Arcen Games

General Category => A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 => : superking September 26, 2011, 03:43:53 PM

: Q & A
: superking September 26, 2011, 03:43:53 PM
Q: The generic monsters that constantly respawn- does killing these give no benefit of any kind (besides killing them for a short period)? In which case, should I endeavor to just run through levels using spells as little as possible to conserve mana?
: Re: Q & A
: Kronic September 26, 2011, 03:45:35 PM
Yes and yes, but remember to search for items as ye go.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 03:48:24 PM
Q: The generic monsters that constantly respawn- does killing these give no benefit of any kind (besides killing them for a short period)? In which case, should I endeavor to just run through levels using spells as little as possible to conserve mana?

No benefit at all. Personally, yeah, I try to get through using as little magic as possible, but that's really up to you.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 03:51:09 PM
Not sure if you saw this or not, but there is a Getting Started Guide for the game here: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9119.0.html .
: Re: Q & A
: syndicatedragon September 26, 2011, 03:51:54 PM
The constantly respawning monsters are really annoying, especially because they don't give you anything for defeating them. I would really like a way to destroy monster generators or have monster drops or have some kind of reason to be endlessly fighting monsters. The exploration is fun but it gets tedious really fast for me constantly having to kill things that give me nothing other than annoyance.
: Re: Q & A
: Echo35 September 26, 2011, 03:53:06 PM
The constantly respawning monsters are really annoying, especially because they don't give you anything for defeating them. I would really like a way to destroy monster generators or have monster drops or have some kind of reason to be endlessly fighting monsters. The exploration is fun but it gets tedious really fast for me constantly having to kill things that give me nothing other than annoyance.

There is a spell to make them stop for a while.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 03:53:25 PM
The constantly respawning monsters are really annoying, especially because they don't give you anything for defeating them. I would really like a way to destroy monster generators or have monster drops or have some kind of reason to be endlessly fighting monsters. The exploration is fun but it gets tedious really fast for me constantly having to kill things that give me nothing other than annoyance.

There is a "Douse Monster Nest" spell that shuts them off.
: Re: Q & A
: syndicatedragon September 26, 2011, 03:55:23 PM
OK, that's cool, how do I make it? :)
: Re: Q & A
: Admiral September 26, 2011, 03:56:39 PM
When I read Chris's dev blog post about removing XP for trash monsters, I was dubious.

I then did find it annoying that they didn't give XP at first, as I was learning the game.

However, now I know that I have to kill bosses anyway for items and fun, it's not a big deal. In fact, I think Chris was right to remove XP from the trash mobs, else you'd level super fast and outlevel all the regions you walked to really quickly.

That said, Civ Level 1 is the hardest. Once you get to 2 it's much easier to kill (level 1 mini)bosses.
: Re: Q & A
: Admiral September 26, 2011, 03:58:21 PM
OK, that's cool, how do I make it? :)

0. Find a spellgem book (or use one of the 4 you start with, whatever they're called) in a library

1. Get lucky enough to find a blue stone that offers to let you learn how to craft the spell using the spellgem book

2. Gather the necessary gem and secondary component to create it at the workshop

3. Start dousing monster generators

4. Collect lots of mana potions to repeat #3 :)
: Re: Q & A
: superking September 26, 2011, 03:58:54 PM
Q: does the content of a building that is of interest to the player (eg. loot) have some relation to the outer appearance to the building? are there certain types of generic building to look out for (besides boss towers)?

The constantly respawning monsters are really annoying, especially because they don't give you anything for defeating them. I would really like a way to destroy monster generators or have monster drops or have some kind of reason to be endlessly fighting monsters. The exploration is fun but it gets tedious really fast for me constantly having to kill things that give me nothing other than annoyance.

Agreed. At the moment regular monsters seem to just be annoying, and having no way to permamently clear them out means there is little satisfaction to be had in fighting them.
: Re: Q & A
: Echo35 September 26, 2011, 03:59:22 PM
However, now I know that I have to kill bosses anyway for items and fun, it's not a big deal. In fact, I think Chris was right to remove XP from the trash mobs, else you'd level super fast and outlevel all the regions you walked to really quickly.

Plus it makes the OCD people like me grind out useless for hours. The way it is now rewards exploration, which is kinda the point of the game.
: Re: Q & A
: Admiral September 26, 2011, 04:03:01 PM
Plus it makes the OCD people like me grind out useless for hours. The way it is now rewards exploration, which is kinda the point of the game.

Good point. I resemble that remark.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 04:03:58 PM
Yep, I'd kill every monster I saw if they gave rewards that were too long-term.  As it stands, I'm thinking I'll add some very light auto-pickup health/mana restoration drops from these light enemies, but that's about the extent I think it should be taken to: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4008
: Re: Q & A
: superking September 26, 2011, 04:09:43 PM
Why do they need to respawn though? Its pretty agravating to clear a pack of those dwarf skelebots out of an atrium only for them to be waiting when you get back, for each door you go through... why not make the monster spawning skull totems permamently destroyable?
: Re: Q & A
: Admiral September 26, 2011, 04:10:55 PM
why not make the monster spawning skull totems permamently destroyable?

See the commentary here for your answer:

http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4008
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 04:23:24 PM
Why do they need to respawn though? Its pretty agravating to clear a pack of those dwarf skelebots out of an atrium only for them to be waiting when you get back, for each door you go through... why not make the monster spawning skull totems permamently destroyable?

I think that would make the game really boring. As it stands, if you're overpowered, there's at least the bubble-wrap satisfaction of attacking enemies and killing them with one hit. But if there are almost no enemies, then it's just you... running. That's it. I think that would get extremely tedious, which is part of why the monsters spawners aren't kill-able.

The other part of the reason why monster spawners can't be killed has to do with the effect they have on boss rooms, and how one that is higher in a cavern causes monsters to keep "arriving" from above in lower sections.
: Re: Q & A
: KDR_11k September 26, 2011, 04:39:33 PM
At least slow down the respawn rates. As it is I kill a dwarf, take three steps and the little bastard is back.

BTW, I find the dwarfs extremely unfun to deal with, their speed and huge attack radius makes them very hard to avoid and even the cooking-off trick makes them take some time to get past.
: Re: Q & A
: syndicatedragon September 26, 2011, 04:43:08 PM
At least slow down the respawn rates. As it is I kill a dwarf, take three steps and the little bastard is back.

BTW, I find the dwarfs extremely unfun to deal with, their speed and huge attack radius makes them very hard to avoid and even the cooking-off trick makes them take some time to get past.
So far my annoyance with the monsters is 100% dwarf guys.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 26, 2011, 04:45:18 PM
I'm not sure if this is commonly known but, the speed of monsters is relative to your civ level. If you venture into areas below you civ level, monsters are slower, if you venture into areas above your civ level, monsters are faster.
: Re: Q & A
: Nice Save September 26, 2011, 04:48:48 PM
At least slow down the respawn rates. As it is I kill a dwarf, take three steps and the little bastard is back.

BTW, I find the dwarfs extremely unfun to deal with, their speed and huge attack radius makes them very hard to avoid and even the cooking-off trick makes them take some time to get past.
So far my annoyance with the monsters is 100% dwarf guys.

I find just charging straight at them works well enough to not bother trying to evade. Also, if you play as a bat, you can get inside their radius before they can hit you and be away before they get a second chance.
: Re: Q & A
: arcee September 26, 2011, 04:52:45 PM
Q: Is there any way to find out what recipies I've unlocked and what I need to find for them?

Q: Can I use the mouse wheel to change what spell is on the buttons?  I found an entry that seemed relevant (switch first mouse ability slot), but couldn't set it.  Neither to a button nor to the wheel.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 04:55:26 PM
Why do they need to respawn though? Its pretty agravating to clear a pack of those dwarf skelebots out of an atrium only for them to be waiting when you get back, for each door you go through... why not make the monster spawning skull totems permamently destroyable?

To quote Chris from a Mantis ticket regarding this question: "... But if there are almost no enemies, then it's just you... running. That's it. I think that would get extremely tedious, which is part of why the monsters spawners aren't kill-able.

The other part of the reason why monster spawners can't be killed has to do with the effect they have on boss rooms, and how one that is higher in a cavern causes monsters to keep "arriving" from above in lower sections."
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 05:04:32 PM
Q: Is there any way to find out what recipies I've unlocked and what I need to find for them?

There's not a flat list at the moment, no -- but you can see this general information in the crafting interface itself.

Q: Can I use the mouse wheel to change what spell is on the buttons?  I found an entry that seemed relevant (switch first mouse ability slot), but couldn't set it.  Neither to a button nor to the wheel.

I think that has to be bound to a keyboard key at the moment, unfortunately.  It gets to be a pretty confusing option to use, unlike in an FPS where you see your huge gun at the bottom of the screen.
: Re: Q & A
: superking September 26, 2011, 05:14:43 PM
ideally the spells bound to the left and right mouse buttons would be displayed arger on the GUI
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle September 26, 2011, 05:43:23 PM
What are the red crosses signifying on the map? Is it just resource areas?
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 05:45:59 PM
What are the red crosses signifying on the map? Is it just resource areas?

Those are resource areas that your settlement's don't yet have access too. In order to get access, you need to go kill the guardians in the region.
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 26, 2011, 05:46:51 PM
So i have a rather stupid questions..

What do i do with gem mine areas. I found 3 of em in a huge underground cave network.. but what are they for?

Is there some list that lists what you get at what civ level? Is there *much* more beyond civ 6 ?

Sometimes when entering a bombed out area i spawn in a room with no door, that normal?

Where do you find Spell Books, only from boss towers?

What can you find in normal buildings besides just the glow currency and health potions?

How do i actually gain access to resources, after defeating the guardian (at what civ level for one ,p)
: Re: Q & A
: Teal_Blue September 26, 2011, 05:52:16 PM
X4000 said -
Yep, I'd kill every monster I saw if they gave rewards that were too long-term.  As it stands, I'm thinking I'll add some very light auto-pickup health/mana restoration drops from these light enemies, but that's about the extent I think it should be taken to: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4008-


:)  Nice idea.


: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle September 26, 2011, 05:52:27 PM



Those are resource areas that your settlement's don't yet have access too. In order to get access, you need to go kill the guardians in the region.


How do you know which creatures are the guardians? Or do you just kill everything in the area?

Sorry for all the questions most things are making sense but I can't seem to be able to liberate the resources local to my settlement.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 06:04:34 PM



Those are resource areas that your settlement's don't yet have access too. In order to get access, you need to go kill the guardians in the region.


How do you know which creatures are the guardians? Or do you just kill everything in the area?

Sorry for all the questions most things are making sense but I can't seem to be able to liberate the resources local to my settlement.

Look for the microbosses, they are usually as far away from the entrance of the region as they can be.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 06:08:37 PM
So i have a rather stupid questions..

What do i do with gem mine areas. I found 3 of em in a huge underground cave network.. but what are they for?

Is there some list that lists what you get at what civ level? Is there *much* more beyond civ 6 ?

Sometimes when entering a bombed out area i spawn in a room with no door, that normal?

Where do you find Spell Books, only from boss towers?

What can you find in normal buildings besides just the glow currency and health potions?

How do i actually gain access to resources, after defeating the guardian (at what civ level for one ,p)

The Gem Mine areas allow you to mine more gems, which you can use to make more spells. Every 5 Levels or so, the gems get stronger (Jade II as opposed to Jade II), when you use a stronger gem to make a spell, the spell becomes stronger.

Books are best found in houses in rural and wooded areas. Once in the houses look for rooms that appear yellow in the dungeon map, they are libraries or dens. Books are usually there.

Normal buildings have, in addition, health potions, the conciousness shards, and sometimes, gem dust, which can be used to make potions.

After defeating the guardians in a region, you need to assign an NPC from the settlement management screen, to go get the resources.
: Re: Q & A
: PLivesey September 26, 2011, 06:09:06 PM
Probably a silly post, but I don't wish to risk quitting the game without knowing (played for 5 hours straight!).  Does quitting save the game such that I'll be in the same place when I start it up again?  Or does it teleport me to my town?
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 26, 2011, 06:12:30 PM
The Gem Mine areas allow you to mine more gems, which you can use to make more spells. Every 5 Levels or so, the gems get stronger (Jade II as opposed to Jade II), when you use a stronger gem to make a spell, the spell becomes stronger.

Books are best found in houses in rural and wooded areas. Once in the houses look for rooms that appear yellow in the dungeon map, they are libraries or dens. Books are usually there.

Normal buildings have, in addition, health potions, the conciousness shards, and sometimes, gem dust, which can be used to make potions.

After defeating the guardians in a region, you need to assign an NPC from the settlement management screen, to go get the resources.

So i assume mining doesn't unlock at civ 6 ;P
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 06:13:52 PM
Probably a silly post, but I don't wish to risk quitting the game without knowing (played for 5 hours straight!).  Does quitting save the game such that I'll be in the same place when I start it up again?  Or does it teleport me to my town?

You stay right where you are. :-)
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 06:14:34 PM

So i assume mining doesn't unlock at civ 6 ;P

Nope, you can mine right away. :-)
: Re: Q & A
: PLivesey September 26, 2011, 06:16:58 PM
Probably a silly post, but I don't wish to risk quitting the game without knowing (played for 5 hours straight!).  Does quitting save the game such that I'll be in the same place when I start it up again?  Or does it teleport me to my town?

You stay right where you are. :-)

Thanks a lot!  I've been in this underground cavern for about an hour now, and have found so many boss rooms.  I was worried that quitting would mean I'd have to come find them all again.  A question relating to that: do underground caverns go on forever?  As in, is there always one 'green' room which leads deeper?
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 06:17:46 PM
They can go on forever, yes.
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 26, 2011, 06:21:36 PM

So i assume mining doesn't unlock at civ 6 ;P

Nope, you can mine right away. :-)

But.. but.. HOW? ^^
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 26, 2011, 06:24:37 PM
Basically, once you find the gem veins in the caves, you essentially attack them.
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 26, 2011, 06:32:06 PM
Attack them with spells? I did that a lot, it never showed any health bar or any indication that it works.. but let me try quickly ;P

Oh wow, this needs a Tooltip when you pass by a minable rock

only spell that counts as mining action is fire touch... i never even looked at it as its melee , and why bother with melee when i have ice waves of eternal doom and fireballs of fire...

So yeah ;)
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle September 26, 2011, 06:33:35 PM
Took me a while to work out mining watched one of Chris's vids and it made sense. Maybe something that should be mentioned in game. Got the hang of getting the resource points taken three now along with two rare commodity towers.
: Re: Q & A
: PLivesey September 26, 2011, 06:35:11 PM
Attack them with spells? I did that a lot, it never showed any health bar or any indication that it works.. but let me try quickly ;P

Oh wow, this needs a Tooltip when you pass by a minable rock

only spell that counts as mining action is fire touch... i never even looked at it as its melee , and why bother with melee when i have ice waves of eternal doom and fireballs of fire...

So yeah ;)

Yeah, I didn't realise it was just fire touch.  Just so happened I'm a cheapskate with my mana and will ONLY use that (free) spell on non-hostile objects.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 26, 2011, 06:36:41 PM
why bother with melee when i have ice waves of eternal doom and fireballs of fire...

Because it's free, and that's awesome.  Anything that costs me nothing to use is great.  Also awesome?  PUNCHING BATS IN THE FACE.  It never gets old.  It even deserves lots of capital letters, which I rarely use.

I really want an upgraded version at a higher level that's basically FALCON PUNCH, with the lunge and higher damage everything.  I should stick that in Mantis at some point, because I've wanted it for weeks now.
: Re: Q & A
: Nice Save September 26, 2011, 06:40:15 PM
Attack them with spells? I did that a lot, it never showed any health bar or any indication that it works.. but let me try quickly ;P

Oh wow, this needs a Tooltip when you pass by a minable rock

only spell that counts as mining action is fire touch... i never even looked at it as its melee , and why bother with melee when i have ice waves of eternal doom and fireballs of fire...

