how much damage they deal or how much HP they restore. These gems will turn pink one by one as the card gains tiers, and then red once it reaches its maximum tier, the full potential of the card's power. Compared to that, Element is very simple, it's the type of damage the card deals. So it's also a good place to talk about how cards interact with things like your elemental Affinities. Cards will always automatically update it to how it functions for your current character, factoring in your stats, skills, perks, and anything else happening at the moment. You don't need to remember off the top of your head whether Bethany has a +2 or a +3 Air Affinity, or how that will change with time, or whether you played another card to boost it this turn. The game has already increased the amount of damage any Air card will do, before even showing it to you. It's very nice. As a side note, the 'All' element, referred to in a few places as 'Intense' damage, ignores Resistances entirely. AP Cost is easy to understand if you've played any other card battlers. You need to spend that many AP, or else you can't play the card. If you play a large number of cards in one turn, this cost starts to go up 1 AP at a time, a system called fatigue. How many cards you can play before you start taking those penalties is your Concentration, a stat I really wish was somewhere more obvious and visible on the character sheet so I wouldn't have to bring it up now. It usually starts at 8, but can be raised or lowered by various perks. On the opposite side of the card from the Element and AP cost is the Skill Requirement, with the symbol indication the specific skill needed for you to play the card, and the number indicating its level. Skills are also referred to as Expertises in the game's code and a few other places, but they mean the same thing. This card require a Conjuration skill of 1, with the number being red indicating we don't meet that prerequisite. If we raised our Conjuration, that number would turn green. Cards with a * instead of a number have no skill requirement at all and can be played by anyone, but still count as cards of that skill, which can be important for perk effects. While the Name of a card is obvious, this is also where the Quantity will show up (usually up to a maximum of three), as well as the card's Organization, if any. Each organization has a bank of cards exclusive to that group, usually focused into one or two major skills. Bethany's Organization is the Fae Alliance, a collection of elves, fay (sic), druids, and other adventurous nature-loving sorts dedicated to maintaining the balance of the elements and the protection of the natural world. They're one of Erannorth's unambiguous 'good guy' factions, with a focus on allies, healing, and support effects, especially in the Nature Magic and Marksmanship skills. You can absolutely make a Nature Magic-focused character without them being Fae Alliance, but it should be for a specific reason, such as wanting the benefits of another organization, as some of the best low and mid-level cards and perks tend to come from organizations. There's a lot to go over with card Effects, so I'll hold off on some of that until we get to deckbuilding and combat, but this is where you'll find everything the cards actually does, any other requirements for play, as well as various symbols that are basically keyworded effects that show up often enough to need a shorthand. Most of the most important ones to know all show up on this card, actually. The scroll means it Ignores Synergies, Synergies being a system where cards will sometimes give additional effects to the next card you play. Ignore Synergies cards will be 'skipped over', preserving the Synergy bonus until you play a card that accepts Synergies or end your turn. It's usually a downside, but there are ways to turn it to your advantage. The archery target marks the card as Ranged, which has no inherent effects but interacts with many enemy statuses. And down at the bottom, the lock is Morph, which just tells you that the card will gain additional effects if you meet a certain prerequisite, usually either having a specific skill or getting the card to a specific tier. We're not planning to take Illusion with Bethany, so what else this card does is a bit immaterial, but it can be a good way to get extra value out of cards that might otherwise be slightly sub-par. And finally, one that's actually simple. Autotarget is just whether a card will target you, an enemy, or an ally if you right-click it to play it without selecting a specific target. It's a small QoL feature, and a useful way to get through cards that don't have much in the way of interesting decisions to make (such as ones that only affect you, or hurts random enemies regardless of who you're targeting). Once more, with clarity: Tier: The card's 'level', raising and increasing the power of its effects as you play it more often. Element: The card's primary damage type. 'All'/Intense ignores Resistances. AP Cost: How many AP you need to pay to play the card. Goes up if you play a lot of cards in one turn. Skill Req: The skill you need and level it needs to be at. * cards can be played by anyone. Name: Also shows quantity and organization. Some cards are org-exclusive. Effect: Also includes symbolic keywords. Auto-updates based on your affinities and perks. Autotarget: Who the card targets if you right-click it. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Shop Screen Breakdown (Also included in Chronicle 0-02, skip this if you haven't read that yet.)  This is a lot to take in at once, so once again, I'm going to break it down into chunks, since that seemed to work well for helping people wrap their heads around the Character Sheet.  In the top right are the services offered at every town. We can also see the town's market tier, which is basically just an indicator of how strong of cards they'll sell you, ranked by the required rank in the Skill. At Tier 1, they'll sell us cards with a max skill level of 2, which is just fine for us, since we only just hit level 2 anyways, and it takes a very specialized build to start with more than 2 points in a skill. If you have any DLC, this is also where other NPCs related to those DLC will show up, some of whom are town-specific. But, for the base game, 90% of the time, every town is the same, and your options in them are as follows: Skip Time (Variable) - If you need to advance time for a few hours (such as if you arrive at town just before dawn), you can do so by paying a small Farthing cost based on how much time you want to burn. Usually, though, it's better to use... Inn (45 Farthings) - The Inn, which will advance time directly to the next morning, fully restore your HP and AP, and, most importantly for a Gauntlet run: Refresh shop inventory. All the cards and equipment we can buy from a town changes every day, and if you have a lot of Farthings to spend but aren't getting many ways you want to spend them, it can pay to hit the Inn and take another swing at it. Healer (175 Farthings) - Mostly useful in difficulties where time is at a premium (more on the Doomsday Clock... eventually), the Healer restores your HP and AP, and also removes all your negative status effects. Mostly only useful if you need a full heal but can't afford to wait around a day for your boo-boos to go away, but it can also be worth remembering if you happen to stumble into town with like 20 stacks