Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nenjin]

1. & 2.

I think most of it is self-explanatory when you take the time think about it. Weapon accuracy is the base chance to hit, modified by Accuracy mod of the character. An enemies' dodge rating reduces this chance to hit further. When you miss, it means you rolled over your chance to hit. When they dodge, it means you didn't roll low enough to overcome their dodge stat. When you hit, you do the damage of the character (based on their weapon) modified by the damage mod of the skill they're attacking with (almost all skills reduce damage in some way, very few do more than normal damage.) PROT is a percentage of the character's maximum HP that reduces damage by that amount. So having 10 PROT with 40 HP means you take 4 less damage from every attack. Stuns and Blights and Bleeds all work the same way. You have a base chance, plus whatever trinkets you have, minus their resist, equals chance to land the effect.

It's not exactly straight forward so I agree it's a bit of overload. Mostly the tutorial doesn't explain any of the stats. But once I started taking the time to read tool tips, it started making more sense.

3. Character attachment - Would like that to be fleshed out more. I don't mind the perma-death, but I'd like to care a bit more about my guys. Being able to change the names and colors is cool, but I'm being encouraged by the meta-game to think of the individuals as all disposable. That seems to run against the tension of the combat though. Whatever guy dies, well, I have another couple in the wings.

Unfortunately yeah, the game meta is disposable heroes. The kicker is you need surviving heroes to eventually learn all the story, visit all the dungeons and beat the game. So that's where the tension is. Heroes are only disposable up to a point. Lose too many but win enough missions that your "exploration" of each dungeon rises far enough, and eventually you'll find you're offered missions too dangerous for your guys to run. It's not clear at the start but you can play yourself into a hole by failing too many times.

Bottomline: You need some guys to survive to ripe old level of 5 or whatever the cap is. So I do get attached to my heroes, especially when they get the right set of Quirks together (Tough, Steady, Fated, all great Quirks to have.) And when they seem to be clutch hitters, when shit really counts.

4. Trinkets. Still not feeling it. Can I have equipment that doesn't harm me in some way pls? Forcing me to make my characters take on different roles, and building them together into a functioning team, that's all well and dandy. But does it really mean that we have to do away with that tried and true cornerstone of dungeon spelunking that is finding some nice little piece of equipment?

First rule: accept that there is no straight buff trinkets in the game.

Second rule: specialize. You're inclined to not do it to begin with, but like I said, some things are obvious. Your healers are not damage dealers. If anything their attacks are useful for their secondary effects. So. Nerfing their damage to increase their survivability is smart. Your tanks? They're better positioned to take hits than anyone else. So trinkets that hurt their dodge but give them +10% or +20% HP or PROT are totally worth it. Damage dealing classes are more in the middle, especially the "light" DPS like Highway Man, Jester and Grave Robber. They need dodge, they need HP, they need PROT, they need damage. Many trinkets are harder to justify for them. But there are class specific ones out there that are worth it, and others that are just worth it. Like I found a cloak that is +15 DODGE when the torch is higher than 75, at the cost of -10% Stun Resist (taking them from 40% resist to 30%.) So I stuck it on my Grave Robber, which takes her from a 15% chance to dodge to 30% when the torch is bright. That's a good trade off considering if she dodges she doesn't even have to roll to resist stun.

You just have to evaluate how deep the penalties are vs. the buff they provide, and if that makes sense for their role.

[Yolan]

Thanks for the explanation with the stats.

Regarding trinkets, yes, I'm using them pretty much in that manner. But I still find myself selling more than half of the ones I find, and that feels a bit odd.

It's good to know that I can get myself into a hole later on by losing too many guys. I thought I was allowed to keep hitting low level maps forever so long as I had low level characters in my roster.

[nenjin]

Seems like there's always a chance for Apprentice Level missions, but as the Dungeon Exploration level increases, they stop being as common, until you eventually can get dealt an all veteran+ offering of missions. Maybe they patched that. Still, Level 0 characters not built for a medium+ apprentice mission. So if you need to take an all new group through one...it will be a bumpy ride.

