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[nenjin]

So what do you do about shadows, specifically when:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The lights cut out. I took out a torch and it did exactly nothing. Does a flashlight keep them off you? Are you just supposed to try and regain health however you can while they just kick the shit out of you? What time they appear at night is kind of important for whether you can survive. I had them show up early on my last night played. The lights went out, the lamp wouldn't turn on, I took out a torch, they kept hitting me. The lights then cut back on and they fucked off with me nearly dead. I use Moth....and then the lights cut out again seconds later and the shadows swarm me worse than before and eat me alive.

I still think shadows are a dumb idea. What good is a generator and lights and enough gasoline to set the forest on fire if they just take lights from you at a whim?

That said giving you an unlimited amount of time at dawn to get yourself organized is a god send compared to how all that inventory managing ate into your day before.

[Blaze]

When the shadows appear, all but one of your lamps will go out. You have to keep moving. Torches get put out if you're already in their effect, so they're useless there.

Also, if you hear persistent knocking on your door, and that knocking eventually gets louder...

Open it.

Seriously.

[nenjin]

Last time I did that....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The front door wasn't actually closed and all I got for my troubles was a rock to the face from a savage.

Also I like how the game pitches itself as "Defend the house" when in reality what they mean is "Run through a dark and unsecured house at random like a crazy person because we've added all this stupid shit for expressly that purpose."

If they honestly expect you to barricade every single room of the house and then run hotlaps through it because of all this random shit, I may be done with this game. Because that is a bunch of dumb busy work brought on by unassailable mechanics like those fucking shadows or the fucking corruption bugs. Like, I'm seriously supposed to run out to the fucking generator shack because "oh only one light stays on"? Or run around every room all night in case the bug shows up? Dumb. And gamey. It totally undercuts all the defensive preparations when you have to run outside of them because the game tells you that you have to.

[nenjin]

Decided to revisit this and maybe finally finish Chapter 1...

And I am totally stuck now.

After taking Dose 3....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Dream sequence starts. I'm in the forest. It's dark. I start walking into the trees and it gets darker and darker until it's pitch black. The only thing I can see is my character. I've now been running for infinity in every direction for like 30 minutes. Nothing is happening. I have no items in my inventory. Standing still for minutes does nothing. Did I hit a bug or is this the most obtuse thing ever?

edit

NM, I restarted the game and it restarted the dream. I simply walked the wrong direction. You'd think they'd not just put infinite blackness in every direction except the correct one though......

[nenjin]

Haven't beaten Chapter 1 went. About to venture out into the Old Woods which is the farthest I've made it in the in game in many many builds.

Overall, this game has come quite a ways since Alpha 5ish.

There's two things that have really altered game balance for the playable IMO: the crafting stations and The Three.

Spoilers ahead.

Previously resource management in Darkwood was a huge pain in the ass. It's not that the game itself was hard, it's just there was a lot of busy work and knowledge about how it worked to make it playable. You'd have a house littered with piles of consumables because you lacked the storage space for them. Knowing what you had was a real problem sometimes, and knowing what you needed or what made what took a lot of time and experimentation. Time you didn't have. Now, the crafting bench simplifies all that by giving you a nice clear menu, and a lot of storage space. And The Three basically ensure that, as long as you manage to not die a few nights a week you can have enough gas to keep the generator running, or you can buy up the 1 or 2 of some common item you need to round out your gear and actually grow your reserves instead of just maintain them. (Torches, batteries, wire for lock picks, alcohol for molotovs, weapon components, bandages, etc...) With The Three, now most of the stuff I find in the world is "profit", while the rep and trading I do with them is enough to replenish what I use. The fact they spawn directly in front of your oven everyday just makes it nice and simple and straightforward. Surviving isn't a matter of luck or drops or tedious, time consuming supply runs anymore, which I'm thankful for.

I didn't get my first death until I'd left Dry Meadows. Once I hit the Silent Forest the deaths started to rack up, mostly because of the Huge Dogs (who seem to be able to run underneath any pushable piece of furniture.) Fuck those things. They seem to be able to attack faster than most of the "advanced" melee weapons in game can wind up a swing.

