AVWW Post-Release 1.104-1.105 "The Victorious Return Of... Levels!" Released!

[Penumbra]

Man, ya' got me. I made such a beeline to that station to get my spells, I forgot to read. I am (it hurts to say) a user. 

I forgot to read, and I jumped down into that tiny area with the four robots and got stuck between them in a low passage so I couldn't move and actually managed to die in the tutorial in that area where it says "WARNING: THE AREA BELOW THIS LEDGE IS THE NUMBER 1 CAUSE OF NEW GLYPHBEARER DEATH".

I am so ashamed.

Well, if it makes you feel better, there is a very good reason that area is marked as such 

[keith.lamothe]

I think I got confused. I think there might be a tooltip bug then. I have an "Energy Orb 2" spell with -20 Haste Rating (to target).

But, the tooltip lists my current rating, which is what I found confusing. It says:

-20 Haste Rating (Your Current Rating and Cooldown Modifier: 25/-20%) (To Target)

Very weird, it wasn't doing that to me; it's not supposed to show the "total" since it's irrelevant.

[Misery]

All right!
I think I will make a new world (again) to test how these changes from a new character's perspective.

Aye, I'm going to do the same, it seems to me like the best way to test for balance, is to go right from the start and on from there.

I'll post impressions and thoughts after I've had a couple hours with it.

[Drjones013]

For a while there I had stopped playing, largely because of the level + mentality. I couldn't see the point and, while I enjoyed my time in AVWW, felt I had gotten my money's worth.

This update = insta-download. (I had still been watching because of AI War)

[Conductorbosh]

For clarification: if I have a Fireball spellgem with +20% projectile speed, does that bonus apply to all of my spells while I have the fireball gem equipped, or only to the fireball itself?

[Tobias]

Can I just say thank you for removing the need to reach a certain depth of dungeon in order to unlock spells, that crap was a chore.

[Tobias]

Is clinging fetor supposed to not do any damage? It releases a purple projectile that flies to the nearest enemy and just hovers over it for a few seconds before disappearing. I never used the spell before this update.

[Misery]

Can I just say thank you for removing the need to reach a certain depth of dungeon in order to unlock spells, that crap was a chore.

Not to mention nigh impossible at times.

I never was able to do the swamp one, because the game did not even ONCE generate a cave that went that deep.



That being said, I do like the idea of there being SOME incentive to occaisionally try to do a really DEEP cave excursion.   It's an interesting challenge to do and satisfying if you make it.



EDIT:  Also, before I even fire the game up, looking at the patch notes here, I have to give an immediate thanks for not having maze rooms be stash rooms anymore.   Maze rooms definitely work best when the entire goal of them is to find the doors you're looking for, as opposed to trying to cover every freaking passage.

[Tobias]

EDIT:  Also, before I even fire the game up, looking at the patch notes here, I have to give an immediate thanks for not having maze rooms be stash rooms anymore.   Maze rooms definitely work best when the entire goal of them is to find the doors you're looking for, as opposed to trying to cover every freaking passage.

Actually, it looks like there are some still in. I don't see why anyone would dislike maze stash rooms, the sheer amount of enchantment charges in them is glorious. I found this in a town ruin, which is like the only buildings in towns that I bother to enter because they have maze stash rooms, and I got like three and a half enchantments from here.

http://i.imgur.com/SsDKQ.jpg

[Misery]

I notice a couple of things right away:


1.  Starting on continent 2, enemies are immediately using their previous tier-5 attack patterns; Ice Espers firing three rocks at once, for instance.  I assume this doesnt happen for the first 4 levels of the game, on continent one..... after that, are they just permanently in this mode?     This isnt a complaint, mind you.  I'm playing on a high difficulty level, so having enemies be more aggressive and nasty works for me.

2.  Clinging Fetor still has no effect on anything.   Skelebots wont even swat at it.

Yay!  Bug reporting!    The Clinging Fetor one already has a Mantis report.

There shall be more from me, likely, yup.

EDIT:  Also, before I even fire the game up, looking at the patch notes here, I have to give an immediate thanks for not having maze rooms be stash rooms anymore.   Maze rooms definitely work best when the entire goal of them is to find the doors you're looking for, as opposed to trying to cover every freaking passage.

Actually, it looks like there are some still in. I don't see why anyone would dislike maze stash rooms, the sheer amount of enchantment charges in them is glorious. I found this in a town ruin, which is like the only buildings in towns that I bother to enter because they have maze stash rooms, and I got like three and a half enchantments from here.

http://i.imgur.com/SsDKQ.jpg

Hmm, mostly, I usually find that there are other ways to get enchantments a bit faster, rather than going into one of those.   For instance, doing Boss Towers, the "evil rooms" provide many while being very quick to access.   There's also the "attic" areas in certain building types that contain chests which drop red enchant charges (the ones that instantly give you a new enchant).   Usually though, I dont specifically seek the things out, I just collect any that are in rooms I happen to be in, while I search for other specific things (or do mission stuff).