Like I said, I find the beginning of the game and fresh heroes the least forgiving part of it.

[Stuebi]

THe new additions are cool, but for the life of me, I cant get behind that whole escapade of buffs/nerfs they threw around.

It took me THREE attempts to complete the first actual mission in a new game. First try I had a crit galore that wiped my entire party, and the second time around I finished the mission with 3 partymembers at full stress and one maybe 1 square off (And since you can only upgrade the stagecoach once after the tutorial afaik, you cant raise a compelte new party).

This ties into the major complaint I had right from the beginning, the difficulty curve is all over the place. Early game, there is barely any, if at all, skill involved with surviving the game. Money is limited, buildings unlock only after a couple missions (Which is moronic, imho. Especially the guild hall is just outright necessary if you get heroes with stupid skills) and you can't really influence your success chances beyond praying to the RNG-Gods.

Mid game is the part where the game shines. You have more money, but not enough to spend it willy nilly. You have access to all buildings, and have to think about team composition, which skills to give your guys and when to upgrade someone. It's the only part of the game, in my mind, where skill comes into play. It starts around the time the first bosses show up and ends once you killed all of the apprentice-level Bosses.

Thenw e get to late game, which is just laughable. The problem is, at least, that's what I think, that some of the later upgrades scale too well. Either that or the enemies dont pick up the pace. Tanks become close to unkillable with the right trinkets and upgrades. If you take both a Vestal and a Jester along, you will neither die nor suffer from Stress, unless you provoke it via bad torch management or using the wrong items. Damage also goes trough the roof. Give a Graverobber a couple crit trinkets, up her weapon and then watch her kill most enemies in a single round. Same goes for the Leper. Once you upped his ACC a little and get those weapon upgrades going, he murderes everything in the front row in 1-2 rounds, while still being tanky as all hell.

Bosses become almost hillarious pushovers. I remember the Swine King, and how he couldnt act because he was either permastunned by an upgraded plaguedoctor, or just died within the first couple rounds because my entire team was critting him for upwards 30 every round.


What the game needs (imho), is some major adjustement in scaling and some variation in terms of challenge, especially early and late. Early on, it would be cool if the game was less hard than it is now. It sucks that there is a high probabilty that you have to restart a couple times before you even reach the third or fourth mission. Heck, I've been unlucky enough to get murdered in the Tutorial, with unlucky misses and crits. And for the love of god, give me an option to skip the Tutorial and unlock all buildings right away. There is no good reason beyond "We dont want to overwhelm newbies" for locking critical buildings like the guild hall.

Late game on the other hand, could stand a couple buffs. The Bosses need new tricks on higher levels, and the enemies should scale up a bit more as well.

[nenjin]

I agree and disagree on a couple points:

1. Nothing you can do the first couple of runs. I disagree in part. Yes, it is very much up to the RNG gods whether you get your face critted off. But there are some things you can do to maximize survival. Avoiding Curios you don't understand, for one. Milking fights to 10+ rounds when it's not necessary. Overspending on food and torches for the first mission can help. Several times I've tried to blaze through the tutorial and first mission only to have it blow up in my face. Taking your time does matter. Even something as simple as not exploiting the turn order (i.e. forgetting to stun the last enemy to act on a team) can make a big difference at that point.

2. I do however agree that the difficulty of DD is frontloaded, especially given how effective late game armor is. DD's problem is that it gets players so angry/stressed in the first half hour, they naturally assume the late game will be even worse. And that's pretty much the opposite of reality.

3. They have added new boss tweaks or abilities at higher difficulty levels in this patch. No idea what those are yet.

4. Permastuns are a lot harder to pull off after the Stun Resist Buff gets activated. Most boss enemies even in Apprentice start at 75% resistance. So one stun and they are base 100% chance to resist.

[Jeshin]

I honestly do not find DD that overtly challenging. I consistently run it with my torches completely out and rarely lose parties let alone individuals on runs. You get bonus rewards too which helps. I do buy extra food though as a way to survive the encounters, often times burning 24 units of food before my first camp.

