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Ah well, for  , I might as well take the plunge...
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Apr 10, 2023 23:46
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Well, dang.  This game looks irreducibly complex - too complex for me. I'm glad we get to watch you play it! Looking forward to seeing how this goes. (I'm also sad there's not more metaprogression, but there's still so much Rules to take in as it is...)
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Apr 11, 2023 00:31
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Quackles posted:Well, dang. Erannorth Reborn has more meta-progression. Mastery locks off cards in that, among other things. The tradeoff is you have to deal with That Art. And it already looks like Chronicles is a significant upgrade in a number of other ways too.
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Apr 11, 2023 03:00
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Bought this game on sale, stumbled through the quest mode playing the demon guy, no idea wtf I am doing.
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Apr 11, 2023 12:00
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Chronicle 0-01: A Girl and Her Dog With a final result of 5 to 3, folks have voted to continue Bethany's Quest, explaining situations as we go. I'll be focusing primarily on how I'd theoretically advance a character I only partially understood, based on the options in front of me, rather than any long-term plans for where I want the character to go. This will be significantly more helpful as a way to learn precons without leaving new players feeling as though they need to completely understand everything about a character's skills to have any chance of victory.  I also got mildly hecked by a quirk of how saving works in Erannorth. It remembers the last node you fully completed and left, and resets back to that when you reload. Which, unfortunately, means a different grimoire result than in our first run. I'm not complaining too much, Perk Points are always appreciated, but it does mean we won't have any Stun to play with for a bit.  Without the rope, this is the 24 card deck I created from our starting cards, pulling out Hunter's Brew and Target Practice. Hunter's Brew is an Alchemy card, rather than anything we have perk preferences with. That, plus I'm also just not the biggest fan of cards that don't really do anything themselves. I pulled Target Practice for being unreliable and, unlike a card like Smoke Out, not really having any unique utility to make up for it. Even against a single enemy, three 2-5 damage hits means any Resistance is going to be applied three times, and while Affinities are applied to each hit, even Damage Synergies would only apply to the first, unless it was specifically synergies for random-target damage. Smoke Out is also on the chopping block for being a damage type we don't care much about and somewhat inconsistent, but it stays for now because the damage variety IS nice and we don't have any other ways to get rid of Cover. We'll talk about Cover soon, but the short version is that it hoses Ranged builds like ours if we don't have counterplay. That's a lot of information that comes from experience, though, and I can't expect a new player to have that strong of a grasp on their starting cards. So, if you're ever stuck and don't know what to pull, another option is to start by removing one copy of lots of things, adding back in and removing on a fight-by-fight basis as you figure out what you're happy to see more of and what you wish you saw less of.  After finalizing that and shuffling, on we go to the next fight! There's nothing special about the wolf, and the fungus is only really notable for having an 85% chance to resist Bleed, but the Harmless Frog is special, and I wanna show off what Playful Leap does, rather than just telling you, so it gets to live. I end up holding onto Smoke Out despite it being technically playable, because I'd rather hold onto it for any future enemies we might run into where it'd be more actively useful. It means we'll draw one less card next turn, but this isn't a fight where that's going to be make-or-break.  The fungus's Flank threw a bunch of stacks of Vulnerability on me, with Vulnerability acting for the player like anti-Defend, at an exchange rate of 2 Defend for 1 Vulnerability. Since I didn't have enough Defend to remove to cancel it all out, the rest instead gave that specific enemy a damage bonus. If you're going to take Flank from several sources, it can pay to rearrange enemy actions so you take it from the strongest/most threatening enemies first, and the ones you can deal with quickly afterwards, so you don't have to deal with strong enemies getting even stronger. (Also, so you don't get hosed up quite so bad if halfway through, some of them change their intentions because of your new Defend-less status and decide to smack you in the face instead.) You may have also noticed a new card in our hand, one that looks suspiciously like a certain enemy on the field. That's because the frog is one of a small group of enemies I like to call friendlies, enemies that will give you a way to unconditionally Befriend them on their first turn, completely removing them from the fight, and only start fighting you afterwards, or if you damage them enough to change their intentions. Because of a deliberate quirk of timing rules, we don't have a chance to play Playful Leap before it gives us a stack of Envenomed, which will deal a small amount of damage, but we both can and should play it immediately afterwards. 