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KickStarter Stoneshard - open world roguelike RPG - now available on Early Access

Luzur

Good Sir
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
41,932
Location
Swedish Empire
LOL i just managed to clear a cemetary in Stoneshard by dumb luck and on my way home i get bit by a forest viper and die to poison since i had no choice then to run home with the loot in the darkness.

why arent there any camping equipment in this game so i can sleep til dawn?
 

Trash

Pointing and laughing.
Joined
Dec 12, 2002
Messages
29,683
Location
About 8 meters beneath sea level.
Just found out that enemies actually do follow you from screen to screen. When I hunt I can follow the prey to the edge of the screen and kill them off pretty easily there. Not so much with a dungeon boss. Running away to another floor to recharge and finding out the guy actually follows was quite a surprise.

Anyway, having heaps of fun with this. Going to play through some contracts and then put it in the fridge for awhile. Don't want to burn out on it before release.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
12,841
Over 10K peak players.

LOL i just managed to clear a cemetary in Stoneshard by dumb luck and on my way home i get bit by a forest viper and die to poison since i had no choice then to run home with the loot in the darkness.

why arent there any camping equipment in this game so i can sleep til dawn?
How do you even get any loot back when you have to carry the entire pharmacy with you?
 
Last edited:

toro

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 14, 2009
Messages
14,791
LOL i just managed to clear a cemetary in Stoneshard by dumb luck and on my way home i get bit by a forest viper and die to poison since i had no choice then to run home with the loot in the darkness.

why arent there any camping equipment in this game so i can sleep til dawn?

I just saw somebody on twitch sleeping near a fire in the wild (after he killed some bandits).
 

Luzur

Good Sir
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
41,932
Location
Swedish Empire
Over 10K peak players.

LOL i just managed to clear a cemetary in Stoneshard by dumb luck and on my way home i get bit by a forest viper and die to poison since i had no choice then to run home with the loot in the darkness.

why arent there any camping equipment in this game so i can sleep til dawn?
How do you even get any loot back when you have to carry the entire pharmacy with you?

thing is, i only had salve, water, bandages and meat on me and the loot, i have yet to find a anti-venom thing (are there no potions at all for that?).
 

Sultan

Novice
Patron
Joined
Aug 1, 2017
Messages
42
Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Finally broke and ended up buying the game. I was able to clear the prologue and just saved in the first tavern so far. Picked the barbarian character, so we will see how that goes. Glad to hear about the new save spots in the patch, it sounded like a lot of people were annoyed by this.
 

Trash Player

Augur
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
495
The code base is likely beyond your usual indie spaghetti, data are literally stored in raw .csv and .txt. Devs are hyper dodgy about it. On the other hand, they are responsive and dedicated. The prologue is the best part of the project, an entertaining no-frill dungeon crawl. I do not regret paying for that alone. May be they ran out of resources a good while ago and went all in polishing the demo for the fabled first impression. It works for them and steamspy shows >100k copies already.
 

Van-d-all

Erudite
Joined
Jan 18, 2017
Messages
1,580
Location
Standin' pretty. In this dust that was a city.
OK, so I got the game, spent ~15h in. Got 3 characters, since normies already forced their way with saving, and devs went full anal and made previous savegames incompatible in newest patch...

The overall impression is rather good. A bit like a single character Battle Brothers questing. The story is decent (looming danger mystery) but mosty executed by dungeon crawl fetch quests, however what else would one expect in a roguelike anyway. Presentation is good, everyone saw the visuals so no point in diving in. Sound aspects are rather minimalist, footsteps, combat samples, the usual; some occasional music, adaptive at that, but so scarce and unmemorable overall I switched to music player after around 3h. Noticeably dialogues in prologue are voiced, a weird choice but I guess the thunder of the D:OS dictates; I'd rather have enemies voice sampled in combat...

No custom characters at this point, but it's quite apparent that the character system, while very granular (literally dozens of derived stats; a basic weapon will have around 5 various modifiers) is also rather shallow and unbalanced (by design, not just beta numbers). The base 5 stats are the main offenders here as they correspond to nothing but minuscule changes in above mentioned derived stats - you pour those 2 level up points into a stat and get +2% here, there and elsewhere. Underwhelming to say the least. Supposedly the strength of character building is meant to lie in skills, but I'm not so sure either. There's quite a hefty number of skill trees (only few are in beta though) for every weapon (swords, axes etc.) & magic (i.e. pyromancy; D:OS again...) kind, plus some extras. Every tree has around 15 skills, half of them passive (+1 turn, +3% stuff again, yay! right?) and quite frankly I can see it getting exhausted rather fast, similarly to DA:O. On the other hand, the system is far more complex than Eschalon games, and those were already fun, so I guess it's a matter of how good exploration will be in the final game.