Now on Day 26....the night events have really ramped up. To the point where I'm getting packs of Savages, Huge Dogs, Beetles, Poltergeists AND Banshees all on the same night. Due to the way I've fortified the second hideout, it's generally been pretty easy. I barricade two doors leading into the kitchen, then pile as much moveable furniture in front of them as possible, leaving the window facing the generator shack as the only entrance. Then I sit aways back from the window with a gun and shoot anything that comes through it. Bear traps on the back sides of the barricaded doors ensure that if anything does manage to break through I can get a couple shots on hits on them before they break free.



The moveable furniture in front of the barricaded doors really goes a long way toward making the AI ignore them, it seems. Or if not ignore, then spend most of their time walking into piles of moveable objects that can't go anywhere, effectively tying up the spawn. Probably 80% of the time the 'concealed' doors never get attacked and I've not yet had one fully broken in by an enemy since I started doing it this way. The Poltergeist/Earthquake which moves around moveable objects can sometimes shift enough of the objects that a door gets cleared and guys do start attacking it. But that's pretty rare. It's not fool proof but it basically makes most nights for me. I'd tried it originally with just the furniture to the north and no rebuilt, barricaded door. It kept everything out but the dogs so I eventually had to close it off.
 
So you'd think guys would try the open window instead. As the only real entrance into the house with a clear path you'd think they'd immediately path to it, but no. I watch savages and dogs path and even stop in front of the window constantly but only occasionally decide to come in.

Between those two realities, I have like an 80 to 90% survival rate on nights. That said....

My biggest complaint with night events is still those goddamn beetles. I had four! spawn one night in the two rooms I defend. Even after killing all of them immediately upon spawning, there were apparently others that laid crap down all over the house. When beetles get chosen for the night it ends up costing me between 2 and 4 molotov cocktails to clear out the critical spaces. It's also annoying because they keep walking into my bear traps after they spawn. Which does the job I suppose but bear traps are not cheap to replace. The corruption they spread even grows through walls! It's so annoying. So far it's manageable because I have a sufficiently large stockpile, but only because I scavenged everything I could to do so, and used trade with The Three to cover the shortfalls. It's a precarious balance though, that could easily shift back toward earlier builds where you just got completely fucked by those things. They are the only part of the spooks and scares and challenges of this game I still don't like, because they seem to work counter to theme of barricading and securing your house. Surviving this long has definitely taught me that once the clock hits 8:00pm, your ass does not go outside, even within the boundaries of your hideout. I had one night where I killed a Banshee outside my window and ran out to loot its corpse....big mistake. I had no less than 4 of 5 enemies rushed me once I stepped outside. I ended up running around the outside of my house in the pitch black (other than the circle of flame with a body in the middle that some thoughtful soul left behind in my yard) to get away and narrowly avoided getting killed climbing back in the window. Night ended seconds after that. So yeah. Running willy nilly through a multiroom house with 6 to 8 windows and doors that have to be barricaded and are guaranteed to get broken during the night does not seem to be how you win this game....yet it's what some of their monsters seems to want you to do. Beetles feel like an admission that they can't really stop a player who is well prepared in defense, so, here's a fucking nightly resource tax to make up the difference.

Other than that they've really fleshed out Chapter 1 in terms of content. There's a whole side area to it now with a good half hour or hour of stuff to do relating to the "main quest." Things like the Pigs and Chicken Lady all have context now so their quests and creepiness make WAY more sense than they did in previous builds. They're still weird and creepy but now they're weird and creepy with a purpose.

All in all the game feels easier for a veteran now since so much streamlining has gone on. Resource management, resource gathering are much simpler and take much less time to do, and the dawn break where you get yourself organized means you no longer feel the constant time pressure just trying to manage your shit. That said, melee combat can still be touch and go though. Fighting multiple opponents in melee is still more or less out of the question unless you're fighting in the open. Fighting inside your house at night against multiple opponents seems difficult to downright impossible. I guess that's one advantage of protecting a larger space, is that you have room to move. Ranged though, has seemed to come into its own. I didn't use many guns in previous builds because ammo was so expensive and rare. But after crafting the pistol and buying new mags from The Three every other day or so, combat when it counts feels a lot easier. (Banshees take exactly one shot to bring down with it. Huge dogs, savages, 2. I imagine Chompers might take 3.) I prefer to use a gun in most instances now, because melee still pretty much sucks. Every weapon is slow as fuck, even their "quick attack", and many attacks with different weapons drain a ton of stamina. Which is fine when you're fighting one enemy in the open during the day, because you can study their animations and time your attacks and dodges accordingly. But in any sort of dark conditions, in tight spaces, with a melee weapon against more than one foe....you don't have the time for that and the game is visually not clear enough to help you. The enemies aggressively leap frog their attacks and rush you constantly, and the impact cancels out your swings, so it's very hard to get any damage in....or just maneuver without getting hit.

