KickStarter Lords of Xulima

[victim]

Baldur's Gate 2 was also made by 1+ people

most games are

Its actually hard to tell what he is saying there, given the context

 

[Mortmal]

New version out :

New Version 0.12
12 AOÛT - NUMANTIAN GAMES
Greetings!

We have collected a lot of interesting feedback from the first players of the Early Access version. We would like to talk about the balancing specs and challenge level of Lords of Xulima, since it has been a common theme among community discussions.

Balancing Vs Difficulty level

First, while balance and difficulty often go hand in hand, they are a little different in their meanings. A lack of balance would mean that the game has mechanics and rules poorly implemented, which can damage intended gameplay. For example; a class might be much more powerful than others; some specific sets of equipment might make the party invincible, while others might be less effective; some skills might outshine the rest of what a character can learn, others may prove less satisfying; the in-game economy (too little or too much gold for the player), which is delicate to balance in a large game, could be off.

A game can be balanced, and still offer have a high level of challenge to the player, which is our goal with Lords of Xulima. The Classic difficulty setting is similar to what could be experienced in the good old days. If you are still building your familiarity with the RPG genre (which means Lords of Xulima should also be for you), it is normal to experience a bit of difficulty as you encounter everything the game has to offer. Especially in the beginning, when players have yet to learn various mechanics and understand all the tricks at their disposal.

You can now change the difficulty level

In order to adapt the game a little better to general player expectations, we have renamed the difficulty modes in order to allow everyone to pick a mode better adapted to their preferences. The 3 difficulty settings are now: Normal, OldSchool Veteran and Ballsbreaker, respectively.

Also, we understand that some players love to simply jump right in, and so have added an option to lower the difficulty setting without having to restart your game.

Many players are opting to go with the Classic setting, expecting it to be the smooth Normal mode they are used to. But, this was always meant to be for RPG veterans, and we admit that perhaps the choices offered were perhaps overly punishing to new players. We want you to enjoy a modern take on the old-school gems, and perhaps contribute to raising awareness on the great traditions of a great genre.

Here is the list of changes for this new version:

Improvements

• Help tooltips now appear when the mouse is over the elements (for one second).
• Combat Screen: Now it is displayed the time needed for the combatants for their next turn.
• The enemy presence detector now emits an animation when its state changes.
• The difficulty level can be changed in the options screen. WARNING! You cannot increase the difificulty level onces change it.
• Item Container Box: [Enter] Key now takes all items.
• Party Creation: A random name is pregenerated when creating a new character.
• Improved multimonitor support.

Balancing and Game Mechanics

• Changed the names of the difficulty modes to be more clear for the new users.
• Explorer Venom Strike now have attack rating bonus.
• Evasion (“blocking”) rating of a few creatures has been lowered.

Bugs Fixed

• Some minor crash bugs have been fixed.
• Fixed: Crash when typing backspace with no characters when entering a word in a text box.
• Fixed: Exploit when equipping and unequipping items with HP/PP bonus.
• Fixed: Achievement progress updating.
• Fixed: HP/PP class Ratios did not take in account the Difficulty modifier.
• Fixed: Crash in combat when the character's name has less than three letters.
• Fixed: Spells non identificated showed their description on the help tooltip.
• Fixed: Some cells on the map had wrong zone assigned.
• Fixed: LoX icon in taskbar is now displayed correctly.

See you soon!

 

[Mortmal]

I dont know if someone is at this stage of the game, but after beating prince khornil, wich is the next area to visit ?

Varaskel has "balanced" fights, yet the cute little ravens stack insane amounts of bleed damage on my heavily armored (98 defense ) guys, way more than the cleric can cure ,even it if it was a group spell it wouldnt be enough .It always end up with a full rest to get rid of fatal wounds + adds to that the frightening desert attrition killing 6 days supplies in a few min of exploration.

Rasmura , challenging fight at entrance , one shot characters as it target both front and back row., the path on the side has wyverns two shotting my heavily armored characters.....

I suppose its not going for evengel as entering his domain quickly obliterate the whole party.

The power point leeching, silencing , bleeders horrors of the garden maybe.....


Am i missing something?

 

[Applypoison]

Update 0.13 drops the Conan bomb: "What is steel compared to the hand that wields it?".

Patch notes:

Spoiler

Improvements

• Improved management of load/save errors.
• Tooltip time can be set in the Options screen (it can be disabled too). Also tooltip is not removed until you move the mouse cursor out of the object that is showing the help.
• In the Level Up Window, at the bottom, it now displays the Next Skills that will be available in the next level.
• In the Shop window, the selected character can be switched with the keys (1,2...6)
• Dialog options can be selected using the Number Keys: [1] for the first option, [2] for the second one,....
• In Trap Window, the color of the green gears has been changed to silver. Red-green color blind players had problems with the old colors.