4 AP is a small price to pay to completely remove an enemy from a fight, even this early in the game. Because the card has a specific targeting requirement, Target Frog, it will fail on enemy that isn't a Frog, but we can right-click, and the game will automatically point it at a legal target if it can find one. This is also true of any other targeting requirement, from Target Self to Target Undead Ally. If you aren't sure what qualifies as what, an enemy's species and subtypes are always visible in its mouseover text, even if you haven't beaten it yet.  You can see that playing Playful Leap not only gave us a new Harmless Frog card, it also gave us 2 XP; Befriending enemies, or removing them in any other way, still gives you the same rewards as killing them normally. This Harmless Frog is an ally, a creature we can put into play to assist us in combat. Allies have all the same attributes as normal skill cards, as well as three ally-specific stats, and optionally, one or more abilities. HF has 0 Power, marking it as Passive, it won't ever deal any damage to our enemies, and will essentially ignore orders we give it to attack. It's harmless! It has only a single point of Health, so any amount of damage will kill it, and it has a Lifespan of 4, meaning it'll stick around for 4 turns before dying automatically. In addition, Harmless Frog has a Demise Ability, giving us some HP and AP when it dies. 3 HP and 3 AP, which happens to be exactly as much HP as we'll lose from Envenomed, and almost as much AP as we lost playing its Playful Leap. Little guy just wanted a friend.   The fungus is specifically a Murkith, which are one of the many species of monster in the game with a vulnerability to Silver. And our Silver Dagger just so happens to double any damage it deals to Silver-weak enemies. Its murder is swift and brutal. (You can also see its resistance to statuses was reduced, but that's a whole other kettle of fish I'll get to later.) We get only a single point of experience, but it's XP! On to the next event, a caravan!   Huh. I had been under the impression this only happens at night. Well, I guess we'll talk about shopping another time. For now, I decide to go ahead and help myself to their stuff, pinging me with -2 Order, but also letting me help myself to some of their stuff. There's no downside to this aside from the slight Order hit, so feel free to get up to a little light shoplifting if you get the opportunity. In my case, crime absolutely does pay, giving me both a new weapon more suitable for Bethany's build, and an Infused consumable item. Not a particularly spectacular one, but hey, sometimes you've got more murder in your heart than cards in your hand, and items like Bolts are useful for that. (More on consumables and other backpack items later.)   The next fight is against a bunch of Galdorak, Folkswave's answer to orcs. They can be very threatening in large numbers, but they're weak to silver and also to getting murdered by Bethany. They don't even get an entire paragraph to themselves before I move on to the next grimoire event, and get Perk Points again. 10 more and I'll be able to get an extra Level 1 perk! Plus the little bit of XP here and there adds up, too.   The question mark before the boss can be just about anything. This time, we got a fairly common Unique Event, The Poet and the Pond. This can end up going all sorts of ways, depending on your character's skills and attributes, but we fail to meet the prerequisites for any of the interesting ones. Instead, we just get Gloom, an incredibly unhelpful card that I'm stuffing into my Stash and never pulling out. Effortless and 0 AP is nice, it means it doesn't cost either Action Points or Concentration to play, but the effect is completely useless for us, and even at max Tier, it only kills enemies with 16 HP or less. Picking random targets and letting us apply damage synergy to random targets could be neat, if we decided to lean that direction, but I don't think I'm going to. That's more a build for Alchemy-focused characters (as implied by the stats on Hunter's Brew), and Bethany doesn't even have Alchemy as a skill she can raise. Basically, it's a consolation prize instead of any of the cool cards and events we could've gotten.   Our next node, and the final one this update, has our first boss. Rouglio Shadowhands isn't particularly dangerous, nor does he have any resistances worth worrying about, and his allies are actually more threatening than he is. But they're also a cool opportunity to show off another mechanic, so I'm not going to try to rush him down, even though I'm pretty sure I could if I wanted. The woman next to him is an Inconspicuous Informant, another friendly. Which just leaves the last goon, who's going to try to poison me, to get murdered by arrows. The last couple shots still go into Rougie's face, which isn't enough to change his intentions. I even, entirely by accident, happen to screenshot with my mouse over another neat feature. You can select something as a Priority Target and not only will right-clicks target that enemy if possible, so will your allies. Nice little quality-of-life feature.   