Humorously they added throwable rocks as a basic ranged weapon too. And they are....the most pathetic thing I've ever seen. Their projectile speed and range is about 1/2 that of the rocks thrown by savages. So in practice it looks like the worst stereotype of a kid whose dad never taught them to throw. Your rock falls to the ground after a couple feet and literally rolls into enemies doing very minor damage. Maybe I'm not doing it right but if so, it's not clear how you're supposed to throw rocks because the default attack is a joke. There's also throwable knives now, which are items with durability that a) don't stack and b) can't be repaired. I.e, they're worthless. Good damage and execution but unfeasible since they're a random drop.

I swear, I've never played a game with this much combat where your character was deliberately handicapped this bad. I know it's supposed to make the combat intense and deadly because every enemy can kill you if you don't play collected and calm. But shit like the rocks is just downright pathetic. Combat is engaging, don't get me wrong. The main character just feels comically slow and deliberate in everything they do while your enemies attack you like fuckin' mad men.

Anyways, yeah. Rediscovered my love of Darkwood even though it took me a while. Now to head north to the Old Woods and see what dankness awaits me there...... 

[ChairmanPoo]

how's drm?

[nenjin]

how's drm?

I've got it on Steam, so. Unless you mean something else?

[ChairmanPoo]

Sometimes steam games dont actually need steam to run. Tbats what I was asking... I try to avoid it if possible.

[nenjin]

And so it was that Darkwood, which feels like it has been in Early Access forever, approaches its final release. I've played I'd say about 70% of the game at this point and am more or less pleased with it throughout. The stuff they've been doing the last year or so has really bulked out the game experience.

Patch notes below. This is, according to them, the last big update before release.

Spoiler: Patchwood (click to show/hide)

Hi!

This will be the last major update before release, with a few minor ones coming in the next two weeks. Please report any bugs you find in the Bug Reports section!

Changes
- A new location in the Meadow! It won't be fully accessible until the release though
- A new dream! It's pretty cool.
- There's a new 64-bit executable for Windows, which should improve performance and stability. Additionally, audio files do not get loaded and unloaded constantly from memory if you have more than 6GB of RAM.
- The world reacts to more of your choices.
- Added a option to enable additional content, but this content is hidden in the current version.
- Added help popup when equipping a melee weapon for the first time (after the prologue) about secondary attacks.
- Added new effects to skills.
- Added new texts to some NPCs.
- New item animations for the Meat item.
- Changed Wolf's hideout name.
- Many texts in the Polish localization have been rewritten. English coming soon!
- Bike Man's package has way more columns now so they will be visible on small resolutions if you had a lot of stuff in the hideout.
- New music and audio effects.

