Final test run notes thread

[Lujo]

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And more notes!

If the tavern would get a small "crossed swords" indicator that it takes you adventuring - then the explorer's guild should get a small puzzle token icon to let you know at a glance that this is how you acess puzzles

Puzzle sidebar Interface - once you select a pack to expand from the sidebar (and show you the puzzles within a pack), there isn't a way to "turn it off" except clicking on another building and some of the other buildings are obscured by the parchement. A "back" button which would retract the pack would be nice to have as a part of the scroll.

Puzzle Pack markings - since you can't predict the order in which you unlock them, it's pretty much impossible to tell at a glance which puzzle pack is related to what. Having small icons next to the name indicating whether they are god puzzles, tutorial puzzles, glyph puzzles, troll puzzles, would be a very good thing.

Earthmother Puzzle Pack doesn't explain the lifesteal antipathy - leaves the codex entry about it as ????. This could cause someone a nasty shock since it's an obscure interaction which is actually likely to be discovered in the midle of an otherwise engaging run. I'm noting it also because it's the first god puzzle pack that leaves a blank in that area.

Earthmother 3 needs tweaking - really it does. I had to look the solution up and I've never done it that way since you could walk over the plants previously and that was more intuitive. Now, I thought long and hard about WHY it was more intuitive and why I took me so long to figure out an arguably simple solution and here's the deal:

- You come off Earthmother 2 where you have to get punished and "learn" that it's no biggie. You see a bunch of same poison plants and you'll spend a long while trying to solve it in a way that includes killing them (and the actual solution doesn't). It took me over an hour and the walkthrough to convince me that there is a way to do it without killing them.
- This wouldn't happen if the plants were the mana burn ones, or rather, the player would be more incentivised to try finding a way that doesnt' include killing them. Idealy they should be the 999 dmg plants, but then the player could stone them, so they have to be the mana burn ones.
- The hints didn't help. The "Life is only sacred as death" actually had me thingking that I'm supposed to kill the mushroom plants because I'd get away with it (instead it's about stoning the other plant).

So a better hint signboard and mana burn plants instead of the mushrooms in the "patch" should do the trick, and I remember this and the question of the intuitiveness of the solution were a problem for someone else last time around.

Codex opening up a blank page after when you select the god's tab has happened again. The organization of god entries in the codex makes it user unfriendly (had to realy scroll to find earthmother, and also scroll to the picture to become aware I've found her). And index page for gods would be most wellcome.

Glowing Guardian Puzzle Pack - Well, I liked it, it shows you the ropes, and it leaves half the likes and dislikes unfilled.

An extra god's puzzle pack - when I'm done listing all the the stuff that doesnt' get filled in the codex through existing god puzzles, maybe we could get a puzzle pack that woudl allow players to fill the missing ones? I'm aware some of them require additional glyphs, but maybe it could unlock once the kingdom has all the requirements? We need one for god swapping shennanigans too, probably.

Dracul puzzle pack gave me comparativelyl less trouble this time around even though it seemed significantly more difficult than some of the others. The hint's were good, though and I didn't need a walkthtough (last time I only needed it here and maybe for JJ).

Drac puzzle pack leaves holes in the likes and dislikes as well.

Binlor Puzzle Pack Was trickier than I remembered it. Last one took me a big bunch of tries.

The Puzzle Token - You guys might want to consider not making it a part of the inventory, but rather a part of the interface. What happened to me (I'd say 10 times) is that I clicked on it by accident during the many tries it took me to complete the final Binlor puzzle. Essentially, it places an item with the property of killing your game into your inventory. I know it's puzzles and stuff but that's an unnecessary hazard that should be avoided if possible. Just saying.

Chaos Avatar - You can take it even if you're level 10! This is excellent news (or at least I wasn't aware of it before!)

The "keep track of which badges are still available during a run" function that you can acess from the menut/codex is awesome and one of those things that mellow me out so much ^^ Very nice feature!

"Prestige" status effect and icon Very nice indeed!

The nice, coloutful and informative piety tab is great and should help people learning about the gods a lot.

You can unlock all the gods without setting foot into dungeons past the first directionals, or unlocking tier 3 classes. This is sort of good to know for people looking to speed test stuff and get the feature unlocks done as fast as possible (without heavy tinker involvement).

