Startrail HD - Version 1.10

Khayyin spotted an update for Realms of Arkania: Star Trail HD:

Version 1.10

Hello knights of fortune and adventurers of Aventuria!

We bring glad tidings from occupied Lowangen! After orcs had pushed back our scouts in skirmishes again and again, the first caravans with new relief goods have finally arrived. The Svellt Valley has been rebuilt and repaired many times over, and you, dear adventurers, may now feast on what the peoples of Aventuria have given you.

Many thanks to community supporter Martin Wunderlich, he has tirelessly built improvements in mod form and made this patch possible with his unparalleled perseverance. Also many thanks to CaptainKidd (lunatic) for the feature video and many more!

Well, let these things be proclaimed:

[big feature and fixed bugs list]

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More information.

Looks like it is time to finally get this one. It is on my wishlist forever now and I never pulled the trigger.

Does anybody have experience with it? How does it compare to Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny or even Drakensang?

Wondering the same and I had basically the same thought. I think I played the main Drakensang game and I remember it being hard, crunchy, and delightful offering TONS of optimization options for characters. Crunchy, highly customizable chargen systems are my jam. I want something so convoluted that it takes at least a couple of decades experience with the tabletop system to even attempt it.

FurtiveNyctophile said:

Wondering the same and I had basically the same thought. I think I played the main Drakensang game and I remember it being hard, crunchy, and delightful offering TONS of optimization options for characters. Crunchy, highly customizable chargen systems are my jam. I want something so convoluted that it takes at least a couple of decades experience with the tabletop system to even attempt it.

Click to expand...

The Dark Eye system is not that difficult once you get used to it. Although, we are all D&D conditioned so it might take a bit.

Be aware that these are two completely different iterations of the ruleset.

StarTrail and the original Realms of Arkania Systems are still extremely crude, using lots of luck to level up your character. This has been completely replaced by the newer systems as in Drakensang River of Time.

Even the Old System had tons of skills though. Just the way you increased these was very luck based (and frankly also terrible).

Kordanor said:

Be aware that these are two completely different iterations of the ruleset.

StarTrail and the original Realms of Arkania Systems are still extremely crude, using lots of luck to level up your character. This has been completely replaced by the newer systems as in Drakensang River of Time.

Even the Old System had tons of skills though. Just the way you increased these was very luck based (and frankly also terrible).

Click to expand...

Yes, the rule sets are very different !

And the 5th edition, to which no game exists so far, as far as I can tell, it different again !






Satire : "We'd like to go bancrupt. Can we get a license to develop a TDE game, please ?"

Kordanor said:

StarTrail and the original Realms of Arkania Systems are still extremely crude, using lots of luck to level up your character.

Click to expand...

I would not mind this personally, as I had a blast playing these games back then.
This crudeness also adds some humble German-RPG feel to these games (arbeit first, spass second, and viel glueck! if unprepared)

BUT (- and this is a BIG BUT)
I think the UI/UX was the crude first and foremost, and not the game systems.
The user interface is horrible by today's standards (i.e. inventory management, mouse handling, etc), and certain mundane tasks require way too many clicks (i.e. constant maintain of weapons using whetstones)

So:
What I would look forward is to:
- keep the original's great pixel art graphics,
- but update the user interface to modern standards,
- and add some quick way for mundane tasks.

Problem is, from the screenshots I see, the HD remake does not address any of these, but adds some unnecessary (and frankly: ugly) 3d graphics, and reportedly, tons of bugs. Not very promising, but I'm open to be proved wrong.

I loved all these days back in the day, yet I'm not so sure I'd be a fan of the seriously rough RNG that's prevalent in these games. I'll at least see what people think when all of them are complete and fully released.