KickStarter Solasta: Crown of the Magister Thread - now with Palace of Ice sequel DLC

[lukaszek]

ok its getting on my nerves. fight few dragons in between locations only to mow through wolves once you finally arrive in your destination. Is this scavenger difficulty thing?

 

[GloomFrost]

ok its getting on my nerves. fight few dragons in between locations only to mow through wolves once you finally arrive in your destination. Is this scavenger difficulty thing?

Well that's been a thing since the original campaign when the game just came out. Random travelling encounters are simply a lot more engaging and difficult then the actual plot battles. I was hoping that they would fix it by the 3rd DLC (3RD CARL!!) but nope. So the only real reason to play Soylasta are the User campaigns.

 

[lukaszek]

with all those spells on armor and weapons that game throws at you, my thief is constantly casting now. Gotten staff of fire which allows me to drop fireballs, although it would require some weapon switching...

 

[Cryomancer]

Where is the Stenvãgg Bridge? I'm trying really hard to find it. Already did all faction quests that I could and could't find it to rest and progress the MC.

I'm serious. Did ALL faction quests that I could, navigated the entire world map and could't find this dan campsite "go to campsite" and no help on how to reach it. Even reached the lv cap recently.

My quest log and reputations with factions. Is too hard to find it. Where is this campsite?

 

[Artyoan]

Pretty sure thats the bridge where you had the second fight in the DLC with the Sorak ambush. Also I'm pretty sure you had to rest there anyway so that seems more like a bug that didn't complete the quest from the log but you moved on with the story anyway.

 

[Parabalus]

with all those spells on armor and weapons that game throws at you, my thief is constantly casting now. Gotten staff of fire which allows me to drop fireballs, although it would require some weapon switching...

Is it even any better than just using the same items with a wizard or sorc?

 

[lukaszek]

with all those spells on armor and weapons that game throws at you, my thief is constantly casting now. Gotten staff of fire which allows me to drop fireballs, although it would require some weapon switching...

Is it even any better than just using the same items with a wizard or sorc?

yeah, because its free action

 

[lukaszek]

finished the game. Last area was supposed to be hard but my party was made to plow through encounters without losses so I just... plowed through.

Obviously there are end game bugs like last time

Spoiler

soul that is stolen somehow aids you in combat in solasta realm
soul that is stolen owner somehow appears on ending slides like if I didnt leave it in demon realm forever

 

[Mortmal]

finished the game. Last area was supposed to be hard but my party was made to plow through encounters without losses so I just... plowed through.

Obviously there are end game bugs like last time

Spoiler

soul that is stolen somehow aids you in combat in solasta realm
soul that is stolen owner somehow appears on ending slides like if I didnt leave it in demon realm forever

Dont think anyone here had trouble even in the end , no one dying at all with an imported unoptimized party. High level 5E isnt hard to begin with but there you have boosted stats with tomes and ton of legendary weapons. The last part was still more in line with what i expect to get. Sad they just dont want to make more campaigns for grognards , just have to play it safe release some more dlcs and tilesets then cash in.
My bet is still on some PF2E next, dont see who else would do it.

 

[lukaszek]

imported

that part doesnt matter, you will replace all your equipment anyway.

Quite a spin thinking about it, in main campaign best equipment was crafted and your main obstacle would be obtaining primed weapon.
In here there is no crafting, instead you just pick awesome eq along the way.

I guess main campaign up to vampire fight remains perfection

 

[Infinitron]

Quite a spin thinking about it, in main campaign best equipment was crafted and your main obstacle would be obtaining primed weapon.

This is different after the shop redistribution: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...f-ice-sequel-dlc.138703/page-162#post-8495118

 

[Mortmal]

imported

that part doesnt matter, you will replace all your equipment anyway.

Quite a spin thinking about it, in main campaign best equipment was crafted and your main obstacle would be obtaining primed weapon.
In here there is no crafting, instead you just pick awesome eq along the way.

I guess main campaign up to vampire fight remains perfection

The vampire fight was very good, the sorak crown fight too, but i guess there was too many complaints. People not bothering to learn the ruleset or try new strategies complain its too hard then everything is dumbed down at their level. And now here am i shitposting on the dex , finished a too short and easy dlc, , willing to pay and play more , but no one selling it.

 

[Artyoan]

Myzzrym made some comments in the Solasta discord as to their next game plans. Mostly hints at what we all assume was the case. Starting with a better foundation upon which to build. Here's to hoping that includes a dungeon maker, which seems pretty likely:

 

[Artyoan]

imported

that part doesnt matter, you will replace all your equipment anyway.

Quite a spin thinking about it, in main campaign best equipment was crafted and your main obstacle would be obtaining primed weapon.
In here there is no crafting, instead you just pick awesome eq along the way.