Early kingdom goblin Sorcerors - are complete monsters. It's not like late ones aren't but all you really need is to locker the boots from the graveyard, unlock mystera, magnet:fireball unlocks along with the sorceror and you're good. Oh, and goblins obviously.

JJ puzzle pack Well, I did it on my own, but for a moment there I thought I found a screwup in puzzle no.2 with curse and such. All is fine, and it's a good thing it is. I've deleted the post in the Puzzle Solutions thread I've made, and appologize for the alarm if anyone registered it.

Rogue I have an idea in case the Rogue ever needs a nerf. His glass canon status too easily truned around? Make his penalty extend to Health regen somehow (Not too serious, but would make the bugger a true inversion of the Monk and give him something that isn't easy to fix to worry about).

Warlord status effect icons Still don't have a status effect telling you whether the below half-health buff is active. Sure, simple math involved, but I'd really appreciate not having to do it. Pretty much every other temporary effect has this feature enabled and being certain about this actually makes playing unorthodox scenario warlords a lot easier.

Hero's Helm - Still no clue whatsoever where it is... Being able to acess Crystal Ball, withchalok pendant and piercing wand before Hero's Helm feels just wrong.

Tinker scumming no.3 - TT either didn't fire up or was coverd by an Earthmother plant when was in Southern Swamp with the Rogue, so I'm picking him up this way to complete the puzzles. I guess I'll just do that and the witch and it's writeup time.

Pactmaker 3 Showed up with another wrong background and this time was the only subdungeon in the Southern swamp on a tinker scumming run. I was embarassingly glad it was a stupid tinker scuming run.

TT subdungeon Allows you to use the slayer wand on TT but then doesn't spawn the next monster. One of those is wrong and should be adressed I guess...

Tikki Tooki subdungeon Wonnafyt really helps here And don't use slayer wand untill they fix it.

Tikki tooki puzzle pack is awesomely written, clev er and fun. The final puzzle had me scratching my head but I figured it out in the end, except I'm not sure I used the intended solution (it involved something I don't do too often).

[Lujo]

Ok, I've decided to hold off the writeup a little bit for several reasons.

1) Dislekcia complained about the number of bugs in the bug thread (and my reports might've been annoying so I'll try to make them better and test stuff out more - I'm out of practice) so they probably have their hands full,
2) Whatever's in the pipeline is in the pipeline and I guess they have their hands full,
3) They read everything so they've at least browsed through all this and some of the stuff might be on a list somewhere allready or might have been adressed allready so if I wait for the friday changelog the writeup might be shorter and more concise,
4) Most of the things here are seemingly small stuff that adds up and it would be benefical for the game for pretty much most of it to be adressed at some point. But some of it is the kind of stuff that easily gets lost in the shuffle if I stick it out to them in the wrong moment - and I think we'd all be better off if they got it at the begging of the weekend so it can gat time allocated on time
5) Some of the things are diehard complaints that simply never fail to produce the same reactions/issues but are never a priority (even for proper consideration) due to time constraints - I'd really love to see those resolved to some degree and swamping the devs whiel their hands are full leads to "we're not gonna do it, you're nitpicking" attitude and all that for understandable reasons. And since most of this concerns the early game, I think some nits just have to be picked (in a timely and relaxed fashion).
6) Some of the stuff might be on it's way allready and I've just noticed holes that are ment to be filled.

So there'll be more rambling and me getting into gear and experimenting with the smileys (why didn't i think of it before?). Generally there's a lot of green notes and smiley faces, and jokey suggestions so when the concise list of "good idea to do something about it" comes up on saturday or sunday it's probably not going to be too long.

Incoming notes! (will be edited in, I just wanted to put this up now).

Halfling, Ho! Grimm Grotto Quests Are a true gem in terms of challenging a vet out to playtest the early game. There will surely be exasperated newbies banging their heads against the wall, but I enjoy them a lot.

Crusader subdungeon Is oddly likeable - that forest night tileset is awesome, underused, and makes all the nice sparklies feel fanciful and nice. Would make a great tileset for the Pactmaker subdungeons if they were made to be much smaller and stuff. Also, the advisor hints when you unlock stuff are great and keep making me whish you could ask him about stuff afterwards. That would be a lot of work, though.

