Solasta updates
 

If you fancy early fixes, they pushed a patch on Steam branch 1.0.22
https://steamcommunity.com/games/109…95234441140931

It's now an official hotfix.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/109…52763132294661

Don't miss the known issues! And for the first item (GPU fans at 100%), it's probably worth trying Windowed fullscreen (default is Exclusive fullscreen), if the method below doesn't work.

I see there was a small update 1.0.22c (1.6 MB for me).
https://store.steampowered.com/news/…41807433350824

Review and guides
 

The yellow ball in the sky has finally subsided a little and stopped roasting us, so switching the PC on and playing is a possibility again. A few videos to celebrate!

A first in-depth-impressions sort of review from WolfheartFPS that I had overlooked. Quite fair IMO.



Here are two guides from the same author, to help with starting a new game. I especially recommend the character creation guide to anyone who's not used to D&D 5E, it has many valuable tips :)


This one is longer and presents all races and classes in details.


And finally a few tips for combat!


Don't watch them all at once ;)

So I've finished it today with a total of about 60 h with doing alle content I could find.

It's a good game, I had fun. I knew before that production value isn't hight and the focus is on combat, so I did not expect a lot from the other features.

I was positively surprised with how they handled the concept with having a custom party without a main character whom the story revolves about. By giving the chars some personality flags and a voice, they felt quite alive, though sometimes a little awkward - just like your everyday PnP group. I think the general is approach is great and I'm trilled to see what they or other devs with a higher budegt can create in the future with such a concept.

I was a little disappointed by the combat. While it's really great to have a neat D&D turn based combat, I felt it was too limited. I had two casters (wizard, cleric with bow) and two melee fighters (fighter, rogue) and I has my default actions (hit, shoot, cantrip) and in the more difficult fights I had some default attack spells (fireball, scorching ray, lighting bolt) and healing. Some times I buffed with haste or debuffed with blind. But that was pretty much it. I'm missing the more or less carefully planned buffing like in BG2 or Pathfinder, and especially the caster battles from BG1/2 where you had to carefully strip each other of protection spells.
Also I couldn't do "combos" like conjure an elemental and buff it (with haste) due to the limitation by concentration.
It also wasn't exactly necessary or even helpful to protect yourself with spells like Protection from Energy.
I don't know if these simplifications are just due to D&D 5 being more simplified or if it was a decision by Tactical Adventures.

Also I found the loot quite underwhelming. A lot of chests and crates only contained crap.

They had some novel spells like levitating and flying which sometimes were great for exploring. But Flying totally crumbled when you couldn't even use in end game to fly over some barriers or from one "floating platform" to another. Not a big deal, but it seems like the area/quest designers didn't think of the Flying spell, so they just ignored that they created an inconsistent situation.

And I really would have liked to buy some magic items from the Antiquarians in mid/late game, but I didn't have enough points despite having done all content and tried to give them everything since early/mid game. Seems like you have to concentrate on one faction from the very start if you want to get the good stuff.
So I had tons of money in my bags and some great items in the store, but just couldn't buy anything. Didn't like that.

I also had some bugs like the dialogue system chosing the wrong character for a certain response or an immunity to fire given by an item (which should prevent any fire damage) only acting as resistance to fire (which only halves fire damage). Nothing game breaking though. I also hadn't any problems with overheating (i7-4790k, 1080TI).

Thanks for sharing! Good to hear you had fun :)

Concentration and buff limitation is D&D 5E. Didn't you feel that the tactical choices were more important because of it? I often have the impression that some small decisions can make a combat a success or a total failure. But perhaps it was just luck, that's why I'm curious to hear other's opinion.

Yes, the factions can be frustrating. I wanted to buy a primed weapon but couldn't get it, even though I had items for the faction, just not enough. Then I got it by luck in a loot, later. So while it's frustrating, and the loot is often uninteresting, it makes special items more precious. It does make the factions feel arbitrary though, especially since it entirely depends on the type of items each is looking for and it's out of the player's control.

Hm, no, I didn't feel that. Perhaps my problem was that I hadn't increased difficulty, so combat was quite trivial from mid game.
I still felt that impact was too small for buffs. With haste my melee fighters had 3 attacks instead of 2. That's good but not a game changer. I didn't even use other buffs like Bless, Protection from Evil and so on.
I like it that when making the correct choice the battle goes from nearly impossible to quite easy. For example if you fight some fire monsters, you cast protection from fire, select ice spells and perhaps enchant your weapons to do ice damage (don't know if that's actually possible in D&D 5). Or fighting an "invulnerable" caster who just needs to be stripped of that one protection spell before you're able to harm him.
Or having to cast Improved Invisibility on your rogue or somehow increasing Stealth to sneak attack every round (in DnD 5 you apparently can do this every round when your opponent is threatened by an ally). Or using turn/destroy undead with your cleric (I used it in Solasta but it also wasn't much of a game changer).

Btw. I also don't like D&D5's general proficiency bonus. It's an oversimplification and prevents characters from developing differently, thus making all characters (of the same class) more or less identical.

As I said in another discussion, imo 5th Edition is great for PnP playing, not so much for PC Games.

Turn Undead is helpful sometimes, but more than once I had to chase them down, it was awkward :D Perhaps past some distance the enemies should be considered out of combat and idle again.

Well, I have no issue with 5E even though I'm switching between that and Pathfinder, but I'm probably easily satisfied for that feature. I haven't played the whole game, so maybe I would find it more annoying later.

Well, I guess I only was disappointed because Solasta's combat was praised. It's not that it is bad. I just expected more. It could get better with an increased level limit when you get more options and with a greater variety of opponents.

They need to add giants asap. It isn't D&D without all the giant bashing. Get trolls in right away.

Tiny hotfix for Solasta today, patch notes:

And a intro video to the new Sorcerer class:

Looking really good! That dungeon designer could get very interesting.

If they add giants and trolls, somebody could re-make G1/G2/G3. ;)

Another fix, 1.1.11, and a message:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/109…26980066665572



Those pets of theirs o.O
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.c…de59ed4ba1.jpg