Author Topic: Help :(  (Read 4294 times)

Offline Souls-Stream

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Help :(
« on: February 07, 2012, 08:53:35 am »
Hi all,

I was wondering if anybody could help me and give me some tips about playing the game ?

I was fine until the tier update came, now I'm lost :/ I don't understand how to reach the settlement building screen anymore or actually anything at all :( I took a look at the update change log but didn't help me much !

Those blue "potions" that gives points towards "new enchantments" intrigues me a lot too !? I keep getting them and I don't feel like its doing anything ?

I love the changes but I'm totally lost ! I feel like I don't know how to play the game anymore :( I was waiting for an update of the starting guide but since the game constantly change, It would be the hell of a job to change it for each important updates.

Anyway, I'm really happy to see how the game is coming, the devs are awesome with all their ideas and the speed at which they release them :) just wished the dungeon map was easier to use / read because I still feel lost with it, I just don't have any idea for a better dungeon map yet :/ but if I do, I'll post it for sure :)

Offline x4000

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2012, 09:05:24 am »
I was wondering if anybody could help me and give me some tips about playing the game ?

We're working on that in the game itself at the moment (and an updated getting started guide, actually), but we need some more time.  All the features should be in this week, and then should be a lot more clear during next week.  If there are things in particular that you're finding unclear, we definitely want to know about those!

I don't understand how to reach the settlement building screen anymore or actually anything at all :(

The settlement building screen and the strategic view are both gone, so that would explain your not being able to find them. ;)  Using guardian powers in the latest version, you can build some buildings directly in the background of the settlement chunks.

Those blue "potions" that gives points towards "new enchantments" intrigues me a lot too !? I keep getting them and I don't feel like its doing anything ?

It's storing up enchant points for you, but enchants won't be in place until later today.  So, yes, it was doing nothing direct in your version, BUT you'll get a bunch of enchantments out of it as soon as you upgrade to the new version when that's out, so it's good to have been collecting them.

I love the changes but I'm totally lost ! I feel like I don't know how to play the game anymore :( I was waiting for an update of the starting guide but since the game constantly change, It would be the hell of a job to change it for each important updates.

We're working on updates for the in-game stuff and the getting started guide, and we definitely appreciate feedback on where things get confusing.  But -- and I mean this without irony or anything implied by it -- the important thing to realize is that you don't know how to play the game anymore.  If you played a month ago, or two months ago, or even worse three months ago, this is a completely different game now at the macrogame level.  You can still get around and cast spells like before, I'm sure, but pretty much everything else of meaning has changed: crafting is different, civ levels are replaced by tiers, strategic view is replaced by missions, settlement management view is replaced by guardian powers, etc.

The reason I mention this is if you're trying to figure out "where we moved stuff," you're going to continue to be lost -- we moved almost nothing.  Most things that are different are actually different, not just moved around.  The documentation is lagging behind, but will catch up in the next week or two!

Anyway, I'm really happy to see how the game is coming, the devs are awesome with all their ideas and the speed at which they release them :)

Thanks for your patience and support, hopefully you'll be feeling back on top of things shortly.  It's actually harder for players who played older versions of the game to get into now, because they have all of this invalid knowledge stored up about how the game used to work but no longer does.  For a new player coming in blind we still have some documentation work to do there as well, but at least they aren't coming in and looking for things that don't exist!

just wished the dungeon map was easier to use / read because I still feel lost with it, I just don't have any idea for a better dungeon map yet :/ but if I do, I'll post it for sure :)

If you study it for a minute, it should be pretty clear -- I'm pretty positive there's no clearer way to represent it, based on discussions with others.  Note that it's not a map, first of all -- map is a misnomer.  It's actually technically a "graph."  It's showing the relationships between all the parts of the building -- how to get from here to there -- but not showing the size of the parts of the building, or even their spatial relationships to one another.  It's kind of the difference between a map and directions, actually.

Hope that helps!
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Offline Souls-Stream

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #2 on: February 07, 2012, 11:52:53 am »
Hmm... So if there's no more settlement building screen and it's the guardian powers... How do you get those guardian powers ? I didn't really understand that part either.

Yes, the game has changed so much, it's amazing !!!

As for the graph, you're most probably right ! Though, if I can think of something, Ill submit the idea just in case, maybe you'll like it ?
Right now, I just think a color for visited / not visited should appear to make it easier to remember where we already went because it can become really huge and labyrinthinc !

Thanks already though :) you're always answering so quickly to us :) deeply appreciated !

Offline x4000

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #3 on: February 07, 2012, 11:57:09 am »
Hmm... So if there's no more settlement building screen and it's the guardian powers... How do you get those guardian powers ? I didn't really understand that part either.

You get those as a reward for doing various missions, like you do the rare commodities.  Right-click the missions on the world map to see what all the rewards are.

As for the graph, you're most probably right ! Though, if I can think of something, Ill submit the idea just in case, maybe you'll like it ?
Right now, I just think a color for visited / not visited should appear to make it easier to remember where we already went because it can become really huge and labyrinthinc !