of Envenomed and Bleed and so-on, and even fully restoring your HP isn't going to stop you from hemorrhaging health out of your entire face the first time an enemy looks at you funny. Rations (15 Farthings each) - Every character, be they herbivorous elves or undead sustained by dark magics, needs Rations in order to camp at night. Mostly useful in the open world, but there are a small handful of cards and enemies that care about them, too. You might as well stock up if you have the Farthings for it, it's not like they're expensive, and you can only carry a maximum of 4 by default. Essence (75 Farthings each) - I keep meaning to talk about Infused cards, and there keeps not being a good time for it, but if you need Essence to reload them, you can buy them in any town, in unlimited quantities, for 75 Farthings each. You can only carry 12 at once, and you'll burn through that very quickly with certain builds (mostly Inventors, who thankfully have ways of generating their own Essence), but most builds can get away with never buying any and either just using what they get from card rewards, or just treating Infused cards like any other consumable.  Below that is the transactions 'screen', which will show you confirmation of any purchases or sales you've made, as well as if a card you bought is now out of stock. The checkboxes allow you to filter cards you'll see in stores on future refreshes, blocking cards with a skill level of * and cards you can't use, and if you take one thing away from this update, make it this: Using this filter prevents those cards from showing up at all. That can be extremely good, if you need to find high-level cards and are tired of the shop inventory being clogged up by stuff you can't use or that everyone can use, or extremely bad, if you're using "I can't use that yet" as a guide for how you'll be leveling up. You should be messing with these two check boxes every time you deliberately refresh a shop stock, and may even want to mess with them before leaving town, to make sure the stock at the next town is what you want to see. ('Order by Expertise' is purely cosmetic, though, just showing cards with the highest minimum skill at the top and descending from there, instead of sorted by name. Have that one on or off at your leisure.) Each of the buttons below allows you to check out a different section of the shop stock, which we'll be going through one at a time to show off what they are and how you'd use them. Unless you're on a Doomsday Clock difficulty, checking the different parts of town takes no time at all, so feel free to browse and second-guess and window-shop to your heart's content.  If you're the kind of person who likes the idea of being a fantasy world merchant, Commodities are for you. In open-world games, different towns will have Imports, which they'll sell for cheaper than usual, and Exports, which you can sell them for more than usual. Some of them also have uses in either combat or crafting, or even a few location-specific events, but in gauntlet game modes, this section will mostly matter as "what do I do with these gems I found". (You sell them for fat stacks of cash.)  Weapons & Shields is specifically the shop section for items you hold in one or both hands. Each will be tagged as a Weapon, a Shield, or both, and weapons will be tagged with 1H or 2H, for if you can use a shield-weapon while using them. If you want to wield dual-Scimitars, you absolutely can, one in your Weapon slot and one in your Shield slot, and they'll both function normally, but if you want to use a two-handed weapon like a polearm or a bow, you'll have to pay that opportunity cost. This shop screen also very shows off that some equipment are better Quality versions of lower-skill ones, usually with a level requirement as well as a skill requirement. The names vary based on the item, but the card frame coloring is consistent: Brown upgrades to Green, which upgrades to Blue, which upgrades to Purple. Sometimes, a lower-skill equipment will be better for your specific build than a higher rarity one, either because of the skill requirements or because of a unique substat or ability that gets traded for something else, so it's not always a linear upgrade, but if you want something that functions similarly to your current weapon but with bigger numbers, keep an eye out for those greens.  Armors & Accessories cover the rest of your equipment slots, and unlike Weapons/Shield which have some granularity, you can only equip one item of each type at a time: Armor, Necklace, Ring, and Accessory, a catch-all that also includes things like hats and cloaks and anything that doesn't neatly fit into one of the other categories. Like Weapons & Shields, they can come in different Quality levels, but unlike Weapons, while some of them are Activable (sic), needing to be played for their effect to go off, others (like our Cloak) are Automatic, playing themselves as soon as we start our turn for no Concentration cost. The downside of this is that if there's an AP cost, it will be paid whether you want it or not, and some can even trigger retaliation or other effects from enemies before you have a chance to get defenses up, so be mindful of what you slap on because 'It's got no downsides!'  Actions are exactly what you'd expect, Action cards that can be added to your deck. As of this writing, there's no way to tell how many copies of a card are in stock except purchasing one and seeing if you get a 'Now out of stock' notice on your Transactions screen. If there isn't, you can buy another copy at a slightly higher price by just clicking the Actions button again. (This, despite seeming like a downside, is actually a very nice feature if you're like me and have a tendency to accidentally double-click when you only mean to single-click.) This is also the part of the shop screen most likely to have a large inventory, so don't forget to scroll down to see the rest of your options, especially if you're sorting Alphabetically instead of by Expertise.  Consumable & Trinkets are something I keep meaning to talk about, but in short, they're something you can pull out of your backpack mid-fight for a single AP, and then use during the fight. If you have a large variety of them available, the game will pick four at random, so try to avoid hoarding 'just in case' consumables if you've got something you need to regularly access. Trinket is basically just a tag to make a card show up in the combat backpack menu as though it were a consumable, even if it isn't. All consumables and trinkets can also be put into your deck like regular cards, and there are even a few mechanics that incentivize certain builds to do so, mostly (but not solely) associated with Alchemy and Invention.  Recruit Allies is empty right now, though I don't know how much of that is Bethany's current skill levels and how much is the town we're in. If there were any, we could 'recruit' them, which is basically just buying them like action cards, with the exception that you can't sell them back. Slavery is generally frowned upon in Folkswave. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Reserved
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Might edit this later, but right now I'll just say godspeed. I can't believe less than 10% of people have beaten a Quest mode run as of this post. I always try to run that before throwing a character into an actual campaign, just to see if the basic idea works.