So yeah ;)

Actually circle of fire, Ice cross, Energy pulse, and probably a few others can be used for mining too. Just look in the description for a mention of damage to background objects.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 06:43:20 PM
ideally the spells bound to the left and right mouse buttons would be displayed arger on the GUI

The fiery orange background behind the first mouse slot signifies that's what the left mouse button is bound to, actually.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 06:48:50 PM
In terms of "is there much that unlocks after level 6," the answer is definitely yes.  There's some stuff that unlocks all the way to level... I think 10 or so, in terms of the macrogame.

In terms of the actual monsters, there's new stuff unlocking up to level 12 at the moment, I think.

In terms of region types, the last region to unlock at the moment is the swamp, at region level 60.  But there are others in the 20s and 30s and such, too.

In terms of crafting materials, at the moment there is stuff that unlocks all the way to level 70 (coral), although coral doesn't yet have anything that you can craft from it because I figured I have time. ;)

That's just speaking to what is in the game now, not what will ultimately be in the game, of course.  Most things will unlock before level 80 or so I expect, so that "playing the full game" can mostly be done prior to level 80. But as you go higher, and we add more stuff, you'll be getting the new stuff at the higher levels.  If your first time getting ice cross was at level 100, for instance, it would still be as awesome then as if you got it first at level 1, like now.

And I'm sure we will make a few things for much higher than level 80, just to reward the... insane dedicated. :)
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 26, 2011, 06:51:38 PM
Hah ;) Well i just bought the game anyway.. it really is the "best" sidescroller i ever played - now that i understand the gameplay, heh

Though i gather you gonna remove memory crystals from the boss towers next patch? You be putting anything else in them then? Like.. spell books? ;p
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 26, 2011, 06:53:31 PM
ideally the spells bound to the left and right mouse buttons would be displayed arger on the GUI

The fiery orange background behind the first mouse slot signifies that's what the left mouse button is bound to, actually.

This is worth noting if you bind a key to the "cycle which slot the primary mouse button is attached to" action.  Assuming it all still works how it's supposed to (I haven't touched any of that in forever), that should move around as you cycle through the list.  I actually have no idea how that does or should affect what the second/third/etc. mouse buttons do and never really thought about it before.  It would be kind of funny (and potentially confusing) moving it around and having your left mouse button do the same thing as your other ones at different times, but at least less confusing than the whole set of buttons sliding down the line as a group.  That would be interesting but odd.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 07:56:26 PM
Hah ;) Well i just bought the game anyway.. it really is the "best" sidescroller i ever played - now that i understand the gameplay, heh

Though i gather you gonna remove memory crystals from the boss towers next patch? You be putting anything else in them then? Like.. spell books? ;p

Thanks, glad you like it!  The boss towers are still remaining, as are the memory crystals... the turn-in point is just being temporarily removed.  So you can get the memory crystals, and they will be useful in a future version, but for now it's not actually purposeful to collect them except to have them for later (and gain all that EXP from the bosses, of course).
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 07:57:47 PM
ideally the spells bound to the left and right mouse buttons would be displayed arger on the GUI

The fiery orange background behind the first mouse slot signifies that's what the left mouse button is bound to, actually.

This is worth noting if you bind a key to the "cycle which slot the primary mouse button is attached to" action.  Assuming it all still works how it's supposed to (I haven't touched any of that in forever), that should move around as you cycle through the list.  I actually have no idea how that does or should affect what the second/third/etc. mouse buttons do and never really thought about it before.  It would be kind of funny (and potentially confusing) moving it around and having your left mouse button do the same thing as your other ones at different times, but at least less confusing than the whole set of buttons sliding down the line as a group.  That would be interesting but odd.

It moves all of them, however many you have.  I have a five-button mouse, and it definitely works.  They wrap around the other side when they hit the end.  So when #1 is slot 8, #2 is 9, #3 is 0, #4 is 1, #5 is 2, etc.  I find that more confusing than it's worth, but it works and so we've left it in case others disagree with me.
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek September 26, 2011, 08:13:22 PM
Hah ;) Well i just bought the game anyway.. it really is the "best" sidescroller i ever played - now that i understand the gameplay, heh

Though i gather you gonna remove memory crystals from the boss towers next patch? You be putting anything else in them then? Like.. spell books? ;p

Thanks, glad you like it!  The boss towers are still remaining, as are the memory crystals... the turn-in point is just being temporarily removed.  So you can get the memory crystals, and they will be useful in a future version, but for now it's not actually purposeful to collect them except to have them for later (and gain all that EXP from the bosses, of course).

So that few memory crystals I turned in to library were not needed?
They gave some exp and bits of a story :D
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 26, 2011, 09:01:22 PM
On the initial spell book that you pick up, is there some indication that I missed that it had a limited number of uses? The game kind of walks you through using the book of outfitting, and I found that I could learn everything from it and then it stayed in my inventory. Then it walks you on to using the spell book, and I thought that would probably be unlimited too, so I just started haphazardly clicking things, and then it went away.  :(
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 26, 2011, 09:04:04 PM
On the initial spell book that you pick up, is there some indication that I missed that it had a limited number of uses? The game kind of walks you through using the book of outfitting, and I found that I could learn everything from it and then it stayed in my inventory. Then it walks you on to using the spell book, and I thought that would probably be unlimited too, so I just started haphazardly clicking things, and then it went away.  :(

There's a number next to them in your inventory for how many you have, or at least should be, and the number should go down each time you use one.  When the number reaches zero...  I assume you just happened to have more books than there were outfitting recipes to learn, but not enough to learn all the spells.
: Re: Q & A
: Orelius September 26, 2011, 09:11:42 PM
Speaking of which, where can one find new spellbooks?  I've been having to fight level 8 bosses with the starting spells :\.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 26, 2011, 09:15:13 PM
Speaking of which, where can one find new spellbooks?  I've been having to fight level 8 bosses with the starting spells :\.

Buildings like houses are good, in town-like areas.  Sometimes they'll have things like highlighted yellow library/study rooms, which have a pretty good chance of having books in them.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 26, 2011, 09:44:27 PM
In terms of region types, the last region to unlock at the moment is the swamp, at region level 60.  But there are others in the 20s and 30s and such, too.

All that time spent alpha testing and there is still something I have gotten to yet?! I must hurry to level 60 to experience the swamp.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 09:45:10 PM
Hah ;) Well i just bought the game anyway.. it really is the "best" sidescroller i ever played - now that i understand the gameplay, heh

Though i gather you gonna remove memory crystals from the boss towers next patch? You be putting anything else in them then? Like.. spell books? ;p

Thanks, glad you like it!  The boss towers are still remaining, as are the memory crystals... the turn-in point is just being temporarily removed.  So you can get the memory crystals, and they will be useful in a future version, but for now it's not actually purposeful to collect them except to have them for later (and gain all that EXP from the bosses, of course).

So that few memory crystals I turned in to library were not needed?
They gave some exp and bits of a story :D

Well, Keith wants to redo how the story is handled there, and how the memory archive in general functions, so that's why he's basically taking it down for maintenance.  What you saw in terms of that story was more of a prototype, and he's not happy with how it can build up with the current way the code is, and wants to have another go at it in a different way.

On the initial spell book that you pick up, is there some indication that I missed that it had a limited number of uses? The game kind of walks you through using the book of outfitting, and I found that I could learn everything from it and then it stayed in my inventory. Then it walks you on to using the spell book, and I thought that would probably be unlimited too, so I just started haphazardly clicking things, and then it went away.  :(

Yep, what Nalgas said -- there are counts of how many you have.  You have four of each, but there's only three outfitting techs to learn so far!
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 09:45:55 PM
In terms of region types, the last region to unlock at the moment is the swamp, at region level 60.  But there are others in the 20s and 30s and such, too.

All that time spent alpha testing and there is still something I have gotten to yet?! I must hurry to level 60 to experience the swamp.

I'll warn you that it's the least complete region in terms of graphical assets and such, but I still like it.  There's a lot of art graphics in there you haven't seen yet. :)
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 26, 2011, 09:46:59 PM
Is it intentional that bat form gets no protection from cold? Admittedly, it doesn't state that you retain the use of your cold suit, but it does state you can "do everything as normal" which sort of implied that. I'm glad I wasn't on low HP when I tried it! If it is intentional, perhaps a little note in the tooltip? I think something that can kill you in a few seconds is probably worth a little warning.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 26, 2011, 09:49:12 PM
Is it intentional that bat form gets no protection from cold? Admittedly, it doesn't state that you retain the use of your cold suit, but it does state you can "do everything as normal" which sort of implied that. I'm glad I wasn't on low HP when I tried it! If it is intentional, perhaps a little note in the tooltip? I think something that can kill you in a few seconds is probably worth a little warning.
Very much so, they didn't want the bat usable in the Lava Flats. I still would like to be able to transmogrify into an ice bat but that idea got shot down.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 26, 2011, 09:59:14 PM
Very much so, they didn't want the bat usable in the Lava Flats. I still would like to be able to transmogrify into an ice bat but that idea got shot down.

Ah, that makes sense. I'd vote yes on an ice bat option as well. Still, at least a little tooltip update. I guess it's the kind of mistake you only make once, though.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 10:06:12 PM
Is it intentional that bat form gets no protection from cold? Admittedly, it doesn't state that you retain the use of your cold suit, but it does state you can "do everything as normal" which sort of implied that. I'm glad I wasn't on low HP when I tried it! If it is intentional, perhaps a little note in the tooltip? I think something that can kill you in a few seconds is probably worth a little warning.

Yep, it's intended, but that's a good one for mantis on the tooltip.
: Re: Q & A
: syndicatedragon September 26, 2011, 10:14:01 PM
Is it normal for a lvl 2 boss to have 2,700 hp? There are 2 of them in this room! Are you supposed to be able to defeat them at lvl 1?

I've been having trouble getting XP. This boss is the first thing I've found, and I see no realistic way to defeat them.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 26, 2011, 10:17:25 PM
Is it normal for a lvl 2 boss to have 2,700 hp? There are 2 of them in this room! Are you supposed to be able to defeat them at lvl 1?

I've been having trouble getting XP. This boss is the first thing I've found, and I see no realistic way to defeat them.

There should only be one boss there.  Can you post a mantis issue for this?  That is a bug I have heard about, but I haven't had a world file.  If you can zip your world folder with you in that room with the two bosses, I can fix it.  Thanks!
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 26, 2011, 10:19:16 PM
Is it normal for a lvl 2 boss to have 2,700 hp? There are 2 of them in this room! Are you supposed to be able to defeat them at lvl 1?

I've been having trouble getting XP. This boss is the first thing I've found, and I see no realistic way to defeat them.
Yes, that level of hp is normal. An by two of them, are they the pair of boss bats underground or what type of boss are you fighting where there are two.

As to being able to defeat a level 2 boss at level 1, yes you should be able to do it but it will be more difficult that fighting bosses that are equal in level to you.

As for getting exp, you can get it by setting up windshelters (manually, not by using npcs), using spellbooks (find them in libraries and studies inside of houses, these rooms show up yellow on the dungeon map) or by fighting bosses.
: Re: Q & A
: arcee September 26, 2011, 10:22:23 PM
I see no realistic way to defeat them.

Throw rocks.  I don't remember exactly how big my 2 L2 bosses at level 1 'Master Hero' were, but that worked ok, with some fireball/ice cross for knockback.

Q: What do the *s on the overworld map mean?

Q: Is it normal for a cave entrance to be under water? (Fortunately the next cave was _not_ entirely flooded, but it did make it hard to find).  For that matter, you can come out into water, or in midair and fall into water.  all normal?

Q: can you rescue people that you find in the caves, or do you have to go home and send somebody else?
: Re: Q & A
: syndicatedragon September 26, 2011, 10:25:40 PM
There should only be one boss there.  Can you post a mantis issue for this?  That is a bug I have heard about, but I haven't had a world file.  If you can zip your world folder with you in that room with the two bosses, I can fix it.  Thanks!
Will do. edit- link (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4036)

Yes, that level of hp is normal. An by two of them, are they the pair of boss bats underground or what type of boss are you fighting where there are two.
Yeah, they look like giant bats.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 26, 2011, 10:27:05 PM
Q: What do the *s on the overworld map mean?
Means ther is a windstorm occuring in that region

Q: Is it normal for a cave entrance to be under water? (Fortunately the next cave was _not_ entirely flooded, but it did make it hard to find).  For that matter, you can come out into water, or in midair and fall into water.  all normal?
Yes and yes. Or at least I think it is on the second part. I think this happens when the entrance you came through doesn't have a surface directly below it so you just fall until you get to a surface.

Q: can you rescue people that you find in the caves, or do you have to go home and send somebody else?

The only way to rescue people is by using you npcs to migrate them back to a settlement.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 26, 2011, 10:27:59 PM
Yes, that level of hp is normal. An by two of them, are they the pair of boss bats underground or what type of boss are you fighting where there are two.
Yeah, they look like giant bats.

Do they emit darkness around them? If so these bat bosses that you fight underground are suppose to spawn two of them.
: Re: Q & A
: syndicatedragon September 26, 2011, 10:32:07 PM
Do they emit darkness around them? If so these bat bosses that you fight underground are suppose to spawn two of them.
Huh. That seems... weird. How do you know there's supposed to be two? Anyway, it seems pretty much impossible to beat right now so I guess I'll move on.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 26, 2011, 10:39:54 PM
Do they emit darkness around them? If so these bat bosses that you fight underground are suppose to spawn two of them.
Huh. That seems... weird. How do you know there's supposed to be two? Anyway, it seems pretty much impossible to beat right now so I guess I'll move on.

I was an alpha tester, that's how I know that two bat bosses should spawn at a time.

Also, it was in the alpha release notes
Added the first underground miniboss, the Giant Shadow Bat.

    * The shadow bat is the first enemy that is able to emit an aura of darkness, which literally counteracts the effects of light sources near it.
    * They also have the first vampiric attack, which heals them the amount of damage they do to enemies.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 26, 2011, 10:40:20 PM
Q: What do the *s on the overworld map mean?

Elaborating on what c4sc4 said, it does mean that there is a windstorm there, because it's outside of the protection of your wind shelter network.  The regions without asterisks are "safe" because they're near settlements/wind shelters/roads, while the ones farther away are marked with asterisks to let you know that they are affected by windstorms if you enter them.  The practical consequence of that in-game is that it reduces visibility and increases the strength of enemies.
: Re: Q & A
: syndicatedragon September 26, 2011, 10:54:52 PM
I was an alpha tester, that's how I know that two bat bosses should spawn at a time.
Any idea WHY there are two them? It seems like that's not normal for a boss encounter? It makes it very, very difficult and frustrating.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 26, 2011, 11:02:19 PM
I was an alpha tester, that's how I know that two bat bosses should spawn at a time.
Any idea WHY there are two them? It seems like that's not normal for a boss encounter? It makes it very, very difficult and frustrating.

Might have helped if I quoted the right part of the log.
    * Put in something where the amount of EXP granted from killing a boss can now be set to a percentage of the normal amount per boss.
          o The giant shadow bats now grant 50% the EXP of other bosses.

    * Put in some logic where now multiple copies of a boss can be seeded in miniboss situations.
          o The giant shadow bats now spawn 2 of themselves rather than 1.

The shadow bats are weaker than regular minibosses so they give half the exp that a normal one does so two of them spawn.

Also, I was actually able to beat them with the world file you put on mantis. It took a couple of potions and a lot of jumping around to avoid them. You can try to target them off screen while running away from them by using the location of their health bars to aim.

: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 26, 2011, 11:45:42 PM
Question

1) Is is normal that when i mash both mouse buttons the same time, i can cast 2 spells at once? ;P Its awesome, my DPS increased by 100% ;P (stone + energy wave)

2) What do i do with other settlements? And where do i get new people for my own (currently it ain't exactly growing, with 3 people ,p)
: Re: Q & A
: GabrielKronos September 26, 2011, 11:50:44 PM
I was an alpha tester, that's how I know that two bat bosses should spawn at a time.
Any idea WHY there are two them? It seems like that's not normal for a boss encounter? It makes it very, very difficult and frustrating.

Might have helped if I quoted the right part of the log.
    * Put in something where the amount of EXP granted from killing a boss can now be set to a percentage of the normal amount per boss.
          o The giant shadow bats now grant 50% the EXP of other bosses.

