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

[Bah]

"On one hand it's kinda gamey"

HOLY FUKK NUTZ.

A game based on DnD - a game - has'gamey' stuff.

HOLY FUKK NUTZ.

Imagine that. Whining that a game has something that is 'gamey'.

There are things to complain about with games but being 'gamey' shouldn't be one of them. LMAO


That said, legendary actions - while seeming 'unfair - makes sense for legendary creatures. It is why they are legendary. Afterall, they could just give her 5 actions on her turn and tell you to SUCK IT UP. But, I guess... that would be 'gamey'. Just be glad these are wussy 5E vamps that don't drain 2 levels per hit.

L0LZ

Learn to use the quote function, retard.

Codex lore predicts the end of the Codex if Volourn ever uses the quote feature.

 

[Volourn]

Man. Their toolset sucks. Can't edit monsters/enemies. Can't make your magic items. Can't even create enemy NPCs. But, you can surely use their named enemies from their campaign. No use of a world map - one of the best parts of the game. Can't evcen create a store so the players have somehwre to spend their ph@t lewt. LMAO

NWN Toolset was made nearly 2 decades ago and this cna't replace that? WTF? And, let's be honest, no way are they gonna focus on making it better. I be shocked.

 

[Fedora Master]

Man. Their toolset sucks. Can't edit monsters/enemies. Can't make your magic items. Can even create enemy NPCs. But, you can surely use their named enemies from their campaign. No use of a world map - one of the best parts of the game. Can't evcen create a store so the players have somehwre to spend their ph@t lewt. LMAO

NWN Toolset was made nearly 2 decades ago and this cna't replace that? WTF? And, let's be honest, no way are they gonna focus on making it better. I be shocked.

Dead game.

 

[whydoibother]

If Aksha is the best/most challenging encounter in the game, then why are people praising encounter design? The dark castle is full of copy-pasted ghoul fights that basically any party can auto-attack through. Maybe if long rest spots were single use they would make sense. Aksha would be borderline sadistic and cruel then.

Because we aren't all jaded Bulgarians unable to enjoy a good simple video game for what it is.

Fake news. I'm a jaded Bulgarian and I enjoy the game so far.
What I don't enjoy is that I am halfway through and I still can't get an enhanced rapier for my acrobat DEX fighter.
Also, not knowing what the crown does before you choose which character to pick it makes narrative sense, but its just bad gameplay. You are locking an item into some character before knowing what the item does.

 

[Lacrymas]

If Aksha is the best/most challenging encounter in the game, then why are people praising encounter design? The dark castle is full of copy-pasted ghoul fights that basically any party can auto-attack through. Maybe if long rest spots were single use they would make sense. Aksha would be borderline sadistic and cruel then.

You have TWO paladins in your party...
Everyone has infravision (2 Dwarves, 2 Elves)...
You use long rest spots multiple times...

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

The rest spot thing was more about how Aksha drains your resources and max hp, so fighting Mardracht after that would be brutal. I don't think getting to Aksha with only 1 rest is a problem, not only because I did that, but also because you can auto-attack all the copy-pasted ghoul encounters. If I had needed to use the rest spot again before attacking Aksha, I would have. It's not my job to LARP that a more challenging game is put in front of me. Not using the game's mechanics to their full extent in order to pretend it's good design is an indictment. Instead of bloating stats at higher difficulties, they could've made resting spots single-use.

 

[Reinhardt]

Very hard game

 

[NJClaw]

Not using the game's mechanics to their full extent in order to pretend it's good design is an indictment.

No, it's not. It's called "having fun". You should try.

Or do you rest literally after every single fight when you play IE games?

 

[Harthwain]

It's not my job to LARP that a more challenging game is put in front of me.

My point is you're complaining the game is not challenging while metagaming. This is exactly why the developers gave option to the players to adjust the difficulty to their individual needs. You are not giving yourself any credit when you're playing mostly on authentic mode with merciless and deadlier AI. It's basically the equivalent of saying: "Why is this game so EZ when I am squeezing every advantage I can out of it when playing on NORMAL difficulty!?".

Not using the game's mechanics to their full extent in order to pretend it's good design is an indictment.

Nobody is asking you to pretend anything. Just don't be suprised that rest-spamming (and reloading when ambushed) before/after a fight in Baldur's Gate is going to make the encounters easier in general. Because, yes, you can do that. If you want to be forced to rest more, then you have to adjust the difficulty. Right now I am playing on normal mainly to get the feeling for the 5 Edition rules (and I have to say I am liking how some of this stuff works). My next run with be either hard or very hard (maybe with some custom tweaks here and there) for, you know, the actual challenge.