Spellcasters and Mystera I wonder what she looks like through a newbie's eyes. I'm having way too easy a time with her and what seems to me nothing much else. I know I'm pulling some fancy moves, but rolling bleaty with pretty much nothing but weakening spam on an early kingdom elven bloodmage makes me think she really is too flexible. And elven bloodmage isn't even that strong, halfway trhough I was lamenting the fact that I didn't prep a halfling one...

Halfling Sorceror in Grimm's Grotto is not for the faint of heart. This was the first time I had to really go pro on a dungeon, and that was halfway into a pretty sloppy run. A rather late boss reaveal uncovered a Vicious stat Super Meat Man and I was really glad for the right click select menu for a big potion spike + refreshment barrage of fireballs and autoattacks. Had to regen fight him, too! I think you're supposed to tackle these later on in the game, this is "Dev's giving cocky vets a ding behind the ear" territory. For a few minutes there I thought I wasn't going to do it!

The west strangely enough, I just did a well prepped "poised for warmonger" Berserker run in the Western Jungle (Western Woodlands would be better IMO to distinguish from the more jungly south). And finding magic damage users was actually a bit difficult. I remember the Berserker run in the Labyrinth being the most difficult pre-vicious mandatory run in the game last time around. Maybe there ought to be a druid or two in the first directional, just to up the magic damage users count? Or some other magic user?

Orc Warlord of Mystera At the early kingdom develoment level destroyed Doubledoom which included the Goo Blob. I really need to kick the habit of prepping M. Or I need to start swapping into other gods - this isn't getting any through testing done, there could be a million bugs and I wouldn't have a clue...

Can't resist! I got a bloodmage Doubledoom run looking at me and saying "Mystera will just win it for you! Search your heart, you know it to be true!". I feel like a Dalmatian dope fiend standing next to an overturned Albanian tanker full of the finest Afghan USA bound smack...

Said "No" to drugs and went with prepped JJ because I so rarely do it. Was pleasantly challenged and forced to make sacrifices. Nice change of pace and widely different power level.

Bandit Intro Never fails to amuse me.

Parched Hoarder Warlord for Complicated Tasks pt. I Continuing my anti-drug campaign, I went with JJ again - on a Hoarder run (figured out the obvious problem there later ) Picked up parched by swapping into EM after picking up petition and the mana boosts, and made nice use of my slayer wand.

Warmonger Orc Monk of Taurog for complicated tasks pt.2 Straight up Taurog affair, except the boss does magic damage so it gets a bit tricky. Still, since there are so few magic users in this dungeon it's easier to level up with a monk than a Berserker (I did have to kill a few lvl 1 guys for lvl2, though - and Taurog's not that good here because so few magic guys mean less piety and mazey maps make glyphs a lot more important)

Near Faithless Goblin Assassin in Doubledoom Eh, had to go Taurog in the end to squeeze the last few hits against Frank (the snake boss at least gave me the poison bonus). Playing the game without Mystera from the outset is deffinitely much more challenging. The goblin asssassin in the Den of danger ended in a slightly less desperate kitchen sink affair. Lesson learned - converting Taurog's stuff can save a Goblin's behind.

Cheeky Orc warlord in Nothern Desert for Complicated Tasks part.3 - Having unlocked them first for the first Unlikely Heroe's quest, and then having played them everywhere where they were mandatory, I feel steered towards warlords. Just saying.

Purist, Ding! Max, Unstoppable Dwarven Assassin in Rock Garden for several reasons - Dear god, I must've played too many Dwarven Asssassins last time. The old streaky PQI had me suicidally depressed after seing them like, ever other time... A strange run, though, since I've been faithless and had no fireball for almost the entire duration of the run.

Game Flow I've just had the Taxidermist announce that H is flooding the market and I've yet to unlock the Paladin. This happened last time as well, sort of. I suppose it's because I've been going over quests instead of playing around in Venture Cave and Den of Danger. But then again I've been cleaning stuff up and picking up quests and using Bet on Boss as autoprep since the beginning, so I feel like I've had quite a bit of gold inflow. Oh, well, I've experienced this snag before, too, and it resolved itself soon enough on it's own. And I haven't done the bronze challenges this time either.