    * Put in some logic where now multiple copies of a boss can be seeded in miniboss situations.
          o The giant shadow bats now spawn 2 of themselves rather than 1.

The shadow bats are weaker than regular minibosses so they give half the exp that a normal one does so two of them spawn.

Also, I was actually able to beat them with the world file you put on mantis. It took a couple of potions and a lot of jumping around to avoid them. You can try to target them off screen while running away from them by using the location of their health bars to aim.


I've also been able to defeat them without problems, but yeah, they're annoying if u got cornered, because 1 of them will surely suck (literally) ur life for it.

About the drain transfer %, couldn't it be a little less? Like 85-90% drain instead of 100%?

EDIT: Q. Is there some kind of limit for the regions that shows up? (the only regions I can truly see and explore are lvl 10 maximum, as it is.) If so, is it tied to an Overlord influence?
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 26, 2011, 11:52:19 PM
1) Is is normal that when i mash both mouse buttons the same time, i can cast 2 spells at once? ;P Its awesome, my DPS increased by 100% ;P (stone + energy wave)

No, this is a bug and is currently on mantis but has yet to be resolved.


2) What do i do with other settlements? And where do i get new people for my own (currently it ain't exactly growing, with 3 people ,p)

Well, you do what you do with the first settlement, build stuff, use the npcs to scout, ect.... TO get more people into settlements, you have to find lone npcs in regions. You can find them at potential windshelter sites and inside of caves with neutral illari stones in them. Once you have been in the same place with these npcs, and that region is fully scouted, you can use a npc in a settlement to migrate one of these lone npcs back to the settlement for 25 shards.
: Re: Q & A
: BobJustBob September 26, 2011, 11:58:55 PM
Q. Is there some kind of limit for the regions that shows up? (the only regions I can truly see and explore are lvl 10 maximum, as it is.) If so, is it tied to an Overlord influence?

I'm seeing this too. I'm up to civ level 8 and I've explored the world map as far as I can and the highest level region is 10.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 27, 2011, 12:08:12 AM
Q. Is there some kind of limit for the regions that shows up? (the only regions I can truly see and explore are lvl 10 maximum, as it is.) If so, is it tied to an Overlord influence?

I'm seeing this too. I'm up to civ level 8 and I've explored the world map as far as I can and the highest level region is 10.

That is definitely a bug, in that case, because it's supposed to be civ+10, not zero+10.  That must be new, because last time I played (not sure which version that was, but not the beta), I was getting proper +10 behavior out of it.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 27, 2011, 12:10:06 AM
Q. Is there some kind of limit for the regions that shows up? (the only regions I can truly see and explore are lvl 10 maximum, as it is.) If so, is it tied to an Overlord influence?

I'm seeing this too. I'm up to civ level 8 and I've explored the world map as far as I can and the highest level region is 10.

Perhaps the areas that surround all of your already revealed tiles are actually 19+ in level, or perhaps it is a bug.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 27, 2011, 12:14:32 AM
I'm up to civ level 8 and I've explored the world map as far as I can and the highest level region is 10.

Perhaps the areas that surround all of your already revealed tiles are actually 19+ in level, or perhaps it is a bug.

If the regions surrounding the ones that are already revealed on the map jump suddenly from 10 to 19+, then there's an equally big bug in whatever's responsible for seeding them.  Heh.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 27, 2011, 12:17:37 AM
I'm up to civ level 8 and I've explored the world map as far as I can and the highest level region is 10.

Perhaps the areas that surround all of your already revealed tiles are actually 19+ in level, or perhaps it is a bug.

If the regions surrounding the ones that are already revealed on the map jump suddenly from 10 to 19+, then there's an equally big bug in whatever's responsible for seeding them.  Heh.

In my world I have level 2 regions next to level 17 regions and level 31 regions next to level 22 regions. The world generation really is random. Although being surrounded by level 19 regions near the beginning would be kind of cruel.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 27, 2011, 12:21:10 AM
In my world I have level 2 regions next to level 17 regions and level 31 regions next to level 22 regions. The world generation really is random. Although being surrounded by level 19 regions near the beginning would be kind of cruel.

Yeah, it is fairly random and mixes things together like that, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing that it has sanity checks to make sure that it doesn't do things like completely box people in like that, or at least it's not supposed to be able to as far as I understand it, and I haven't seen that happen with mine.

Edit: Also, multiple people specifically having it get stuck at exactly level 10 is suspicious...
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 27, 2011, 12:36:10 AM
I can confirm this level 10 issue, i see NO other levels besides 10 and lower.

And i think its because i created this game with a trial and then converted it to full while in-game.. just guessing ;)

Heres the World Save - if you load it you see level 10- everywhere ^^
: Re: Q & A
: BobJustBob September 27, 2011, 12:56:22 AM
I found an area I hadn't explored yet on the other side of a single ocean tile. I uncovered twenty or more new map squares, all level 10. I took a look at my world.dat file which appears to contain a list of regions and their levels, and it seems that all the region levels are 1-10 or 20+. There are regions with levels over 10 but none with levels 11-19.

Edit: If that is what the final number means in the rows with region names, I see the same thing in eRe4s3r's world. No regions with levels 11-19.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 27, 2011, 01:02:34 AM
Good point, I realized that I also appear to have tiles of 1 - 10 and that's it.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 27, 2011, 01:05:54 AM
Someone should probably post this on mantis with a save seeing as there may be a bug with the map generation.
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek September 27, 2011, 02:35:34 AM
Someone should probably post this on mantis with a save seeing as there may be a bug with the map generation.
It sounds nasty.. and I can confirm it.
I actually assumed it was by design since I have quite large amount of area already available.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 27, 2011, 02:39:26 AM
Someone should probably post this on mantis with a save seeing as there may be a bug with the map generation.
It sounds nasty.. and I can confirm it.
I actually assumed it was by design since I have quite large amount of area already available.

You have no idea what big is, although my crazy world is the reason worlds should be smaller now.

Anyway, even if you have a large area, I still think there should be more regions opening up like 11+ as you gain civ levels. It seems like there may be a bug that is causing high level areas to be seeded near the start of a world.
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 27, 2011, 03:52:13 AM
So as its not been posted on Mantis yet i will do it..

here is the link
http://arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4062

Feel free to attach your saves as well
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 27, 2011, 06:04:41 AM
On two points discussed here:

1. I think rotating-through-spells-assigned-to-mouse functionality would be immensely useful for those of us without a fifty button mouse but only if it's manageable. Certainly cycling all the spells through all the mouse buttons is completely mad. I'd be in favour of simply cycling through spells assigned through some selection - modifier-key clicking on the spells in the inventory, in the order desired, with a special border colour and a wee number in the corner to indicate their position in the cycle, would be enough - and only cycling one of the mouse buttons.

You might even be able to relatively simply allow the user to configure a whole bunch of spells to cycle through a whole bunch of buttons, if there's an elegant way to display that on the inventory GUI - although that might be a bridge too far without a bespoke GUI for the purpose.

In its simplest form, just being able to assign these five spells to my middle mouse button, and to cycle up and down through them using the wheel, would make the whole experience much less fiddly for me.


2. Monster spawners. I'm all for respawning monsters but there is definitely some tedium here at the moment. I suspect much of it is because there's zero incentive to kill the vast majority of them. It feels like you've accomplished absolutely nothing. Less than nothing, actually, because you've wasted magic to do so. This is less prevalent if I up the difficulty or go somewhere more challenging - but then the fact they respawn so frequently without respite isn't tedious, it's annoying.

I'd be in favour of being able to destroy monster spawners for a particular chunk (with a new sort of spawner, or new flag on a spawner for those situations when destroying them would break the gameplay) and then the spawners could respawn when the chunk reloads. Since there's no reason ever to backtrack through buildings and such, this could remain true for dungeons also - or perhaps just until you get x distance away (two rooms, for example).
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 27, 2011, 06:06:46 AM
Oh and, embarrassing question time!

Q: How the Dickens do I get into the strategic mode??
: Re: Q & A
: superking September 27, 2011, 06:16:30 AM
I like the diabolo approach- when you kill enemies, no more respawn and you can clear out areas, but when you exit the game everything has respawned. That way, I dont have to fight the same pack of dwarf skelebots everytime I go through the Atrium, but next time I fire the game up and go to the house, they are there to fight me again.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 27, 2011, 07:24:07 AM
Oh and, embarrassing question time!

Q: How the Dickens do I get into the strategic mode??

Press confirm on either the green health guardian, or on the bridge if you have it.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 27, 2011, 08:40:13 AM
I like the diabolo approach- when you kill enemies, no more respawn and you can clear out areas, but when you exit the game everything has respawned. That way, I dont have to fight the same pack of dwarf skelebots everytime I go through the Atrium, but next time I fire the game up and go to the house, they are there to fight me again.

I think that's a good way to do it, yeah -- I never actually played Diablo.
: Re: Q & A
: Huw September 27, 2011, 09:21:31 AM
Look for the microbosses, they are usually as far away from the entrance of the region as they can be.

How do I know I've killed enough to "claim" the region though, i.e. remove the guardian?  I've been fighting the minibosses at the end of a region and the cave I'm in seems to go on forever, with another pair of bats every other room I enter.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 27, 2011, 09:25:27 AM
Look for the microbosses, they are usually as far away from the entrance of the region as they can be.

How do I know I've killed enough to "claim" the region though, i.e. remove the guardian?  I've been fighting the minibosses at the end of a region and the cave I'm in seems to go on forever, with another pair of bats every other room I enter.

Those are on the surface only, sorry for the confusion -- the underground bosses are unrelated to those that are guarding the region and preventing you from claiming it.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 27, 2011, 09:31:12 AM
Q: Is there a way to hide the chunk map entirely?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 27, 2011, 09:34:47 AM
Q: Is there a way to hide the chunk map entirely?

Not at present, no.  But you can scale it down further than the default.
: Re: Q & A
: GabrielKronos September 27, 2011, 09:42:15 AM
I like the way the monster spawner works, especially because at low levels most creatures can just been runned past without suffering major health loss (which is easy to recover at the hearth guardian stone).

But I think the time of respawning is quite fast, though. My suggestion would be that the monster respawners could be destroyed, but they would be able to respawn too, after a time that was bigger than Douse Monster Nest spell, but at the same time, small enough comparing destroying them and using DMN.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 27, 2011, 10:10:47 AM
Q: Is there a way to hide the chunk map entirely?

Not at present, no.  But you can scale it down further than the default.

Oh yes? How?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 27, 2011, 10:12:27 AM
There's a slider on the settings screen, I think the Gameplay tab.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 27, 2011, 10:38:48 AM
I'm definitely of the opinion that wandering trash monsters need some point. I found myself falling into a pattern of just double jumping over all of them unless they were directly in the way of something that I needed to stop and punch for a while, like ores. If they can't give xp, then at least some rare chance to drop random crafting bits, or even some sort of parts of crafting bits even. A small bag of dust, that you combine 10 of to make one normal craftable dust, for example. Or 1/100th of a spell gem. Or some sort of currency to be used with wandering traders. Or something. Anything to make me feel like the best way to play the game isn't as a lightning jumping pacifist. :P
: Re: Q & A
: OobleckTheGreen September 27, 2011, 11:47:03 AM
I'm definitely of the opinion that wandering trash monsters need some point. I found myself falling into a pattern of just double jumping over all of them unless they were directly in the way of something that I needed to stop and punch for a while, like ores. If they can't give xp, then at least some rare chance to drop random crafting bits, or even some sort of parts of crafting bits even. A small bag of dust, that you combine 10 of to make one normal craftable dust, for example. Or 1/100th of a spell gem. Or some sort of currency to be used with wandering traders. Or something. Anything to make me feel like the best way to play the game isn't as a lightning jumping pacifist. :P

I definitely agree with this sentiment. Something needs to be done to give the trash mobs some sort of meaning and purpose. Since they currently have no purpose (and there are very few, if any, things to find on the surface), it is far easier to simply transform into a bat and fly above all their heads whilst traversing a surface map. Though it makes traveling safer, it also becomes even duller than jumping endlessly over the heads of the trash mobs (or simply running thru them, since they do very little damage).

I personally like the currency/wandering-traders idea. Think about it: a world without currency is actually rather unrealistic. Like bottle caps in the Fallout series, people will find or create something to trade with. In a land with this many trees, however, let's not make the mistake of the Golgafrinchans and use leaves*. Traders in settlements or in random places on the map could even move around on the strategic map, making them something akin to the traders in AI Wars: a resource I definitely want in MY territory and NOT in enemy-held territory. Doing something like this would open the game up to having an economy, and I can see fluctuating prices for resources based on supply and demand. Not only will doing all this make the trash mobs useful, it will open up an entire new element of strategy to players.

* Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 27, 2011, 12:17:51 PM
Personally, I'm not even particularly averse to all enemies giving experience. Upping the requirement to level up each time would balance it out; and some rate of diminishing return for the normal enemies - such that killing your fiftieth, say, gives you an absolutely piddling amount and killing your hundredth gives you nada - would combat farming.
: Re: Q & A
: superking September 27, 2011, 12:27:58 PM
I like the diabolo approach- when you kill enemies, no more respawn and you can clear out areas, but when you exit the game everything has respawned. That way, I dont have to fight the same pack of dwarf skelebots everytime I go through the Atrium, but next time I fire the game up and go to the house, they are there to fight me again.

I think that's a good way to do it, yeah -- I never actually played Diablo.

say WHAT? In the name of game development and awesomeness, you should take 6 hours out to play Diabolo II! It reminds me of this game in a number of ways, and it gets EVERYTHING right- GUI, loot, balance, variety and character progression.

I think its important that killing regular enemies gives some benefit, just considerably less benefit than killing bosses and looting caves. That way, you dont feel like you are wasting resources when you mow through enemies, but you are only mowwing through enemies in order to reach bosses and caves.

Having different enemy types have a % chance to drop a quantity of instantly applied health or mana would be good.
Having them give a relatively small quanitity of experience would be good, so long as it is way less efficent than other ways of getting exp (that way, farming is inefficent).

Re: basic monsters dropping loot- how about they drop loot occasionally, but the only type of loot they drop are scrolls for summoning that type of friendly monster  :P that way, you can go and kill dwarf skelebots until you have a few summon dwarf skeleton scrolls, then unleash them on the next miniboss !
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 27, 2011, 12:55:47 PM
Personally, I'm not even particularly averse to all enemies giving experience. Upping the requirement to level up each time would balance it out; and some rate of diminishing return for the normal enemies - such that killing your fiftieth, say, gives you an absolutely piddling amount and killing your hundredth gives you nada - would combat farming.

I'm not opposed to it either. In most RPGs, the trash mobs that wander the world usually give a tiny amount of experience. Something like 1/500th the amount needed to the next level wouldn't be uncommon. No one is going to reasonably sit around killing 500 skelebots to level up when they can just go fight a few bosses for the same effect. But the much more important effect is the fact that it feels like you're doing something productive, even if it's only barely so. It's the same reason old school arcade games had score points. They don't do anything, they don't mean anything, but they give you the mental feeling of accomplishing something because you can see the numbers go up.
: Re: Q & A
: EfrenCecht September 27, 2011, 01:02:59 PM
I have yet to figure out how to use deposits, I've cleared a Cedar and Granite deposit but seem to have no way to harvest them with my settlement NPCs.  Any help?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 27, 2011, 01:18:34 PM
In terms of Diablo / Diablo II, or other games that I should play to steal ideas from, I'd generally rather not. ;)  I figure that the power of Diablo is such that a lot of games become a bit too similar to it for that reason.  It's kind of like how everyone aped Tolkien for a number of years after LotR.  I've played a number of Diablo clones, so I get the idea, and I've played some precursors to that general type of game (Demon Stalkers was my favorite as a kid).  I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel, but I am looking to not make a Diablo clone.

I have yet to figure out how to use deposits, I've cleared a Cedar and Granite deposit but seem to have no way to harvest them with my settlement NPCs.  Any help?