As for balance mentioned earlier, you can notice already on the character screen that out of 4 characters, 3 unique skills have a flat % bonus that will scale with their stats as % do, but the magic users gets an incremental one that gives additive % for every new spell. Go figure. Next on, the combat is harsh (and rightfully so) because of a body part & injury based health system, but again it just favors ranged, especially magic. Melee fighters risk close combat injury and sink money into equipment repairs. Archers require arrows, which while cheap, occupy precious inventory space. Casters have none of the above. Typically for roguelike, characters mostly move a the same pace (there's some weirdness about diagonal move not always being possible), so kiting allows for regular hit for hit trading with ranged enemies at worst, and free DPS with melee ones at best. Mana (energy) regenerates, spells cost nothing outside of cooldowns... Effectively, I've been casting the basic triple fireball (whatever it's called) and retreating all the time, virtually killing everything. Pretty much the only issue mages face is rain, since it halves fire damage (obviously a non issue in dungeon crawl, where all quests take place). The only times I got killed was when the game cheased me into walking straight into a bunch of enemies when traversing world cells.

Which brings the technical aspects, and I'm somewhat concerned. The game has the most basic 2d square world, known since ASCII games, yet struggles with it's persistence & continuity. Reloading the game half resets the cells - containers remain looted, yet enemies, shops, FOW resets. Not sure about terrain placement in non story cells. Also the cells... I can understand dungeon levels and buildings being separate, but honestly the world should've been continuous. Enemies can occasionally traverse cells to alleviate it slightly, but again, Eschalon, Factorio. It's 2020 for fuck's sake.

All in all it's a fun game but needs conceptual polish, because as it is now it empirically pushes player down the most optimal playstyle which makes majority of character building virtually obsolete.
 
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Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
12,841
The reason is not GMS2, as it could be misunderstood from the message about “engine limitations”, the reason is our procedural generation engine. The saves currently used by the game technically differ from saving in any part of the game world – they save the seed of visited locations, regenerating the world on each loading, they don’t save the state of the world, as it was left by the player. Otherwise, the saves would end up weighting a few gigabytes and take minutes to load.
:deathclaw:
 

Trash Player

Augur
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
495
This game is like a high school project, not that one done for the curriculum, but that awesome stew of everything you found awesome once. It is meant to be forgotten in some metaphorical or literal cabinet til god knows when, then you may have some laughs and fuzzy nostalgia. The devs actually release a well received top down shooter 4 years before, though they may had an expansion, the sort that drags every old pals and their dogs in due to some hard-to-repeat success.
 

some funny shit

Scholar
Joined
Apr 14, 2018
Messages
388
Location
nowhere
I played it a litte bit. Really nice pixel art but as a rougelike game is very average and it seems slow and boring.

It's just dumbed down ADOM/Stone Soup with pretty graphics.
 

Luzur

Good Sir
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
41,932
Location
Swedish Empire
Well i played on and reached the second city, and noticed that "points of interest" i visited along the way seems to reset just 2 days after being cleared and also reset on the map, from saying "Bandit Camp" back to "Point of Interest" so i have to go back and map it again.

also how the heck are im supposed to afford a plate armor for damn 10k in Stoneshard? i looked it up and a money pouch can only hold 2000 gold....thats alot of filled moneybags just to get a new armor, enemies dont seem to drop armor at all, just shields and weapons.
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
My main problems with the game right now are:

1) Extremely shallow character development. You chose a weapon and then put all skill points in corresponding skill tree which has like 10 skills (and very linear structure too, so you end up putting points into the same skills in the same order). General skills can help adding more deph and variety in builds, but I doubt it will change the system dramastically.
2) Extremely boring itemization. Only meaningful difference in items seems to be more damage or more armor. Not iteresting build-defining items, or items which solve problems like potions, scrolls, bombs, at least in the early game. I've seen a potion of ironskin I think and scrolls of enchantment, but no panic buttons like invis, teport or bombs/potions of confusion, freeze and etc. So you end up relying on your weapons almost all the time.
2) Exteremely linear level/quest progression + very boring levels.

Hopefully it will be adressed. It seems like the devs now something about roguelikes and put a lot of effort in development (at least as far as arts/ui show).
 
Last edited by a moderator:

User0001

Savant
Joined
Jun 9, 2018
Messages
530
Location
Nangilima
I made this easy starting guide for those here that don't want to play overpowered Pyromancer kiter:

Choose the knight for greatswords skill tree.

The first thing you'll want to do is look at the map and look at the forest seeding. You want thick forest close to Ostbrook, to easily hunt moose. If the seed is bad then restart.

YI2T0l7.jpg

^That's a bad seeding^ -

Moose will only appear in this type of area. Moosehide gives 14 coins per inventory square (selling to the tailor), cooked venison 19 (Ormond - butcher) and moose antler a whopping 65 (!)(Bert - merchant).

