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[EnigmaticHat]

Picked this up over Thanksgiving Break, its great.  I've found the key to learning this game is figuring out how to kill other knights as a knight.  Once you can do that reliably you have some breathing room to figure out everything else without dying constantly or cowering behind the walls.

One thing I like building is a wall with stone edges around a core of wood, four blocks thick and very high, with traps around the door at the bottom.  The stone outer layer gives immunity to fire and swords, while the wood core helps against explosives.  Then it needs back walls and preferably another wall behind it, to keep the whole thing from falling if it gets cut through somehow.  Add some fortifications on top and you have something that will take a long, concerted effort to bring down.

Or, as I learned one absolutely brutal game, a single ballista positioned out of your team's reach, firing explosive arrows by the dozen.  That will take it down.  We won that game BTW, by retaliating with fire arrows to take out the balliata.  Then one brilliant knight found a single point to stick a keg that brought down the entire enemy wall at once.  We had a second layer of defenses behind our wall, they did not.

[Vattic]

Started playing in alpha and loved it. When beta arrived I tried it again and again, but just couldn't get into it and worried it wouldn't improve. Recently tried it again and can't put it down. The creators have my respect for tweaking it into a true gem. Glad to say I was wrong.

[Nighthawk]

I still play it obsessively, but honestly? I don't like the changes they made to Archers.

And not just because they're less OP now, either. It's just... they used to be tactical snipers, and a skilled Archer could actually assist a knight in combat from a long range; a Knight and Archer combo absolutely destroyed everything in Alpha. But now? Archers' damage output from a range (which is where they belong) is shoddy at best, and they're even squishier than they used to be.

The only improvement they received is added mobility with the grappling hook, but honestly, the land and water speed of Knights, plus their bombjumping ability, still makes them just as mobile.

I've said this so many times on their forums, and I'll say it again here: I want to see different weapon loadouts for each class, with Archers having the option to use a longbow, which would function a lot like the bows did in Alpha (minus the long-range stun, though, because that was just OP).

I'm addicted to the grappling hook at this point, but the way I look at it, it's still sort of useless, except for getaways (which smart Alpha Archers could do anyway just by running when things got hairy). I mean, what are you supposed to do once you're on top of the enemy tower? Usually you pester a few Builders then get slashed to death by a single capable Knight; it's not really worth it to be offensive as an Archer, even though that's what the devs were going for.

I don't know what the solution is, but I feel like Skinney's Armory mod (currently in the works) which will introduce different weapon loadouts, will make me much happier.

[coolio678]

I prefer capture the flag out of the three modes. It's most reminiscent of Alpha, but I don't say that in the "Things were better back in my day!" sort of meaning. It's got the good stuff from alpha, like coins and freedom of building, but Beta improvements. I tried to go back and play alpha several months ago, and I just couldn't get used to it again (Everyone's so slow!).

edit:

Started playing in alpha and loved it. When beta arrived I tried it again and again, but just couldn't get into it and worried it wouldn't improve. Recently tried it again and can't put it down. The creators have my respect for tweaking it into a true gem. Glad to say I was wrong.

I know what you mean. They hit a rough patch in beta where it just wasn't as fun as it could've been. I think they really tapped a lot of that potential now.

[miauw62]

Is anybody still playing this? This game used to be soooo fun back in the day, and apparently it's changed a lot.

E:
Found a good EU classic server and I'm having tons of fun.

[Sonlirain]

I tried playing yesterday. And comparint ot what used to be the game changed massively but organically.

My only gripe is that most servers seem to be in america and i'm getting a lot of lag where i live... and knight duels are nearly unplayable with 200 latency because you tend to die before you even see the other knight charging their attack... so yeah.

[Cheedows]

I sadly only got the free/classic version which the servers for it have long since died out going to paid, so I haven't played in ages. In it's heyday though it was fun as hell to play on massive servers, be a part of knight charges, kill knights as a builder or unleash hailstorms of arrows with your fellow archers.

[Aklyon]

I've got it on steam apparently, I'll try it again at somepoint.

[Flying Dice]

Don't bother. Archers were nerfed to shit, the mouse cursor -> block detection is even spottier than before, there are plentiful new ways to destroy structures but none to reinforce them, and even at peak hours there's maybe two or three servers with more than ten people on.

[Aklyon]

Ah. Sounds similar to hawken then in how I'd found it in my library but the steam hub was all talk about how the dev had vanished.

[Flying Dice]

Oh, no. The devs are still around and working, it's just that on most fronts the game is objectively worse than it was in alpha, with a handful of minor exceptions like the ability to rotate blocks before you place them.

[Vattic]

Worth noting that some people prefer the way things are now. I still enjoy the current version, but preferred alpha.

[Flying Dice]

I'm probably slightly biased because I mained archer, but at this point there are basically 1.5 classes. Archers are worthless after the range and power nerfs, and between kegs and drills fortifications are at best a symbolic nod to security. Even in alpha teams usually hinged on knight play, but now it's rare to see a decent team with less than 80% knights. I'm not certain, but I think they nerfed catapults too.

Hell, I've played 20+ hours in the new version and I don't think I've seen a single person die to spikes or old-fashioned bridge drop traps. I've seen more people die of drowning than of arrows.

[Taricus]

Mostly because everyone knows how to avoid regular bridge traps and spikes now. As for archers being useless, I'm just going to assume you've not played with very skilled people, those bastards are the bane of my existence, even when I am one.

Fortifications do need to be manned though. A builder can scale any tower if they get up to one without being spotted and can termite themselves in. That, and drills are usable by builders only now, and kegs can be shot off of a knight's back by arrows...

[Flying Dice]

I'm just going to assume you haven't played archer for a long time. You can still do nice work if you have friendly knights keeping the enemy in the outer third of your range, but your range is so pitiful that it's impossible to contribute meaningfully in most situations -- either you're sitting on a tower and you get maybe two shots on attackers before they're too close for you to hit, or you're running around in the field and die as soon as somebody gets past your knights. All the stun arrows in the world don't make up for having a range that's about as long as the width of the default zoom level screen. The long and short of it is that the skill cap is lower and the class is vastly less effective; I remember being able to pull off trick shots with high-angle firing and precision ranging that are just flat out impossible with how arrows work now. Even on the smallest maps you can't manage to shoot across the no man's land between the two starting zones.

There's a reason why the maximum any half-decent team has is one archer, even for a group of 10-16 people. They've got a tiny niche where they're good, but they're vastly overshadowed even by the builder, never mind knights.

As for the notion of the combat builder actually managing that, I have only laughter. If a builder gets away with that, it's because their knights have already swept the tower clean or are skilled enough to keep defenders away.