Balancing and Game Mechanics

• Strength bonus damage changed: Now it gives one point damage every two points and every 5 points it gives an additional damage point.
• Random values for Auto Lock Picking, Auto Trap Disarming, Herbs
• Collecting, and more... are now generated with the same saved seed. What this means is, save-scumming is now almost impossible.
• Flaming weapon and Icy Weapon now have some bonus to attack rating depending on the development. Also, in combat their hit rate and damage is now displayed.
• Mercantilism Skill now affects the prices of the town services: Inn, Food, Temple.
• There were some problems with the level of the skills for the hybrid classes Paladin & Arcane Soldier, that were affected when level up. Now the level required for shared skills (the ones specific to the two subclasses) are equal to: Level *1.5 +3. So for example: Lv1. Light Heal is available for Paladins at level 5.

Bugs Fixed

• Some computers had errors when using the user temp folder to create the temp files when saving. So now the temp files are created in the save game folder instead.
• Fixed: The greeting voice of the temple was executed after coming back from the "Need Spiritual Help" menu.
• Fixed: Some English & Spanish texts errors.
• Fixed: Message after fighting in the Arena (only the character who fights gains EXP).
• Fixed: Initiative help.
• Fixed: Turn time in combat list now is updated at the beginning of the turn too.
• Fixed: Cauldrons in the Temple near the Well of Souls were unclickable.
• Fixed: Some more minor bugs and graphic glitches.

The 'Strength' tweak goes hand-in-hand with the Strike Skills tweak from Update 0.10. It will help ensure that fighter-type classes are better at dishing out the pain, while also making it so that an an occasional investment in the Strength of your Thief, Bard or hybrid-Caster is always beneficial, regardless of weapon scaling.

Also, you can now tell which new skills will be learned on a character's next level, along with their cost:

That is sure to come in handy, especially since...

Next update will contain the new class The Divine Summoner and some new skills for the existent ones.

I dont know if someone is at this stage of the game, but after beating prince khornil, wich is the next area to visit ?

That's quite close to the edge of the content. You can head into Rasmura if prepared with heavy defense against physical blows (and a little party formation tweaking against the Ogre), or Varaskel if you have the gold, food and high points in certain utility skills (such as Knowledge of Terrains and Hunting).

The 'Gardens' also work, if your Fire Resist is up to par. At this point, take it easy and enjoy the challenge while the rest of the content is on the way

 

[GrimoireFTW]

so Ive defeated prince khornhil and beaten the second temple, only places I have to go now apparently are rasmura (impossible) and the guardian of the red pass (also impossible) at this point. Problem is im lvl 16-17 and from what ive read most people are in the 20's at this point? I don't understand how im so far behind In levels.... yes I did the second tower whatever it was called and got the hammer, uncovered pretty much every map possible. Ive done every quest from the 2 villages except for the yotum tusks and finding yoel in karraga which I have a feeling is behind an impossible yotum fight. but yeah im just wondering why im so far behind in levels

 

[felipepepe]

The Guardian of the Pass should be doable now that you have the Hammer from the Tower. He's way easier than the second prince.

 

[Mortmal]

Varaskel is tough even with the utility skills, got knowledge of terrain at 10+ , yet its still draining ressources like mad. There's caleb farm to resplenish supplies but thats tiresome to travel all the way back each time. Buyng it at the local merchant is out of question of course else theres no way you can upgrade party armors.


I noticed too the guardian of pass is easier than the prince , wich is probably way too hard and should be tuned down. The castle encounters were a breeze but i barely did khornil wih one character alive.

 

[victim]

In the arena, melee enemies seem to only be able to attack the square directly in front of them. This means that if your character is faster than the enemy you will eventually get an extra turn vs the enemy. So you can just dance your character around to a different square until you get your extra turn and take a shot. It can take a while but this process feels like an exploit. The enemy will have to waste all of its turns chasing you.

Additionally, even if enemies could attack diagonally this would still be a problem, since you can move your character from corner to corner presently.

 

[victim]

PS I have hand drawn maps and written instructions for the Tower of Resilience puzzle if anybody wants/needs them.

 

[GrimoireFTW]

theres no way the red pass guardian is easier than the second prince. I mean I did the second prince many levels ago with much worse gear. Now that I think about it though I bought all of the blessings from the broad in town to make the fight doable, so I guess I should try the same thing for the guardian, but either way Im pretty sure the guardian is much harder (more hp, and does a shitload more dmg)

 

[victim]

theres no way the red pass guardian is easier than the second prince. I mean I did the second prince many levels ago with much worse gear. Now that I think about it though I bought all of the blessings from the broad in town to make the fight doable, so I guess I should try the same thing for the guardian, but either way Im pretty sure the guardian is much harder (more hp, and does a shitload more dmg)

On the easiest mode (not sure what they're calling it now) my brother beat the guardian at the pass fairly handily and he was around level 17 I think. I'm playing on the middle mode (it was called Classic when I started the game) and the Guardian seems much tougher than for him. But I'm not level 17 either.