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Chronicle 0-00, Part 1: Character Sheeit As of this writing, Erannorth Chronicles doesn't have an intro movie or anything of the sort. The game opens with a loading screen, and then boots you directly to the main menu. We'll be getting into some of these options a little more later, but Back is worth pointing out, as it's how you unpause if you open the main menu. Also special shout-out to the external links, especially the Discord Community, it's the best place to discuss the game. Pretty quiet most of the time, but people are happy to help new players, and Raven himself is quite active, responding to questions and bug reports and suggestions about how the game might be improved. Quick Challenge gives you a random build and I want a bit more control over our first experience than that, so we'll start with a standard New Character.   Character creation is a long, multi-step process deserving of a whole update on its own, so for now we're going to pick one of the preconstructed characters, the Fay Monster Hunter, Bethany. They're all very competently built, and function just fine with a minimal amount of tweaking. I don't necessarily agree with all of the choices, were I to make them myself, but it's good enough for a tutorial.   We can also select our character's name, gender, and appearance, all of which are purely cosmetic. There's a decent stock of available appearance options, especially if you pick up the official mod on the Steam Workshop that adds most enemy and NPC art to the player roster as well. Difficulty is much more important, as it not only determines how hard the game is, but also the scope, and adds or removes various special rules. We'll start with Quest, a linear series of fights, essentially three short areas or dungeons in a row. It's a good way to test out new mechanics or builds and make sure they function before you throw them out into the open world.  And with that, we're ready to begin. Again, no intro cutscene, just right into the world. Or, in this case, the hallway. We could just press right on ahead, but first, let's take a minute to get our bearings. On the bottom left we can see our character status, as well as various buttons for opening things like our card collection or our inventory of items. At the top left, the in-universe date and time. The date is purely cosmetic, but the time of day can matter for certain species and character builds. We have 200 of the standard currency, Farthings, which we'll be able to use to buy cards and items if we run across any merchants during our journey. Rations are mostly used in the open world while traveling. The 0/2 is our Ally Limit, the current and maximum number of temporary allies and summons we can have. I'll go over that more when it becomes relevant. Top center shows the trail ahead of us and what we can expect at each of the nodes, a series of fights and events that usually end in a boss of some sort. With Quest mode, three bosses is all we need to win. Top-right has menus, a combat log, and a very useful search function in case you don't know what a specific keyword, enemy, or mechanic is. And, at the bottom right, a button to make all our allies auto-attack, a button for camping (again mostly useful in the open world), our discard pile, and the Next Turn/next node button. Before we head on into what's almost certainly going to be a fight, though, we should really look at our character and what she can do, shouldn't we? That's a lot of information at once, but it gets easier if we break it down a section at a time. On the left, mostly cosmetic info, with Order being your law/chaos alignment and Karma being good/evil, which can matter for a few events. Your name or appearance can be changed at any time, but your gender is locked (which mostly just means you can't swap back and forth from 'generic stock female voice' to 'generic stock male voice'.) Along the top are the different character screen sections we're break down one at a time in a moment, but below those are all of our Attributes and Skills. The three left-most icons are our Mastery, Erannorth's only metaprogression system. By completing areas, dungeons, runs, and so on, you earn Mastery Points. Get enough Mastery Points, and future characters that share a Race, Class, or Organization with the previous characters will receive extra points for raising their starting attributes and skills, in amounts that are minor by late-game, but very nice for getting a new build off the ground a little faster. There are no unlocks behind this system, it exists solely to encourage you to try making small tweaks on existing builds (and thus learning what you did wrong) rather than starting over with something completely different. Hit Points are about what you'd expect; when they hit 0, you die. Bethany starts with 69 HP, which is funny! That's the weed number! Action Points are spent to play cards, usually between 0 and 3 AP per card, but some can go higher, occasionally even into double-digits. Bethany has a maximum of 16 AP, restoring up to 9 of it at the start of each round, with no modifiers currently raising or lowering that. Ally Limit was covered previously, but it should be mentioned that 2 is the default, though there are a few ways to lower it and many, many ways to raise it. Deck is our current deck size. The minimum size of your deck is decided by your race, class, and sometimes a few other factors, but is usually somewhere between 24 and 36. Handsize is the number of cards you draw from your deck at the start of each turn, up to that limit. So if Bethany already had two cards in her hand at the start of her turn, she'd draw three more. The minimum is 4, and the maximum is 7.Your main Attributes, basically the same six that everyone's been using since D&D was invented, impact many of your stats, including HP, AP (and AP/Turn), and even Handsize, but it also impacts how much damage your cards do. More on that when we get to Affinities. Mousing over each stat's little icon will tell you what it's used for, AND whether any of those modifiers will increase the next time you raise the stat. Next to that are your Skills. There are dozens of skills in the game, each with its own completely unique card pool, ranging from less than 50 for the smallest and most niche skills, to over 200 for some of the largest ones like Combat, Necromancy, and Nature Magic.The higher your skill, the more cards associated with that skill are accessible to you. Both Attributes and Skills are raised with Level up Points (LP), costing 1 point per stat or skill, with some caveats. For Attributes, from 17 and up, it costs 2 points to raise a stat, rather than just one. For Skills, you can't raise a skill level higher than your character level. (Both of these rules are ignored during character creation, which is how Bethany has 2 Marksmanship despite only being Level 1.) You usually gain 2 LP per level-up, as well as getting some through other rewards, including the fore-mentioned Mastery. Bethany started with 5 extra LP due to my Mastery, all of which I sunk into Attributes at the very start so I wouldn't have to explain them until right now. Compared to all that, Affinities and Resistances are very simple. Your Affinities increase how much damage your own cards deal with the various elemental damage types, while Resistances reduce how much damage enemies deal. It's very late and I've spent longer talking about the sheet than I wanted so I'm going to leave it at that and break it down another time. Perks include everything from your character's species and starting traits to various qualities they've picked up over the course of the game, and as such they can do anything from raising skills and unlocking or adding new cards, to changing the effects of those cards, to entirely unique effects you can't get anywhere else. Thankfully, you can hover over that little book above the word 'Modifiers' and get a nice, summarized list of all the changes your perks are making to your cards. Right now we don't have much, but we do have enough Perk Points to pick up a Level 1 Perk. I don't feel like explaining all of them and I'm sure you don't feel like reading them, so let's come back to that after we see what kinds of cards we have and what sorts of effects we might find valuable. Progression seems like it'd be about meta-progression, but all these rewards are actually individually unlocked per-character, and include things like completing a certain number of challenges (quests/locations), or defeating a certain number of enemies. Just remember to check them whenever you level up and you'll probably be fine. Equipment are cards you draw automatically at the start of each turn, and aren't factored into your handsize limit. Some play themselves as soon as they're drawn, while others you need to play yourself. They're formatted the same as any other card, so if I'm going to explain how equipment works, I should probably break down what all these numbers and symbols mean.  Oooooon the other hand, it's already getting late, and this is enough information for one post, I'll take a crack at it next time. Next Chronicle: Cards, deckbuilding, and the basics of combat!
