KickStarter Serpent in the Staglands Pre-Release Thread

[Infinitron]

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So yeah, the game looks much better now.

Also wolves can now one-hit-kill you.

 

[garren]

We need to gift this game to avellone asap.

 

[tuluse]

Ok, I just spent an hour or so with the latest beta, and it is AWESOME.

Minor spoilers for the first 3 areas ahead if you care:

Just poking around the starting areas, finding little huts filled with bandits on the outskirts of town. Fighting wolves, foxes, and goblins mostly.

There is a tree where you have to polymorph into a cat to get into. Inside there is a possessed kid who attacks you. I made a support pc, so I can't beat him yet. Gonna try to level up and come back.

Every combat is dangerous. I think in all but one or two, I've had to shuffle people around and desperately try to heal while hoping I can divert the enemy's attention. They've managed to cut the gordion knot of kiting by making it mandatory to get through fights. It doesn't feel like you're exploiting, it feels like you're barely surviving.

No resource casting is really nice too. Each spell takes long enough to cast that you're thinking what can help me 5 seconds from now, instead of right now. I haven't dived too far into theory crafting with the character system, so there might be exploits I'm missing, but what I've done so far has been pretty well balanced.

Itemization is really good too so far. Getting that first leather armor so my tank could take 1 hit more felt so satisfying, but isn't too powerful either. Going through my inventory and finding stuff to sell to get that magic robe to make casting just a bit easier was great too.

I haven't gotten far at all, so this is a little like judging Fallout from Shady Sands, but if the quality of the game keeps up, it's a major winner.

 

[Ninjerk]

Ok, I just spent an hour or so with the latest beta, and it is AWESOME.

Minor spoilers for the first 3 areas ahead if you care:

Spoiler

Just poking around the starting areas, finding little huts filled with bandits on the outskirts of town. Fighting wolves, foxes, and goblins mostly.

There is a tree where you have to polymorph into a cat to get into. Inside there is a possessed kid who attacks you. I made a support pc, so I can't beat him yet. Gonna try to level up and come back.

Every combat is dangerous. I think in all but one or two, I've had to shuffle people around and desperately try to heal while hoping I can divert the enemy's attention. They've managed to cut the gordion knot of kiting by making it mandatory to get through fights. It doesn't feel like you're exploiting, it feels like you're barely surviving.

No resource casting is really nice too. Each spell takes long enough to cast that you're thinking what can help me 5 seconds from now, instead of right now. I haven't dived too far into theory crafting with the character system, so there might be exploits I'm missing, but what I've done so far has been pretty well balanced.

Itemization is really good too so far. Getting that first leather armor so my tank could take 1 hit more felt so satisfying, but isn't too powerful either. Going through my inventory and finding stuff to sell to get that magic robe to make casting just a bit easier was great too.

I haven't gotten far at all, so this is a little like judging Fallout from Shady Sands, but if the quality of the game keeps up, it's a major winner.

Bolded is awesome.

 

[Infinitron]

They've managed to cut the gordion knot of kiting by making it mandatory to get through fights. It doesn't feel like you're exploiting, it feels like you're barely surviving.

People weren't nearly as positive about this when Legend of Grimrock did it

 

[tuluse]

People weren't nearly as positive about this when Legend of Grimrock did it

It's possible that a tactical view will make this feel better than first person blob.

 

[Infinitron]

It's possible that a tactical view will make this feel better than first person blob.

Maybe, or maybe it's just the novelty factor and you'll be just as tired of it N hours into the game as you were in Grimrock (assuming the necessity for it persists, which it might not).

In general "This annoying mechanic isn't annoying anymore because you HAVE to use it" seems like a weird statement to me

 

[tuluse]

Maybe, or maybe it's just the novelty factor and you'll be just as tired of it N hours into the game as you were in Grimrock (assuming the necessity for it persists, which it might not).

In general "This annoying mechanic isn't annoying anymore because you HAVE to use it" seems like a weird statement to me

Kiting in IE wasn't really annoying. It just seemed ridiculous and exploitative.

Another thing I've noticed. Low level enemy creatures have much faster attack speeds than your characters. So when they get next to one of your characters, they're petty much guaranteed an attack. This differs from IE, where you could easily avoid forever.

 

[Sensuki]

They've managed to cut the gordion knot of kiting by making it mandatory to get through fights. It doesn't feel like you're exploiting, it feels like you're barely surviving.

This is how it should be. No matter what, kiting is simply a part of RTS-style games (not saying this is one), and I think it's smart to make it so that you have to rotate your frontline in an encounter because you can get smashed if you stay there for too long. I wish PE played like that.

 

[Agesilaus]

I was immediately eaten by wolves. Then eaten again. And again. And again. And again.

It's so good though I kept playing until I finally won. Then I got smashed because I walked into a random building and stumbled upon some angry people who also didn't belong there.

 

[tuluse]

I was immediately eaten by wolves. Then eaten again. And again. And again. And again.

BTW: I made one extra character at the beginning. So I'm running a party of 4 with the two recruitables.

 

[SuicideBunny]

anyone else having an issue where using inventory items that pop up other windows (the book you find at the beginning, thieving imp, or diary from the possessed child) cuases characters to become unresponsive?

 

[tuluse]

anyone else having an issue where using inventory items that pop up other windows (the book you find at the beginning, thieving imp, or diary from the possessed child) cuases characters to become unresponsive?

There was a complaint about the imp on the official forums. I haven't tried any myself yet.

 

[SuicideBunny]

i get it from everything that pops up a window, after closing the window and inventory either way. characters won't move at all, deselecting/selecting/switching cursors to actions and whatnot doesn't do anything. saving and reloading seems to fix it for the most part.