 

[Thac0]

Oh lol, this game has optional missions. And they give quite a bit xp and loot. I didn't see them because the highlight function did not highlight the quest board at day, but only during the night?
Yeah if you do those you will have a level more before pretty much every big encounter, making Cataclysm a lot more fair.

Also are the magic item drops really out of whack for anyone else? In the entire dark castle dungeon I got maybe one Breastplate +1. All loot was just a ton of crafting schematics and ingredients.
Then I do the sword sidequest and I get two magic rings (Featherfall and Darkvision) from the absolute trash encounter before the temple.

It almost feels like they are rolling their loot for a crpg, which is impressively dumb. Rolling loot is in P&P only because hand placing it is too much work for the DM.

 

[whydoibother]

Very hard game

Maybe they are using the premade characters? Or maybe they read somewhere that a wizard NPC joins your party, and they decided not to create one.
All dumb reasons, of course, but I have to rationalize this somehow.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Very hard game

Maybe they are using the premade characters? Or maybe they read somewhere that a wizard NPC joins your party, and they decided not to create one.
All dumb reasons, of course, but I have to rationalize this somehow.

Maybe they are hard men who play no magic users party?

 

[Lacrymas]

It's not my job to LARP that a more challenging game is put in front of me.

My point is you're complaining the game is not challenging while metagaming. This is exactly why the developers gave option to the players to adjust the difficulty to their individual needs. You are not giving yourself any credit when you're playing mostly on authentic mode with merciless and deadlier AI.

How am I metagaming? By noticing rest spots are not single-use? Besides, I didn't rest before tackling Aksha either way, so it's not like it would've made any difference had the rest spot been single-use in this case. That's because the copy-pasted ghoul encounters are pointless and can be defeated by auto-attacking. I'm also playing on scavenger difficulty now, not authentic.

 

[whydoibother]

Very hard game

Maybe they are using the premade characters? Or maybe they read somewhere that a wizard NPC joins your party, and they decided not to create one.
All dumb reasons, of course, but I have to rationalize this somehow.

Maybe they are hard men who play no magic users party?

If you play without any magic users in your party, you are a soft, flaccid, impotent, noodle man, who can't even cast light on his staff.

 

[Lacrymas]

Probably the only way to squeeze a not dumb challenge from this game is not using full casters or Paladins. So some kind of combination of Rangers, Rogues, and Fighters. That's it. Oh, and no Spellblades and shit. I'm actually gonna do that after finishing this run.

 

[jackofshadows]

The biggest thing a Ranger brings to the party over a Rogue imo is food and how the trivialize rations.

A cleric will also trivialize rations upon reaching 5th level and gaining the "create food" spell, which is cast automatically each day while traveling.

I don't have a cleric and didn't pick food spell for my ranger but still swimming in food rations by now. The devs really should crank this up, otherwise it's a dead feature basically. Rations should be scarce, barely available at the stores and not like 99 for 2 coins each or something. And of course I agree on too many long rest spots: you already have short rests system and on top of that long rest spot every few fights?

Also, regarding primed greatsword remarks: I'm pretty sure this chest has hand-placed loot since it's filled with craft recipes for greatswords and greataxes:

Spoiler

So I think Larianshill you just missed it somehow.

 

[Thac0]

Probably the only way to squeeze a not dumb challenge from this game is not using full casters or Paladins. So some kind of combination of Rangers, Rogues, and Fighters. That's it. Oh, and no Spellblades and shit. I'm actually gonna do that after finishing this run.

Or just put the game on cataclysm...
Scavenger is 25% extra health for enemies and +1 for saving throws, that is a barely noticeable difference.
Cataclysm is 100% extra health, 50% extra damage, +3 extra to hit, +3 extra skill checks and saves.

Playing a game below max difficulty and whining that the encounter design is dumb because it is too easy is some next level retardiation.

 

[Reinhardt]

Also, regarding primed greatsword remarks

Still can't get over how ugly is UI.

 

[Lacrymas]

Probably the only way to squeeze a not dumb challenge from this game is not using full casters or Paladins. So some kind of combination of Rangers, Rogues, and Fighters. That's it. Oh, and no Spellblades and shit. I'm actually gonna do that after finishing this run.

Or just put the game on cataclysm...
Scavenger is 25% extra health for enemies and +1 for saving throws, that is a barely noticeable difference.
Cataclysm is 100% extra health, 50% extra damage, +3 extra to hit, +3 extra skill checks and saves.

Playing a game below max difficulty and whining that the encounter design is dumb because it is too easy is some next level retardiation.