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Apr 9, 2023 11:08
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Uh what the hell, I've never heard of this but it sounds rad. Did you ever play the Shandalar game? Is the gameplay loop here anything like that (go around doing quests, gaining cards, building your deck though in this case instead of magic it's a deck builder ofc)? God I miss that game.
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Apr 9, 2023 11:35
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silvergoose posted:Uh what the hell, I've never heard of this but it sounds rad. Did you ever play the Shandalar game? Is the gameplay loop here anything like that (go around doing quests, gaining cards, building your deck though in this case instead of magic it's a deck builder ofc)? God I miss that game.
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Apr 9, 2023 11:47
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Yeah, me too. I spent so many hours on that janky rear end game. Cool!!
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Apr 9, 2023 11:50
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How have I never heard of this until now? Excited to see how this plays, an open world deckbuilder sounds like it's right up my alley. I've been waiting for something to take another jab at the Shandalar gameplay.
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Apr 9, 2023 13:14
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Odd Wilson posted:How have I never heard of this until now? 
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Apr 9, 2023 13:51
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Oh hell yes, I'd never heard of this before but it looks like exactly my jam.
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Apr 9, 2023 14:27
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Oh man, I want this game now.
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Apr 9, 2023 14:37
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Odd Wilson posted:How have I never heard of this until now? 
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Apr 9, 2023 15:34
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I have a decent number of hours into the first game (Erannorth Reborn - yes, this is a sequel) but I'm already seeing some exciting differences like the challenges. Also of course, the art, because...well. The two biggest complaints about Reborn were "this is impenetrably complicated and weird" (fair but part of the appeal) and the art. You can see how Chronicles is immediately better.
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Apr 9, 2023 16:16
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The only thing I've ever heard about this game is people saying how it looks interesting but it breaks their brains to get into, so I look forward to following this LP with interest so I can see if I can get to the point where my brain will not break upon eventually trying it out. I'm also vaguely getting some Archmage Rises vibes, from my time playing that during Steam's last NextFest, as a fellow open-world, indie RPG with a whole bunch of complicated interacting systems, although that's more of a traditional dungeon-crawler than a deckbuilder. Jossar fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Apr 9, 2023 |
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Apr 9, 2023 16:18
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hmm yes, I do like cards. Will be keeping an eye on this.
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Apr 9, 2023 19:50
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You know you've got something special when the first update has zero gameplay and has to stop in the middle of explaining the rules because there's just too many rules to explain. I mean that sincerely! I'm the sort of guy who absolutely loves reading and figuring out complex rulesets, and even I had to nope the gently caress out of this game after a couple hours. This should be an interesting watch.
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Apr 10, 2023 02:20
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Chronicle 0-00, Part 2: Heart of the Cards, Guide Please! When we last left off, we were doing what many people did, and balking as soon as we saw what the cards actually look like. Now, we're going to break it down and come at it a piece at a time. If you ever need a refresher, a standalone version of this part of the update will be linked in the OP. Erannorth Card Anatomy Rather than bouncing around describing things in an order that'd make more sense explainedall at once, we're going to start at the very top of the card and work our way down. Then, I'll summarize again at the end. Once you get your head around how the cards work, everything else becomes much easier to fit into that puzzle. Along the top row, most cards have one or more gray gems. These gems are the card's Tier, which have different current and maximums levels on a per-card basis. In short, cards gain Action XP when they're played, gradually increasing their numerical effects like how much damage they deal or how much HP they restore. These gems will turn pink one by one as the card gains tiers, and then red once it reaches its maximum tier, the full potential of the card's power. Compared to that, Element is very simple, it's the type of damage the card deals. So it's also a good place to talk about how cards interact with things like your elemental Affinities. Cards will always automatically update it to how it functions for your current character, factoring in your stats, skills, perks, and anything else happening at the moment. You don't need to remember off the top of your head whether Bethany has a +2 or a +3 Air Affinity, or how that will change with time, or whether you played another card to boost it this turn. The game has already increased the amount of damage any Air card will do, before even showing it to you. It's very nice. As a side note, the 'All' element, referred to in a few places as 'Intense' damage, ignores Resistances entirely. AP Cost is easy to understand if you've played any other card battlers. You need to spend that many AP, or else you can't play the card. If you play a large number of cards in one turn, this cost starts to go up 1 AP at a time, a system called fatigue. How many cards you can play before you start taking those penalties is your Concentration, a stat I really wish was somewhere more obvious and visible on the character sheet so I wouldn't have to bring it up now. It usually starts at 8, but can be raised or lowered by various perks. On the opposite side of the card from the Element and AP cost is the Skill Requirement, with the symbol indication the specific skill needed for you to play the card, and the number indicating its level. Skills are also referred to as Expertises in the game's code and a few other places, but they mean the same thing. This card require a Conjuration skill of 1, with the number being red indicating we don't meet that prerequisite. If we raised our Conjuration, that