The reason I'm noting this is that I still haven't found the Hero's helm because it's obviously tied to the number of class unlocks and not unlocking all the classess first thing sort of locks you out of the sweet spot where it's something you actually want in your shops. Following quest flags around is intuitive (and err, looks like the only thing you're ment to do), but it does have this kink to it.

Gnome Wizard in Hex Ruins Was a nice systematic dismantling, allthough Viper Ward really kills that place. No Imawal, mind you.

New Cydstepp Is very nice and adds strategic considerations that I much appreciate.

Second appearance of "H" What a creepy ominous bastard.

Got all the base class buildings upgraded Which is nice, and the Hitchikers gude refference for the curch is also nice. It doesn't change the Hero's helm situation much for me, but hey, at least it's all nice. I mean, I found the quest and all, but all the base classess unlocked for it just seems too high a price barrier. Anywho, got CB and Hero's Helm at the same time.

Purist Orc Paladin (of TT) did in the warlock boss. TT potions FTW.

And that's probably it for today.

[Lujo]

Wow, those notes get unreadable when I binge

Anywho, remembered two more reason to delay the writeup - gives me time to think things through and not bother people with stuff that only makes sense later. Second one is that it gives me time to consider situations where different "issues" are actually solved by a small fix elsewhere (putting a crossed swords indicator on the tavern as well as a "new quests" would propt people to open the adventuring map and then getting new quests there wouldn't be an issue at all )

Anywho, new ones:

The Unstoppable in Shifting Passages quest that lets you upgrade the bank seemed out of place in difficulty last time around. I guess whatever I'm doing this time is closer to the intended way of going through the game.

Naga Challenge Subdungeon Ok, so last time around I (and other folks) complained about the situation where you look at the south and have no clue what to do because Ick Swamp unlocks in a way different than other directions. So the devs allowed the anomalous subdungeon whch unlocks Ick Swamp to appear elsewhere. Well, now it can apear in places where it's background clashes wildly with the aboveground (I got it in the snow). Adjustmens maybe? And also, the anomaly of the whole situation is something I'd avoid like the plague, so if they don't want to scrape it alltogather maybe add simmilar subdungeons for other directions?

Tinker scumming incentives the problem I have with the Witch and the Challenge subdungeon is that they are truly better found by tinker scumming. And if you want to find the witch when you sit down to play, you brain will tell you that tinker scumming is the fastest way to get it out of the way.

This leads me to the conclusion that... the problem with the witch and the challenge subdungeon is that they are remnants from abandoned develpoment ideas. The solution? Develop them! If every direction had it's own subdungeon with an actual reward for finding them so it doesn't "ruin" a run, with proper background tracking, and maybe only worked as "solved" if you beat the level (maybe even a quest flag like the witch) it would be awesome and not stick out or cause undue confusion. I'll shake this about in my head for a while to see what potential problems it would cause (apart from taking up dev time), but leaving it as is is way too sloppy in a game that is quickly getting polished to perfection. (And it would help immensly with the lore!)

Blootopowa and Thieves Are really, really good together. I probably underplayed thieves last time around, but it makes a lot of sense and it helped me in Creeplight runs this time.

The potion spiking power of Halflings never fails to amaze me. If you go Taurog for whatever reason and convert most of your glyphs you end up with enough to potion spike a boss like a boss (especially on something with resists like a monk or a berserker).

Complicated tasks part ? The warmonger sorceror in Berserker camp is still remarkably easy due to the dungeon being overall easy and the strat in guestion (go mad with Taurog) having more suport there than most of the west. Oh well, I guess you have to build up newbie confidence going into the midgame. But the berserker boss is a real wimp - sure, nuking him with fireballs probably won't work (no, wait, weakening spam...), but it looks like just about anybody can take him down in a few hits. Oh, well...

Final Complicated Task however is a different matter entirely GG into Earthmother, then consensus back into GG did it for me and the interesting thing was, again, that I spent the better part of the level looking for the fireball (don't attack the bossess without it, you'll be sorry). Orc monk, heavy potion conversion. I think a halfling could get enlightment (I took 4 absolutions too).

First accidental death My own darned self finally got to me while I was clearing out the Berserker Camp. 100% legit and undeniably my fault. My only death so far (apart from the tutorial goat) is... with a Monk in Berserker Camp ...

The throphy price indicator is a very nice feature. It must've saved me a building by now.