You'll need to be civ level 6 for them to do it, I think, but if you've cleared them then they I think automatically give you the benefit at the nearby towns.
: Re: Q & A
: Professor Paul1290 September 27, 2011, 01:23:39 PM
Do you think it would be better if enemies respawned off-screen or while you're not in the room?

I don't mind enemies respawning, but I do find it irritating that they respawn right there where I can see them and they can pose an immediate threat. If they instead waited until the player left the room before respawning then I think it would be much more comfortable, at least for normal rooms. Boss rooms should probably still keep spawning enemies.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 27, 2011, 01:30:50 PM
I have planned changes coming up for today's new release, folks, with regard to monster spawning and such -- running short on time, so I'll skip explaining it in detail for now, but it's taking into consideration a lot of what has been said here as well as elsewhere.  I don't mind at all if folks continue to discuss the matter without me, but I'll be most interested in participating after you see the next set of revisions.  Cheers!
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 27, 2011, 01:34:04 PM
I thought my patch sense was tingling.
: Re: Q & A
: EfrenCecht September 27, 2011, 01:35:32 PM

You'll need to be civ level 6 for them to do it, I think, but if you've cleared them then they I think automatically give you the benefit at the nearby towns.

I am civ level 6, hit "end turn" a few times but my resources didn't increase
: Re: Q & A
: Fiskbit September 27, 2011, 01:35:44 PM
Also awesome?  PUNCHING BATS IN THE FACE.  It never gets old.  It even deserves lots of capital letters, which I rarely use.

Super Bat Puncher (NES) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2DJrr2iBXc)
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 27, 2011, 01:56:35 PM
Also awesome?  PUNCHING BATS IN THE FACE.  It never gets old.  It even deserves lots of capital letters, which I rarely use.

Super Bat Puncher (NES) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2DJrr2iBXc)

That game looks excellent!
: Re: Q & A
: Commiesalami September 27, 2011, 01:58:59 PM
Do you ever get to build more buildings at higher levels?  Or is it just the graveplots, houses, wells, and farms right now?
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 27, 2011, 02:05:38 PM
I have yet to figure out how to use deposits, I've cleared a Cedar and Granite deposit but seem to have no way to harvest them with my settlement NPCs.  Any help?
An example on how to use them:

1) Build a woodcutter building in your settlement.
2) Assign someone to work it.
3) Mouseover your wood stockpile in the upper right corner, it will show expected production amounts.
4) Go clear out the guards of a wood deposit in a region within 3 tiles of the settlement.
5) Go back to the settlement and check that wood stockpile projection again, it should be about 50% higher.

I have some ideas on making it a bit more interesting, but those are the mechanics I put in to get them at least initially tied into the whole system and give us an excuse to drop more bosses into the world ;)
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 27, 2011, 02:23:31 PM
I have a Q looking for an A. Are there plans for more footstep sounds? I could be wrong, but it seems at the moment that it's pretty much the same noise regardless of what you're walking on. I can't help but think, as I run across these snow fields, that a more traditional crunching snow noise wouldn't go amiss. I seem to recall sound artists traditionally use the noise of cornstarch being pressed to make that noise, actually. I don't know why I know that.

Also, the areas without windstorms and just falling snow can be pretty dead silent, maybe an occasional distant gust of wind noise, or something? Obviously I haven't even stepped out of the ice age yet, so I don't know what else is out there for other eras. I don't know how far along the sound work is either, so I don't know if I'm just preaching to the choir or not.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 27, 2011, 02:40:16 PM
Both of those would be really good Mantis additions. (hint, hint ;-) )
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 27, 2011, 02:46:17 PM
I'd vote them up for sure. I'm all about the ambient sounds.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 27, 2011, 03:14:30 PM
Ambient sounds are definitely planned, it's not intended to be dead silent forever there.

And the footsteps do vary by three different surface types at the moment.  No plans to add in further anytime soon, although Pablo did do sounds for two more kinds.  But the coding on that is really tricky for now, because answering "what kind of surface am I standing on" is surprisingly difficult.  Not impossible, it's just not set up to efficiently answer this question.
: Re: Q & A
: coconutpete September 27, 2011, 03:16:06 PM
I don't seem to have any music when I'm walking around outside ( I do get music within buildings etc ). Is this done on purpose or is it a bug?
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 27, 2011, 03:21:47 PM
Ambient sounds are definitely planned, it's not intended to be dead silent forever there.

And the footsteps do vary by three different surface types at the moment.  No plans to add in further anytime soon, although Pablo did do sounds for two more kinds.  But the coding on that is really tricky for now, because answering "what kind of surface am I standing on" is surprisingly difficult.  Not impossible, it's just not set up to efficiently answer this question.

Ah, you posted that just as I was entering it in Mantis. Oh well. I figured it was some sort of coding problem with figuring out what the surface was. Good to have confirmation though.

And I definitely support more ambient noise. Things like little wind gusts, or a distant echo of metal creaking in abandoned buildings, or deep rumbles and pebble falling noises in caves, etc. All sorts of things that you may not even consciously notice can go a long way towards really drawing the player in to the environment. But I definitely trust Pablo to do some awesome sound work, so I know I have nothing to worry about there. That quiet theme that plays when you enter a collapsed room is fantastic, by the way. Very, very fitting. Sometimes I just went into those rooms to hang out and listen to it for a while.
: Re: Q & A
: GabrielKronos September 27, 2011, 03:40:37 PM
I also find the outside exploration quite quiet (yeah, lame pun here), but I think music playing all the time would kinda break the feel of the outside.

It would be great so, to hear music snippets here and there sometimes, just to break the mood.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle September 27, 2011, 03:43:10 PM
Is there an easy way to find gem veins or do I just need to keep exploring all the caves I find?
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 27, 2011, 03:51:36 PM
Is there an easy way to find gem veins or do I just need to keep exploring all the caves I find?

When you are in an underground cave, press comma, that will bring up a dungeon map. Gem veins are in the yellow rooms in that map.
: Re: Q & A
: arcee September 28, 2011, 12:06:29 AM
Q: If magma is available in a tower, will it say so on the overworld (like it says 'Memory Crystal')?

Q: If I generate a new world with the same name as a deleted one, will it be the same world (due to RNG seeding) or is a name just a name?
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 28, 2011, 12:12:41 AM
Q: If magma is available in a tower, will it say so on the overworld (like it says 'Memory Crystal')?

Yes. Also, on the world map, the icon for the commodity tower is actually the item that is at the top of that tower.

Q: If I generate a new world with the same name as a deleted one, will it be the same world (due to RNG seeding) or is a name just a name?

No, a name is just a name.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 28, 2011, 12:15:57 AM
Q: If I generate a new world with the same name as a deleted one, will it be the same world (due to RNG seeding) or is a name just a name?

No, a name is just a name.

And to add to that: there's no way to ever get the same world twice.  The RNG isn't single-seeded.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 28, 2011, 12:18:39 AM
And to add to that: there's no way to ever get the same world twice.  The RNG isn't single-seeded.

Surely you could get the same world twice.  It would just be extraordinarily unlikely.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 28, 2011, 12:22:41 AM
And to add to that: there's no way to ever get the same world twice.  The RNG isn't single-seeded.

Surely you could get the same world twice.  It would just be extraordinarily unlikely.

In the same sense of the Monkeys typing shakespeare... although millions of times less likely than that, honestly.  There are way too many factors here.  And with version updates also thrown into the mix, that makes it literally impossible if you ever upgrade your version from the version you started on.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 28, 2011, 12:32:04 AM
And to add to that: there's no way to ever get the same world twice.  The RNG isn't single-seeded.

Surely you could get the same world twice.  It would just be extraordinarily unlikely.

In the same sense of the Monkeys typing shakespeare... although millions of times less likely than that, honestly.  There are way too many factors here.  And with version updates also thrown into the mix, that makes it literally impossible if you ever upgrade your version from the version you started on.

Well, yeah.  I sure don't expect it to ever actually happen.  It's just that I'm both pedantic and a math nerd, and you said "there's no way".  Heh.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 28, 2011, 12:32:55 AM
Heh -- understood, and in that sense you're right.  Provided no version upgrades. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Professor Paul1290 September 28, 2011, 02:12:12 AM
I know the world is supposed to be all sorts of messed up and crazy, but is this intentional?
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/9800/avwwcaveissue.jpg

My theory on AVWWs story:
Someone slipped The Doctor exotic space drugs and he went berserk. :D
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 28, 2011, 03:05:59 AM
And to add to that: there's no way to ever get the same world twice.  The RNG isn't single-seeded.

Surely you could get the same world twice.  It would just be extraordinarily unlikely.

In the same sense of the Monkeys typing shakespeare... although millions of times less likely than that, honestly.

Millions of times less likely than that? Are you sure??
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 28, 2011, 09:09:10 AM
I know the world is supposed to be all sorts of messed up and crazy, but is this intentional?
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/9800/avwwcaveissue.jpg

My theory on AVWWs story:
Someone slipped The Doctor exotic space drugs and he went berserk. :D

Yes, that's intentional, although there will eventually be more of a forest background as well.

And to add to that: there's no way to ever get the same world twice.  The RNG isn't single-seeded.

Surely you could get the same world twice.  It would just be extraordinarily unlikely.

In the same sense of the Monkeys typing shakespeare... although millions of times less likely than that, honestly.

Millions of times less likely than that? Are you sure??

Pretty sure, yeah.  I'm not sure how many words are in shakespeare, but I imagine it's not more than 200,000.  And they all have to be in the right sequence, obviously.  And they're each composed of 1-10 characters or so, most likely.  Each of which only has maybe... 50 possible values if you include all the exotic punctuation and spacing and such.

In an AVWW world, you've got the world map, which has one random factor and maybe 100 possible distinct values per tile if you multiply all the various attributes together.  Then in each region you have the dungeon map for the surface, with a random factor and really only maybe a few thousand overall permutations there, at most, for the dungeon map itself.  But you have to multiply that versus the value for each world tile, for instance, since this could vary by each region.  So now we're up to 10,0000 as our number of permutations, conservatively.

Then you get into what is in each dungeon node, what all the sub-dungeons look like, what each building looks like, where the monster nests are seeded, how the terrain is seeded, where each tree and such are seeded, what the bosses are named (and there are a about 250,000 permuations of them as it is).

To get the EXACT same world twice involves so much multiplicative complexity that a few million times more complex than the works of shakespeare is probably undershooting it.  The reason is all the nested procedural algorithms: there are tens or hundreds of thousands of possibilities at each level, if not more, and there's levels within levels like russian dolls.  Minecraft is hugely random enough, but it only has a few levels -- terrain, caves, and mob placement, so far as I can tell.  That's going to give ridiculous amounts of random as it is, but our system adds on a lot more in terms of what would really be randomized.

I'm not making a value statement against Minecraft, or Shakespeare for that matter, but the fact of the matter is this has more constituent parts that would need to be placed properly if you've got a world of any substantial scope -- say if you reached level 80 or 100, for instance.  If you're just talking about the very starting map seed when you start the game, obviously that has way lower complexity than Shakespeare, or Minecraft, because most things haven't been generated yet and we're only talking a few dozen tiles.  There's still hundreds of thousands of possible starts, so it's still unlikely, but once you start moving around more, that complexity literally compounds. :)
: Re: Q & A
: KPJZKC September 28, 2011, 10:31:30 AM
Maths is delicious :p

And now here is my stupid question - how do I do things on the strategic map? I have the map up, the scrollable list of characters on the bottom that I can click and select...but then nothing? Unless I just don't have any options yet? (although I did come across a neutral NPC in a cave)
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 28, 2011, 10:46:27 AM
Maths is delicious :p

And now here is my stupid question - how do I do things on the strategic map? I have the map up, the scrollable list of characters on the bottom that I can click and select...but then nothing? Unless I just don't have any options yet? (although I did come across a neutral NPC in a cave)

Well, have your NPCs done anything yet? I ask because each NPC can only do one action per turn. So, if they've all acted, you have to end the turn to continue. Up in the top right hand part of the screen, it will tell you how many NPCs you have, and how many can still act. If you have NPCs who are free, simply click where you want them to act. Click on the white person icon to have them recriut the neutral NPC, click on the shaded areas to have your NPCs scout, etc.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 28, 2011, 10:48:26 AM
Also, hover over region tiles to see the actions they can take.  Mostly exploring to start.
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek September 28, 2011, 12:56:35 PM
Q: I found a settlement and on strategic map when I mouse it over it says build wind shelter. I click it and... nothing (I'm in that settlement). Active character portrait switches to next one but previous guy is not flagged as already spent turn and no resources are consumed. What's wrong then with this?
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 28, 2011, 12:58:10 PM
Q: I found a settlement and on strategic map when I mouse it over it says build wind shelter. I click it and... nothing (I'm in that settlement). Active character portrait switches to next one but previous guy is not flagged as already spent turn and no resources are consumed. What's wrong then with this?
What's wrong?  I goofed somewhere, that's what ;)  It shouldn't be displaying any action on a friendly settlement, really.
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek September 28, 2011, 01:05:58 PM
Q: I found a settlement and on strategic map when I mouse it over it says build wind shelter. I click it and... nothing (I'm in that settlement). Active character portrait switches to next one but previous guy is not flagged as already spent turn and no resources are consumed. What's wrong then with this?
What's wrong?  I goofed somewhere, that's what ;)  It shouldn't be displaying any action on a friendly settlement, really.
Hmm strange then. This action actually made sense for me.
Since settlement should have wind shelter right?
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 28, 2011, 01:09:42 PM
Hmm strange then. This action actually made sense for me.
Since settlement should have wind shelter right?
Settlement > (Friendly) Outpost > Wind Shelter.

Friendly outposts aren't really in the game yet, but they're basically upgraded wind shelters (requires an actual guardian stone to be built), and settlements are uber-upgraded outposts (requires a hearth guardian present).  So they all already have the wind shelter effect.
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek September 28, 2011, 01:13:19 PM
Hmm strange then. This action actually made sense for me.
Since settlement should have wind shelter right?
Settlement > (Friendly) Outpost > Wind Shelter.

Friendly outposts aren't really in the game yet, but they're basically upgraded wind shelters (requires an actual guardian stone to be built), and settlements are uber-upgraded outposts (requires a hearth guardian present).  So they all already have the wind shelter effect.

But map around settlement is full of *. Mantis then ?
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 28, 2011, 01:16:13 PM
Hmm strange then. This action actually made sense for me.
Since settlement should have wind shelter right?
Settlement > (Friendly) Outpost > Wind Shelter.

Friendly outposts aren't really in the game yet, but they're basically upgraded wind shelters (requires an actual guardian stone to be built), and settlements are uber-upgraded outposts (requires a hearth guardian present).  So they all already have the wind shelter effect.

But map around settlement is full of *. Mantis then ?
Oh, the settlement won't contribute to the actual network until it's actually connected to the origin settlement, I think.  It just prevents windstorms in its own region.  May change that later but it's not a bug.

But it is a bug that it would tell you that clicking on that square would build a wind shelter, so mantis'ing that would be good, thanks :)
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek September 28, 2011, 01:33:08 PM
Q: Road network and building it. I noticed that some of wind shelters I ordered to be built have road connections. But few I built by hand don't. How do I connect them (and new settlement) with road?
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 28, 2011, 01:39:20 PM
Q: Road network and building it. I noticed that some of wind shelters I ordered to be built have road connections. But few I built by hand don't. How do I connect them (and new settlement) with road?
They have to be within a certain range of the other locations, though possibly there's some bug with manual building (though I did tell it to do the SetRoads() call in that case).
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 28, 2011, 02:53:51 PM
Q: Road network and building it. I noticed that some of wind shelters I ordered to be built have road connections. But few I built by hand don't. How do I connect them (and new settlement) with road?
They have to be within a certain range of the other locations, though possibly there's some bug with manual building (though I did tell it to do the SetRoads() call in that case).