[nenjin]

I don't understand how you can survive the increased crits and stress gain. Getting locked out of lower level missions keeps your guys from becoming stress immune, so.

[Jeshin]

I abuse stress reduction abilities and while in camp I focus solely on stress reduction skill uses.

I should probably do a more recent run through given some of the changes they've made. I will document it and post it up in a few days!

[Sindain]

At the start of EA many people considered dark runs to be OP as the extra gains far outweighed the increased difficulty. I personally never saw the point as I keep torches at max and just steamrolled everything so I didn't need the extra gold. Though I've heard that dark runs where nerfed quite a bit in the recent patches.

[Retropunch]

I abuse stress reduction abilities and while in camp I focus solely on stress reduction skill uses.

I should probably do a more recent run through given some of the changes they've made. I will document it and post it up in a few days!

Please do! I'd be really interested to see how the new stuff works out in practice but don't have the possibility of doing it myself.

[Jeshin]

Alright! Jeshin's run through will be posted Wednesday in the evening EST. I will attempt to catalogue (and get screenshots) of significant events and what did and didn't work.

[EnigmaticHat]

I don't understand how you can survive the increased crits and stress gain. Getting locked out of lower level missions keeps your guys from becoming stress immune, so.

I haven't played in like a half a year, but... back when I plaeyd (which sounds about like when Jeshin played) this is what I would have said:

Its kinda like newcom, the more damage you have the more and more trivial things become.  Although for a different reason.  The abilities all scale basically by adding a few points in every category each time.  For healing abilities, it added one to the min or max healing, which was mediocre (and in one case actually made the ability WORSE because it had a downside that scaled as well).  But for damaging abilities, crit, damage, and accuracy ALL increased.  Add that to trinkets, weapon improvements, camp buffs, and you have all these overlapping offense buffs.  Then you take an offensive team (say, 4 hellions) and wreck every encounter in 1-2 rounds, using your ~10% crit rate to relieve stress.

[nenjin]

I imagine not much has changed with that, all they did was tone down the treasure buff in the pitch black and buff up the crit rate and stress damage from enemies.

Partly my issue is that I'm only now messing with Level 3 heroes. Unlike others I didn't stampede to the higher level game, I basically leveled my whole hero list a little bit at a time. And I think Darkest Farming is way easier past Resolve Rank 3 than before it.

[nenjin]

Double post but this was in today's patch notes:

Disabled torch snuffing during combat to prevent admirable but sneaky torch snuffing at combat end to receive bonus loot

I tried this in the previous build and wasn't amazed by the results. Apparently you can still get some incredibly mediocre loot rolls in the dankest darkness.

[sambojin]

Still have to get this game. Watched a few recentish LPs on youtube and got hooked. More-so just due the the incredibly crappy players of these LPs (stuff made reasonable sense to me, focusing as much damage on the required targets rarely seemed to be done by the LPers I watched).

Looks fun. In a weird way, it almost looks like an oldxcom difficulty curve. If you haven't worked out the basic awesomesauce items/skills early on, it'll be far rougher on you, all game. It's the early set backs/missed missions/purchases and decision making that determines half the difficulty of mid/late. Ie: rocket launchers are bitching all the time, assault rifles are not. They both skill the same, sort of. But one works. It might cost a bit, but money is cheap. Similar to the "don't dick about, form parties to hit things hard early" in DD. Support players come later. Buy the things that give you more adventurers early, then you have the choices required to make a party work. Money and items aren't as pricey if you stop dying, or getting maladies all the time, due to having a suckfull party mix and not krumping things quickly. Drag it out if you want to for skills/loot/anti-stress/healing, but you do that by killing stuff so quickly that it's an option. It's not an option if you can't just wipe out everything that's scary, fast.

Don't go under a million dollars on oldxcom/ don't go under a few tanks/dpser's in DD. Hit hard, QoL stuff comes later. Buy it/research it early, and if it's the wrong thing or wrong party layout, you'll be set back all game. Dead things don't ever damage anyone, so focus on killing stuff quickly.

Anyway, next new job I'll grab a copy.