To make it as effective and easy as possible you need to pick Heroic Charg at lvl 1. That is how you hunt, so you'll need to buy a War Scythe as your first weapon. When you reach level 2 you should put a point in Courage. Put all ability points in strength in the beginning.

Do yourself a favor and pack light, so leave your purse and lockpick. This is how it should look like:

Wo8XiLi.jpg

^Obviously not the first pre moose hunt. Vivifying Essence (the potion) should be two Healing salves in the beginning, and the cooked venison will be some other food of course. You won't need more than this. Don't forget to forage a lot of Pinecap mushrooms in the beginning to save food.

This is what the catch of a good hunt will look like:
q74JqcH.jpg


And after selling everything to the right vendors the profit was this:

nVzNpfP.jpg

If the tailor runs out of money, invest in boots and gloves that give protection. Any gear that gives less than protection is a waste of coin.

Take care in the beginning. I invested early money repairing the starting cuirass and getting Vivifying essence (it can save your ass).

Spending one and a half in-game week hunting should set you up with great gear at about level 2.5 - 3, giving yourself a good starting position to play as a melee character.

Happy hunt!
giphy.gif

Really like the game! Will definitely come back every quarter to check the new updates.
 
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Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
11,113
Well i played on and reached the second city, and noticed that "points of interest" i visited along the way seems to reset just 2 days after being cleared and also reset on the map, from saying "Bandit Camp" back to "Point of Interest" so i have to go back and map it again.

also how the heck are im supposed to afford a plate armor for damn 10k in Stoneshard? i looked it up and a money pouch can only hold 2000 gold....thats alot of filled moneybags just to get a new armor, enemies dont seem to drop armor at all, just shields and weapons.
None of my points of interest have reverted maybe because I used them to save? Did you camp at them even for a token 1 hour rest?
 

Van-d-all

Erudite
Joined
Jan 18, 2017
Messages
1,580
Location
Standin' pretty. In this dust that was a city.
also how the heck are im supposed to afford a plate armor for damn 10k in Stoneshard? i looked it up and a money pouch can only hold 2000 gold....thats alot of filled moneybags just to get a new armor, enemies dont seem to drop armor at all, just shields and weapons.
I had over 6k after the basic 3 quests... Just hoard stuff or something, it seemed easy. Firstly various vendors buy shit at various prices. Secondly every POI has at least a single valuable. Thirdly a shitty wolf pelt goes for 55 at the tailors. Lastly road brigands will often drop weapons worth 400+ (@ level 5; level scaled maybe?:decline: ). Again, a set of pyromancer clothes cost me ~2k and I pretty much had no use for money since...
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
11,113
Yeah mage gear doesn't reach anywhere near that 10k plate armor tier. Mage gear just seems a whole lot stronger with weapons and armor that add 10-20% to spell damage. My sword and board is way more durable and every bit as survivable but he sure cannot pump out nearly as much burst or aoe damage.
 

Luzur

Good Sir
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
41,932
Location
Swedish Empire
Well i played on and reached the second city, and noticed that "points of interest" i visited along the way seems to reset just 2 days after being cleared and also reset on the map, from saying "Bandit Camp" back to "Point of Interest" so i have to go back and map it again.

also how the heck are im supposed to afford a plate armor for damn 10k in Stoneshard? i looked it up and a money pouch can only hold 2000 gold....thats alot of filled moneybags just to get a new armor, enemies dont seem to drop armor at all, just shields and weapons.
None of my points of interest have reverted maybe because I used them to save? Did you camp at them even for a token 1 hour rest?

No havent played for a few days now so havent updated yet LOL
 

Teut Busnet

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
Messages
972
Codex Year of the Donut
also how the heck are im supposed to afford a plate armor for damn 10k in Stoneshard? i looked it up and a money pouch can only hold 2000 gold....thats alot of filled moneybags just to get a new armor, enemies dont seem to drop armor at all, just shields and weapons.
I had over 6k after the basic 3 quests... Just hoard stuff or something, it seemed easy. Firstly various vendors buy shit at various prices. Secondly every POI has at least a single valuable. Thirdly a shitty wolf pelt goes for 55 at the tailors. Lastly road brigands will often drop weapons worth 400+ (@ level 5; level scaled maybe?:decline: ). Again, a set of pyromancer clothes cost me ~2k and I pretty much had no use for money since...
I don't want to sound like a filthy casual, but while probably realistic, it is a bit annoying. Either have them buy stuff or don't.

Is there a special Healing/Herbs shop in the second town or is the guy in the church supposed to be his replacement?
 

Ent

Savant
Joined
Nov 20, 2015
Messages
541
I ran through the early access stuff over the weekend and it was pretty fun. I played a greatsword + bow character and beat the hardest available dungeon by level 8. Greatswords and blocking seem to be very strong at the moment as I skipped all possible armor upgrades and relied entirely on dodge and my weapons block + stance as my defense.
 

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