I guess main campaign up to vampire fight remains perfection

The vampire fight was very good, the sorak crown fight too, but i guess there was too many complaints. People not bothering to learn the ruleset or try new strategies complain its too hard then everything is dumbed down at their level. And now here am i shitposting on the dex , finished a too short and easy dlc, , willing to pay and play more , but no one selling it.

The DM stands ready for you to craft the ultimate attrition-based D&D scenario. You can do what TA did not.

 

[lukaszek]

The DM stands ready for you to craft the ultimate attrition-based D&D scenario. You can do what TA did not.

i just want to consume product and complain.

Let me know when someone makes campaign with encounters like up to vampire(lvl 6 ish it was I think?). But low lvls do not matter as much as half of combat being positioning, securing choke points.
I had high hopes due to early bridge ambush encounter - casters on good positions that cant be just sniped or jumped over within single turn. Also it was a bit of cheating but they introduced that new scaly caster which doesnt need to concetrate on fly spell. Unless it is a bug that is.

Flying/spider climbing/wall climbing just stopped to matter at some point. Did they lose the guy responsible for those or just started to rush things?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

"Next time we'll get it right"

The faces in the EA looked way better iirc. They changed them without real reason or explanation when the game was released.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Myzzrym made some comments in the Solasta discord as to their next game plans. Mostly hints at what we all assume was the case. Starting with a better foundation upon which to build. Here's to hoping that includes a dungeon maker, which seems pretty likely:

How are they going to fix faces?
Full helmets/bags with eyeholes for everyone?

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/if-you-long...e-then-solastas-palace-of-ice-dlc-is-for-you/

If you long to play high-level D&D but don't have time, then Solasta's Palace of Ice DLC is for you​

The add-on for Solasta: Crown of the Magister lets you play 5E up to the lofty heights of level 16.

Even if you do the sensible thing and start your Dungeons & Dragons campaign at level 3—the point where everyone gets a subclass and starts to feel like a bespoke individual rather than a persona you bought off the rack—having a campaign actually reach D&D's higher levels is like becoming fluent in another language. Easy for kids, almost impossible for adults. We just don't have that kind of time.

Which is why the Palace of Ice expansion for Solasta is appealing. Solasta is a French RPG made with a mildly homebrewed version of D&D's 5th edition rules, and its original version took characters on a traditional zero-to-hero journey from level 1 to level 10ish. Maybe 12, if you really took your time and did everything. The Palace of Ice DLC lets you either import a party who finished the base game's Crown of the Magister campaign, or make new characters at level 10. Either way, they'll start with a full suite of cool abilities and a collection of magic items, and reach level 16 by the end. That may not sound like much in videogame turns, but since 5E tops out at 20 it's actually way up there.

I praised Solasta's previous DLC for finally letting me make the weird D&D party of my dreams because it rounded out the original game's roster with player-character options like dragonborn and half-orcs, as well as warlocks, monks, bards, barbarians, and druids. Palace of Ice adds gnomes and tieflings, meaning if you own all the add-ons you now have access to every species and class in the 5E Player's Handbook.

Palace of Ice welcomes you to high-level D&D by making you fight demons—including one of the buzzard-headed skeksis rejects called a vrock—on day one. Pretty soon, enemies start using legendary actions to get extra turns and no-selling anything that makes them take a saving throw with legendary resistances as a matter of course. Then Palace of Ice takes you on a trip to Dragon Town, population your face, which is on fire because you fight dragons all the time now. Five of them will show up as a random encounter while you're trying to cross the overland map and you just have to cope.

Which is actually pretty easy. By the time dragons, ogre zombies, and the remorhaz show up—a remorhaz is a kind of giant arctic centipede that radiates enough heat to cause fire damage when you hit it, which why you never see one wearing a cardigan—you'll have access to top-tier spells. Things like earthquake and finger of death as well as a new one called gravity slam that does 12d6 bludgeoning damage (save for half).

Have you ever chosen a character class for a tabletop campaign by looking at cool shit like how sorcerers from a draconic bloodline can grow wings whenever they feel like it once they hit level 14, but then had the game stall out before you reach, like, level 7? If you have, this kind of stuff is a dream come true.


Unfortunately, having characters who fly all the time—which is not unlikely given ready access to magic items that grant it and being able to toss around level 3 spells like fly as if you're rich people pouring champagne on the dirt just to feel something—does expose some problems.

Solasta's turn-based battles make the most of their 3D environments, with giant spiders climbing walls and chasms that have to be jumped across. Which is neat, except that it simulates bottomless pits by removing areas from the grid completely, meaning that you can't fly over those chasms no matter how high up you go. Meanwhile the entangle spell, though its area of effect is described as a square just like it is in the tabletop game, actually covers a sphere and will restrain characters who try to fly over it.


The huge number of area-of-effect spells that high-level characters fling around, like Johnny Appleseed but with cloudkill, also highlights how finicky it can be to place things on specific spots in Solasta's 3D spaces. I haven't spent this much time trying to get AoE spheres to snap into the position I want since I went all-in on grenades in XCOM.