 

[tuluse]

You should report it on their forums just to be sure.

Unrelated story:

Spoiler

I just cleared out the farm and found an underground passage. Found a couple passive crop goblins which I thought was unusual, and some wood structures which made me thing "who built this". Keep going for a bit and I meat "the King of Goblins". Some dude commanding the goblins larping that he's a king. In the dialog options I have the option to give him a companion as a slave for safe passage :incine:. I decide to fight it out anyways and I get swarmed by a dozen goblins and get at a MC death.

 

[StaticSpine]

I was immediately eaten by wolves. Then eaten again. And again. And again. And again.

 

[Infinitron]

Kiting in IE wasn't really annoying.

Well, now you're talking opinions.

 

[Infinitron]

Hail fine folk of 2015!

Reigning in the holidays, we have just put up patch 1.6 for your downloading and playing perusal. The forum patch log has the list of updates since 1.5, but overall you’ll be seeing a bit of polish to menus, inventory tweaks, UI and further balancing. Known issues are also in their respective forum sections. Scepters (now available) and whips now give their appropriate item modifications as well. If you haven’t started a new game since 1.4/1.5 we’d encourage you to get fresh start and see some of the new features and balancing from these early areas and let us know what you think. 2.0 will have plenty more for extended exploration testing and mid-game content.

New Mechanic
The gameplay mechanic we’ve finally had a chance to update was the consumables you eat/drink for health. Consuming potions or eating delicious fatty hearts now require you to be unpaused, and items that give more than 3 hit points now give you health over a brief duration of time instead of its contents immediately. So for instance if a potion would give you 10 HP upon use, you’ll see your health restore by 2 hit points every 1 second. As before with other potions, you can stack these as you will, but the tactics for using them will obviously change accordingly.

We’ve gotten some great feedback for 1.5, and 1.6 should resolve a lot of the tweaks suggested. We’re getting prepped for 2.0 content over the next couple weeks, and will send another email for that. In the meantime there will continue to be periodic patches to 1.6 once we get it back rolling, but let us know if there’s anything you’d like to test out in the forums specifically and we can have something up for testing more promptly. Always appreciate the feedback we’ve gotten for all these controls/mechanics issues, thanks for keeping them coming!

Patching

With a slim budget and quickly approaching deadline, sometimes we have to settle for 3rd party features to implement into our systems to save time and money where we can. Our patching system (if it hasn't been obvious) is just that. As any developers out there may know, doing so can be like rolling a die to see how successfully it plays with existing work. As it goes, our die seems to have rolled off the table. We're looking at new systems to make the remaining beta patching easier.

 

[Infinitron]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/335120/announcements/detail/137690667021224820

Listed on the definitive PC Gamers "Guide to the games of 2015"!
6 JANUARY - WHALENOUGHTSTUDIOS

Very honored to be selected amongst such strong RPGs coming out this year. Should be a busy year for RPG fans, wonderful list.

PC Gamer guide:
http://www.pcgamer.com/best-pc-games-2015/#page-5

 

[bussinrounds]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/335120/announcements/detail/137690667021224820

"It is an isometric, real-time ARPG"

I can see all the tards crying..."but this isn't like Diablow" already

 

[Markman]

Reading this thread made me wanna try it, but it seems the beta link is dead. Nvm anyway, its soon to be released in any case.
Looking damn good.

 

[Merlkir]

I played the beta a bit and it's fun. For some reason, they changed the UI from what they previously had in the videos to something I consider quite a bit worse.

1) The font is awful. Sorry, I know it's retro and Darklandsy (?), but it's hard to read. A setting option to change it to a modern font would be nice.
2) The UI elements are a bit hard to make out, it took me a few hours to realize those were books of spells and abilities. (only noticed them in one of their update videos, where they looked different and better) Sometimes I'm not sure what's clickable and what's just UI decoration.
3) The effect of transparent environment when in front of your characters is a bit difficult to parse. I have very poor sense of orientation and navigating the initial temple location felt like running through a shifting maze - because obstacles disappear and only leave a ground level section to indicate they're there. I'd prefer actual transparency.

And there are beta things like enemies spawning randomly after each load, so sometimes you load a game and there are five goblins and three wolves around you while there were none when you saved. There are typos, redundant words left in some sentences etc. but I'm sure that'll get ironed out before release.
Other than that it's pretty enjoyable.

 

[roshan]

I played the beta a bit and it's fun. For some reason, they changed the UI from what they previously had in the videos to something I consider quite a bit worse.

1) The font is awful. Sorry, I know it's retro and Darklandsy (?), but it's hard to read. A setting option to change it to a modern font would be nice.
2) The UI elements are a bit hard to make out, it took me a few hours to realize those were books of spells and abilities. (only noticed them in one of their update videos, where they looked different and better) Sometimes I'm not sure what's clickable and what's just UI decoration.
3) The effect of transparent environment when in front of your characters is a bit difficult to parse. I have very poor sense of orientation and navigating the initial temple location felt like running through a shifting maze - because obstacles disappear and only leave a ground level section to indicate they're there. I'd prefer actual transparency.

And there are beta things like enemies spawning randomly after each load, so sometimes you load a game and there are five goblins and three wolves around you while there were none when you saved. There are typos, redundant words left in some sentences etc. but I'm sure that'll get ironed out before release.
Other than that it's pretty enjoyable.

Yikes. Hoping for a polished release so that this doesn't end up being the next Dead State. Really want this to be successful!

 

[Merlkir]

It needs more codexers buying the beta and reporting bugs. ;P