Fixes
- Fixed several instances where the player could freeze and be unresponsive to inputs.
- Fixed nasty issue where in a very rare case, a location outside of the main world could get corrupted.
- Fixed being able to freeze the player when aiming a flare and dodging continuously until out of stamina.
- Fixed flare fire up animation playing again when aiming the flare and dodging.
- Removed "saving" text on the white screen during morning.
- Hopefully fixed issue where you did not get reputation for empty firearms sometimes.
- Fixed bug with the pigshed lever if you started the generator, left the location, came back when the generator run out of juice in the meantime.
- Fixed several missing translations.
- Fixed some issues when hovering the cursor over many objects at the same time.
- Fixed missing cursor on the well.
- Fixed missing music after dreams!
- Fixed missing OSX and Linux icons.
- Fixed some occurances where characters could get stuck on fences.
- Fixed being able to do the secondary attacks or enter the active skills menu when you are not supposed to.
- Characters no longer treat destroyed objects like obstacles.
- Changed ravens to not use pathfinding.
- Fixed being able to run when entering water passage.
- Fixed game thinking you are aiming a weapon when you aimed a weapon, the morning white screen came and you stopped aiming at a certain moment.
- Fixed not being able to push furniture on top of certain rugs.
- Fixed light flares in dream cellar.
- Fixed being able to explode and burn traps which you are placing.
- Fixed doors in a ruined cottage on the swamps.
- Removed ability to upgrade the table leg.
- Fixed several bugs with the final doctor stage in chapter 2 if you failed his dream.
- Fixed night trader being inside hideout instead of wolf if he came to your hideout during the morning and you reloaded the game.
- Lanterns can now be stacked.
- Stones can now disarm all mushrooms and mimics.
- Fixed incorrect cursor behaviour when examining the electronic game.
- Fixed incorrect torch particle positions in some animations, and when aiming only for a split second.
- Fixed not being able to ignite gas clouds with matchsticks.
- Fixed enemy health bar appearing if caught in beartrap.
- Fixed some audio effects still on during the day when played during a night event, and the player was out of the hideout when the morning came.
- Fixed being able to select objects for a split second when transferring between doctor's dreams.
- Fixed cellar dream being too dark when loaded from a saved game.
- FIxed cellar dream ending sometimes lasting for too long.
- Fixed invisible cursor for a while when exiting the cellar dream.
- (Hopefully) Fixed cursor not being visible when traveling to the underground entrance and leaving dreams.
- Fixed flare smoke sometimes being below some sprites.
- Fixed some characters being able to attack the player even though he's using the invisibility skill.
- Fixed cursor being below the buttons in the profile menu.
- Fixed biome name text being below some of the map icons.
- Fixed some ruins in the swamps being flooded.
- Fixed deadly light in the swamps having no effect when drinking an antidote.
- Fixed "Disable gamepad mode" buton not reverting to default.
- Fixed incorrect color overlay when loading a game during morning.
- Fixed music not playing after some time.
- Fixed not being able to transfer some items with shift+click in certain situations.
- Fixed errors during character rotation when animating.
- Fixed some traps that do not trigger automatically when stepping on them, being removed from player's vicinity when respawning.
- Fixed aim glitch when mashing the aim button during switching items on hotbar when placing a trap.
- Fixed visual glitch when rapidly transfering from the village and to the well and vice versa.
- Removed possibility to change hotbar items during padlock menu.
- Fixed english dialogue in polish version of the game for Wolf.
- Fixed some item names in journal being too long.
- Removed option to go into main menu during death animation.
- Fixed Human Spider clone damage being too high.
- Fixed player shadow glitch when traveling between locations.
- Fixed Centipede shadow pop up.
- Fixed visual glitch on the Protagonist in the first part of the prologue.
- Fixed weird Antek behaviour after being cut in half in some cases.
- Pressing "Escape" in the help menu now skips to the next page instead of closing the Main Menu.
- Closing a door stops the rotation sound immediately.
- Fixed being able to move characters around when aiming and they are eating something / playing a custom animation.
- Fixed invisible pad / keyboard icons when entering / leaving the gamepad mode inside the dialogue.
- Fixed catching the first input when entering / leaving the gamepad mode.
- Fixed chain trap still affecting the player even though he has the Careful Step skill.
- Fixed chain trap bugging out when having a door closed on it.
- Fixed the Trader not being visible outside of the FOV.
- Fixed Skill help pupup being visible when traveling to a dream (not when the dream is ended).
- Fixed some bad translations for some buttons inside the Controls Menu.
- Fixed missing beartrap anims for Wolf.
- Fixed some dodge animations not having footstep sounds.
- Fixed some melee sensors being incorrect.
- Fixed sparks and FX inside lights not disappearing when using Moth skill and the skill was used up.


Gamepad
- Fixed broken object selection if selected a item in a dead body and closing the inventory.
- Greyed out the "Transfer" text when having a item selected inside the inventory.
- Fixed being able to throw out important items from the inventory.
- Added back "Far look" button, for seeing underneath trees in the forest.
- Improvements to journal management.
- Fixed Main Menu buttons not being selectable when exiting the Help Menu.
- Fixed cursor text not disappearing when entering controller menu.
- Fixed being not being able to exit the padlock menu.
- Fixed glitch when dropping a quest item from inventory.
- Fixed some object selection issues.
- Accepting a trade is now done by a specific button.

Big thanks to Didek and DeforMC for testing out this version!

Work has also been done for the Epilogue! It still needs some final touches though. Other than that, we've been busy preparing the backer rewards and marketing stuff for the release, which, I would like to remind you, will happen on August 17th!