Solasta - Winter Patch Preview

Henriquejr spotted dev update #23 for Solasta: Crown of the Magister:

Dev Update #23 - Winter Patch Preview!

Changes to the light system, new area and more features!

Hey there folks,

Our Steam Early Access Launch has been a blast so far. We've spent hours upon hours reading your messages, comments, suggestions, feedback… and it's been great! This is everything we wanted from the Early Access period. Anyway, now that things have calmed down a bit, we're back with our scheduled Dev Updates - this time with a preview of the upcoming Winter Patch, which should drop in the coming months. But before that… Let's greet our newcomers with our usual ritual - a picture of one of our fluffy companions!

Winter is Coming

Grab your coat and fire up your computer, here's a little sample of what's coming next!

• A new area and its set of quests, taking place after the Necromancy Main Quest
• The Scavenger System - no more lugging around all the junk you see lying around
• New combat features, such as hiding during combat and applying Poison onto your weapon
• More customization options in Character Creation, and a bit of plastic surgery on some faces
• Inventory and Shopping improvements, hand picked from your suggestions
• Still under consideration, but we might be adjusting the lighting system following your feedback - potentially not in this patch!
• And plenty of other additions, that we'll talk about in the coming weeks!

[…]

More information.

I'm curious to see the Scavenger system in place, I really like this original idea Just take the important and precious items, leave the junk at a little cost.

Some players were complaining about the little place there was in the inventory, but I find it's a good thing. First, it's more realistic, you can't expect adventurers to carry to kind of baggage we see in most other games. Then it becomes so annoying to manage! I frequently have to reorder my pack in D:OS2, Pathfinder, BG3 or PoE, making sure not to sell important items, keeping other stuff 'just in case..

I watched the last video of NeverKnowsBest on DeusEx, and I have to agree (those are really in-depth videos and his take on games is very interesting). Keep a simple and realistic inventory, don't put big pointers on the map, and let players manage things a bit by themselves!

The lighting system is already good IMHO, even if it made me curse a few times when I had to roll at a disadvantage. The idea of throwing torches sounds fun, however, we'll see what they come up with

The most interesting thing to me is how they changed the light system as in… how did they change it?! The patch notes were (purposefully?) vague on that aspect.

Originally Posted by FurtiveNyctophile
The most interesting thing to me is how they changed the light system as in… how did they change it?! The patch notes were (purposefully?) vague on that aspect.

Did you follow the link to the explanations? https://www.solasta-game.com/news/10…there-be-light

Originally Posted by Redglyph
Did you follow the link to the explanations? https://www.solasta-game.com/news/10…there-be-light

Yes, I see that they describe their current lighting system but I am missing any changes they made to it?

Originally Posted by FurtiveNyctophile
Yes, I see that they describe their current lighting system but I am missing any changes they made to it?

It appears they aren't quite decided on the change yet.

Originally Posted by vanedor
It appears they aren't quite decided on the change yet.

It was an interesting patch note. "Lighting system changes!!!"

(…tba)

They mentioned taking on board some ideas from the community - but won't commit to saying what at this point because it's such a major part of their world/encounter design and they need to do some serious thinking about how changes will impact things. And I see why - *anything* they implement will precipitate a backlash - the steam forums were full of outage when people realised they couldn't simply take a party with darkvision only and, you know, simply ignore all the tactical darkness they'd built in. How *so very* unfair!

I carefully read all their earlier posts - including the KS updates - and knew what to expect, and thought it would add a lot to the game - but others *insist* (in capital letters) on RAW in 5e SRD etc etc. And the noise on steam threatened to drown the game, so they did the most sensible thing which was to try and compromise. The lighting implementation is currently buggy though, which may have added to player frustration. Some suggestions include returning to RAW for darkvision, but adding in monsters buffs/powers to negate those advantages where appropriate, adding in throwable light sources to light up enemies, home brew spells for creating light tactically (beyond the basic light spells available). I just hope they aren't bullied too far down this path because I think that would remove one of the core new gameplay mechanics. They are also limited because the can only use the SRD. not official D&D, so limited in classes they can support etc (again lots of moaning about that without reading the notes that stated this pretty clearly). For a small studio, they have done an excellent job so far

Originally Posted by FurtiveNyctophile
It was an interesting patch note. "Lighting system changes!!!"

(…tba)

Ah, I see where the confusion is coming from

They changed it from the start, meaning it's always been different than how D&D specified it in the SRD, and that old link explains the deviations. Some people asked to change it back to comply with the original SRD.

But no, they haven't done that yet, they're actually not sure they'll do it, or how. Thanks to Vanedor and Booboo for the clarification

Originally Posted by booboo
They are also limited because the can only use the SRD. not official D&D, so limited in classes they can support etc (again lots of moaning about that without reading the notes that stated this pretty clearly). For a small studio, they have done an excellent job so far

They would probably be more limited by what they can achieve right now with a small team, than by more exotic classes that are outside of the SRD scope anyway. There are quite a few base races and classes of the SRD they couldn't implement.

I'm fine with that, as you said they did a wonderful job, and they could find a good balance between the features they could implement and what they had to leave out. If that works well for them, I hope we'll see more content and more "base features" in a next game / DLC

For my understanding, what does RAW and SRD stand for?

RAW = Rules As Written
SRD = System Reference Document

Originally Posted by vanedor
For my understanding, what does RAW and SRD stand for?

The first is when you go without a condom. The second is supposed to have a "T" in the middle.

You Raw Dog.

Originally Posted by booboo
They mentioned taking on board some ideas from the community - but won't commit to saying what at this point because it's such a major part of their world/encounter design and they need to do some serious thinking about how changes will impact things. And I see why - *anything* they implement will precipitate a backlash - the steam forums were full of outage when people realised they couldn't simply take a party with darkvision only and, you know, simply ignore all the tactical darkness they'd built in. How *so very* unfair!

I carefully read all their earlier posts - including the KS updates - and knew what to expect, and thought it would add a lot to the game - but others *insist* (in capital letters) on RAW in 5e SRD etc etc.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they have a vision.

Ultimately, though, they have a product they're trying to sell. So perhaps listening to the "fan base" is a good business idea. I already bought the game, EA, because i Love it and I want to support these kinds of games.

But they'd probably do well to listen to what annoys most people, unless they want to make a niche game.

Lighting rules can be a real nuisance in DnD. I hope they're not too stringent about it, otherwise it could make ranged characters quite tedious (even with 60ft darkvision).

I had two characters that used a bow. They were shooting at disadvantage about half the time. At first, I was confused why they were at a disadvantage so much.

If they're concerned about trivialized encounters, the obvious solution is to implement a toggle in the difficulty options - just as previous RPGs have done with friendly fire.

The EA doesn't have difficulty levels implemented yet - they commented on this somewhere. They were also collecting feedback in the EA - so they have clearly heard what people said about their plans with tactical darkness. I don't think they can be faulted for that - they have take the feedback on board and I'm sure they'll reach some reasonable compromise. I'm only sad we'll have to wait for some time before the next EA update :/ I suppose I could install the BG3 EA…