I almost always build them manually, so as of a few days ago the roads were working fine with the manual.  Not to say that's still the case. ;)
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 28, 2011, 03:00:24 PM
speaking of manual, i want the roads to be build-able manual.. for aesthetic reasons ;P
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 28, 2011, 03:01:34 PM
speaking of manual, i want the roads to be build-able manual.. for aesthetic reasons ;P

Right, and we definitely don't want people building them manually... for aesthetic reasons as well. ;)  Urbanization of these wilds is not something we want happening, hence the auto-constructed roads.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 28, 2011, 03:13:35 PM
speaking of manual, i want the roads to be build-able manual.. for aesthetic reasons ;P

For some reason, this road network spells out "eRe4s3r is awesome!!!1" when viewed from the air. Future archaeologists will go mad trying to figure that one out.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 28, 2011, 03:16:28 PM
speaking of manual, i want the roads to be build-able manual.. for aesthetic reasons ;P

For some reason, this road network spells out "eRe4s3r is awesome!!!1" when viewed from the air. Future archaeologists will go mad trying to figure that one out.

Yeah, in the settlements themselves you'll be able to build roads more directly, I think.  That we want to eventually look pretty built up.  It's just the world map that needs to stay... pretty wild. ;)
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 28, 2011, 03:20:38 PM
Yea, ever since seeing the Civ games (before 5, seems they fixed it there with upkeep costs) with entire continents absolutely _strapped down_ by roads and railroads on _every single tile_...  I don't want that ;)
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 28, 2011, 03:23:39 PM
Yea, ever since seeing the Civ games (before 5, seems they fixed it there with upkeep costs) with entire continents absolutely _strapped down_ by roads and railroads on _every single tile_...  I don't want that ;)

That was ugly, but, it is much better in 5. Too bad they took all the fun out of 5 as well. :-)
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 28, 2011, 03:34:36 PM
Yea, ever since seeing the Civ games (before 5, seems they fixed it there with upkeep costs) with entire continents absolutely _strapped down_ by roads and railroads on _every single tile_...  I don't want that ;)

Ugly, but realistic. Just look at a highway or rail map of the U.S. some time. It looks... a lot like a Civ IV spaghetti of roads, really.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 28, 2011, 03:44:03 PM
Yea, ever since seeing the Civ games (before 5, seems they fixed it there with upkeep costs) with entire continents absolutely _strapped down_ by roads and railroads on _every single tile_...  I don't want that ;)

Ugly, but realistic. Just look at a highway or rail map of the U.S. some time. It looks... a lot like a Civ IV spaghetti of roads, really.
Yea, but then look at a satellite map; how much percent of the land area is covered by those?  But in the "iconic" display it just dominates the landscape.

I'm fine with urbanized areas looking urban (and the ruined town areas kinda do, on the world map), but you're not going to really be buiding large (1000+ people) settlements or anything like that.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 28, 2011, 03:54:02 PM
I know the world is supposed to be all sorts of messed up and crazy, but is this intentional?
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/9800/avwwcaveissue.jpg

My theory on AVWWs story:
Someone slipped The Doctor exotic space drugs and he went berserk. :D

Yes, that's intentional, although there will eventually be more of a forest background as well.

And to add to that: there's no way to ever get the same world twice.  The RNG isn't single-seeded.

Surely you could get the same world twice.  It would just be extraordinarily unlikely.

In the same sense of the Monkeys typing shakespeare... although millions of times less likely than that, honestly.

Millions of times less likely than that? Are you sure??

Pretty sure, yeah. 

...A lot of good stuff...

There's still hundreds of thousands of possible starts, so it's still unlikely, but once you start moving around more, that complexity literally compounds. :)

But you wouldn't need any monkeys!
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard September 28, 2011, 03:57:52 PM
What does the black line heading back from a wind tower to your settlement mean? I know the wind tower gets rid of the snow storm but I don't get what the black line is supposed to suggest. ???
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 28, 2011, 03:59:51 PM
What does the black line heading back from a wind tower to your settlement mean? I know the wind tower gets rid of the snow storm but I don't get what the black line is supposed to suggest. ???

That's a road.  It also provides lack of windstorms on each tile the road crosses.
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek September 28, 2011, 04:27:37 PM
I would like some option to manually build roads between things that did not connect automatically when some discovery/upgrade is made to make it possible. Right now different things are differently connected in my world and sometimes in quite silly way (road from windshelter leading into darkness).
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 28, 2011, 04:29:51 PM
I would like some option to manually build roads between things that did not connect automatically when some discovery/upgrade is made to make it possible. Right now different things are differently connected in my world and sometimes in quite silly way (road from windshelter leading into darkness).

If a road is leading into tiles that you cannot see yet, then that means that there is a settlement somewhere in those tiles that the windshelter is building roads too.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 28, 2011, 04:32:12 PM
Q: Do you intend to (time permitting) allocate a portion of beta time for performance throttling; just deal with it as and when you come across areas which can be improved; or mostly sideline it for the foreseeable?

I ask because I wonder if there's any point me logging what will and won't run well on my spec.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 28, 2011, 04:32:49 PM
Q: Do you intend to (time permitting) allocate a portion of beta time for performance throttling?
Chris and I are addicted to performance improvements, so I think it will happen whether we want it to or not ;)
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 28, 2011, 04:34:31 PM
 :) Yes, I did rather notice.
: Re: Q & A
: arcee September 28, 2011, 04:46:29 PM
Q: is the snowsuit making your character pure 'glowing white/silver' normal or should I log it with screenshot/world?
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle September 28, 2011, 04:57:16 PM
Q:How do you find lieutenants and overlords? I keep hearing them mentioned but have yet to find where their based.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 28, 2011, 04:58:02 PM
Q: is the snowsuit making your character pure 'glowing white/silver' normal or should I log it with screenshot/world?
I'm pretty sure this is normal.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 28, 2011, 04:58:55 PM
Q:How do you find lieutenants and overlords? I keep hearing them mentioned but have yet to find where their based.

Lieutenants are in keeps and overlords are in evil lairs. In order to find them, you need to use your NPCs to scout.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle September 28, 2011, 04:59:40 PM
Thanks for the quick reply I will continue my search.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 28, 2011, 05:01:15 PM
Q:How do you find lieutenants and overlords? I keep hearing them mentioned but have yet to find where their based.

Lieutenants are in keeps and overlords are in evil lairs. In order to find them, you need to use your NPCs to scout.
Yea, they're the guys who seem to like bats and very spiky helmets.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 28, 2011, 08:38:19 PM
Q: Can I see where my vengeful ghosts are from the world map?
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 28, 2011, 08:45:24 PM
Q: Can I see where my vengeful ghosts are from the world map?
If they've formed a rampaging group, yes.  Not before.  It's been asked that we have it show them before, and I think that's reasonable to add.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 28, 2011, 08:57:11 PM
Q: Can I see where my vengeful ghosts are from the world map?
If they've formed a rampaging group, yes.  Not before.  It's been asked that we have it show them before, and I think that's reasonable to add.

Found it and voted up.
: Re: Q & A
: brianc September 28, 2011, 11:39:14 PM
Q:  I killed a lieutenant in an overlords tower as opposed to its own tower and received no experience.  Is this an error or intended as a punishment for bypassing the lieutenant's tower for the kill?
Also, I killed my first Overlord, it took a longgggggg time and a lotttt of potions, but no exp?  No cool goodies or trophy room? I was really disappointed then I remembered it is a beta; will there be goodies and benefits for killing an Overlord and if so what might they be?
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 28, 2011, 11:51:21 PM
Q:  I killed a lieutenant in an overlords tower as opposed to its own tower and received no experience.  Is this an error or intended as a punishment for bypassing the lieutenant's tower for the kill?
Also, I killed my first Overlord, it took a longgggggg time and a lotttt of potions, but no exp?  No cool goodies or trophy room? I was really disappointed then I remembered it is a beta; will there be goodies and benefits for killing an Overlord and if so what might they be?

Was your civ level more than 5 levels above the Overlord's level? If you defeat a boss who is more than 5 levels below your civ level then you don't gain any experience.
: Re: Q & A
: brianc September 28, 2011, 11:53:18 PM
Yes this was the case, I believe I was seven over but I want to say I was still gaining a lot of experience on lieutenants that I was about seven levels over.  I might just be going crazy from how long I've been playing though :/ My eyes burn in a good way
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard September 29, 2011, 02:00:25 AM
I'm just wondering, will there ever be somewhere you can store valuables? Like a safe or a bank. Somewhere the "smart" player can put their stuff for safe keeping.

It's pretty foolish to bring everything you own on a long journey that you might die on and then end up not being able to collect the items from the corpse afterwards.

: Re: Q & A
: orzelek September 29, 2011, 02:33:43 AM
I'm just wondering, will there ever be somewhere you can store valuables? Like a safe or a bank. Somewhere the "smart" player can put their stuff for safe keeping.

It's pretty foolish to bring everything you own on a long journey that you might die on and then end up not being able to collect the items from the corpse afterwards.
You don't drop anything on death now.

Some kind of bank would be useful tho to not drop all the old items but store them.
Ability to destroy items would be nice also as an alternative.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 29, 2011, 02:46:20 AM
Also awesome?  PUNCHING BATS IN THE FACE.  It never gets old.  It even deserves lots of capital letters, which I rarely use.

Super Bat Puncher (NES) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2DJrr2iBXc)

That is fantastic.  I totally want it.  And it also makes me want to play Cave Story again for some reason...
: Re: Q & A
: arcee September 29, 2011, 04:04:44 AM
Ability to destroy items would be nice also as an alternative.

you can store items by dropping them, throw them out by dropping them somewhere you aren't likely to go back :)
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 29, 2011, 04:22:22 AM
A bank is nonetheless a nice idea. It feels more gamey than just leaving your junk lying about on the floor.

And I'm all for a way of converting my (whoops why did I craft that) second coldsuit into resources!
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan September 29, 2011, 08:24:56 AM
A bank is nonetheless a nice idea. It feels more gamey than just leaving your junk lying about on the floor.

And I'm all for a way of converting my (whoops why did I craft that) second coldsuit into resources!

There are plans for some type of "bank" mechanic. :-)
: Re: Q & A
: Spejs September 29, 2011, 09:42:22 AM
Q: Is it normal to find mainly 1 type of gem in similar dungeons? I found 11 green gems in 3 different dungeons on similar chunks and 2 yellow. Right now I'm in another dungeon, found 4 yellow gems and can see room with one more vein. But my desire to explore more of one cave almost completely vanished.

Q: Is there any way to drop full stack of items? Low-lvl potions and scrolls are starting to clutter my inventory and it'll take too much time to drop them one by one.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 10:07:01 AM
Q: Is it normal to find mainly 1 type of gem in similar dungeons? I found 11 green gems in 3 different dungeons on similar chunks and 2 yellow. Right now I'm in another dungeon, found 4 yellow gems and can see room with one more vein. But my desire to explore more of one cave almost completely vanished.

Yes, those vary by region type.  Check the tooltips on the gems themselves to see which regions are richer in which kinds of gems.  And don't worry, you're not expected to have to go through the entire dungeon at once if you don't need that much of that type of gem at the moment.  But you have somewhere you can go back to if you need more.

Q: Is there any way to drop full stack of items? Low-lvl potions and scrolls are starting to clutter my inventory and it'll take too much time to drop them one by one.

I'm going to be switching it to only dropping the full stacks in the next version, since the one-by-one really serves no point until we have multiplayer.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard September 29, 2011, 02:34:37 PM
Are the wind tower locations considered as settlements too? (more importantly if they are settlements are they considered part of my empire? I assume that's what the roads mean...) Since there's always 3 npcs walking around there.

On another note, I was thinking it would be neat if we could rename our settlements. I'm lucky with my starting settlement "Settlement of Firm Range" sounds nice but I'm not sure I'd be as fond of something like "Settlement of Dizzy Plateau"....
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 02:37:21 PM
Wind shelters are considered part of your empire, but they don't work at all like settlements.  Right now all they do is provide wind protection.

You can already name your settlements, but you need to get to having the settlement management interface at civ level 6 before you can. :)
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 29, 2011, 02:38:44 PM
Are the wind tower locations considered as settlements too? (more importantly if they are settlements are they considered part of my empire? I assume that's what the roads mean...) Since there's always 3 npcs walking around there.
They're not the same as settlements, but they are what the game considers "human usable sites".  The NPCs there still have to be "rescued" (migrated to a settlement) before you can give them orders or whatnot.

On another note, I was thinking it would be neat if we could rename our settlements. I'm lucky with my starting settlement "Settlement of Firm Range" sounds nice but I'm not sure I'd be as fond of something like "Settlement of Dizzy Plateau"....
You can rename a settlement from the settlement management interface (which unlocks at level 6) :)  You can also rename an NPC by right clicking their portrait in the strategy or settlement-management interface and clicking the rename button.

(ninja'd by Chris)
: Re: Q & A
: brianc September 29, 2011, 02:40:44 PM


I'm going to be switching it to only dropping the full stacks in the next version, since the one-by-one really serves no point until we have multiplayer.

Just let us shift-alt-click like AI Wars :) solves current and future problems
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 29, 2011, 02:45:06 PM
On another note, I was thinking it would be neat if we could rename our settlements. I'm lucky with my starting settlement "Settlement of Firm Range" sounds nice but I'm not sure I'd be as fond of something like "Settlement of Dizzy Plateau"....

You should visit my lovely village of Human-Usable Site Test Instance 1 (http://feeblearms.com/~nalgas/avww/Screenshot_2011_09_19_20_11_42.png).  Your randomly generated names have nothing on what it assigned me.  Heh.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard September 29, 2011, 02:47:40 PM
Does making an npc in your settlement set up a wind shelter instead of you going and doing it manually have a penalty?

I ask because I made two with my own character and there was three npcs in each.....however I made another two using my npc settlers on the strategy map and there was only one npc in each of those. Was it just bad luck those times?
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas September 29, 2011, 02:50:45 PM
Does making an npc in your settlement set up a wind shelter instead of you going and doing it manually have a penalty?

I ask because I made two with my own character and there was three npcs in each.....however I made another two using my npc settlers on the strategy map and there was only one npc in each of those. Was it just bad luck those times?

It was just bad luck.  It is free if you do it yourself, though, or it was last time I did it myself.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 29, 2011, 02:51:33 PM
On another note, I was thinking it would be neat if we could rename our settlements. I'm lucky with my starting settlement "Settlement of Firm Range" sounds nice but I'm not sure I'd be as fond of something like "Settlement of Dizzy Plateau"....

You should visit my lovely village of Human-Usable Site Test Instance 1 (http://feeblearms.com/~nalgas/avww/Screenshot_2011_09_19_20_11_42.png).  Your randomly generated names have nothing on what it assigned me.  Heh.
Yea, from back before settlements even showed their names ;)

Ah, the relics of the alpha days...
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 29, 2011, 02:52:33 PM
Does making an npc in your settlement set up a wind shelter instead of you going and doing it manually have a penalty?

I ask because I made two with my own character and there was three npcs in each.....however I made another two using my npc settlers on the strategy map and there was only one npc in each of those. Was it just bad luck those times?
Yea, no difference other than doing it strategically has a cost.  A cost which will probably become more significant in the future, but we'll see.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 29, 2011, 02:56:41 PM
Does making an npc in your settlement set up a wind shelter instead of you going and doing it manually have a penalty?

I ask because I made two with my own character and there was three npcs in each.....however I made another two using my npc settlers on the strategy map and there was only one npc in each of those. Was it just bad luck those times?
Yea, no difference other than doing it strategically has a cost.  A cost which will probably become more significant in the future, but we'll see.

I'd vote that up.  ;)
: Re: Q & A
: arcee September 29, 2011, 03:19:39 PM
Is it known how long the discount is for?
and what happens if I buy multiple copies at once from the store? 

until AVVW is on Steam and/or more fleshed out and/or multiplayer I'd probably want to refrain from introducing it to my friends.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 29, 2011, 03:25:39 PM
Does making an npc in your settlement set up a wind shelter instead of you going and doing it manually have a penalty?

I ask because I made two with my own character and there was three npcs in each.....however I made another two using my npc settlers on the strategy map and there was only one npc in each of those. Was it just bad luck those times?
Yea, no difference other than doing it strategically has a cost.  A cost which will probably become more significant in the future, but we'll see.