 

[GrimoireFTW]

theres no way the red pass guardian is easier than the second prince. I mean I did the second prince many levels ago with much worse gear. Now that I think about it though I bought all of the blessings from the broad in town to make the fight doable, so I guess I should try the same thing for the guardian, but either way Im pretty sure the guardian is much harder (more hp, and does a shitload more dmg)

On the easiest mode (not sure what they're calling it now) my brother beat the guardian at the pass fairly handily and he was around level 17 I think. I'm playing on the middle mode (it was called Classic when I started the game) and the Guardian seems much tougher than for him. But I'm not level 17 either.

Im also playing on classic. Just beat him after buying all of the blessings for 220g a pop and I still barely scraped by. Takes a long time to knock his 1000 hp down when the soldier is doing the bulk of the dmg and runs out of energy for power attacks pretty quickly, rogue and gaulen do single digit shit dmg and poison dosent work. wound dosent work so it was stone arrow from my mage doing about 30 dmg a cast, the bard does no dmg only good for buffs, and cleric runs out of mana just from trying to keep up healing the massive aoe dmg without having time to clear the ever stacking wounds. Apprently next level my mage gets meteor so maybe it would have been easier then but whateva.

 

[moraes]

This game uses an interesting form of level scaling. Food, tavern and equipment prices go up with your level so as to constantly put pressure in the player: even if you grind all encounters you'll be paying more and more for food and rest. Also there's a money sink in training wich is mandatory if you hope to buy all relevant skills as soon as they are unlocked.

 

[victim]

This game uses an interesting form of level scaling. Food, tavern and equipment prices go up with your level so as to constantly put pressure in the player: even if you grind all encounters you'll be paying more and more for food and rest. Also there's a money sink in training wich is mandatory if you hope to buy all relevant skills as soon as they are unlocked.

Actually the scaling is very uneven. If you clear a mausoleum, hit a treasure room, or manage to beat a baddie that is considered outside your range (say, Titanic difficulty or higher such as the Ogre early in the game) then you can end up with a ton of cash for a while and buy pretty much whatever you like. If you hit a cold spell you can be dead broke for a while too.

I don't know if they intended you to buy food or not. If you warp back to Velgarn and farm the cereal plants plus grab the low hanging fruit that is right around Velgarn and the Nabros warp you can basically never pay for rations. Fatal wounds are a problem but you get those fangs from the Cursed Hounds and if only one or two characters die it is cheaper to have the healer in town fix them up.

 

[victim]

Im also playing on classic. Just beat him after buying all of the blessings for 220g a pop and I still barely scraped by. Takes a long time to knock his 1000 hp down when the soldier is doing the bulk of the dmg and runs out of energy for power attacks pretty quickly, rogue and gaulen do single digit shit dmg and poison dosent work. wound dosent work so it was stone arrow from my mage doing about 30 dmg a cast, the bard does no dmg only good for buffs, and cleric runs out of mana just from trying to keep up healing the massive aoe dmg without having time to clear the ever stacking wounds. Apprently next level my mage gets meteor so maybe it would have been easier then but whateva.

Sounds like you picked the default party like I did. I made a second party and played on Easy to test the other classes.

Speaking of the other classes:

Barbarian gains a TON of HP which is insane vs some of the bosses. My brother beat the Febret guardian by tanking and having his weaker characters use healing items on the Barbarian plus a LOT of PP potions on his Mage. The Guardian slowly died of burning from 2000 HP.

Astral Knight does more damage early on than the soldier (especially since it gets Burning really fast) but I haven't leveled one enough to know if it keeps up since Soldier's Powerful Strike gets pretty good. The biggest problem with Powerful Strike is that it costs a large % of your PP so its a HUGE loss if you miss with it.

Paladin can't deal damage and it can cast its Aura about 4 times before running out of PP so I have a hard time seeing how it is better than Cleric in any way. On Party Stats mine was doing like 2% of all damage. Also Bleeding starts to be a huge problem and I don't know if/when Paladin is able to cure bleed. I substituted Paladin for Cleric in my second party, so if P can't cure bleed that could become a BIG problem.