Unlike Frogs, who just poison you before letting you befriend them for 4 AP, Informants demand Farthings for it. They also do this with a Reaction card, so if there's more than one Informant in a fight, you can only pay off one of them, and the others will fight you normally, presumably envious that they weren't the one you paid first. Fun little touches like this are part of why I love this game. We also drew Animal Companion, a Hunter-specific card that lets us either create a special Companion ally, or, if our Hunting is high enough, one of two cards to make better use of an existing one.   Unique allies like our Companion are limited to 1 each, no matter how high our Ally limit. If we try to play more than one, the game will pull an old-school Magic the Gathering and they'll both cease to exist in a burst of paradox. (Or just die. But, y'know. That's less funny.) The Wolf companion has an extremely useful ability for our build in particular; by right-clicking it, we'll have a temporary Track! card added to our hand. Or we can do what I do here, what you can do with any non-passive ally and have them damage an enemy, in exchange for taking that enemy's damage in return.   I make the card on the next turn instead. You can also see that my first two cards are both new and entirely negative, and this is because they're Maladies, negative cards forced into your hand by enemy actions. Even if you reshuffle, or the Malady is forced into your deck instead of your hand, it can't be gotten rid of except by playing it. Even mandatory discards will ignore Maladies. The only ways to deal with them are to either let them clog up your hand (thus reducing your draws) or playing them, taking the negative effects and AP and Concentration cost. Sometimes, holding onto them for a turn or two until you're in a better position can be the right move, and other times you'll need to either pay an ongoing penalty for having them, or just let them fire off a one-time powerful negative effect and discard themselves. But, generally, the best play is to get rid of them as soon as it's feasible, as every Malady is one less card to kill the enemies that're causing you problems in the first place. Track! is a spectacular early-game card for our build, removing not just Cover (which we still haven't seen yet), but also Concealment, which gives enemies a 10% chance per stack of Concealment to dodge any damage from a card or effect, and slapping down three stacks of Mark. That's enough to kill the boss this turn, and give me the typical reward for killing a boss in gauntlet difficulties: Tomes of Knowledge.   With the first, I grab a third Resolve, skipping the Essence for the same reason as last time, and Defensive Strike because, despite being a Fae Alliance-exclusive card and certainly not a terrible one, I'd like another source of repeatable healing, and I intend to talk about Resolve and Retribution SoonTM. The two cards from the Greater Tome is an easier choice. As before, we already have the maximum number of Skirmish, so another copy would be temporary only, but Marksmanship is decent, and Rapid Shot is only okay on the surface, but I have Plans for it. I could also level up right now if I wanted, but we're almost at a much better place to do that, and this fight's almost over anyways. Getting rid of the Maladies and killing the Rats is quick and easy enough that I don't even bother taking any more screenshots of the fight.  And with that, the first leg of our journey is complete! One boss of three down. Next time, we'll spend all these Farthings and Level-up Points we've got, pick a new perk, and I'll talk a bit more about deck-building philosophy. Next Chronicle: It's only Natural! girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Apr 14, 2023 |
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Apr 13, 2023 05:49
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Hmm, am I reading that Rapid Shot correctly? Does 'Draw -> Rapid Shot' mean that whenever you draw it, you get a (presumably temporary) another copy? Or do you get a copy of it whenever you do a Draw effect whilst it's in your hand? Or does it mean something entirely different? The 'strain +1' presumably being some sort of stacking AP penalty or similar to prevent you from spamming it?
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Apr 13, 2023 09:10
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Theantero posted:Hmm, am I reading that Rapid Shot correctly? Does 'Draw -> Rapid Shot' mean that whenever you draw it, you get a (presumably temporary) another copy? quote:The 'strain +1' presumably being some sort of stacking AP penalty or similar to prevent you from spamming it? If you want a version that ACTUALLY does what you're thinking of, there's a handful of cards that spawn copies of themselves whenever you play them, and they have Strain +1, too (I think), though off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is Beat Down, in Unarmed, and that might be from one of the expansions.