Well actually, setting up a windshelter yourself gives you experience while having a npc do it doesn't give you any experience.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 03:26:21 PM
The discount is through "early beta," which will probably be at least a month or two.  The addition of multiplayer might be the cutoff, actually, I dunno.  Then it will go to 25% off instead of 50% off.  You can buy multiple copies from the store with no issue; you get one key for each purchase.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 September 29, 2011, 04:58:49 PM
In terms of region types, the last region to unlock at the moment is the swamp, at region level 60.  But there are others in the 20s and 30s and such, too.

All that time spent alpha testing and there is still something I have gotten to yet?! I must hurry to level 60 to experience the swamp.
So I got to level forty and found a level 50 swamp tile. Is the swamp suppose to spawn at level 50 or 60?
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard September 29, 2011, 05:00:40 PM
Is there some ice suits that npcs wear that include a helmet?

Cause I just recruited an npc from the 4th Century (the forest, high living one) and she was human when I saw her first, but after I recruited her she showed up in my settlement looking like a robot. (fully white suit head to toe) I got quite the surprise seeing a "robot" running around I thought we were under attack. xD

There's probably a reason for this....

(oh and while I'm asking...this is something that has probably already been pointed out but on the settlement screen when you rename a settlement and press p the game pauses and makes the pausing sound. It's not a big deal though.)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 05:01:06 PM
In terms of region types, the last region to unlock at the moment is the swamp, at region level 60.  But there are others in the 20s and 30s and such, too.

All that time spent alpha testing and there is still something I have gotten to yet?! I must hurry to level 60 to experience the swamp.
So I got to level forty and found a level 50 swamp tile. Is the swamp suppose to spawn at level 50 or 60?

Oops, it's 50, not 60.  I decreased it a while back, and forgot the new number.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 05:01:57 PM
Is there some ice suits that npcs wear that include a helmet?

Cause I just recruited an npc from the 4th Century (the forest, high living one) and she was human when I saw her first, but after I recruited her she showed up in my settlement looking like a robot. (fully white head to toe) I got quite the surprise seeing a "robot" running around I thought we were under attack. xD

There's probably a reason for this....

Yeah, she had to put on a snowsuit to live in the ice age settlement.  Otherwise she would have died about 10 seconds after getting there thanks to the exposure. :)
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 29, 2011, 05:06:09 PM
I just imagine that the people who are native to that era have evolved highly cold resistant heads. Either that, or they're using advanced snowsuits with heat blowing vents around the neck area.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard September 29, 2011, 05:11:02 PM
What's the cap of npcs that can be moving around your settlement screen? (or living in your settlement for that matter) Do you ever get a second screen for a settlement? Like something you can unlock when you reach a certain amount of npcs?

I like questions incase you didn't realize. :P

: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 29, 2011, 05:13:25 PM
What's the cap of npcs that can be moving around your settlement screen? (or living in your settlement for that matter) Do you ever get a second screen for a settlement? Like something you can unlock when you reach a certain amount of npcs?
There's no cap or special behavior based on settlement size right now; probably later I'll add caps based on some other factors.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt September 29, 2011, 06:19:19 PM
As a blue sky item, I'd really like to see buildings pop up in adventure mode to signify settlement size. No need for them to necessarily be linked to specific buildings constructed, just reflective of quantity of buildings and residents, that sort of thing.
: Re: Q & A
: coconutpete September 29, 2011, 06:26:47 PM
Either that, or they're using advanced snowsuits with heat blowing vents around the neck area.
Hahaha, In a game like this, such an explanation is as good as any. :D
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard September 29, 2011, 06:40:50 PM
I just noticed something else, you know that woman I was talking about earlier who was wearing the full white ice suit?

Is it normal that her stat box doesn't say what century she is from? All the other npcs I recruited say they're from the ice age, bronze age etc....but she's a blank.

There was another guy who was in the same location as her who I just recruited and his says: (pre industrial (4th M)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 06:44:01 PM
That last is a bug -- would be good to log in mantis if you don't mind.  Thanks!
: Re: Q & A
: arcee September 29, 2011, 06:51:48 PM
Q: how do you use Shrink?  I shrunk some flags, water tanks, plants, etc.  the resulting items didn't reexpand when I tried to redecorate the settlement, except the flags.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 07:03:02 PM
Q: how do you use Shrink?  I shrunk some flags, water tanks, plants, etc.  the resulting items didn't reexpand when I tried to redecorate the settlement, except the flags.


There needs to actually be room for the items -- you might need to knock down some trees in an area to get a water tank there instead.  There are various collision layers, and there has to be room in the collision layer of the particular object type for you to be able to grow it back.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard September 29, 2011, 07:05:21 PM
That last is a bug -- would be good to log in mantis if you don't mind.  Thanks!

Ok done, put a picture of it up too.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 07:11:25 PM
Thank you!
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 29, 2011, 07:11:32 PM
There needs to actually be room for the items -- you might need to knock down some trees in an area to get a water tank there instead.
In other words, unshrink the propane tank first.  Should probably prepare the way.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 07:14:52 PM
It's still on my list to make those and the barrels explode when they die. :)
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 29, 2011, 07:16:43 PM
It's still on my list to make those and the barrels explode when they die. :)
Combined with shrink...

I can see the press release now, "Hyrule Natural Gas is highly gratified... and somewhat surprised... to have been able to contribute to the liberation of our fair region from the oppressive Ganon..."
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 29, 2011, 07:17:50 PM
Hahahahaha.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard September 30, 2011, 05:56:55 PM
Is granite supposed to show up often in "Granite deposits" or are they only for the quarries in your settlement?

: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 30, 2011, 06:30:14 PM
Is granite supposed to show up often in "Granite deposits" or are they only for the quarries in your settlement?

Yeah, it should be 100% of the time.
: Re: Q & A
: mithrandi September 30, 2011, 08:48:51 PM
Is granite supposed to show up often in "Granite deposits" or are they only for the quarries in your settlement?

Yeah, it should be 100% of the time.

Hang on, I think "Granite deposits" are the world map resources which are only relevant to quarries in your settlements. "Granite outcroppings" are found in caves and can be destroyed by your character, yielding a 1 granite drop with 100% probability.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 30, 2011, 09:11:11 PM
Is granite supposed to show up often in "Granite deposits" or are they only for the quarries in your settlement?

Yeah, it should be 100% of the time.

Hang on, I think "Granite deposits" are the world map resources which are only relevant to quarries in your settlements. "Granite outcroppings" are found in caves and can be destroyed by your character, yielding a 1 granite drop with 100% probability.


Oh, yeah, I had a misunderstanding there, then -- the two things are utterly unrelated in that case, yes.
: Re: Q & A
: arcee September 30, 2011, 09:58:47 PM
Q: is it intentional that your platforms block spells but preplaced ones do not?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 30, 2011, 10:03:13 PM
Q: is it intentional that your platforms block spells but preplaced ones do not?

I'm not able to duplicate.  Are you saying that they are able to get killed by spells?  That is intentional.  But I can fire fireballs and such right past them with no trouble...
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 30, 2011, 10:34:58 PM
Q: Why does the fantasy world of Environ contain a 'Colorado Blue Spruce'? Is that name a leftover from when the story took place in an Earth setting, or something more sinister?
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe September 30, 2011, 10:36:04 PM
Q: Why does the fantasy world of Environ contain a 'Colorado Blue Spruce'? Is that name a leftover from when the story took place in an Earth setting, or something more sinister?
Remember the meanings of "France" and "Belgium" in Hitchhiker's guide?

(not that we actually thought of that at the time)
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor September 30, 2011, 10:38:48 PM
"Belgium"

Such language! Need I refer you to the rules about profanity?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 September 30, 2011, 10:41:42 PM
Q: Why does the fantasy world of Environ contain a 'Colorado Blue Spruce'? Is that name a leftover from when the story took place in an Earth setting, or something more sinister?

The real reason is that's simply the name of the plant; not much beyond that. :)
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r September 30, 2011, 11:43:35 PM
More importantly, why does our character know the names of trees, if they are from the 32th ice-age i'd suppose they have no clue what a tree even is - and certainly not be able to name em
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 01, 2011, 12:00:53 AM
More importantly, why does our character know the names of trees, if they are from the 32th ice-age i'd suppose they have no clue what a tree even is - and certainly not be able to name em

Don't make me say it. :)

...Magic? ;)
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 01, 2011, 04:02:27 AM
Q: is it intentional that your platforms block spells but preplaced ones do not?

Player-crafted platforms are susceptible to background-object-damaging (usually melee) spells.

Preplaced platforms are not considered background objects.
: Re: Q & A
: Nenad October 01, 2011, 05:05:29 AM
Q: How do I build something that asks for 150 or 200 Time Units, when everyone has just 100 TU?
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 01, 2011, 06:55:02 AM
Q: How do I build something that asks for 150 or 200 Time Units, when everyone has just 100 TU?

When you end the turn, the time units for each settler goes up a bit.

Edit: I have my own question now, what are sunstones and moonstones for? I collected two sunstones already but I don't seem to be able to use it for anything....
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 October 01, 2011, 01:09:15 PM
Q: How do I build something that asks for 150 or 200 Time Units, when everyone has just 100 TU?

Each time you end a turn, every npc gets 100 TU, if they are assigned a job, they lose 50 TU. If a npc still has TU when you end a turn, they roll over to the next turn, ie: A character without a job has 50 TU left over and you end a turn, that npc will then have 150 TU.

I have my own question now, what are sunstones and moonstones for? I collected two sunstones already but I don't seem to be able to use it for anything....

Sunstones and Moonstones are used as crafting ingredients. Right now all they can be used to craft are two time changing spells.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 01, 2011, 01:11:36 PM
Each time you end a turn, every npc gets 100 TU, if they are assigned a job, they lose 50 TU. If a npc still has TU when you end a turn, they roll over to the next turn, ie: A character without a job has 50 TU left over and you end a turn, that npc will then have 150 TU.
FYI, the gain each turn isn't necessarily 100; it's whatever that NPC's morale value is (100 is the cap).  The cost of working a structure is half the gain for that turn.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 October 01, 2011, 01:18:48 PM
Each time you end a turn, every npc gets 100 TU, if they are assigned a job, they lose 50 TU. If a npc still has TU when you end a turn, they roll over to the next turn, ie: A character without a job has 50 TU left over and you end a turn, that npc will then have 150 TU.
FYI, the gain each turn isn't necessarily 100; it's whatever that NPC's morale value is (100 is the cap).  The cost of working a structure is half the gain for that turn.

Oooh, that makes sense.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 02, 2011, 06:29:05 AM
What's the best place to find blue conciousness shards? It's only now when I'm starting to run out big time that I'm noticing I end up with other colours nearly the whole time. I explored some buildings earlier and I don't think I came across any blue shards. I don't think I got any for defeating bosses either....

I wish there was a way to convert one colour shard into another.....I have who knows how many of the other colours sitting around when I'm in desperate need for blue ones.

Also while I'm asking, if these shards are fragments of the people who didn't survive the transition....what do the colours mean in that regard? What makes one person who didn't survive be a blue shard and another person a green shard. Just curious.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 02, 2011, 10:26:45 AM
What's the best place to find blue conciousness shards? It's only now when I'm starting to run out big time that I'm noticing I end up with other colours nearly the whole time. I explored some buildings earlier and I don't think I came across any blue shards. I don't think I got any for defeating bosses either....

I wish there was a way to convert one colour shard into another.....I have who knows how many of the other colours sitting around when I'm in desperate need for blue ones.
Conversion isn't something we'd want to have, or at least not have be accessible at all early or be anything near 1:1; making resources interchangeable tends to lead to design problems.

Anyway, what you're experiencing is just transitional: the costs will be more varied in colors, worry not :) 

Are you actually running out of shards?  There's something like 1000 in each settlement's starting stockpile, and you can just take from the newer settlements and give it to the settlements you want to use them from.


Also while I'm asking, if these shards are fragments of the people who didn't survive the transition....what do the colours mean in that regard? What makes one person who didn't survive be a blue shard and another person a green shard. Just curious.
That's one of the mysteries :)  One possibility is different personalities/hopes/dreams/etc.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 02, 2011, 11:12:29 AM
Are you actually running out of shards?  There's something like 1000 in each settlement's starting stockpile, and you can just take from the newer settlements and give it to the settlements you want to use them from.

At the moment I have around 100 blue shards (111 in one, 137 in the other) in both of my two settlements. I went underground recently and picked up some blue shards (before that I was around the 10-30 blue shards point in both settlements)

Maybe I'm just not going underground enough, I usually tend more towards the commodity towers, resources and evil outposts.

It might also just be me being a bit haphazard with clicking the end turn button, since the earlier version of the game I don't think it took up blue shards to go to the next turn.

: Re: Q & A
: orzelek October 02, 2011, 11:24:04 AM
Running of shards became much easier now. Time unit addition means you need more turns to get something done. And apparently ice bats drop white+green? shards and mini bat bosses underground in ice area drop green+purple. So only reasonable shard source for blues are caches in ice areas. I didn't check out swamp areas tho. I think that none of bosses available are dropping blue shards(not 100% sure about amoebas).

Also scouting costs get quite large now. And I still have my main settlement (first one) with capped happiness saying that some lieutenant is oppressing it. I already killed closest overlord and his lieutenants. And without ability to cross oceans it's hard to explore further. Some way of showing if area is oppressed by lieutenant on map could be useful(mantised this one).
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 02, 2011, 11:46:16 AM
It would be lovely if there was a boss that gave out blue shards.

Yeah I think it's the ice areas that give out the blue shards, I was just looking around the underground of the bronze age and it was all yellow shards lying around.

At least I know where to go for certain now.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 02, 2011, 02:25:11 PM
Is it currently possible to cross sea squares or are we waiting for the ability to craft a suit immune to the corrosive water?
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 October 02, 2011, 02:29:15 PM
Is it currently possible to cross sea squares or are we waiting for the ability to craft a suit immune to the corrosive water?

You can cross ocean tile but it is time consuming. If you are a bat, when you get sucked into the ocean you are flying above the water so you just have to cross 3 screens to get back to the world map. It takes a long time but it is possible to cross large expanses of ocean.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 02, 2011, 02:55:02 PM
Thanks for the reply I hadn't tried the bat form before now so didn't know how this worked.
: Re: Q & A
: Commiesalami October 02, 2011, 03:27:55 PM
Is there any reason for the disappearance of the memory archives?  I'm sitting on about 10 memory stones and would like to turn them in for an experience boost/more plot.  I think the memory archive got overwritten by the big building that lets you go to strategic view.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 02, 2011, 03:32:31 PM
Is there any reason for the disappearance of the memory archives?  I'm sitting on about 10 memory stones and would like to turn them in for an experience boost/more plot.  I think the memory archive got overwritten by the big building that lets you go to strategic view.
The archive interface, the underlying story system, and the actual writing all needs to be redone, and that's going to take a while.  So didn't want to leave something in that was misleading in basically every facet of its implementation ;)
: Re: Q & A
: Commiesalami October 02, 2011, 03:38:38 PM
Is there any reason for the disappearance of the memory archives?  I'm sitting on about 10 memory stones and would like to turn them in for an experience boost/more plot.  I think the memory archive got overwritten by the big building that lets you go to strategic view.
The archive interface, the underlying story system, and the actual writing all needs to be redone, and that's going to take a while.  So didn't want to leave something in that was misleading in basically every facet of its implementation ;)

Sounds good.  Is there any reason to stockpile memory crystals then?  Or should I just stick around in the rare commodity towers to just kill bosses?
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 02, 2011, 03:50:07 PM
Sounds good.  Is there any reason to stockpile memory crystals then?  Or should I just stick around in the rare commodity towers to just kill bosses?
They'll be useful someday, and cashing those in grants XP.

And yea, even if you can't use the item at the top (yet), those towers are good sources of easy-to-find bosses, and thus of XP.  And shards, nowadays.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 02, 2011, 03:52:39 PM
Is it currently possible to cross sea squares or are we waiting for the ability to craft a suit immune to the corrosive water?

You can cross ocean tile but it is time consuming. If you are a bat, when you get sucked into the ocean you are flying above the water so you just have to cross 3 screens to get back to the world map. It takes a long time but it is possible to cross large expanses of ocean.