My brother also reports that Icy Touch gets really strong if you level it enough. By comparison Bard's Song of Stunning is good but inconsistent. I've been leveling damage spells on Mage but I'm going to give Icy Touch a shot. The biggest problem is that Mage is also the best damage dealer which is sort of a catch-22. My brother *almost* beat the Febret guardian by keeping it constantly frozen but he couldn't muster enough offense from the rest of his team. Thats why he switched to the strategy of having it burn itself for 150/turn.

 

[Mortmal]

theres no way the red pass guardian is easier than the second prince. I mean I did the second prince many levels ago with much worse gear. Now that I think about it though I bought all of the blessings from the broad in town to make the fight doable, so I guess I should try the same thing for the guardian, but either way Im pretty sure the guardian is much harder (more hp, and does a shitload more dmg)

I think the gear is also extremely important, maybe you were able to stack a lot of elemental resistances , so the prince lightning bolts were dealing less damage. In my case guardian was much easier because i had high physicial defense , it all comes to what the vendors are selling, the loot they sell is completely random and no guarantee to even see a good item on sale.

 

[victim]

the loot isn't completely random..it scales with your level. It might be random within a certain range but you definitely start to see better stuff over time as your party gets stronger.

 

[Mortmal]

yes but still you get only a few interesting pieces in the whole inventory with the resists you really need.

 

[victim]

Not sure if this is a bug or not but 'Short Rest - 8 Hours' is supposed to totally refill HP and PP. Therefore I assumed that if all characters had at least 1 HP and no characters had a Wound or Fatal Wound that the "rest until healed" option couldn't take longer than 8 hours and in practice should always take less time. However, on Hardcore (the hardest difficulty) I just saw it take 8h10m. I reloaded and tested the "Short Rest" options to confirm.

Short Rest was 10 minutes quicker -- and all of my characters were alive when I started the test, without any wounds or fatal wounds. On character had 1 HP.

 

[GrimoireFTW]

is that the default party comp? I dunno I created all my own characters

 

[victim]

is that the default party comp? I dunno I created all my own characters

Soldier-Explorer-Thief-Bard-Cleric-Mage

no Astral Knight, Barbarian or Paladin

its vastly underpowered in terms of damage, especially early in the game and even more so in Hardcore mode where your first priority will likely be Con to help with survival.

 

[Suicidal]

So I went ahead and bought it, despite my policy of never buying/playing early access stuff.

What a well-made, simple, but fun game it is, I'm enjoying it so much. But I think I'm gonna restart on normal. Starting on hard with a crappy derp party without knowing anything about the game was a mistake. I realized that when I attacked the first boss and watched almost my entire party die at the beginning due to confusion while the boss had 350 hp :D

Btw can anyone tell me the exact differences between hard and normal. I know that on hard monsters have more hp, you have less and you can die from starvation. Is there anything else?

 

[octavius]

This game looks very promising.
I haven't bought a new game at full price for at least 15 years (closest I got was with Age of Wonders 3), but so far it looks like this may be an insta buy (if not insta play) when released on GOG.

One thing im not overly fond of with different kickstarters is their backer portraits. Nerds dont make good warriors/mages. But the game looks good anyways, looking forward to it!

Didn't some older RPGs feature slightly modified developer mugs as portraits?

Jon Van Caneghem used a portrait of himself as the male Paladin in MM3.
Most of the staff at Triumph Studios were used for portraits in the Age of Wonders games.

Saw this from RPGWatch , if you wanna laugh / rage hard

http://www.twinfinite.net/2014/08/08/lords-of-xulima-preview/

Lords of Xulima is a role-playing game, or RPG. It does a fair job of emulating the characteristics of the genre but this is a game that caters to a very specific breed of RPG-gamer: the one that doesn’t care about meaningful characters, style, or the good parts of the genre.

Tl;dr he probably expected a Bioware game

I think I've seen another retarded review posted on the codex from there.

"About Author

Mike Geib (Writer)
This one was born in 1989 and counts watching his old man play Hack on an ancient PC as one of his earliest memories. Fond of JRPG's, visual novels, and the RTS' of old, Mike's gaming preferences are "anything so long as it's got a good story." A simple network engineer from Philly PA, he looks forward to exploring the intricate world of gaming with ye!"


When a reviewers who likes JRPGs and visual novels finds a CRPG too hard, then it must do something right.

 

[victim]

Does the day counter mean anything? If you get to like Day 1000 do you auto lose or something? Because otherwise Caleb's farm is infinite or at least persistent (I'm guessing you can't go above 10 but I stopped at 6 days worth) free food.

 

[StaticSpine]

Bros, I'm still hesitating about buying the game.

The first thing I liked was nice isometric visual style. But I'm not a big fan of first-person combat. And as I've seen in the preview the gameplay is mostly random battles and the story/interesting characters are nonexistant, amirite?

And besides there are a lot of games to play right now and till the end of 2014.