number would turn green. Cards with a * instead of a number have no skill requirement at all and can be played by anyone, but still count as cards of that skill, which can be important for perk effects. While the Name of a card is obvious, this is also where the Quantity will show up (usually up to a maximum of three), as well as the card's Organization, if any. Each organization has a bank of cards exclusive to that group, usually focused into one or two major skills. Bethany's Organization is the Fae Alliance, a collection of elves, fay (sic), druids, and other adventurous nature-loving sorts dedicated to maintaining the balance of the elements and the protection of the natural world. They're one of Erannorth's unambiguous 'good guy' factions, with a focus on allies, healing, and support effects, especially in the Nature Magic and Marksmanship skills. You can absolutely make a Nature Magic-focused character without them being Fae Alliance, but it should be for a specific reason, such as wanting the benefits of another organization, as some of the best low and mid-level cards and perks tend to come from organizations. There's a lot to go over with card Effects, so I'll hold off on some of that until we get to deckbuilding and combat, but this is where you'll find everything the cards actually does, any other requirements for play, as well as various symbols that are basically keyworded effects that show up often enough to need a shorthand. Most of the most important ones to know all show up on this card, actually. The scroll means it Ignores Synergies, Synergies being a system where cards will sometimes give additional effects to the next card you play. Ignore Synergies cards will be 'skipped over', preserving the Synergy bonus until you play a card that accepts Synergies or end your turn. It's usually a downside, but there are ways to turn it to your advantage. The archery target marks the card as Ranged, which has no inherent effects but interacts with many enemy statuses. And down at the bottom, the lock is Morph, which just tells you that the card will gain additional effects if you meet a certain prerequisite, usually either having a specific skill or getting the card to a specific tier. We're not planning to take Illusion with Bethany, so what else this card does is a bit immaterial, but it can be a good way to get extra value out of cards that might otherwise be slightly sub-par. And finally, one that's actually simple. Autotarget is just whether a card will target you, an enemy, or an ally if you right-click it to play it without selecting a specific target. It's a small QoL feature, and a useful way to get through cards that don't have much in the way of interesting decisions to make (such as ones that only affect you, or hurts random enemies regardless of who you're targeting). Once more, with clarity: Tier: The card's 'level', raising and increasing the power of its effects as you play it more often. Element: The card's primary damage type. 'All'/Intense ignores Resistances. AP Cost: How many AP you need to pay to play the card. Goes up if you play a lot of cards in one turn. Skill Req: The skill you need and level it needs to be at. * cards can be played by anyone. Name: Also shows quantity and organization. Some cards are org-exclusive. Effect: Also includes symbolic keywords. Auto-updates based on your affinities and perks. Autotarget: Who the card targets if you right-click it.  Now that we know how to actually read a card, the last tab on the character sheet, the deckbuilder, will be much less daunting. We can see every card in our inventory, how many of them we have, and can decide how many we want in our deck (usually to a maximum of 3.) If we had any consumables we wanted to use out of combat, like a bedroll or a treasure map, we could do so by clicking the little purple backpack item underneath the card. The gears on the other side let you hide certain cards if you're tired of scrolling past if you know you won't ever use them, or even spend Farthings to increase a card's tier, though we don't have enough on us to do that anyways (and it's usually not worth it unless you're near your money cap). The various buttons on the left let you look at different subsets of your cards, like just consumables, or just equipment, which can be very helpful once your stock of available cards grows and you're starting to get overwhelmed by how many options you have. As for our current deck, looking at everything, we have a couple of cards we can't use, so we'll pull them out, and also a few cards that are consumables, and so don't need to be put in the main deck. (More on that later.) Once we take those out, and use the Filters system on the left, and press the Deck button to show us only the cards actively in our deck...  This is what we've got to work with. I could cut some cards out, slim it down to the minimum deck size (24 for Bethany), but for right now, let's assume I'm not sure what's good or bad and just look at all my options. It looks like most of our damaging cards deal Piercing damage, and are Marksmanship cards. But what's this 'Mark' keyword? It shows up on a few different cards, if only there was some way to-  Surprise, there is! By clicking the top left corner of any card (the element symbol), you'll open a detailed view of that card, explaining everything about it in plaintext, rather than the shortened version used to fit on card boxes. This can be done anywhere, at any time, and is a massive help in learning how cards work and what they do. Mark, one of the flagship mechanics of Hunting and Marksmanship, increases all damage that enemies take by 2 per stack of the Mark status. If we wanted an even more detailed explanation, we could click 'Mark' just below and the game would open the rulebook entry on mark and how it works. All the information you need to understand any card in the game is right here in front of you. The issue is just knowing where to look and how to interpret it.  Now that I've looked at my cards and see what they do, I can go back to the perks menu, and make a much more informed decision about what kind of perk I want. Given that Marksmanship is my highest skill, and my most numerous card type, and I'm not sure what other mechanics I might or might not run into, I pick On My Mark, which permanently buffs the Damage and Mark effects of all of Bethany's Marksmanship cards for the rest of the game, even ones with Ignore Synergies. If I went back to the deckbuilder again, you'd see that Fay Reflexes which was previously had Mark 1, now has Mark 2. It might even be a good idea to go back in, now that I know what perk I've chosen, and pull some cards out that don't mesh with my strategy so far, but again, we're assuming that I don't quite know what's good or bad, and even if I did, sometimes a combo you didn't think about can be unexpectedly powerful. 30's still a decently slim deck anyways, so how about we press on?  