I'd like to talk in this topic about how the game "feels" to me.

[Blahness]

I'm actually starting the game for the first time, and I want to talk, as I play, about how I respond, emotionally and mentally, to different things I see in the game.

I've been a huge fan of Arcen games ever since AI War 2.0, and have stuck with them all this time.  I've heard exciting things about AVWW, and now it's out, so here I go.

This might actually be better done with a Let's Play, but I'm not sure if the creators want videos of their beta posted on youtube.  I could also stream it, but again, not sure if it's allowed by the creators.

I'm writing this post as I play, but it'll be posted after I make some headway.

So I begin!

Music is nice, clicking is kinda odd, but I'm neutral.  First thing I look for is graphics settings - the text is small on my 1920x1200 resolution, and I'd like to scale up the UI. 

Oh, what's this?  11 beta updates?  Installing.

Okay, what's  new?  Custom cursor?  Yes please, I hate my OS cursor.  Precipitation, clouds, complexity?  Max it all, my computer's rather decent.

Port forwarding?  Excellent useful links, brilliant man for including them.  Audio's fine, graphics fine, just wish I could scale the UI a bit more.

Now to create a world.

Hm, what to name it... ??for sure!

Back up my world?  I'd recommend making this automatic.

Hm, beginning stats are health, magic points, magical attack and casting speed.  In DnD, I'm a munchkin, so I tend to go for optimization.

I'm not sure what a red stat or a green stat means;  I assume it means "low" and high, either in terms of base or scaling.

I went with a high (9) casting speed, decent magical attack and hp, and low (620) magic points.  We'll see how this works out!

Mah name is... Boris Markowski!

For the sake of my first time, I'll stick with Wily Hero.

Reading the stats that are explained after I pick my hero.  I like the idea of explaining them when I pick my hero, but I digress.  Magic points and health is intuitive (love the idea of auto-potion usage!), Civ Exp is neat too, and chunk is especially intriuging. 

So I run around for a tiny bit, and pick up... fire touch.  Bottom left looks like a quick bar OH MY GOD I'M SETTING TREES ON FIRE ROFL ROFL ROFL LOGS ROFL ROFL ROFL BURNING Oh, wait, what was I up to?  Heading to the left, I find blue consciousness shards.  Check my inventory, that's a *lot* of components to start with, wowee.  Run to the right, hit the edge.  After a bit of confusion, I realize I can actually run through, and continue to the right.

Ooh, a pool of acid.  And in front of it a grave that mentions both death by acid and the use of wooden platforms.  Creative way to introduce a game mechanic, I like! 

Ooh, a town, calm music, and blue advisor stone.  Recommends reading 5 tips, there's 35 total.  I'm a completionist, so be right back, reading.

Good advice, and I love warp stones and I haven't even used them yet.  Backtracking is considered evil in this game, and I love it!

Hm, so I turned 2 of the 30 cedar wood I picked up into a hundred platforms.  Maybe not enough?  200 then.

get a bunch of every scroll, get a million spells, and start running around the overworld!  I'm quite tired at this point, but maybe I've described my initial reactions somewhat.

I guess I'm asking if I can do an LP of this game.  Can I?  It'd be easier than typing this out. D:

[c4sc4]

I guess I'm asking if I can do an LP of this game.  Can I?  It'd be easier than typing this out. D:

Seeing as two other people on this forum are doing Let's Plays of this game, I'm sure the developers won't mind.

[x4000]

Cool stuff! And yeah, we've no problem with anyone doing video or screens of our stuff. We love LPs!

[Blahness]

I'm going to do an LP of this then, but I plan on actually knowing what I'm doing for that, so I'll play through.

I've invaded a dozen ~level 10 studies and libraries, and got no spellbooks.  Invaded a few ~level 15 ones, too, and nothing.  Are they supposed to just be on the ground?  Do I pick them up like any other item?


How do I increase my base stats?  I feel like I'm just as strong as when I was level 1, only now all my enemies have scaled up massively.  How do I grow in power?

[Dizzard]

I've invaded a dozen ~level 10 studies and libraries, and got no spellbooks.  Invaded a few ~level 15 ones, too, and nothing.  Are they supposed to just be on the ground?  Do I pick them up like any other item?

Spellbooks were removed a couple of updates ago. You start off by knowing how to craft all spells. (but you don't get all the ingredients until a certain level)

[zebramatt]

How do I increase my base stats?  I feel like I'm just as strong as when I was level 1, only now all my enemies have scaled up massively.  How do I grow in power?

You don't increase your base stats really. The base stats of your current character are fixed, permanent for that character. You can change - and moderately improve, sometimes - those stats only by becoming another character... which means dying or using a particular spell on an NPC at your settlements. As you explore, new NPC types will become available, and with them new stat possibilities. But I digress.

As your civilization level goes up, all the magic in the world becomes relatively less significant to you. It's like an exchange rate, or inflation: as you progress, lower level monsters, spells, potions, whatever, become weaker. To survive, therefore, you must harness stronger magic. To do this, you need to find the next tier of spell gems.