Also:   Possibly consider letting the player start with Storm Dash unlocked, as before.

For one simple reason:  The very beginning of the game is now so slow as to be downright painful, particularly to someone like me who has no patience.   The crafting requirements are very light, but it's still taking absolutely forever to get them, and backtracking is just horrid without it.

[Penumbra]

Possibly consider letting the player start with Storm Dash unlocked, as before.

Isn't there a Storm Dash gem in the very first tutorial building?

[NyQuil]

I'm definitely seeing an issue with consciousness shards.  I've got 3 stacks going.  The first which was a holdover from before this patch has an L2 Label in the corner and is called "consciousness shard 2".  The second stack is labeled "consciousness shard 1", and the third stack says "consciousness shard 6".   None of the shards I'm picking up seem to be going into my older large pile, they all seem to be going to the second two piles.

I've attached a photo.

====

My supply inventory seems to have reset itself as well. When I first started up after this patch, I had 100's or 1000 of certain items like cedar logs and granite that imported from my C1, I quit the game in the normal wayer. Later I loaded it back up and went and unlocked a few things in the lava fields on my C2, rescued a few survivors, and when I went back to my town, everything was back down to single digits, things that before had huge surpluses.  I think it was bugging out trying to combine with the C1 inventory again.

Now I've quit and loaded the game a 3rd time, and I have no stockpiles at all.

[Misery]

Possibly consider letting the player start with Storm Dash unlocked, as before.

Isn't there a Storm Dash gem in the very first tutorial building?

I skipped ahead to continent 2, which is what I usually do, since it opens up the Lava Flats and the Deep right away, both of which are interesting and challenging.

[darke]

Actually, it looks like there are some still in. I don't see why anyone would dislike maze stash rooms, the sheer amount of enchantment charges in them is glorious. I found this in a town ruin, which is like the only buildings in towns that I bother to enter because they have maze stash rooms, and I got like three and a half enchantments from here.

http://i.imgur.com/SsDKQ.jpg

Hmm, mostly, I usually find that there are other ways to get enchantments a bit faster, rather than going into one of those.   For instance, doing Boss Towers, the "evil rooms" provide many while being very quick to access.   There's also the "attic" areas in certain building types that contain chests which drop red enchant charges (the ones that instantly give you a new enchant).   Usually though, I dont specifically seek the things out, I just collect any that are in rooms I happen to be in, while I search for other specific things (or do mission stuff).

The best place to farm for enchantments is the basements of grassland buildings. From testing, all "Basement" rooms have about a 90% chance to have at least one chest that will drop one of those red enchantment containers, and about 30% chance to have two. (That is *normal* rooms labeled basement, not just stash rooms.) Stash rooms will have the normal stash stuff in addition to this.

I just spent a bit under an hour running through one grasslands area and harvested 49 enchantments from the buildings of one dungeon map of one 20 dungeon map area. Maybe one of those enchantments was built from the blue enchantment containers, definitely no more then two. I could probably do the same run in half an hour if I was just wanting to grind for red enchantment containers rather then grab the other things like you normally do when you start a game.

(Yes, it's been like this for a while, it's not just this patch. No, I haven't reported it because It's Not A Bug Dammit! I'm seeing a x4000 nerf coming just as soon as I post this.  )

[Misery]

So, current thoughts on this, is that this is pretty awesome.

After getting bloody Storm Dash and getting THAT out of the way, MOST of my time in-game has been spent exploring;  been awhile since I've been able to say that!

I think you guys have hit the sweet spot for the frequency of the arcane items appearing in stashes and such;  I'll probably never have too many, but at the same time there arent too few of them.  Making spells outta those will take some work, but not so much as to be annoying.   Exploring surface areas and caves for secret missions to get scrolls is also important, so I find myself exploring all 3 area types.   Very, very nice.

That being said, I havent gotten to compare common and uncommon spells;  when I tried to craft an uncommon one just now, the game..... utterly ignored me.   Clicking "craft uncommon gem" did absolutely nothing.   To see if the rest of the menu worked, I intelligently blew it on the common version instead (that was smart).   That did though at least let me craft it.   I tried to craft uncommon Fireball, specifically, to compare it to the common version I already had.

I have some uncommon orbs, so I'm not sure what happened there....


Still, right now, this is SO much better and more enjoyable than it was before.


Oh, and the bit about the enemies being in their tier-5 mode.... yeah, dont change that.   It's making the combat pretty awesome.  I suddenly realized, I almost never saw enemies at that tier before, because upon actually hitting tier 5 on a continent, it was usually time to go attack the overlord pretty much right away.  So, didn't run into that many monsters on the way.