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Apr 13, 2023 10:36
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girl dick energy posted:If you want a version that ACTUALLY does what you're thinking of, there's a handful of cards that spawn copies of themselves whenever you play them, and they have Strain +1, too (I think), though off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is Beat Down, in Unarmed, and that might be from one of the expansions. Beat Down is fun if you have Strain effects -1 from a perk - I had it on a holy knight build, so every so often I'd just go berserk and start pounding enemies into paste, funneling my AP directly into damage. Not sure if it's from DLC or fan expansion or what - I only have the first DLC, on the basis that I wanted to make sure I'd actually, like, use them - I'll get the next one next month! ("Next one" since, though they're not like storyline expansions or anything, the dev suggests getting the DLCs in release order since the added content generally gets later and later in the game as the DLCs progress)
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Apr 13, 2023 23:48
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I have different suggestions regarding which DLCs to get when, but we'll talk about that after our first regular open-world run.
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Apr 14, 2023 00:16
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Jossar posted:Ah well, for  I mean, I figured out all sorts of old lovely Magic: The Gathering rules like banding, how hard can it be?
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Apr 14, 2023 01:02
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MagusofStars posted:
If you focus in on straightforward stuff like "use sword. knight skills reinforce sword." it's not TOO hard... ...but fortunately that's not all the game has. 
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Apr 14, 2023 01:09
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In the coming update, I turn this: from a nightmare of information overload into your best friend in the game. Edit: Which may or may not be the theme of the whole LP, honestly. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Apr 14, 2023 |
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Apr 14, 2023 01:56
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Chronicle #0-02: It's Only Natural When we last left off, we'd just reached a town. Honestly, I could've skimmed right through this in a few images because I didn't do anything too major, but I figure it's a good place to break down not just how towns work, but also my personal philosophy regarding items and actions and leveling up in general. Like with Card Anatomy, a standalone version of this part of the update will be linked in the OP for ease of reference. Shop Screen Breakdown 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. So, what does all of this mean for Bethany?  Personally, having empty equipment slots always feels like a huge waste for me, so the first thing I did was look at Equipment & Accessories for items that might suit our build, or directions it could go. The obvious choice for the first pick-up was the Fae Armor, as a reliable source of Defend, healing, and Resistance. That symbol is one of a handful that indicates multiple resistances. You could theoretically try to memorize them all, but for a new player, it's probably just a better habit to click the top-left of any card you want to see the specific details on, rather than giving yourself even more homework. (If you're curious, though, that symbol is resistance to Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind, and is in fact stronger than it would otherwise be because Bethany is a Seelie, a kind of Fay.) The necklace is the next choice, for the same reasons, with the added bonus of healing our puppy and other allies with no active input requires, and because it uses the same skill, Nature Magic. It requires a skill of 2, instead of 1, which would require an investment of both of our level-up points, but I also saw a couple of Nature Magic 2 actions in the shop that intrigued me, so I decide that it's worth the investment. The Friendship   Speaking of selling, not only do I sell the Conjuration cards we can't use, I also sell Gloom, and the Hunter's Vest, though not the Silver Dagger. I'll probably be using that later.  This leaves me enough Farthings to pick up Vine Lash; our Earth affinity is the same as our Piercing affinity, so we're not missing out too much by diversifying the damage type as we would be with something like Fire, a source of Intense Damage is always nice in a build this centralized, even as small as this, and Entangle is a fun mechanic I want to make use of. I don't capture a screenshot of it, but I also sell Smoke Out after removing it from my deck; we now have a dog who does the same thing much more reliably.   I also pick up a Meditation Candle so I can finally show off how backpack items work, and because emergency oh-poo poo card draw and AP is a good thing to have in our back pocket. With that, our business is concluded and we can leave town, though I want to point out that the Camp screen has been replaced by a small town icon. We can keep going back into town as much as we want, as long as we don't advance to the next node, 'leaving' isn't final until we actually go to the combat map and end our turn.   Now, how about that level-up? I've kind of forced my hand on where my LP are going; both points into Nature Magic. This isn't a bad thing; Fae Alliance's key skills are Nature Magic and Marksmanship, so we're still toeing the party line just fine. As for perks, I decide to pick up Nimble-Footed, one of a handful of early-game perks where picking one blocks its opposite. [Combat] Retribution +3 buffs our Resolve card, which is nice, but the real reason to pick up this perk is [All Actions] Strain -1. This includes everything from equipment to maladies, making the Strain -X bonuses better, and the Strain +X penalties less harsh. Remember when I said I had a plan for Rapid Shot? This was it. It's now just a very nice two-for-one that happens to hit random targets. And yeah, I got rid of Target Practice for hitting random targets, but shut up, I'm allowed to be a little inconsistent. By mousing over the little book near our perks, we can see the mechanical benefits of all of our perks in one place, a useful feature if you forgot you've got minor bonuses here and there, like Bethany's boost to [Combat] Damage for being a Monster Hunter.   Our new deck and equipment is slightly more focused than the last one, with a decent mix of offensive and defensive cards, and is starting to look less like a random pile and more like an actual strategy. You'll notice I took out Animal Companion, though I didn't sell it. We can just add it back to our deck later, either if we need a new puppy, or if I end up raising Hunting enough that the Hunt! and Let's Train! options become actually usable.   And with that, we're ready to shuffle up, save our game, and move on! Next Chronicle: Did the image quality just get a little shittier...?