Gems are found underground, in the vast cave systems under the world. You'll know there's one in your chunk if that chunk is of a lighter shade of green on the region map. Find the entrance and descend, vanquishing any bosses you might encounter, and be on the lookout for yellow caves on your dungeon map. Tier I gems can be found in regions of level 0-9, tier II in regions 10-19, tier III 20-29, and so on (with some blurring at the boundaries - there's a chance a level 18 or 19 region will relinquish a tier III gem, for example).

Once you have found an outcropping and harvested the gems using a background-damaging spell like fire touch, you can return to a settlement to craft the gem into a spell. Basic spells can be crafted from the gems alone, but very quickly you will require additional resources to improve your spell loadout and get ahead of the curve. If you're looking for a particular resource, or a particular colour gem, simply hover your mouse over it in the craft interface and the very bottom bit of hint text will tell you what region types you need to explore.

Your civilization has an effective 10 level head start on the universe, so you should always be able to take on the bosses guarding the next gem tier and upgrade your stuff before it starts to become utterly unusable - but the search for new, higher tier gems - combined with seeking out rarer materials for even more awesome spells - makes up a major part of the medium term gameplay.

Hope that helps!

[x4000]

That's a really good explanation of the mechanic, zebramatt -- thanks for that!

[Blahness]

If your stats never increase, then what's the point of mana potions II, III and so on?  I'll never have enough mana to make even I's economical.

In addition, higher-level spells cost more; a higher-ranked spell should never be a tradeoff between a lower-ranked version of the same spell, and I'm having to pick whether or not to spend additional mana in order to do more damage, or to play conservatively and have things take a while.

[zebramatt]

Everything gets worse as your civilisation level increases - including potions, and spell costs. Tier I potions will give you less and less magic and health; spells will become cheaper and cheaper.

Therefore whilst it might be the case that at your current level those potions and spells seem pointless, there will come a time when you need those things, as the lower level ones become increasingly meaningless to a society of such success.

[Blahness]

Ah, I see.  I didn't notice since over the course of 15 levels, my Death Touch spell went from costing 60 to costing... 57.

And it does about 15% more damage, while monster spawners have 15 times the health they did at level 1.

Hm.  I'll keep playing and watch more carefully how things scale, but I'm not certain monster spawners degrade in strength as my civ levels up...

[x4000]

Blahness, monster health doesn't increase as levels go up.  Level of the monster and yourself are completely irrelevant to the stats of yourself and the monsters.  Your stats never change, period.  The monster stats only change in relation to their level relative to your level -- so if a monster is two levels above you, it's got X stats, regardless of what the actual levels in question are.  If it's two levels below you, the stats are Y, regardless of what the levels in question are.

The thing that is relative are the tiers of your equipment.  If you're using equipment that is higher than your current base level's equivalent, then you get more benefit for more cost.  As you continue to level up and your stuff gets relatively lower-tier compared to your civ level, things "depreciate" and you get less benefit for less cost until the equipment is pretty well pointless (this take about 20 levels per tier).

Why do things this way?  There's been a lot of discussion about this, and this was something that -- with player feedback -- we actually shifted to in the first or second week of the public beta.  We'd been doing it a more traditional way, previously, but it was horribly, horribly broken.  There's a reason that most games cap you at level 99, and that has to do with the exponential increases in stats need to happen as levels go up in order for the balance to remain the same at level 99 as it would be at level 1.  Some RPGs hand-tune monsters at each level to get around this, but that's not an option with something procedural.  And a few games let you get to level 9999 and you have stats in the millions, but then that becomes hard to see and read, and just generally isn't the sort of feel I'd want to go for.

Anyway, since the goal here is worlds that you can level up infinitely or thereabouts, and since we want balance between you and a specific enemy type to remain constant as long as your levels remain constant, this is a big part of why we shifted things this way.  Hope that helps clear up the confusion!

[Blahness]

I didn't say monster health; I said monster spawner health.

Whether I enter a level 1 area with a level 1 or 20 civ, the spawner still has 7k hp.  Monster spawner health does not scale at all to player level.  Is this normal?

[x4000]

Actually, yes -- had to check the code, but there's actually an IsImmuneToLowLevelHealthDevaluation flag that's being set on monster spawners so that they don't ever have less health than their baseline if you go into lower levels, but they do have higher health if you go into higher levels. 

The reason is that if you're able to kill monster spawners instantly (which is what would happen normally if it was level 1 and you were level 20), then there's literally no monsters around and that gets boring fast.  Having monster spawners be killable is something that folks really wanted, but having them be killable easily is something I really wanted to avoid for the sake of not making players traverse long, empty swathes of nothing all the time, heh.

[Blahness]

Understood, and I love how cohesive, directed and detailed your "plan" for character advancement is.  Everything's extremely well thought out, and keep up the good work!

[x4000]

Thanks!  We try.