Difficulty concerns, especially with wind shelters.

[Professor Paul1290]

In my current world, I'm on Continent 4 and the continent is at Tier 5

While the difficulty seemed relatively comfortable under normal circumstances, trying to set up a wind shelter on this continent has become extremely difficult. I think it may be due to the combination of the Windstorm, the increased strength of monsters due to it being the 4th continent, and several other things.
I actually had to switch down from "Hero" to "Skilled" and eventually down to "Adept" before setting up a wind shelter became even barely doable, and even then it was probably one of the most difficult times I've had in the game so far.

I think with so many other things that may increase the difficulty of the game and the increased effect of windstorms on difficulty, it might be a bit too much to require wind shelters to be placed in a windstorm.

It seems to me that the main reason a player would put up a windmill in the first place is to push back the windstorms. If a player is trying to set up a wind shelter then there is a good chance the player is having trouble dealing with windstorm areas.
With that in mind, requiring the player to fight through a windstorm with bosses in order to push back the windstorm feels like rubbing salt into the wounds somewhat.

[Terraziel]

Just checking first, you know you don't have to kill the bosses and the best plan is usually avoiding them?

I would suggest a separate guardian power that temporarily disabled the wind storms in a single region, so that if things got too bad you have a way of dealing with it, but that opens up the possibility of the player never having to experience wind storms, which is not a good thing in my mind. The same applies to allowing players to set wind shelters up in non-wind storm regions.

Edit: For the record, because I took out the paragraph that said this the first time, Wind shelter missions are definitely one of the most difficult things in the game, I usually play with a character on about 150 health, for wind storm missions I switch to one with 1000+, but playing on The Chosen One, difficulty is what I chose to have, so as long as things are actually possible I don't complain.

[Penumbra]

This brings up a question. Wind shelters can only be placed in wind, bordering non-wind. In the case where there is a peninsula with lava flats right at the border of the wind, it would be impossible to ever remove the wind there or further on. 

Is this on purpose?

I could see someone complaining about not being able to put the wind shelter right  before the lava flats, even though that spot would already be protected.

An expanse of lava flats over 4 regions long makes sense for blocking shelters, but the odd boundary case seems strange.

I think the restriction on location is to require the player to build the wind shelter under the conditions of a wind storm. This could use a lore reason. I don't have a clue as to what it would be, since the windmills never, by definition, have any wind near them! Windstorms have also gotten much harder with the recent tier increase.

[Toll]

What I've been thinking about suggesting is an "advanced wind shelter" power that can be placed at any region at an increase in cost (think 4x or so). This would enable you, at an extreme cost, to remove wind where otherwise impossible, but in general it'd always be better to work your way there with normal wind shelters.

[Hyfrydle]

Not sure if this is doablle but maybe the effect of the wind increases the deeper into the windstorm area so the tiles on the edge are not quite as brutal therefore a wind shelter can be built. It should still be difficult but not impossible. This would make sense as the game is all about pushing the wind back so the continent can be tamed and the Overlord defeated.

[Penumbra]

the effect of the wind increases the deeper into the windstorm area 

I really like this idea!

[Terraziel]

I considered suggesting that myself, but didn't because I'm not sure what the players interaction with wind storms is supposed to be.

Currently outside of wind shelter missions I don't go anywhere near wind storms, it is just not worth the risk, rather there is nothing to make it worth the risk, and I'm not sure whether that is how it is supposed to work or not, do the devs want us going into the wind storms or avoiding them?

Edit: Personally, I feel like the game would benefit from there being versions of the wind storms without the increased difficulty simply to break things up, add some variation. I have mantis somewhere about myriad kinds of Weather but some low level wind storms would be a nice start

[Toll]

I don't find the wind storms to be all that bad though, to be honest. They really only affect you when you're outdoors, and (almost) all missions are done indoors anyway. Same with building exploration and spelunking, as well as the lieutenants/overlords.

[Terraziel]

I don't find the wind storms to be all that bad though, to be honest.

It's a matter of scale for a fair part. On The Chosen One a tier 4 Jellyfish (NOT the boss version) does 129 damage a shot, a tier 6 (so a windstorm one) does 290 damage a shot.

[Professor Paul1290]

I don't find the wind storms to be all that bad though, to be honest. They really only affect you when you're outdoors, and (almost) all missions are done indoors anyway. Same with building exploration and spelunking, as well as the lieutenants/overlords.

I don't find the windstorms that bad either under normal circumstances.

This is more about specific cases where you have windstorms in addition a whole bunch of other things that increase difficulty. In this case "windstorms + continent 4 enemy buffs + Tier 5 enemy buffs + narrow tunnels that seem to occur often in wind shelter missions".

The windstorms are fine by themselves, but when they end up combined with so many other things that increase difficulty they can quickly become the most difficult missions in the game.

[keith.lamothe]

The windstorms are fine by themselves, but when they end up combined with so many other things that increase difficulty they can quickly become the most difficult missions in the game.

Reminds me of some challenges in some game I remember... space, real-time-strategy, made by some place called Arcen Games... hmm, had the name on the tip of my tongue

More seriously, an interesting topic.  I think some other ways of managing windstorms, and some other threats from windstorms (particularly "deep" ones) would go well together as additions to the game.

[zebramatt]

This sounds like a great topic to tackle in the next couple of weeks, I agree. The game's all about pushing the wind back, after all!

[Misery]

I'm finding the same problem with the accursed wind shelters.

These missions seem IMPOSSIBLE most of the time.

The game does numerous things during one of these:

1.  Creates about 4 outdoor "rooms" with a boss or two in each.

2.  Buffs the bosses to the point that attacking them is pretty futile

3.  Creates the landscape in such a way that you're GOING to get stuck on things if you try to dash by.  One of those things is likely to be the boss itself.   And running by really seems the only viable tactic here......

4.  Spawns way too many overpowered normal monsters.

5.  KEEPS SPAWNING THOSE GODDAMN SHADOW BATS.   I kept leaving the mission and restarted if the first section had those.  My usual tactic of, you know, FIGHTING them, doesnt work during these missions, because they're too fast and wont take hardly any damage, while other enemies build up and spam the area with bullets.   Running by them, at least when I did it, was entirely based on luck.



Normally, I love games with high difficulty.   Currently I generally play this game on Hero difficulty, and I'll likely up it later on once I'm more familiar with everything.   THIS mission type..... well, there's a trope on TVTropes called "Fake Difficulty", and honestly, that's what these feel like.   No other mission type has this problem (even if they can be bloody irritating sometimes).  JUST this one.

The only way I found to get through this was to just keep hurling new characters at it and storm dash my way through...... after setting the difficulty to "featherweight" so that the slightest mistake wouldnt instantly eat their healthbar.   I really hate having to do that to pass one of these, but nothing else whatsoever was working.

[Wanderer]

Misery... do you truly find avoiding bosses that difficult?

I think I've killed 2 bosses (because they were directly in my way) in 10 or so windshelter missions.  In most cases... platform platform JUMP and... POOF, I'm outta here.

Wind shelters are more like a stealth kill mission, with no kill at the end.  The entire point is to move past everything.  Grab a high-HP char and just blow past 'em.

[x4000]

Shadow bats in particular are very hard to avoid, it's true.  And some of the other minibosses are so large that depending on your luck you sometimes literally can't avoid them at all without teleporting.

I've been contemplating if instead of having 1 miniboss, instead having something like 4 microbosses (buffed-up small monsters) might not make more sense.