The other gripes I have in my notes, unrelated to characters being high level, are mostly about Palace of Ice's quests being confusing or easy to sequence-break. Sometimes it's minor stuff like the quest log getting NPC names wrong (someone called Etheyn Cook becomes "Tea" for a while), a sidequest refusing to complete, or the time I talked to a merchant who asked me to rescue someone I'd not only already rescued, but actually had with me when that conversation triggered.

Sometimes it's more annoying, like when a companion suggested allying with a storm giant who was hostile from the get-go and I had no option but to kill. Subsequent dialogue made it sound like not only was that storm giant still alive, but I'd successfully brokered an alliance with his people. A quest later on said I had the option to return a magic item to him, even though he remained as dead as THAC0.


The story isn't the reason to play Solasta, so things like that aren't the fatal flaws they might be in another RPG. Its localization has always been odd in ways that make it difficult to take seriously, like how party members will congratulate each other on a kill by shouting "That's battle!" as if we spent the previous rounds of combat playing badminton or something.

The whole reason to bother with Solasta is because you want more D&D than your every-second-Tuesday group is up for, you've already rinsed Baldur's Gate 3, and you've got a high tolerance for goofiness as long as it's part of a game that lets you upcast magic missile at a vrock or remember that remorhaz exist. Which is exactly what Palace of Ice does.

Palace of Ice is available on Steam and GOG.

 

[Mortmal]

imported

that part doesnt matter, you will replace all your equipment anyway.

Quite a spin thinking about it, in main campaign best equipment was crafted and your main obstacle would be obtaining primed weapon.
In here there is no crafting, instead you just pick awesome eq along the way.

I guess main campaign up to vampire fight remains perfection

The vampire fight was very good, the sorak crown fight too, but i guess there was too many complaints. People not bothering to learn the ruleset or try new strategies complain its too hard then everything is dumbed down at their level. And now here am i shitposting on the dex , finished a too short and easy dlc, , willing to pay and play more , but no one selling it.

The DM stands ready for you to craft the ultimate attrition-based D&D scenario. You can do what TA did not.

I could without any doubt produce a baffling , jaw dropping, excellent ground breaking campaign. Every encounters fine tuned, limited rest and number of encounters by the guidelines , all of them hand made , tactical and challenging inspired by decades of the best classics modules . Better writing too (not really hard tbh), thanks to chat gpt, bard, or novel Ai new writer. All it takes is spending a few hundred of hours. A few hundred hours of unpaid work...
For what ? I will get at best 3 brofists , probably an equal number of cuck or retarded ratings. People wont even have the honesty to acknowledge its much better with limited rest and more ressources management. That if people are still playing this when i am finished with the module.
That seems a lot of work to prove a point. Then it wont solve my problem, i still have nothing new to play.
Could say the exact same thing for kotc2, except its even harder and less rewarding.
So consume product and complain for me too.

 

[Parabalus]

What's the maximum average single target damage you can do in a round?

Probably hasted action surge fighter, ranger swift blade, paladin dropping all smites?

 

[notpl]

What's the maximum average single target damage you can do in a round?

Probably hasted action surge fighter, ranger swift blade, paladin dropping all smites?

Provided your paladin is fighting the right kind of enemy, he can attack four times for 2d6+1d4+2d6+5d8+10, plus a little extra from followup strike and whatever weapon enchant. Well over 200, I would think?

 

[Mortmal]

mediocrepoet hey , no rating yet, i said i was not making it!

 

[lukaszek]

What's the maximum average single target damage you can do in a round?

Probably hasted action surge fighter, ranger swift blade, paladin dropping all smites?

no math for you:
if you say that enemy is a skeleton, then paladin with 2wf hammers will likely win.

if its a fiend, then you are looking at 2wf guardian and sovereign weapons that got best bonuses.
When facing against fiends, with moderate uses of charges etc in prolonged fight(lets say mid smites, no more adrenaline on ftr etc) - swiftblade is unmatched.
Whats more swiftblade is not just a single target - you can switch to bow/xbow mid fight to make sure your dmg lands where it matters most.

Against random enemy siftblade wins since can stack those piercing bonuses

 

[0sacred]

I'm playing through the OC. Still at the very beginning, those Soraks nearly got me. I'm afraid I suck at 5E combat I had to cheat the RNG a little. Still, I'm hooked.

Went Life Cleric, Berserker Barb, Marksman Ranger and Loremaster Wizard. The Ranger has saved my ass several times already.

Too bad we won't get to vote on Solasta in this year's GOTY, I guess. With all the DLC, it's the best game I've played these past few years.

 

[Agesilaus]

Unless the original campaign has been changed drastically, it featured some of the worst writing and most undeveloped locations I have ever seen in a game. This year or any other. Painfully bad.

The forest campaign was better though, and it sounds like the ice one might be good too. I will get this new dlc when it goes on sale, still slogging through infinite trashmobs in pathfinder.