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Apr 14, 2023 03:49
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Disclaimer, image quality is gonna get a little shittier from here forward because I'm currently in the middle of a... let's call it a very last minute move, and am only able to play and get screenshots on my aging laptop, rather than the desktop I was using. This'll mostly be obvious on large monitors where you can see the update images at full size, as I'll be playing the game at 1360x768, instead of 1600x900 like I was before. On the bright side, it means smaller image sizes, so future updates should load faster! Hooray...? 
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Apr 14, 2023 04:06
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I just realized I only reserved three posts for info standalones, but might end up needing a fourth once I talk about the map screen. Ah well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
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Apr 14, 2023 18:15
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This game gives me the perfect mix of intimidated and intrigued. It seems wildly overcomplicated, but then again, I love wildly overcomplicated games. ...I might just follow the LP for a bit and decide if I'll pick it up later.
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Apr 14, 2023 18:23
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Congrats OP, you got me to re-buy this after I refunded it a few months back. I was gonna wait for a few more updates to see if I could get a better handle on the game first, but the sale price pushed me over the edge. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go pore over the in-game card list for a few hours instead of actually playing. 
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Apr 15, 2023 00:11
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I've picked it up too! I... think I'm gonna need to reread the deckbuilding tips bit. A lot.
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Apr 15, 2023 04:18
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How can you tell what slot equipment cards take? I wouldn't have guessed that the Charge of Nature card was a necklace, for example. And I would definitely be confused that the ring of friendship isn't a ring.
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Apr 16, 2023 04:29
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LLSix posted:How can you tell what slot equipment cards take?
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Apr 16, 2023 11:05
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I have severe commitment issues with my characters in this game. Every time I manage to finish several areas with a character and somewhat understand how the class/race/faction works I absolutely have to try something new. Which by itself is really good, I think, but it would be nice to see higher level gameplay sometime.
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Apr 16, 2023 12:28
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girl dick energy posted:The little symbol just before (Activable) or (Automatic). I'll get separate screenshots of the symbols and add them to the post. Cool, thanks.
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Apr 16, 2023 18:07
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I have no idea what I’m doing but I’ve made a half human half vampire who hunts vampires and it’s fun to play as Blade.
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Apr 16, 2023 18:55
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Oh cheese and crackers, today's update added a full simulated weather system
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Apr 17, 2023 20:41
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John Lee posted:Oh cheese and crackers, today's update added a full simulated weather system
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Apr 18, 2023 01:53
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John Lee posted:Oh cheese and crackers, today's update added a full simulated weather system Somehow, it all manages to get more complex. 
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Apr 18, 2023 02:16
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girl dick energy posted:I'm going to skip addressing that until the open world difficulty just to keep things a LITTLE simpler during this first run. We can pretend it was added between the end of Bethany's journey and the start of the next. Well, it doesn't actually do anything yet, on its own. I assume that's coming, but in the meantime it's all available to use in mods.
