Antharion

Thanks for the comments everyone ! I'll add this game to my buying list.

Yes you do see the doors and it will say need 50 lore. I like the web spell to keep the melee out of range of my mages. I was thinking if I had 2 guys that could cast web the game may be too easy

I have a fighter orc that goes sword and board and dabbles in barter.
A doggie ranger that does my open locks.
An undead priest (awesome) with white magic that also does my lore and and skill increases treasure. Forget what it is called.
A Mage that does dark magic and alchemy. The race is the dark elf looking but there called something else. He also dabbles in persuasion.

I am lvl 15 now and this basic party is pretty powerful and I have only wiped doing battles that was too hard and was testing some strategies. Fighting monsters my lvl I have been crushing them mostly. Great game and I am very happy with the $75 I spent on kickstarter.

The races in my party make me look real evil but I am being helpful mostly. Though I did kill an elf noble because the treasure and exp for the quest was too good

Did you find 3 groups of orc raiders? I've been all over the map and only found two groups. I've been where the map shows the 3rd group to be and there is only a wandering merchant there.

Yes that one was a little harder to find. When there is a marker on the map always use the southern tip of the marker. Kinda a point on the south part.

crpgnut said:

Did you find 3 groups of orc raiders? I've been all over the map and only found two groups. I've been where the map shows the 3rd group to be and there is only a wandering merchant there.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJpG-LWksKE
One of the camps is at 7 minutes 30
The other at 31 minutes 40

The first one is north of the starter village.

Thanks, Kordanor. I'll give this a looksee when I get home tonight.

You guys are really making me want to play this game.

This game is right up your alley, JDR. It's not perfect, because there isn't quite enough active character manipulation (abilities, skills, inventory, etc), but there's enough to have fun for quite a while. It is best at not giving you quite everything you want, so the carrot is always dangling.

The game really makes you want to get 1 more lvl or explore 1 more dungeon to get more gold or items. It is a very solid game that does not excel at anything but for me all the pieces fit nicely. Not complicated either, is my kinda beer and pretzel game.

Okay, they just broke the game with the last patch and only min-maxers would enjoy the game as it is now.

They dropped the level cap and now you have to be about level 15 before you can do anything. Unfortunately, they're patching the game based on people exploiting barter and now training is ridiculously expensive until you totally max barter. Gold is very restricted in this game and you will need to clear multiple dungeons to train even once. Since some of the good chests now have extremely high level locks on them, money is even less available, yet they raised the costs. Used to be locks were a % chance so it just cost lockpicks/reloads to eventually open a chest. Now it is hard-coded and you always use one pick/lock but won't be able to open several locks really until you're high level.

Never seen a dev so willing to break their own game. I really want a refund now, since I'm not getting the game I paid for. I hope the idiots change it back.

Edit: I put fuktards on Steam and it took it. I had to go back and change it to goofballs

crpgnut said:

Okay, they just broke the game with the last patch and only min-maxers would enjoy the game as it is now.

They dropped the level cap and now you have to be about level 15 before you can do anything. Unfortunately, they're patching the game based on people exploiting barter and now training is ridiculously expensive until you totally max barter. Gold is very restricted in this game and you will need to clear multiple dungeons to train even once. Since all the good chests now have extremely high level locks on them, money is even less available, yet they raised the costs. Used to be locks were a % chance so it just cost lockpicks/reloads to eventually open a chest. Now it is hard-coded and you always use one pick/lock but won't be able to open any locks really until you're high level.

Never seen a dev so willing to break their own game. I really want a refund now, since I'm not getting the game I paid for. I hope the idiots change it back.

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Yeah, I dislike the changes as well. Its just too much. We seem to have similar-ish tastes in games. Have you played Heroes of Steel? Its a decent console port that is still getting patched with content etc. It is completely linear, but the story is pretty good and the TB combat can be very challenging. Decent character progression system. 4 character party with pre-generated personalities. You can't go wrong for $10. The combat and character building are a lot better than in Antharion, but like I said, it is completely linear for the most part like an arpg with town hubs in-between chapters.

First of all: Calm down!

Your statement stat you need to be at least level 15 to do anything is simply factually wrong.

Also the requirements of the chests are not that bad and personally I prefer a fixed requirement instead of savescumming all your way into some treasure. I didn't like the previous approach where you just reloaded a few dozen times to get into a 5% chest.

Even without training it you can increase your skills to a point where you can get through the game.
As I wrote on steam:
How many skillpoints do you have to your disposal even without training? With the "old" system with a level cap of 24, you had 23*5+20= 135 points per character plus the 5 points in each initial skill that is 100 in one skill (which you don't need necessarily) and 45 in another. Or you can shift it around. With training, and even without parter you can should easily be able to max out several of these secondary skills.

Now the max level is removed, but you have a low diminishing returns which gives you less per later levels.

I agree that some changes are a little over the top and maybe not the best to "test" in a live environment. But overall I am quite happy about how they are listening, fixing bugs and adjusting. And that is even without the barter change.

Unrestigered said:

Yeah, I dislike the changes as well. Its just too much. We seem to have similar-ish tastes in games. Have you played Heroes of Steel? Its a decent console port that is still getting patched with content etc. It is completely linear, but the story is pretty good and the TB combat can be very challenging. Decent character progression system. 4 character party with pre-generated personalities. You can't go wrong for $10. The combat and character building are a lot better than in Antharion, but like I said, it is completely linear for the most part like an arpg with town hubs in-between chapters.

