Q & A

[TechSY730]

Boss monsters now get randomly-added elemental strengths as part of their general stat allocations. Each random addition gives them an added 25% strength against one of the six elements. But don't worry, these additions are in place of their other stat increases, such as health, magical/physical attack power, casting speed, etc.

Does this mean that boss versions of monsters get the same HP as their "non-boss" versions? If so, that seems too weak, even if they have elemental resistances to go with it.

No, boss monsters have base stats that are way higher than their regular counterparts anyhow.  But then parts of their stats were randomly allocated, so one amoeba boss would have extra health and another would have extra magic power, etc, etc.  Now that gets diluted some with some of them also having extra elemental resistances instead.

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks.

[x4000]

You bet!

[Hyfrydle]

All this new elemental information sounds very complicated is it visually clear in game how effective spells are?

[x4000]

All this new elemental information sounds very complicated is it visually clear in game how effective spells are?

It's really pretty simple for the most part.  For most basic enemies, you'll know "attacking robots with lightning does extra damage" as in most other games.  And "attacking icicle leapers with ice/water does almost nothing" and things like that.  When you attack them, you can see the little up arrow with the icon of the element they are weak to, or the down arrow to the elements they are strong against.  All that is right above their health bar.

For bosses there are more variants, so each boss you'll have to see what the strengths/weaknesses are.  Since it's sorted from best to worst in terms of what you should use, you don't even need the exact numbers to make your decision (and if you want those, you can easily pause and look at them).  Anything not listed is unaffected, so no changes happen.

Secondarily, the more you attack an enemy with one spell, the stronger they get against it.  This again really only matters in practice for bosses, unless you are playing several levels up from your civ level.  But as the bosses are getting stronger to one thing, they're getting weaker to its opposite.  Thus you'll want to outfit yourself with paired spells when you go out to fight a boss in particular: if you normally use lightning spells, then also bring along forest rage or launch rock or similar so that once you've lightning'ed them up for a while you can do some rock hits for much larger damage.

It is definitely more complex than it was before, but before it was kind of "shoot anything in the face with any spell until it's dead," and that was always incomplete.  The elemental stuff makes it so that you want to plan for specific kinds of enemies, and do extra damage or avoid doing less damage.  In a lot of respects it's kind of like AI War, where you can't just spam frigates on every planet all the time; you have to bring at least a slightly mixed group of stuff for balance.

Anyway, I think you'll find it a lot more clear when you see it in action.

[Hyfrydle]

Secondarily, the more you attack an enemy with one spell, the stronger they get against it.  This again really only matters in practice for bosses, unless you are playing several levels up from your civ level.  But as the bosses are getting stronger to one thing, they're getting weaker to its opposite.  Thus you'll want to outfit yourself with paired spells when you go out to fight a boss in particular: if you normally use lightning spells, then also bring along forest rage or launch rock or similar so that once you've lightning'ed them up for a while you can do some rock hits for much larger damage.

Is it possible to leave the boss room if you find yourself unprepared for the battle? Definately looking forward to the elemental additions just got too used to the one spell for all occasions functionality. Really like the fact that repeated use of the same spell causes immunity. This will add some real strategy to choosing a loadout.

[x4000]

Sure, you can always leave boss rooms -- if you can get to the door.  You can't warp out, but you can leave by the door you entered through with no worries.  And then of course you can warp back later if you are then better equipped.

This is part of why we had different spells that were very similar to each other in each element.  That's not even done, but still there's going to be a LOT of spells in the game, in each element, so that you can really customize way more than you can right now.  Right now there's a basic ranged spell in each element, and a handful of other kinds of offensive spells in most of the elements, but it's really paltry compared to what it will ultimately be.

Still, none of them are exact clones of one another anyhow, varying things like MP cost, range, cooldown, speed of movement, and other factors.  So you have those things to weigh when also choosing your two opposing colors to use for a while.  And if you run into a specific kind of boss with immunities that aren't in your favor, you really want to have some backups in another pair of opposing colors if you can.

My goal for a lot of the spell stuff is to really have a system where players can really express their personalities a bit in how they choose to tackle the problems the game throws at them; there's a slight bit of that at the moment, I guess, but it's not remotely like what I envision pushing it to by 1.0.

[Dizzard]

Maybe eventually you could include some sort of monsterpedia and have a scanning spell?

Then after you scanned a monster with the spell you could check their details (like weaknesses and where they usually appear) in a special book that comes up on screen for easy reference.

[Hyfrydle]

Maybe eventually you could include some sort of monsterpedia and have a scanning spell?

Then after you scanned a monster with the spell you could check their details (like weaknesses and where they usually appear) in a special book that comes up on screen for easy reference.

What a great idea like the sound of thia.

[x4000]

Yep, there's already a "bestiary" idea noted in mantis from long ago, which is basically the monsterpedia thing.  That said, what I'm finding is that I'm not sure if adding extra steps to the whole encountering a new monster for the first time process is really a desirable thing.  Sometimes having an extra process (scanning and looking up) can be fun, sometimes it just adds some extra work for the player without adding extra fun.  Right now I've kind of hedged and you just get the info when you pause the game and hover over monsters.

[Nalgas]

Yep, there's already a "bestiary" idea noted in mantis from long ago, which is basically the monsterpedia thing.  That said, what I'm finding is that I'm not sure if adding extra steps to the whole encountering a new monster for the first time process is really a desirable thing.  Sometimes having an extra process (scanning and looking up) can be fun, sometimes it just adds some extra work for the player without adding extra fun.  Right now I've kind of hedged and you just get the info when you pause the game and hover over monsters.

If you don't want the hassle of extra steps, a lot of people still like to be able to look up different enemies and spells and various other things about the game in some kind of reference (if there isn't one in-game, people will inevitably make one outside of it if the game is complex and popular enough), so just adding each of them to it after you've killed one would be a simple way of approaching it, for example.

[x4000]

Oh, for sure -- that sort of thing I definitely think would be a good idea.  Reference sections on enemies, spells, recipes, and so on would be really handy in general.  Once all this intro mission stuff is done, probably that's going to become a lot more important as I work on getting a ton more spells and enemies in place, too.

[Dizzard]

Yep, there's already a "bestiary" idea noted in mantis from long ago, which is basically the monsterpedia thing.  That said, what I'm finding is that I'm not sure if adding extra steps to the whole encountering a new monster for the first time process is really a desirable thing.  Sometimes having an extra process (scanning and looking up) can be fun, sometimes it just adds some extra work for the player without adding extra fun.  Right now I've kind of hedged and you just get the info when you pause the game and hover over monsters.

Maybe instead of needing to use a scan spell to gain detailed information about the monster, it gives you some other bonus. Like getting that monsters "essence" to use in crafting.

[x4000]

I had missed the part of your idea where the scan spell lets you view it later at your leisure, rather than that being a barrier between actually seeing the stats when paused.  As a monsterpedia type thing, I think that having a scan spell makes a lot of sense.  That's for long-term use, not short-term "I need to see what this monster does right now" type of use, so that's the sort of thing where an extra step would probably be fun and rewarding.

[Dizzard]

Is there a cheap damage dealing entropy spell?

I'm using creeping death at the minute but it's pretty expensive MP wise. I don't really need that much damage anyway.

[x4000]

Not yet, no, but that's part of the upcoming variety I want to get in there, for sure.