One last thing we want to do first, though. Pressing the Shuffle button in the bottom left under our character stats will completely refresh our deck, taking all the cards out of our hand and discard pile, and removing any extra or temporary cards that aren't in it any more. It's a very good idea to shuffle your deck whenever you're sure you're finished. Your deck also reshuffles automatically whenever you'd draw from an empty one, but in the mean time, you'd be stuck playing with a janky version of your deck, and probably left wondering why you're not drawing that swanky new high damage card you just paid an arm and a leg for. Now, properly equipped, with a deck we're happy with and at least somewhat understand, we can press on to combat.  We've moved on to the next node and, as expected, it's a fight. Enemy intentions and certain other information about them is hidden from you until the first time you kill one in any of your games, even if you immediately die afterwards, but both for teaching purpose and because I don't wanna loving deal with that, we'll be using my profile that already has almost (thought not quite) everything's stats and intentions unlocked. So I guess there is technically a bit more metaprogression. It mostly matters against bosses, since they tend to have the most unique effects and abilities. Our first set of enemies appear to be a rat dude, some kind of druid, and a dwarf with a club who wants to 1v1 Bethany. Down at the bottom, we can see the cards we've drawn for this turn. As expected, 5 cards from our deck because of our hand size, as well as our Equipment. Aside from the Silver Dagger, we also have a special cloak that played itself automatically, without costing us any Concentration. You can see to the left of Bethany that we still have 8 Concentration and, because of our cloak, 3 Defend, which will block that amount of incoming damage this turn. As for that little "CardXP+1" line, I'll just say that also came from the cloak, and we'll get onto what it means in a minute. First, let's look at our enemies in more detail.  Mousing over the rat thing lets us see its species, tags, damage type, and resistances, and we could do the same for the others, learning who's strong against what and which kinds of damage are likely to work best against who. Seeing what those intentions are, though, that'd be nice. And we can see that, too, by mousing over the intention itself, and then Alt + Click, you'll open the Intention. Every Intention is, basically, just an enemy-exclusive card with some enemy-exclusive effects and keywords, and you can look them up in the rulebook like any other.  So, by looking at the intentions, we can see that the Ratfolk intends to steal some of our farthings and run away, the druid wants to block and remove a bunch of statuses, and the dwarf wants to fight us. Single Combat is an especially important intention to watch out for, because the Duel keyword means that enemy will try to attack one of our allies, possibly killing them if their health is low. If we don't have any allies, it will instead attack us, with a bonus to its damage. That, plus the hefty stack of Vulnerable it throws on you either way afterwards, and Single Combat is easily one of the most dangerous early-game intentions, and if possible, it's almost always worth rushing that enemy down. That, plus the dispelling negative statuses doesn't impact what we do at all, and I want to show off how Concealment works. So, 1v1ing it is!  One of our cards, Snipe Shot, has another important card effect I didn't get to talk about before. The lightning bolt means it's a Reaction, and whenever you play any card, all Reactions in your hand are immediately discarded. I personally don't like them much, drawing more than one in a turn puts you in a no-win situation, they can end up getting discarded before you even had a chance to play if you draw one as part of a compound effect, or due to fuckery from enemy statuses. However, they do tend to be some of the most AP-efficient cards in the game, so if you find yourself regularly running out of AP mid-turn, consider slotting in a few Reactions and see if they help. By clicking on the card and then mousing over an enemy, we can see not only what that card will do, the enemy's relevant resistances, and the game's prediction about what will happen, but if we look at the card itself, we can also see that something else has changed: That black +1 XP line is a Synergy from the cloak, which will be applied to which ever card we play first. Snipe Shot doesn't Tier up, so the XP is wasted, but it still made a nice demonstration of Synergies. Which is good, because they're about to get a little more complicated.  The Critical line on our Snipe Shot triggered, so we just dealt 12 damage to that dwarf in one hit. That's probably weak enough to finish it with one more card, but I'd like to make sure. So why don't we look at this Hunter's Brew? A +3 bonus to damage seems pretty good. Let's go ahead and right-click that. We could also click it and then click Bethany, but because the autotarget on the bottom says 'self', we know that right-clicking will do the same thing for us.  Now our Silver Dagger, which previously had no chance of killing the warrior, has a very good chance. Not guaranteed, however, as all damage bonuses increase a card's maximum damage, with the minimum damage usually being half that, rounded down. So with both the Damage and Critical synergies, we still have a chance of dealing only three damage, but we also have a chance of dealing seven, or criticaling for definitely enough to kill. Not a nearly-guaranteed kill like using it on a Skirmish would be, but it's worth a shot.  Unfortunately, it didn't work out, though, so we end up still having to use a Skirmish to finish him off anyways. However, this does give me another opportunity. You may have noticed that all cards have elements, even ones that don't deal damage. And Resolve doesn't deal damage, but it also doesn't ignore Synergies. So, what would happen if we were to take the +2 Damage synergy, and apply it to Resolve?  What happens is that the game puts a new damage effect on that card, then adds all your usual bonuses like Affinities on top of that. It's a fantastic way to either get more oomph out of your Affinities by focusing on elements you're already good at, or expand your options vs. enemy resistances, by grabbing non-damage cards with elements you rarely play. If one of these enemies had a strong resistance to Piercing, we could use this trick with Resolve to deal Slashing damage instead.  They don't, but we still just barely miss out on killing the ratfolk. On the bright side, this also demonstrates that enemies' intentions can change during a turn based on the situation, so you can't always be 100% certain that your plan is going to work, especially if one of the enemies is going to heal others. Fun tip: Enemy actions happen in the order they're currently in play, and can be rearranged. If we wanted the druid to act before the ratfolk, we could just the little arrows next to their damage numbers, and move them around to make sure things happen in exactly the order we want them to. This can also be used for things like making sure one enemy dies from ongoing damage before its ally gets a chance to heal it.  