Often you can just cut back out the nearest exit, right next to where it drops you, and then move to the next ocean tile.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 02, 2011, 03:54:33 PM
Often you can just cut back out the nearest exit, right next to where it drops you, and then move to the next ocean tile.
Go ahead and try that for crossing, say, a 4-wide body of water.
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek October 02, 2011, 05:37:50 PM
Often you can just cut back out the nearest exit, right next to where it drops you, and then move to the next ocean tile.
Go ahead and try that for crossing, say, a 4-wide body of water.

Just take a set of warp scrolls with you and you'll be ok. It's a bit time consuming tho.

Can you guys "hack" some of the bosses to drop blue shards until strategic costs are revamped?
Like maybe make underground bats drop shards depending on actual area they are in.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 02, 2011, 05:57:50 PM
Q: Hanging trap, WTF?

(Ok it's not much of a question, but come on. They look like light fixtures, they don't do anything, then I flip a switch and I'm instantly dead. That's lame.)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 02, 2011, 10:55:50 PM
Q: Hanging trap, WTF?

(Ok it's not much of a question, but come on. They look like light fixtures, they don't do anything, then I flip a switch and I'm instantly dead. That's lame.)

They really shouldn't instantly kill you in most cases -- that was highly unlucky on your part.  Most of the time they just block the exit and you have to fight your way carefully out.  Sometimes accidents happen, though, with insta-death as the result.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas October 03, 2011, 12:54:32 AM
Q: Hanging trap, WTF?

(Ok it's not much of a question, but come on. They look like light fixtures, they don't do anything, then I flip a switch and I'm instantly dead. That's lame.)

They really shouldn't instantly kill you in most cases -- that was highly unlucky on your part.  Most of the time they just block the exit and you have to fight your way carefully out.  Sometimes accidents happen, though, with insta-death as the result.

The one room with them that I was stupid enough to pull the lever in didn't instantly kill me, but there was nowhere safe to stand where they couldn't hit me, and they did kill me within about three seconds.  Close enough to instant.  My future plan for dealing with them after that has been to destroy them without prejudice as soon as I see them (assuming they're destructible), even if there are no levers around, but I haven't gone anywhere with them again yet to see if that works.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 03, 2011, 01:10:28 AM
Well it wasn't instant death, I was exaggerating out of aggravation. But they were pretty much filling the room, and filling the small space where the switch was. So when I hit the switch (which had never before caused bad things to happen) and the room was suddenly full of fire and there was no safe space to dodge to, I wasn't really sure what the heck was going on. I figured out that they were destroyable right around the time that I died, which probably did only take 5 seconds or so.

I'm not sure I like the idea of a trap like that. It doesn't add anything to the game except for one lame death. From now on, of course I'm going to clear them all out before pulling any nearby levers. So that simply means that it's a 'gotcha' to a new player and it might as well not exist for a player who has experience with it. Why not something more interesting, like pulling the lever turns on a series of intermittent flame jets that you have to dodge on your way back out of the room? Admittedly, that's an idea as old as dirt in the world of platforming, but at least it's some sort of challenge.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 October 03, 2011, 01:26:11 AM
If you've been in switch rooms without any traps before then once you enter one with all the hanging traps it should be fairly obvious that those things are out of place and maybe you should investigate further. The first time I saw a switch room with the traps I knew something was fishy since the room was littered with these things that weren't there in previous rooms. 
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 03, 2011, 02:45:47 AM
Plus doesn't one of the tooltips somewhere warn you about traps? I've been suspicious of all levers since I read that!
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas October 03, 2011, 02:58:32 AM
Plus doesn't one of the tooltips somewhere warn you about traps? I've been suspicious of all levers since I read that!

I forget if the tooltips do.  If they do, it was added after I got killed by them the first time.  I was suspicious of them before that because the developers themselves told me point blank that I should be afraid of pulling levers after I said something about Boatmurdered to them a few weeks ago, but I just had to try it myself to see if that was indeed what would happen.  Heh.
: Re: Q & A
: snelg October 03, 2011, 05:17:41 AM
I've been wondering for a while now. What exactly does ending a turn do? I know it gives action points to npc's but is there anything else?

I'm getting a bit paranoid as turn number increases. :P
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 03, 2011, 09:16:50 AM
If you've been in switch rooms without any traps before then once you enter one with all the hanging traps it should be fairly obvious that those things are out of place and maybe you should investigate further. The first time I saw a switch room with the traps I knew something was fishy since the room was littered with these things that weren't there in previous rooms.

Yeah, they look like a bunch of light fixtures. Not exactly obvious. A bunch of rooms have various lamps and lanterns and such, I just figured these were similar. All I'm saying is the trap shouldn't spawn directly over the switch, or there should be a blank spot somewhere on the same level as the switch for the player to dodge to. Then it becomes a game of 'how do I get out', whereas right now it's just a quick death with no fair warning. I'm not just whining for myself (although I am doing that as well, to be sure) but because I think this is the sort of thing that will annoy new players pointlessly, and again, will have zero effect on players who have experienced it one time already. No warning no escape death belongs in platformers like IWBTG and SMB, not in AVWW.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 03, 2011, 09:56:52 AM
I'd say you get a fair amount of warning in Meat Boy, insofar as anything which looks remotely like it might murder you will probably indeed murder you.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 03, 2011, 10:01:17 AM
I've been wondering for a while now. What exactly does ending a turn do? I know it gives action points to npc's but is there anything else?

I'm getting a bit paranoid as turn number increases. :P
The tooltip that displays when you mouseover the end-turn button tells you pretty much everything about what it does.  I'm not sure if it mentions that every X turns (X depending on your strategic difficulty level) it spawns a rampaging monster group near one of your settlements, but it does do that.

Nothing too threatening... yet ;)
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 03, 2011, 10:01:44 AM
I'd say you get a fair amount of warning in Meat Boy, insofar as anything which looks remotely like it might murder you will probably indeed murder you.

Well yeah, that's pretty much the nature of that game. It basically says from the get go 'everything is trying to kill you'. Although I can think of a few areas where something popped up when I wasn't expecting it and flattened me. Mostly during boss levels and such, though. Anyway, total tangent.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 03, 2011, 10:09:31 AM
Well, tangental as it was, perhaps the lesson is: if the traps looked generally more like they were out to get you, people would be more wary.

But then, I'm certainly in favour of the idea that there might be some hope of escape once you've set one off.
: Re: Q & A
: snelg October 03, 2011, 10:36:43 AM
I've been wondering for a while now. What exactly does ending a turn do? I know it gives action points to npc's but is there anything else?

I'm getting a bit paranoid as turn number increases. :P
The tooltip that displays when you mouseover the end-turn button tells you pretty much everything about what it does.  I'm not sure if it mentions that every X turns (X depending on your strategic difficulty level) it spawns a rampaging monster group near one of your settlements, but it does do that.

Nothing too threatening... yet ;)
Woah! not sure how I missed that massive tooltip there. Thanks!
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek October 03, 2011, 12:04:23 PM
Well, tangental as it was, perhaps the lesson is: if the traps looked generally more like they were out to get you, people would be more wary.

But then, I'm certainly in favour of the idea that there might be some hope of escape once you've set one off.

I hit that once and it was very quick death. And if you are not running energy pulse by default you have hard time to kill 1-2 of these so you can have small safe area to recover (Ice cross or touch are not so easy to use when destroying these). Is energy pulse meant as "needed" spell don't go out of town without it?

You have no hope of hiding if ceiling is full of them so surprise kill effect they have looks intended.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 03, 2011, 12:11:07 PM
This would be a good one for mantis.  I should make it so that none of the traps seed higher than the switch, which is always at the top area of the room anyhow.  And then I should also make it impossible to warp out of a room that has any traps, to actually make that so you still have to make an escape past them.
: Re: Q & A
: KingIsaacLinksr October 03, 2011, 01:13:51 PM
Sorry if this has been answered already, but I'm having a heck of a time finding an answer in-and-out of game.

1) How do you build wind shelters?  Is it only on the strategic map?  And if so, how do you get 200 time units for one character?
2) How do you manage towns?  I'm at civ level 5 so maybe I'm not high enough to do that. 

Thanks!

King
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 03, 2011, 01:16:03 PM
Most of those options will show up when you level up. It's usually better to just build wind shelters yourself, by going to that area in person and walking to where the shelter is. 200 time units is what you get if you have a character not do anything for a few turns, as they save up their time units if they're unused.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 03, 2011, 01:20:38 PM
And if so, how do you get 200 time units for one character?
Yea, just don't spend them all, and they'll accumulate to up to 200.  Basically simulating that if you let them take care of their other stuff for a while they'll have a bit more free time, but only up to a certain extent.

Currently working on more documentation of TUs.
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek October 03, 2011, 01:23:15 PM
The Deep - is current "look" of the place there to stay?

That blurring shader that gets left out and bugs when alt+tabbed is annoying.
: Re: Q & A
: KingIsaacLinksr October 03, 2011, 01:23:20 PM
Ok, thanks guys.  I figured it out, (I hadn't gone over 2 chunks to the actual wind shelter site) having some really blond moments today.  Obvious sign of the mondays x_x...

King
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 03, 2011, 01:31:36 PM
The Deep - is current "look" of the place there to stay?

That blurring shader that gets left out and bugs when alt+tabbed is annoying.

Sort of -- there needs to be more tuning.  And for the bug on alt-tabbing, that's a known bug in mantis we just haven't had a chance to fix it yet.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 03, 2011, 06:55:37 PM
Hah, after all my moping about traps, I run into a guardian stone in a new settlement today that tells me to beware of trapped switches. Thanks! Where were you yesterday, guardian stone?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 03, 2011, 07:11:14 PM
:D
: Re: Q & A
: Commiesalami October 04, 2011, 02:26:48 AM
Is there anyway to determine if an overlord has any lieutenants left?

And on a completely unrelated note: Is there anyway to lure a lieutenant out of an overlords room?
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 04, 2011, 08:13:06 AM
Q:When trying to access the higher spellgems is this based on civilisation level or region level? Is the below correct?

Civ level 1-5 Spell gem level 1
Civ level 6 - 10 Spell gem level 2
Civ level 11 - 15 Spell gem level 3

Does this increase every 5 levels?
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 04, 2011, 08:23:53 AM
I think it's based on the difference between your civ level and the region level.
: Re: Q & A
: Ceerox October 04, 2011, 08:36:17 AM
Q:When trying to access the higher spellgems is this based on civilisation level or region level? Is the below correct?

Civ level 1-5 Spell gem level 1
Civ level 6 - 10 Spell gem level 2
Civ level 11 - 15 Spell gem level 3

Does this increase every 5 levels?

The lvl of the area the vein is in is what matters.

Ranks go up by one every 5 lvls with the rank 1 gem only being available until vein lvl 4, however.

So it's as follows:
vein in area lvl 1-4:     gem lvl 1
vein in area lvl 5-9:     gem lvl 2
vein in area lvl 10-14: gem lvl 3
...

What you shouldn't forget is that the lvl of the vein isn't necessarily the lvl of the tile on the world map (with
"highest" underground areas always being 1 lvl above the lvl of the world map tile).
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 04, 2011, 08:43:40 AM
So the level of the vein will actually be higher than the region but this gives a good rule of thumb to finding higher level gems. Which becomes more important as the civ level increases and higher level targets start appearing.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 04, 2011, 09:48:12 AM
Tier = (Level / 5) + 1.

In general, for raw gem veins, what the game considers a "modern" spellgem for you, etc.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 04, 2011, 11:52:31 AM
So at level 15 the gem tier equals 4 and are these gems found in the level 15 regions? Sorry for all the questions but for some reason I'm finding it hard getting my head around how this works.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 04, 2011, 11:55:37 AM
So at level 15 the gem tier equals 4 and are these gems found in the level 15 regions?
Presumably, it might actually be level 16 before you see tier 4 (that is, ((level-1)/5)+1.

Sorry for all the questions but for some reason I'm finding it hard getting my head around how this works.
No problem.  Basically every 5 levels you'll start seeing a higher tier of stuff.
: Re: Q & A
: Terraziel October 04, 2011, 11:57:41 AM
Your civ level doesn't matter, all that matters is the chunk level as shown in the orange bar
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 04, 2011, 11:58:34 AM
So at level 15 the gem tier equals 4 and are these gems found in the level 15 regions?
Presumably, it might actually be level 16 before you see tier 4 (that is, ((level-1)/5)+1.

Actually, since it's the CHUNK level, not the region level, that matters, you probably would start seeing them there.  Seeing as the topmost caves of a level 15 region would be level 16.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 04, 2011, 09:55:35 PM
Q: Why do I see monsters (usually skelebots I think) healing randomly? Especially obvious on the giant 'bot bosses. Their feet flash green and their HP goes up slowly. Does this mean anything? Is there some way to stop this? At first I assumed this was related to areas where a windstorm was ongoing, since that makes monsters stronger, but I've noticed it happens in areas under the protection of a wind shelter as well.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 04, 2011, 09:57:41 PM
Q: Why do I see monsters (usually skelebots I think) healing randomly? Especially obvious on the giant 'bot bosses. Their feet flash green and their HP goes up slowly. Does this mean anything? Is there some way to stop this? At first I assumed this was related to areas where a windstorm was ongoing, since that makes monsters stronger, but I've noticed it happens in areas under the protection of a wind shelter as well.

That's a regen effect -- it's an innate property of all the skelebots.  You can't prevent it or affect it in any way, and nothing except skelebots has this at the moment.  It's like vampirism on the shadow bats or the fire effect on the fire bats; it's just part of the skelebot design.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 05, 2011, 02:22:14 AM
That's a regen effect -- it's an innate property of all the skelebots.  it's just part of the skelebot design.

How come our playable skelebots don't have regen then?

Let me guess their regen units were damaged in the transition?  :P
: Re: Q & A
: Baleyg October 05, 2011, 02:47:21 AM
Hmm.  Maybe the regen is fueled by the blood of humans?  That would explain why the Skelebots went crazy and killed everyone by the junkyard time period.  ;D
: Re: Q & A
: Professor Paul1290 October 05, 2011, 05:36:45 AM
Hmm.  Maybe the regen is fueled by the blood of humans?  That would explain why the Skelebots went crazy and killed everyone by the junkyard time period.  ;D

So perhaps they're from the timeline where Eli Whitney invents flesh-eating robots?  ;D
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 05, 2011, 02:09:17 PM
Are low tier spells eventually supposed to converge into being exactly the same power?

Kind of bummed when I went to make a new energy pulse because I still had level 1 energy pulse. Went to get energy pulse lv 5 and I thought "great!" Then I looked and it was the same power as level 1. D:

What level spells/potions is good for level 32?  (Would a good rule of thumb be any gems you find in areas that are the same level as you?) I just crafted a level 7 ice cross and it costs 8mp so I'm not sure if it's much stronger. I'm feeling that I might need to go hunting for better gems.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 05, 2011, 02:13:52 PM
Around the same level as what you're finding is what you'd be looking for in terms of base equipment.  The general rule of thumb is your level divided by 5.  So in this case, level 6-7 gems are the current ones.

Ice cross costs 8 for its default usage, and goes up only if you've found a gem better than your current tier.  For instance, if you go find a tier 8 gem it will cost more to use... until you level up some more.

Eventually everything does get useless below a certain cap, which is about two tiers -- 10 levels' worth of stuff.
: Re: Q & A
: Deekay October 05, 2011, 08:14:06 PM
didn't want to start a new thread to ask this so thought this would be the best place. I currently have a band of monsters that is in a tile one space away from one of my settlements.
The thing is I can not uncover the tile so I cannot fight them :P I am wondering if this is intended or not? As the only option I have now is to end the turn and let them attack my settlement :P
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 05, 2011, 08:19:53 PM
didn't want to start a new thread to ask this so thought this would be the best place. I currently have a band of monsters that is in a tile one space away from one of my settlements.
The thing is I can not uncover the tile so I cannot fight them :P I am wondering if this is intended or not? As the only option I have now is to end the turn and let them attack my settlement :P
Or gain enough levels that you can see the tile, but yea, you'd probably need to fight that one out in the settlement.  Not sure what else it could do there, other than to not seed settlements on a tile that's bordering a higher level region.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 05, 2011, 08:21:25 PM
Another thing that will be done that's relevant to that case is making sure you can see new world events (like the spawning of a rampaging monster group) on the strategy and settlement-management interfaces, so you don't get surprised when it gives you that end-of-turn warning :)
: Re: Q & A
: Deekay October 05, 2011, 08:22:16 PM
Ok was just wondering, il gain a couple more levels and see if i can uncover it. Thanks.
: Re: Q & A
: Monadenia October 05, 2011, 11:22:19 PM
I just have a question regarding Dragon's Breath. I'm at Civ level 11 and took on some guardian monsters (of the new consciousness shard node) in a level 1 region.