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Apr 18, 2023 04:19
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Emergency Update: Which DLC Should I Buy? As of this writing, each of the DLC for Erannorth Chronicles is on sale for between 20% and 40% off for a week, and while I plan to go over each of the DLC and which one(s) we want to add to the game first, that won't happen for a little while yet. This is going to be less polished than my other updates, and will eventually be phased out by a proper breakdown, but for the time being, it should give at least a brief overview of each of the DLC, and whether they interest you. First things first: You do not NEED any of the DLC. Buying it goes directly towards helping support Raven as he makes more content for the game, so of course I recommend buying it if you have the money and the inclination, but trying to jump straight from the base game to one with all of the DLC is going to add thousands of extra cards, hundreds of new enemies, and all sorts of new mechanics to learn. If you're happy with Erannorth Chronicles exactly the way it is, that's fine. Raven takes special care not to make anything in the DLC feel 'mandatory', even retroactively adding mechanics back into the main game so modders can use them in their own content without creating a DLC-dependency. And even if you do want to buy all the DLC just to support an indie dev, you can just turn them off, adding them one at a time as you want to add more content to the game. Raven himself recommends buying the DLC in release order, and that's a good simple answer, slowly adding more complex and more difficult content as you go. So if that's all you wanted to know, you can skip the rest of this post. Personally, however, I have a slightly more nuanced opinion: I believe the best DLC to buy first depends on which part of the game you feel could use the most fleshing out or additional content or mechanics. As such, I'll be covering not just the ad copy on what each of them adds, but also what aspect of the game I believe that DLC most improves, as well as reasons you might want to skip it. DLC 1: Ancient Ruins Ancient Ruins adds a massive number of new enemies, more than a hundred, many of which are exclusive to new quest chains added to parts of the open world. Locations that were previously empty or nearly-empty will have new quests, new mechanics, and new bosses, with exclusive loot, primarily focused towards mid-level characters. This is the DLC to buy if you feel like the overworld is a little empty, if you want more enemy variety, or if you want the game to have more viable options for where you'll take a character to do some leveling up. However, players who struggle to get their characters to midgame and beyond won't get much value out of it, and may want to look elsewhere first. DLC 2: Relics & Armaments As the name implies, R&A focuses on equipment, especially late-game equipment, adding new quests with unique loot as rewards, and new enemies to guard it. If you like playing a large variety of character builds, if you've gotten a little tired of all your characters having roughly the same equipment by the end-game, or if you enjoy hanging out in the open world at high level, getting more and more hilariously overpowered when you could've beaten it long ago, you'll probably enjoy R&A. However, if you don't put much thought into your equipment, or if you tend to windmill slam into the Easy or Normal ending missions as soon as you can, you won't miss not having this one. DLC 3: Guilds & Secret Societies My personal favorite of the DLC, and the one that's likely to be the most 'visible' for a new player, G&SS massively expands the crafting system, adding blacksmiths who can upgrade your gear to the next 'tier' for a Farthing fee, and skill trainers, who can enhance your character's skills, or even give them entirely new ones, as well as providing ways to more easily find cards and allies exclusive to an organization. If you often feel like you have tons of money with nothing to spend it on, if you like the idea of picking up a wide variety of skills, or if all the towns feel samey and empty, you'll love G&SS. However, if you rarely use towns, or are almost always a little short on Farthings, I'd recommend against this as your first, as the content it adds to the overworld outside of towns is a little thin on the ground. DLC 4: Untold Tales & Legends Continuing the trend that G&SS started, UT&L adds new NPCs to towns that provide 'Quest Opportunities', some of which are quick vignettes with a small XP reward, while others are longer quests or even quest chains. This doesn't suddenly make Erannorth Chronicles a narrative powerhouse, and some of the quests do feel a bit 'Dungeon Master flying by the seat of his pants', but they're there, and they provide a surprising amount of early-game content. This is the DLC to grab first if you're a serial restarter, who keeps wanting to try new builds and new strategies, and would like a leg up on getting your characters up to speed, or if the existing quests in the game all feel a little 'you walk down a hallway and fight a guy'. However, if slightly stilted fantasy writing ejects you right out of the experience, I'd recommend skipping this one; English is not Raven's first language, and while I haven't seen very many outright grammar goofs, the language he uses often feels a bit dry and plain. DLC 5: ???? This one was only just announced yesterday and we don't know anything about it yet, except that it's expected to be out 'around late summer', expect more info here once we know more. Okay, that's enough shilling for one post. Hope it helped at least one person decide whether or not to make this hard-to-learn and complicated game even more complicated and even harder to learn. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Apr 18, 2023 |
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Apr 18, 2023 10:31
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Bought this game and made the archetypal Evil Fantasy Queen who doesn't even do any fighting herself, just uses Seduction, Nobility, Subterfuge and Witchcraft to cycle through the encounters via control and charm effects and having the enemies kill each other. This game is pretty good
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Apr 18, 2023 10:44
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The character creation is insane. So many options. So far I've played two Acolytes and they're completely different, the first one was an undead revenant using necromancy to rotate through disposable undead summons while ensuring a steady supply of corpses to create new ones. My current one is an angel who's loaded up on healing, punishing heretics, and doing retribution damage. Same class, different specialization and race.
