AVWW Beta 0.525, "Rushing Minis," Released!

[freeformschooler]

Just popping into say I like the secret thing. It makes for a better aesthetic experience.

[eRe4s3r]

Ok so a bit of playing i noticed things

1) Enemies do too little damage (with the new health drop system), level 7 bat vs level 8 char = 100 hp damage (i have 15k HP) | usually i'd not mention this, but this allows for farming of bats for HP and MANA pickups.. enemies should do some damage.. maybe 50% of what they can drop in HP or MANA in "best case". Maybe even 75% (that is, damage in relation to their HP drop) that way only rarely can a hit of an enemy be fully counter balanced by a health drop.

2) the HP and Mana pick ups seem to work fine and are fun except the mana pick ups seem to be too strong. They need to be about a 5th of the HP pickups in strength. Though maybe more.

3) The drop chance of health orbs needs to change, currently it seems each "amount" has the same chance, but it needs increasingly worse odds

1 orb = 75%
All next orbs up to 5 = 50%
All orbs beyond 5 up to 10 = 25% (per orb)

That means Chance to drop
1. Orb = 75%
2. Orb = 50%
3. Orb = 50%
4. Orb = 50%
5. Orb = 50%
6. Orb = 25%
7. Orb = 25%
8. Orb = 25%
9. Orb = 25%
10. Orb = 25%

Either that way, or some kind of linear decrease in chance (in 5% steps or whatever) in any case, big drops should be very rare, smaller ones not so much, in all cases 1 to 5 drops should never outbalance the damage an enemy can deal on a hit.

Also the level difference should be taken into account, higher level enemies than the character should be rewarded by very slightly increased chances (flat +5% chance per orb) up to ORB 1 hitting 100% | And for lower level enemies there should be a negative chance for orbs, but much stronger increase the more enemies are below the player level (to prevent cheap farming of HP and MANA in levels with level 1 enemies..)

[Dizzard]

(to prevent cheap farming of HP and MANA in levels with level 1 enemies..)

What would really be the difference between heading to a level 1 chunk for health and just going to a nearby settlement to heal by the hearth stone?

In fact going to fight any monsters at all for health and you'd be going out of your way. If you can go to a level 1 chunk you can just as easily go to a hearth stone, it doesn't sound like you'd be caught out.

[eRe4s3r]

Mhh thats true.. but if the hp/mana drops are too drastic there is no reason to even have health potions (except for bosses)

Just find it a tad too easy right now

[x4000]

* Snowsuits and heatsuits no longer have a max level on their usage -- they are crafted at the outfitter, which doesn't use spellgems/dust anymore, and thus inherently doesn't have tiers.  So having snowsuits with multiple tiers just doesn't work at all, or make any sense.  Sorry about the confusion!

[zebramatt]

* Snowsuits and heatsuits no longer have a max level on their usage -- they are crafted at the outfitter, which doesn't use spellgems/dust anymore, and thus inherently doesn't have tiers.  So having snowsuits with multiple tiers just doesn't work at all, or make any sense.  Sorry about the confusion!

It's a shame since I actually enjoyed the moment when my coldsuit became unable to bear the depths of the ice caves I'd wandered into.

[x4000]

Yeah, but it's the nature of the outfitter -- no tiers on anything there, ever, but also no gems/dust involved.  Potentially at some point there could be some other way for snowsuits to become ineffective, such as breaking when you die, or something.  But that might be annoying rather than fun.

[zebramatt]

Why isn't there any dust involved any more, incidentally?

[x4000]

Because that makes it identical to spellscrolls, really.  I wanted to have a use for 400 units of wood in the adventure side -- make lots of wooden platforms, or make wooden blocks to chuck at enemies, etc.  There needed to be a part of the game that involved crafting but not crawling around underground, and the outfitter was the one that made sense because it's the only non-magic-oriented type of crafting in the game.

[zebramatt]

Diversity's good, agreed.

I suppose another way to handle scaling of craftables might be by tying it even closer to the strategy game: have your standard coldsuit give up the ghost at level 30 but allow you to build a building in strategy mode which produced a resource which could be extracted and combined with some other commodities (10 quartz or something), which then formed the ingredients of an even better coldsuit, effective to level 60; etc.

And with platforms you could probably already do that, I suppose - requiring worked wood for the largest size ones; and worked wood and stone for some new reinforced (x20hp) version, or some such.

But that all sounds very much like something for further down the line!

[Yuugi]

Alternatively, what about not adding tiers to the outfitter items, but to the outfitter crafting shop itself?

Upgrade the outfitter via a settlement management building, to allow it to make fancier stuff, and the existing basic stuff better? (Crates/Platforms you plunk down spawn at Civ level +3 or something for extra HP? Better snowsuits?) Dunno.

[x4000]

That could be a really interesting idea, actually, for something along the lines of the outfitter.  The main thing is, though, that having multiple levels of a lot of the outfitter stuff would get super annoying really fast -- wood platforms, even crates, etc, are something that should just stack in their sole inventory slot I'd think.

[zebramatt]

I agree: I think where 'upgrades' would come in for craftables would be in the form of new, fancier versions of old stuff - like reinforced crates, etc. - but expensive in a way which means at least for a long while you'll always have use for both versions.

[x4000]

Yeah, those sort of "upgrades" are definitely planned, as with all the spells and scrolls and so on.

[x4000]

New one: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9366.0.html