Not that it matters in this case; the rest of the fight goes extremely quickly, without me getting a chance to show off what enemy Concealment actually does, since the rat dies almost immediately on the following turn, even to my attempt to cherry-tap it. We then murder the poo poo out of the druid soon after through the power of card synergies and damage multipliers. I do, at least, get to show off that all status effects, both good and bad, do show up when you mouse over an enemy. There's very little in EC that requires you to actually memorize anything, and even the things that do feel more like oversights than intentional design. I'll rarely be breaking down future fights as granularly as I did this one, there were a lot of mechanics to explain all at once, and in the future I'll be able to cherry pick which mechanics to show off when, so I can demonstrate them in more interesting situations and manners, now that the knowledge base of how the core game works is there.  With the last enemy dead, we're out of combat mode, and have time to tweak our deck again, look at other options, poke around in the camping menu, and so on. No matter what we do, we won't advance to the next node until we end our turn, but once we do, we will immediately advance on. No spending several turns buffing up your allies before you march into a boss fight. The next node is an event, and a specific kind of event no less, so I decide to wait on any more tweaking until we're on the other side of that.   Grimoire events are your most common way of getting new cards, especially in difficulty modes without the open world. They're always worth taking, rewarding you with either a new card, some XP and Perk Points, or, at worst, a useless 'Grimoire' trade good card that you can sell to a merchant. This one gives us the most common option, a choice of one from up to four new cards, picked from a weighted pool based on what skills we have and what level they are, thus making raising Skills useful not just for using better cards, but for having a better chance of getting those cards. Essence is a commodity card that, rather than being used itself, is used to 'recharge' certain magic items, those with the Infused tag. Useful, but not incredible, and we don't have any Infused cards we'd use it on anyways. Smoke Out and Camouflage are cards we already have the maximum number of copies of, so our only option is to gain a temporary version and put it into our hand, rather than a permanent version in our deck or Stash, our stockpile of available cards. Given all of that, Sturdy Rope is the obvious choice here. It provides the incredibly useful Stun status effect, with a 75% chance of making an unresistant enemy lose their next action. Damage breaks the stun effect, so you have to be a little careful about the order you play your cards in, especially when using cards that damage random targets, but having a very solid chance of making an enemy lose their entire turn, for a paltry 2 AP and no skill investment, is incredibly valuable in the early game. So useful, in fact, that rather than just put it into my Stash, I add it directly to my Deck.  And with that, the event is complete. Now would be a good time to re-evaluate my strategy, my options, which cards are pulling their weight and worth holding onto, and which might be better pulled out so we can get to our good cards faster. However, that's a whole process in itself, and this update's getting fairly long now. More to the point, though, this is the end of the necessary tutorial. I am fairly confident that, at this point, any enterprising reader could pick the game up, grab a precon character, and start fumbling their way through learning the game their own way. Which means Bethany might have served her purpose, and there's an argument to be made that I should move as quickly as possible to showing off the character creation and/or the open world, since that's what really sets Erannorth Chronicles apart from its contemporaries. However, there's also something to be said for providing an example of how a player might choose to advance a precon, and for elaborating on the strategies specific to Quest and other 'gauntlet' difficulties. There are arguments in both directions, and neither is inherently right or wrong. So, my readers, as an expression of gratitude for holding out this long, for wading through pages and pages of rules, I leave the choice up to you. That's right, it's time for some  audience participation! Do we Continue Bethany's Quest, carrying her through three stages of events and nodes and boss-fights, and move onto other options after? Or do we Start A New Character, jumping into the open world with both feet, and come back to the Quest difficulty at a later date, possibly with an entirely different character? Which difficulty, and what kind of character, will be a later discussion, if starting a new run wins. While I encourage you to make your cases in the thread, as well as asking any questions you may have, I'll be using I'll be keeping the vote open at least overnight, unless there's an immediate and definitive winner, and deciding how to proceed some time tomorrow. A bit short notice, yes, but with how much of this game there is to get through, and how many of these polls there will be, I need to keep them moving briskly or I'll lose all my momentum. It's not you, it's me.  And with a vote of 5 to 3, Bethany's adventure continues! girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 05:48
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I say Continue - I think it'd be helpful to keep truckin' and see what situations crop up that need explaining. Erannorth Chronicles rules, I played a bunch of the previous game (and Shandalar!), and it took me a while to get into Chronicles but I've played thirty-someodd hours in the past couple weeks. My recommendations for anyone who wants to get into it, but can't: -As GDE said, use the detailed card explanation every time you're confused about a card. Click the upper-left icon or alt-click, and you'll get all the details you need. -The autoplay feature is basically How You Play - more than just something to smooth things over occasionally, like 90% of the cards you're playing should be right-clicked and slammed directly on yourself or an enemy. Are there builds that change this? Sure. Are there situations where more finesse is required? Absolutely. But the majority of the time, you want to set an enemy as your target (the little circle under their picture) and just let the game handle the rest. And a more basic rules explanation that took me one game to technically have learned, but a few to really know (spoilered for people who don't want to be overwhelmed by rules explanations at this early stage): -Any cyan text on a card is Good Stuff That Happens To You, full stop, no matter who the card is played on. That Resolve cards says it heals 4 HP, so surely you don't want to play it on an enemy, even if it's modified to deal damage as well? Nah, it's greeny-blue text, so it's for you no matter what.