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Apr 18, 2023 14:52
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girl dick energy posted:Okay, that's enough ftfy  But really, thanks for the post! I already have DLC1, which I felt did a good job specifically at filling in the level 15-18 content gap I ran into on my first victory (although I might have just not completed the right prerequisite quests). Now I'm staring at the DLCs trying to decide if I can afford any of them - I'll probably get them all and make cuts in the fast food budget, honestly.
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Apr 18, 2023 16:15
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  It tickles me that this game is so complex that less than 10% of players have apparently finished the 2-hour-at-best Quest mode Also, hopefully this isn't derailing the thread, but does anyone know why running Erannorth makes my computer's fans start loving blasting? The game is hardly a graphical wonder, but it's making my GPU crazy. I've read some talk elsewhere that it's just Unity being Unity, but I also have no idea how to fix it.
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Apr 18, 2023 18:24
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:Also, hopefully this isn't derailing the thread, but does anyone know why running Erannorth makes my computer's fans start loving blasting? The game is hardly a graphical wonder, but it's making my GPU crazy. I've read some talk elsewhere that it's just Unity being Unity, but I also have no idea how to fix it.
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Apr 18, 2023 18:31
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:
I wonder how much of that is "people didn't get that far and/or can't beat it" and how much is "that's a mode that's almost at the bottom of difficulty selection where it's not immediately obvious that it's a good introductory mode, and also it's not the sandbox RPG that's advertised?" As in, people aren't beating it because they spend all their time in sandbox.
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Apr 18, 2023 23:11
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malkav11 posted:I wonder how much of that is "people didn't get that far and/or can't beat it" and how much is "that's a mode that's almost at the bottom of difficulty selection where it's not immediately obvious that it's a good introductory mode, and also it's not the sandbox RPG that's advertised?" As in, people aren't beating it because they spend all their time in sandbox. Anecdotal data and all, but just look at the first page of the thread: Pretty much everybody who posted as being interested by the LP mentioned the open-world / Shandalar comparison.
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Apr 19, 2023 02:11
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yeah I absolutely bought it to just be Really Complicated Shandalar but hey I ain't complaining
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Apr 19, 2023 02:21
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What I should be doing tonight: Finishing up last-minute prep work for my move. What I could also be doing: Working on my LP for this game. What I've been doing:  Modding this game, which I'm pretty sure is literally the opposite of an LP, because instead of explaining the content that's there, I'm adding to it with my silly ideas inspired by how cool 3.5e Truenamers were, conceptually.
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Apr 19, 2023 05:25
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girl dick energy posted:I'm having similar issues while trying to work on updates on my laptop. My best guess is that the game is rather poorly optimized, and is doing a lot of technically-unnecessary loading of data in the background. It looks like you can get around it by going into your GPU's control panel and manually setting its FPS limit to whatever your monitor's refresh rate is. The refresh rate is the highest FPS your monitor can physically display, so it should be safe to do and shouldn't affect other games. My computer's been running a lot cooler since I changed it. TheOneAndOnlyT fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Apr 19, 2023 06:10
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:I've done some more research on this and it appears to be a Unity bug. I guess Unity doesn't have any kind of FPS limiter built-in, so unless the developer adds one to their game, Unity will pretty much always try to make your GPU run at max power. The problem is that with something as graphically simple as Erranorth, that means rendering something like thousands of frames per second, which is useless, both because Erranorth doesn't need it and also because most monitors can't display anything above 200FPS anyway.
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Apr 19, 2023 07:30
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Goddamnit I will end up buying this, won't I?  Oh well, at least once I inevitably get the Steam Deck I will have this to occupy all my free time forever. For now, I'll follow the LP and see what crazy poo poo we can pull off.
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Apr 19, 2023 11:32
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