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Checked Heroes of Steel and already bought it quite a while ago. Similar amount of people working on it, who work on several projects at once though.

And while they implement some feedback this game just has some so drastical problems for me, like a horrible, horrible interface and a completely annoying music/soundloop that it's bascially unplayable for me at this point.
I'd really like to enjoy that game, but I am still waiting for patches to come before I sink my first couple of hours into it.

First of all: OH MY GOD!!!!

Second of all, its nice a developer is listening to the community, but don't treat a released game like an early access where drastic changes can be expected, or an mmorpg where drastic balance changes are necessary for the game's longevity.

The combat is extremely basic and simple, and nothing short of a complete overhaul is going to fix it. I'd rather save scum than have to remember where chests are all over the place I have to come back to to open. They picked a poor skill system type that with their new patch does not allow me to build a party that can open most chests as I come across them.

If you are going to make big changes, don't listen to a bunch of idiots on a forum who think they know what they are talking about, and look at the big picture and take the long view. If you want to reduce save scuming with the current skill and progression system, some sort of level based skill cap may be necessary. That would allow the developer to know around what level a character will be in what area what the max their lock pick skill will be. You need a couple of "come back later" events (chests, pick pocketing, whatever), but no one wants to remember where a million chests are that when they come back with the required skill will have outleveled the gear or items it provides.

It would also allow a better, more predictable training progression.

Should this be implemented? I don't know, I don't develop games. I just have impeccable taste.

So let me ask you: Do you actually enjoy savescumming?
Or would you prefer if chests do not have a locks at all?

How would an ideal system look like for you?

To me it's either a fixed skill requirement as they have, or even better would be the system of avernum, where you can use multiple lockpicks if you want to pick hard locks early on. But I personally also don't have a problem with backtracking.

I just think that the %-based value is the worst way to go.

Now whether the lockpick requirements are ok how they are or if they need to be adjusted is a different story.

I prefer locked chests to be a fixed skill requirement rather than % based, but high-level chests should be few and far between.

They are. Not sure I actually found one.
I think I found one door at "very hard" so far which you don't need to pick, and one cupboard. That is after 30h gametime.
Most chests are on "Medium". Cant say which skill that's requiring now. Have yet to find one lock on that difficulty again.

Took this one for a spin but put it on hold since the last patch.
I admit, getting max barter then putting on the hat for 115 Barter was fun for a bit. Wasn't a serious playthrough anyway. Selling back items for more than you paid was a good little racket and let me play with some items I generally wouldn't have been able to afford. Saved me from busting out "ye olde hex editor" on my save games.

Like crpnut said, its not perfect, but its pretty good.
Also, I think this is a record for crpnut posts in one thread for the past 250 days.

This is a good little indie game. The main problem is they keep changing the game so often that you have no idea how to build your party. By the time you've built something with the way the game was when you started, they've patched it 3 times and it plays nothing like the original. They've manipulated barter, lockpicking, gold, foraging, and pickpocket is next. This is in the week I've had the game. Good grief!

That's why I'd suggest waiting. Let the devs stop patching it for a couple weeks, then take the plunge. I'm still playing, but I've invested in it already. I'm not a fan of locks that take one number or higher to open. That's not the game breaker though; the meddling is the issue. If this was early access, I'd have no gripes, but I bought the release version. To me, the only thing they should be doing now is bug fixing and adding content. Not changing the game systems. That should be done already.

Kordanor said:

So let me ask you: Do you actually enjoy savescumming?
Or would you prefer if chests do not have a locks at all?

How would an ideal system look like for you?

To me it's either a fixed skill requirement as they have, or even better would be the system of avernum, where you can use multiple lockpicks if you want to pick hard locks early on. But I personally also don't have a problem with backtracking.

I just think that the %-based value is the worst way to go.

Now whether the lockpick requirements are ok how they are or if they need to be adjusted is a different story.

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I would much rather save scum than back track for most chests. The ideal system would be a competent level up system with level skill caps, so that I can keep my lockpicking skill maxed for the level I'm at while not gimping myself too much in combat. I have always disliked the trainer systems (like in the Avernums), unless they tie into the gameplay with caps such as in MMX. In this game a skill level cap by level would compliment the training system. And it helps the developer by knowing what the appropriate skill level should be for opening chests by the expected level of the area.

You need some surprise backtrack chests, events, etx, but they should be rare. Right now, the system is just borked. I can skip all the chests in the area at my level range, which my OCD dislikes a lot, and backtrack for every single one of them when I can afford to pay to upgrade my lockpicking skill.

But, I'd really rather not make a choice between combat viability and barter/lockpicking/pickpocketing. I'd rather the choice be between maxing lockpicking and having to ignore pickpocketing, or maxing lore and ignoring foraging, or maxing barter and ignoring persuasion, etc. But the stat system really doesn't support a system of character specialization, I have an orc two-handed melee character as my barter/persuader. Its just not a good system. Twiddling with it isn't going to fix it, it just screws the people playing the game.

The game is very basic and has extremely basic systems for everything. But its a party based open world rpg and it is greater than the sum of its parts. Don't twiddle with the parts, unless it is a complete overhaul to make a basic system an actual good system. Go D20 OGL, this game would have fit, and could have been the Knights of the Chalice type game everyone wants.

D20 isn't even a good system really, compared to the meaty systems that are out there (like The Riddle of Steel, for example), its just 100X better than what 99.9% of video game developers can come up with on their own.