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Apr 10, 2023 07:07
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John Lee posted:it took me a while to get into Chronicles but I've played thirty-someodd hours in the past couple weeks. By the time I wrote my Steam review, three days after getting it, I had almost 40 hours in the game. Now, three months later, I've got almost three hundred. A decent percentage of that time has been from leaving the game open while answering messages or making shitposts on SA or working on my personal mods for the game, but that really doesn't do much to diminish how quickly and definitively it became a major part of my leisure time. I knew pretty much by the end of the first week that I'd be LPing Erannorth Chronicles sooner or later, but I wanted to spend enough time with the game and get good enough at it to really feel qualified to talk about it. Even now, I feel like there are people much, much better at the game than me, and I haven't even touched the hardest difficulties yet, much less completed them. But I know enough that I feel comfortable instructing others, and if my Pokemon and Final Fantasy LPs were any indication, I'll learn much more about this game by teaching it to others than I did just by playing it for myself. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 07:51
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I'll say continue so the thread has time to talk about what kind of character they want to see next. Just broad strokes. This way we don't come to a dead stop discussing all the different classes. And just forget about voting for subclasses. I'd like to see a pirate for the first Campaign character, personally.
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Apr 10, 2023 07:56
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habituallyred posted:I'll say continue so the thread has time to talk about what kind of character they want to see next. Just broad strokes. This way we don't come to a dead stop discussing all the different classes. And just forget about voting for subclasses.
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Apr 10, 2023 08:00
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I vote for Start a New Character because the full Character Creation deserves to be seen in all its glory, and there are far more interesting character concepts than Bethany here.
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Apr 10, 2023 08:33
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One thing that kept tripping me up during my brief time in this game was the way Synergies made it harder to tell where and when I should be playing my cards. To use an example from this update, Resolve is purely a self-buff, so it seems obvious to play it on yourself. But add a damage Synergy to it and play it on yourself, and you'll end up damaging yourself, too. On the other hand, play it on an enemy and they'll take the damage, but you still get the buffs. I'm guessing the green text means "this effect happens to you, the player, regardless of where you play this"? I get that the idea of Synergies is that you can set up bonkers combos with them, but the downside is that Synergies can also end up changing your future plays in unexpected or detrimental ways. Which is probably fun as hell to figure out as an experienced player, but as a newbie that poo poo is annoying. Even as the "noob" precon, it felt like the game was expecting me to fully engage with Synergies from the word go, and I just wasn't ready. It's one of the reasons why I'm looking forward to seeing this game played by someone who actually knows what they're doing.
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Apr 10, 2023 08:47
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I say we make a new character, no reason to really put it off and the basics can be explained as they come up. I have one question: cards seem to level up as you use them, which makes enough sense in a game like this as your character learns the technique or whatever, but is that progression per that specific card or all copies of that card. Like, if I have three copies of 'Big Ol' Haymaker', will I have to level all of them separately or do they share their progression? girl dick energy posted:I actually have a slightly goofy idea for how I might take character suggestions without getting overwhelmed, and still leaving myself plenty of room to creatively interpret. Everyone gets to submit a write-in vote, as vague or specific as they want, for what kind of character I should make, with only a single rule: Your vote must be exactly one word long. I like it 
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Apr 10, 2023 09:39
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I’d want to continue with Bethany just to see how Quest ends, honestly. Also arghhh game go on sale I want to play youuu
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Apr 10, 2023 11:12
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Theantero posted:I say we make a new character, no reason to really put it off and the basics can be explained as they come up. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Apr 10, 2023 |
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Apr 10, 2023 11:45
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Voted to stick with Beth for now. Good to learn our basics up front and see what we're up against before we inevitably disregard all we've learned in a chaotic bout of character creation.girl dick energy posted:I actually have a slightly goofy idea for how I might take character suggestions without getting overwhelmed, and still leaving myself plenty of room to creatively interpret. Everyone gets to submit a write-in vote, as vague or specific as they want, for what kind of character I should make, with only a single rule: Your vote must be exactly one word long. This sounds great and i can't wait to see how it plays out.
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Apr 10, 2023 14:43
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Bethany's adventure continues! Update coming today.
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Apr 10, 2023 16:17
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:One thing that kept tripping me up during my brief time in this game was the way Synergies made it harder to tell where and when I should be playing my cards. To use an example from this update, Resolve is purely a self-buff, so it seems obvious to play it on yourself. But add a damage Synergy to it and play it on yourself, and you'll end up damaging yourself, too. On the other hand, play it on an enemy and they'll take the damage, but you still get the buffs. I'm guessing the green text means "this effect happens to you, the player, regardless of where you play this"? One thing that I neglected to explicitly mention: the autoplay is *context-sensitive.* In the situation you describe, the autoplay would appropriately play the card on the enemy, to get the damage on them while giving you the buffs.
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Apr 10, 2023 17:28
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John Lee posted:One thing that I neglected to explicitly mention: the autoplay is *context-sensitive.* In the situation you describe, the autoplay would appropriately play the card on the enemy, to get the damage on them while giving you the buffs.
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Apr 10, 2023 17:55
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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1580800/Erannorth_Chronicles/ It's on sale for 11$ and IN my steam library yessssssssssssssssssssss
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Apr 10, 2023 18:10
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Dammit I guess I should get it huh
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Apr 10, 2023 18:23
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StrixNebulosa posted:https://store.steampowered.com/app/1580800/Erannorth_Chronicles/ Just finished taking the screenshots for the next update, and it's gonna end up being a touch longer than I expected, so it might not be out until tomorrow.
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Apr 10, 2023 18:55
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Goddammit I bought the game this morning before it went on sale and already played more than two hours. 
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Apr 10, 2023 19:18
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pumpinglemma posted:Goddammit I bought the game this morning before it went on sale and already played more than two hours.
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Apr 10, 2023 19:26
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After beating one of the first big quests by the skin of my teeth on the easiest difficulty, instead of wanting to play more.... my brain is clamoring for me to try a new character and see what other deck synergies there are. oh god help
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Apr 10, 2023 19:48
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girl dick energy posted:If it makes you feel better, that's $20 going straight to a solo indie developer who uses the money from sales of the game and DLC to keep supporting himself while he works on further updates for the game and DLC.
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Apr 10, 2023 21:40
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