I started a brand new game for the release of 1.2 and on the whole it's a real improvement to the earlier releases. I love the procedural spells although the not working in the day is pretty annoying I wasted an epic orb and got that negative and it's hard to know when I can and can't use this spell.
The biggest bottleneck I found was getting hold of wind shelter scrolls and these are a really important part of the game especially if the RNG is been unkind with the layout of the continent. I found myself grinding for conciousness shards so I could get them from the store.
The overland missions giving spells is great for the first level or two but then I can craft better spells so I no longer need to do the missions. I think from level 3 onwards I didn't do any overland missions. Although I did do lots of secret missions hoping for wind shelters and early on farms.
The changes to enchants I feel have taken things the wrong way I now find myself throwing most of the enchants I receive as they never seem to improve on what I'm using and my current enchants are from quite early on in the continent. Please bring back the old system.
Finally I have now reached the point where I need to reduce the overlords level using despatch missions he is now level 10 and I have 3 of my 4 npc's I lost one to reduce him from 11 to 10!!! This stage of the game is a real grind and revolves around buying gifts for the NPC's as they don't seem to spawn in any stash rooms I visit. This is on district level I would hate to have to do this on any higher level.
Despite all these issues I really feel the game is heading in the right direction and it certainly has a more enjoyable flow. I hope some of my comments help and now I'll go and continue trying to take down the overlord.
Thanks for reading.
Aye, I agree with much of this.
My two main issues with the game currently are things I've already brought up and made topics about..... the citybuilding/placement issue, and the thing about spell diversity.
Other than that, there's no huge issues with this version, but there are a few minor annoyances. Gifts dont spawn often enough, definitely, and this makes the "weaken overlord" task very difficult, particularly if you've been using the dispatch system for other things.
The enchants though, I think are fine. They kinda needed to be changed to work with the new system of levels instead of tiers. I think part of the point was removal of grinding for charges; based on your level, enchants can only be so strong, so there's no point in doing that (which is good)..... just keep grabbing them when you find them, and you'll get better ones soon enough. It's the RNG being a snot sometimes, when you arent. Playing at the end of the second continent currently myself, I do find a decent number of good enchants that I keep. There'll always be many throwaway ones, though. It's a "Diablo-ish" loot system, so that's inevitable. But I think it's much better balanced now.
Some enchants though I think occaisionally spit out one that's a bit too powerful for it's type. I got a 75% cloak type recently, which is so strong as to basically be cheating (the cloak types need to be reworked a bit, I think). A better one than that likely wont pop up anytime soon. So there's still some balance issues buried in there.