That just sounds grindy and tedious. The copy-pasted ghoul encounters aren't going to become more interesting by doubling the time it takes to get them down. Aksha is a fine encounter on scavenger, but it lacks a support caster. I'd place a single Dark Apprentice in there and it would bump up the difficulty significantly without resorting to giving enemies ridiculous roll advantages and double hp.

 

[V_K]

It almost feels like they are rolling their loot for a crpg, which is impressively dumb. Rolling loot is in P&P only because hand placing it is too much work for the DM.

I've replayed some of the side quests, and the loot stayed the same.

 

[Reinhardt]

Or just put the game on cataclysm...

No.

Cataclysm is 100% extra health

It's hp bloat. It's shit. Victor warned us about it.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Played this whole weekend and really liked it. It's really rough on the edges (and game have many edges...) but I think I really missed this kind of low level campaigns.

 

[Thac0]

As for +3 save throws - not sure at all about turning it off. W/o them contol spells must be really powerful so killing enemies one by one even with bonus hp doesn't seem too tough. So maybe even this blunt approach serves its purpose. I have to play more with them to judge though.

What annoys me is how much it incentivises just slugging through the game with auto attacks. There are two ways to hurt someone in 5e, make them fail a save or match their AC. If you boost one of those up without touching the other, you are heavily incentivising one over the other. As long as there is no slider to boost AC aswell I will not touch the saving throw slider, because otherwise all those cool control spells are best left unused. And saving throw damage spells like Shatter and Flaming Sphere take a massive hit in viability. The game becomes Scorching Rays and Fireballs then, which are already the most mundane and overused spells.

The system is tight enough, at least it seems to me that way atm. Compare this game to Wasteland 3 where I bitched about lack of challenge on the highest difficulty and by lack I wasn't being arrogant it was really a cakewalk since some point because the system there is far more clumsy so surprize rounds every time completely break the game there.

Yeah Wasteland was pretty dumb. Snipers could get their initial crit so high, they could consistently delete the strongest enemy before combat even starts, and then do it two times more as soon as their turn starts. Although seeing those 10.000+ damage crits felt good for my primal brain.

I feel like this game stacks up pretty well to last years GOTYs overall. Imo it is slightly worse than Naheulbeuk, and slightly better than Wasteland 3, putting it comfortably in high, but not exceptional category. Strong 8/10 seems to be the overall line, while Naheulbeuk is either a very strong 8/10 or a weak 9/10. It definitly lacks the final spice to put it to 9/10 in its current form, but it is a lot better than a 7/10.

I agree with Larianshill, the game gets better the longer it goes on. The Dark Castle was overall the highlight. I am already itching to replay it with a new party, and actually fight the grumpy trapper, Adam the Twelth and the witch in the sewers. I succeeded on the Diplomacy and just kept that result, and sadly there was no way to enrage them later.
Had any of them any cool loot I missed this way?

 

[jackofshadows]

Still can't get over how ugly is UI.

It is ugly, yes. Personally I got used to it but that doesn't change the fact. But at least UX is okay with some exceptions like the crafting recipes situation. And the fact that you have to press alt for more item info every time like a retard while it should work by fucking default.

The game also has the blandest soundtrack ever and I've heared many bland soundtracks. The fact that they allocated a good portion of their so called limited resources to hire an orchestra for that simply blows my mind. Even generic fantasy theme from M&M X for example was more memorable than this.

Cataclysm is 100% extra health

It's hp bloat. It's shit. Victor warned us about it.

It would be much better if there were extra enemies instead of bloat but it would have require ton of extra time and they hardly that eager to please RPG-enthusiasts (the irony).

 

[Lacrymas]

It would be much better if it there were extra enemies instead of bloat but it would have require tons of extra time and they hardly that eager to please RPG-enthusiasts (the irony).

It wouldn't require a ton of extra time tbh, because most boss encounters are 1 or 2 extra mobs away from becoming actually good. The Sorrak wizard encounter by the crown requires some kind of Cleric to bump it up. Aksha needs a Dark Apprentice. I'd remove at least 2 of the ghoul encounters in the dark castle, though. Or spice them up, like some Brood here and there, and a Dark Apprentice or two, maybe even some spectral/phase spiders. Zombie + Dark Apprentice isn't a good combo because there's nothing stopping you from beelining to the apprentices and ignoring the zombies. The ghouls have a paralyze attack, though, so that will stop you whether you want it to or not. So, yeah, it requires a critical eye, not time, they already have the mobs to simply place in there.

 

[DemonKing]

For an indie game they did a good job creating the background graphics and don’t seem to be reusing the same assets over and over again. The dialog sections are more in the so bad they’re good category though.