Sure, ideas are always welcome.  In terms of visited / not visited... that has always been there.  Well, it always has drawn a black line through anything not visited.  And now it not only does that, it also makes the visited ones brighter and not-visited ones darker. ;)

Thanks already though :) you're always answering so quickly to us :) deeply appreciated !

Glad I could help!
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Offline Souls-Stream

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #4 on: February 07, 2012, 12:25:17 pm »
Ah okay , thanks a lot :)
I'll definitely take a look when I come back home !

The map does ? I never noticed, well, I don't know, it's always a bright color for me ? Do I need to activate anything in the options ? I'm always lost an I always forget which one I visited or not unless I hover above the case. Which is why I always spend a lot of time in buildings or dungeons, I get frustrated with being lost sometimes. I'll try to see if creating a new world will do the trick !

Offline x4000

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #5 on: February 07, 2012, 12:28:24 pm »
My pleasure -- and no, there are no options, and creating a new world won't help.  I think you just need to look more carefully. ;)  The brightness thing is new in the last week, but the black line thing has been there since the game has been in alpha.  You're not the only one not to notice it, though (not even close), so that's why we recently added the brightness thing.  The black line is there if you look, but plenty of folks just looked right past it.
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Offline Souls-Stream

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #6 on: February 07, 2012, 01:16:54 pm »
Thanks again and again and again!  I'll make sure I have the right update and I'll check more carefully :)
My bad :(

Offline x4000

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #7 on: February 07, 2012, 01:20:02 pm »
No worries!
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Offline zebramatt

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #8 on: February 07, 2012, 01:24:04 pm »
Is there any merit in having the mission pane display automatically at some point during the proceedings? Obviously not when you're just walking about, since you'd only ever see mission panes (unless the information was somehow condensed and put in a corner - maybe a configurable setting for people with big screens there).

But perhaps when you first enter a mission region, it could show it. Or when you hit E to enter but before you actually get down there, as a sort of "Here are your objectives, do you accept them?" sort of wosname. Or maybe even as you cross that warp gubbin in the staging area before you enter the mission chunk proper, you could pop it up.

Offline x4000

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #9 on: February 07, 2012, 01:27:02 pm »
I'm pretty sure there's a sign that shows all that stuff in the staging area of the mission, but I could be wrong.  At any rate, it's definitely stuff we're trying to work through to make more clear in a variety of ways; suggestions in mantis are most welcome, as right now Josh is trying to collate all that stuff so that Keith and I can work on it once we're past all the actual implementation work on the new features that are currently in progress.
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Offline zebramatt

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #10 on: February 07, 2012, 01:36:53 pm »
Yeah, the warp gubbin allows you to view it but I think it's player-prompted (Press confirm to see the mission objectives) rather than the game ensuring you look at them/accept them before embarking.

I'll have to dust off my old Mantis account and get right to it!

Offline x4000

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #11 on: February 07, 2012, 01:39:15 pm »
I appreciate it. :)
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #12 on: February 07, 2012, 01:49:20 pm »
In theory I could have the gubbin pop up the window during walk-by, and originally planned to do so, but it was both easier to implement and seemed less intrusive to the player this way.  Perhaps we could have a toggle (default:on) that makes it walk-by instead of on-confirm, and that tells you that the walk-by behavior can be disabled :)
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Offline Martyn van Buren

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #13 on: February 07, 2012, 03:53:24 pm »
Back to OP, is there any chance you're confusing the chunk map, which appears in the upper-left corner of the screen and does show the shape of the room you're in, with the dungeon map, which appears in the lower-right corner and represents all the rooms of the area you're in as rectangles?  That second has all the information about other rooms; it uses color codes to show different kinds of rooms and has the black strikethough on rooms you haven't visited. You can mouse over for explanation.  It's possible you've turned this off; you can toggle it with either the comma (,) or period (.) key (I forget which).  It also has a mode where it just shows the major divisions of the region you're in ---- dungeon, building, outdoors --- which won't help much in getting around inside, so make sure it's on the mode that has lots of smaller squares rather than a few large squares in a row.   That said, the local map also shows doors you haven't been through as red dots and doors you have visited as dark green.

Offline Saolite

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Re: Help :(
« Reply #14 on: February 08, 2012, 04:16:47 am »
I had many of the same questions as the OP, though eventually figured out the numerous changes -- after about two hours of searching in-game and navigating through all the menus. I'm glad that there's going to be an "extended tutorial" in the future covering the recent changes.

Out of curiosity, will this new tutorial include the spell tier system? My first time playing ( after all the recent changes ) I was a little confused, since there wasn't any spellgem crafting. After a while I got the hang of it, though as I understand it thus far, you need some unlocks or allow the enemy to progress higher before getting access to the higher tier spells?

There seemed to be a few points where the enemy, particularly bosses, were increasingly difficult and higher on progress themselves without having access to higher tier spells. I'm not sure if that was intentional and my character simply had bad statistics for these fights or if I missed something to get the higher tier spells.