So I find the bosses there: some giant skelebots and one of those crippled dragon things. Should be a piece of cake, right? The skelebots don't hurt too hard, as I'd expect.

But the dragon's breath ... takes maybe 1.5 seconds to deplete my whole health bar. I pop a potion (automatically or manually) and die 1.5 seconds later, since the breath keeps decreasing my health.

Is the dragon fire meant to give this instant kill behaviour? I know that you can kill them as background entities, but if a giant skelebot kicks you into one, for instance, I'm having trouble seeing how to tackle the situation. Especially with such a large difference in relative level.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 06, 2011, 02:39:53 AM
There's already a Mantis issue regarding the extremity of the fire effect's damage over time, and it's high on Chris's to do list to fix - we all feel your pain!
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 06, 2011, 09:18:07 AM
Definitely -- sorry about the fire damage thing, it's calculation is just using entirely the wrong math and it's not a trivial fix, so I hadn't had time in the last couple of days since it was reported.  But it's one of the very next things I'm going to do this morning for the morning release. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Monadenia October 06, 2011, 10:13:22 AM
Awesome, thanks! My trail of vengeful ghosts (because of course I had to keep going back) can soon rest in peace!
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 06, 2011, 10:14:33 AM
Awesome, thanks! My trail of vengeful ghosts (because of course I had to keep going back) can soon rest in peace!
Just don't cross the beams!
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 06, 2011, 10:20:49 AM
Awesome, thanks! My trail of vengeful ghosts (because of course I had to keep going back) can soon rest in peace!
Just don't cross the beams!

Streams!  Not beams!  Streams!

Now make like a tree and get outta here. ;)
: Re: Q & A
: freeformschooler October 06, 2011, 11:34:44 AM
Okay, so I don't think I fully understand spell tiers.

I understand at the start of the game I have spell blah blah I and spell yadda yadda I. But then my books run out. Do my spells automatically upgrade after a certain civ level? Do I have to find new books? And at what civ level should I start searching for book to make tier II spells (and so on).

Basically, how do I get the next-tier spells?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 06, 2011, 11:40:55 AM
The books just unlock kinds of spells -- once you unlock a recipe in general, you never have to unlock it again.

To get higher-tier stuff, you'll need to find higher-tier gems.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 06, 2011, 06:10:46 PM
Are lv 50 mobs supposed to be attacking one of my settlements when I'm lv 43? I don't fancy my chances...
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 06, 2011, 06:11:55 PM
Are lv 50 mobs supposed to be attacking one of my settlements when I'm lv 43? I don't fancy my chances...
Is the settlement level 50?  Or did it spawn in a level 50 region?
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 06, 2011, 06:13:14 PM
Are lv 50 mobs supposed to be attacking one of my settlements when I'm lv 43? I don't fancy my chances...
Is the settlement level 50?  Or did it spawn in a level 50 region?

It spawned in a level 50 region, although the settlement is level 48.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 06, 2011, 06:14:31 PM
Hmm, I may need to make them not keep spawning at region level then, since fighting something 7 levels higher than you actually means something now ;)
: Re: Q & A
: Commiesalami October 06, 2011, 11:50:37 PM
What does the asterisk mean when after a region level?
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 October 06, 2011, 11:52:55 PM
What does the asterisk mean when after a region level?

Means there is a windstorm in that region.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 07, 2011, 03:54:23 PM
Is it still a good rule of thumb not to venture into regions 4 levels aboove your civ level or has this changed due to recent patches?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 03:56:18 PM
Is it still a good rule of thumb not to venture into regions 4 levels aboove your civ level or has this changed due to recent patches?

Definitely still true, but in the first 6 or so levels it's less of a big deal.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 07, 2011, 03:57:44 PM
That's good to know I've just started a new game with the latest patch and wanted to make sure. Thanks.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 03:59:16 PM
You bet!
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 07, 2011, 04:40:14 PM
Just entered a cavern and had my first boss fight on my new game and I was wondering if it would be possible to autotarget the closest boss when entering a boss room. Maybe this should just apply in caves just an idea. What does everyone else think?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 04:41:00 PM
You can just hit TAB -- I don't see a reason to make it automatic.  You can target bosses even that are not onscreen if you wish, so it's just a button press away already.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 07, 2011, 04:57:08 PM
Okay I was just been lazy the problem I have it sometimes seems to target the bat furthest away and this is a little annoying.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 04:58:13 PM
Well, the bats are constantly moving -- there's a good chance that they were both nearby and that then one flew further away.  That might not be it, I don't remember what the targeting logic is like on that honestly, but it's a possibility.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 07, 2011, 06:04:56 PM
Would it be a lot to ask to get an indicator of what you currently have targeted somewhere in the UI? It's not really a big deal, but when you first enter, say, a cave with bat bosses, it can be hard to tell if you have one targeted properly, or if you're just targeting a lightning esper off screen in that direction.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 06:11:41 PM
It actually already does show you that -- the health bar gets bigger and appears for the thing you've got targeted. So if it was an esper you'd see a random esper health bar all large down there.  Might need to make the targeted healthbar show a little bit more differently, though -- different color font or something on the text above it.  Would be good for mantis. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 07, 2011, 06:12:28 PM
I second this idea I'm forever targeting the lesser creatures and then the big ones start taking chunks out of me.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 07, 2011, 06:22:52 PM
Is there a point where exp gain becomes non existant?

Like I fought a lv 33 dragon boss (I'm lv 43) and got absolutely 0 exp when I defeated it. Sure I wasn't expecting much....but I kinda thought there was going to be something. (like 1 exp)

I'm going to have to check out a boss closer to my level to be sure.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 06:28:51 PM
Yes, at exactly 10 levels below your own, bosses stop giving you any EXP.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 07, 2011, 06:45:05 PM
Any chance of refilling health and mana when leveling up? This is always a nice perk I find.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 06:51:15 PM
It's mildly complex because of multiplayer, but not too bad -- sounds like a good one for mantis. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 07, 2011, 06:55:57 PM
Will there ever be a way to conquer hostile tiles? It seems a bit strange to me that you could be lv 80 and a lv 30 "The Deep" tile will suck you into the middle for taking a second step. The horror won't really be there anymore.

Seems like they'll be more "in the way" rather than a difficult problem.

I can accept the ocean doing it forever (no matter what the level) since it's the ocean but that's all.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 07, 2011, 06:57:04 PM
Just reached level 5 in my current game and I was just wondering if tier 2 gems should be appearing not found any yet. Also I want to say how much smoother and enjoyable the game is getting even at this early stage I've spent four very enjoyable hours and each patch makes it better and better.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 07:03:51 PM
In terms of conquering hostile tiles: maybe.  The Deep and the lava flats and the ocean are the only hostile ones, and thematically it's not fitting at all to conquer the deep or the lava flats.  I'm really tempted just to make them not hostile anymore at all except for the ocean, because it's just annoying and doesn't add anything.  You know what?  Done.

Hyfrydle: That's awesome to hear!  In terms of the level 2 gems, you'll start seeing those at level 10 now, not level 5.  That was all stretched out to 10 levels rather than 5, because otherwise it was a constant treadmill of replacing your equipment (and that was only going to be worse).  See release notes for full details, but all is well there. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 07, 2011, 07:07:11 PM
Cool I thought that was the case  I'm really starting to see how everything works at least till the next patch and more cool stuff to discover.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 07:10:09 PM
I'm really starting to see how everything works at least till the next patch

 :P

Hopefully the worst of the "oh man everything has to be relearned" sort of changes are behind us -- knock on wood.  Hopefully it's more along the lines of "hey, that makes for new awesome stuff" like the shields,, heh.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 07, 2011, 07:24:16 PM
I love watching the patch notes grow as more cool things and enhancements are added. Even in beta this has taken up all my gaming time this week  :)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 07:26:17 PM
 ;D
: Re: Q & A
: Spejs October 07, 2011, 07:28:13 PM
Could you look at this one for the next patch? http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4268
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 07:29:50 PM
Could you look at this one for the next patch? http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4268

Wow, it's so funny that you bring that up -- I literally had put that on my shortlist already for the next one.  Great minds thing alike, I guess -- it really seems to be needed now.  I guess with the shields taking up extra ability bar slots in particular, it's relevant.
: Re: Q & A
: Spejs October 07, 2011, 07:59:28 PM
Could you also make "move mousewheel up/down" available for binding actions to them?
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 07, 2011, 08:26:37 PM
I'd like to see mwheelup/down usable for swapping spells, like it's often used for swapping weapons in an FPS. With a ton of spells already, and more on the way, this seems like it would be a handy option.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 09:11:52 PM
That one is much tougher, because it's not something that unity supports.  We'd have to kludge together a solution for that, and it would be pretty ugly and pretty time consuming.  I don't see having that happen any time soon just because of the immense time to do it and then the inevitable bugs.  Sorry!
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 07, 2011, 09:42:23 PM
Oh well, it was worth a try. Keep cranking out the good stuff.

Here's an unrelated question. Is Creeping Death sort of terrible now? It seems to have a big mana to damage efficiency gap as compared to other spells, and it's slow, with a huge cooldown. Its only advantage is passing through multiple targets, but Energy Pulse does that better: less mana loss, and much more quickly on both projectile speed and refire speed. Comparing rank III of those two spells shows me CD costing 3x as much mana but doing less than 2x the damage of EP.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 07, 2011, 09:45:37 PM
Creeping death is a bit terrible, which is more or less by design.  It will have a couple of specific uses: one, damaging some targets that just can't be damaged any other way very effectively due to elemental damage; and two, PvP slow-mo fights. ;)  So, yeah -- at the moment it's not a great choice, but that won't always be the case.

Man I hate saying "wait until ___, then you'll see" -- I'm saying that a lot lately.  It's unavoidable, but still; in all my time as a game designer I've never had to say that remotely so much.
: Re: Q & A
: Baleyg October 08, 2011, 01:30:02 AM
Huh.  Are multiple rampaging groups allowed to stack on top of each other?  I just entered a chunk with 8 microbosses looking for a fight.
I've got one node linked right now, if that's useful information.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 08, 2011, 04:19:41 AM
These tier things are confusing me again I was under the impression that tier 2 gems don't appear until I'm civ level 10 but just now at civ level 9 in a chunk at civ level 10 I found a tier 2 gem. Is it the chunk level not the civ level that affects the tiers?
: Re: Q & A
: Terraziel October 08, 2011, 06:37:15 AM
These tier things are confusing me again I was under the impression that tier 2 gems don't appear until I'm civ level 10 but just now at civ level 9 in a chunk at civ level 10 I found a tier 2 gem. Is it the chunk level not the civ level that affects the tiers?

Yeah, chunk level is what matters
: Re: Q & A
: yuastnav October 08, 2011, 08:55:28 AM
I apologise if this was asked already but are you planning on releasing an OST?
I think the music in this game is fantastic so an OST would be very appreciated.

Also I have a problem:
There seems to be a n impenetrable vortex and the pylon is also blocked by the vortex...
http://imgur.com/5hSBB
: Re: Q & A
: wyvern83 October 08, 2011, 11:18:45 AM
Q: When can I start rescuing NPC's? I assume it's gated by level but no one has talked about it as far as I can see. I don't see them on the strategic map yet either. (I'm level 5 atm)

Q: What strategic actions can I order my npc's to do at level 5? I can only order scouting. (an option for linking shard generators is also available, but I don't think I'm ready for that.) I know there are tooltips that say I can build stuff at level 6, but is there anything for them to do besides scouting until then?

Q: UG cave systems aren't mentioned in the region details on the strategic map or when walking around. Why is that? I would think they should be.

Q: Could there be a structure or feature to allow you to view chunk/region/dungeon maps when not in said region?

Q: Could there be a region map function that shows unexplored buildings/locations with in the region if you have walked by them? Just as a way of helping keep track of what you've done.

I'll throw the last three into mantis, just wanted to see what everyone thought.

Edit: provided I can't find a similar suggestion already made of course, I'll have to look around a bit.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 08, 2011, 11:53:40 AM
I apologise if this was asked already but are you planning on releasing an OST?
I think the music in this game is fantastic so an OST would be very appreciated.

Check this post (http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,9048.msg82509.html#msg82509) for confirmation of an OST in the coming months. The music is indeed awesome.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 08, 2011, 12:17:19 PM
So I found a node underground with a neutral Illari stone, except there was no illari stone.

Is that something to do with the stones all being fallen so there's no such thing as a neutral illari stone?
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 08, 2011, 12:18:45 PM
Sounds like a bug?
: Re: Q & A
: wyvern83 October 08, 2011, 12:21:39 PM
It is, orzelek posted about it Mantis. http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4544 (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4544)
: Re: Q & A
: yuastnav October 08, 2011, 12:33:50 PM
Thanks BobTheJanitor!

And since I'm already here (though this may be kind of a spoiler): Where do I find magma?
I read that some of the commodity towers have magma but they are very few (in fact I've only seen some of them around the settlement where I started), is there no other way to obtain it?
I already travelled far below where everything is red and there's lava but there was not magma to be found, either.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 08, 2011, 12:49:27 PM
I just visited the lava flats underground and found a neutral illari stone sight but I didn't have an npc this time.

Is that a bug too....it's the first time there hasn't been a person in the room. Although it's the first time I ever went underground in the lava flats.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 08, 2011, 12:51:38 PM
Thanks BobTheJanitor!

And since I'm already here (though this may be kind of a spoiler): Where do I find magma?
I read that some of the commodity towers have magma but they are very few (in fact I've only seen some of them around the settlement where I started), is there no other way to obtain it?
I already travelled far below where everything is red and there's lava but there was not magma to be found, either.

I've only found it in commodity towers. You need to have your settlers scout tiles in the strategic mode to find a tower with magma in it. If you don't see one yet, just keep scouting further out.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 08, 2011, 04:51:00 PM
I finally finished off my first overlord. 7 levels below me, which apparently means no XP. Sad face. Also used up every single mana scroll and potion that I had. I had to finish him off with fire touch. So yes, I just punched out the evil overlord. This doesn't have much to do with Q & A, I just wanted to share it.

Oh wait, here's a question. Will NPCs actually celebrate when you win? Right now I notice they've just gone from moping about evil overlord X to moping about evil overlord Y. Don't get up, people, don't worry, I just punched out a dragon, I'll just go on to the next thing right away. Don't bother to thank me.
: Re: Q & A
: yuastnav October 08, 2011, 05:10:58 PM
Wow, congratulations!

I think the game finally broke for me, though, because there is not a single pylon I can reach now and no matter how much I level up I cannot explore the the world beyond the dark tiles i.e. no new tiles open up.
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 October 08, 2011, 05:18:17 PM
Wow, congratulations!

I think the game finally broke for me, though, because there is not a single pylon I can reach now and no matter how much I level up I cannot explore the the world beyond the dark tiles i.e. no new tiles open up.

Have you tried having your npcs destroy the pylons?
: Re: Q & A
: yuastnav October 08, 2011, 05:30:57 PM
I didn't know that is possible but it does not matter since I am out of reach of any settlement from where I can access the management/strategic map.

[edit]
Ah, I am mistaken. I do have access to one settlement. Thanks!

[edit]
Though it looks like all of the NPCs are out of reach, too.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 08, 2011, 05:37:11 PM
Can you not use the new button to warp to your home settlement?
: Re: Q & A
: yuastnav October 08, 2011, 05:39:04 PM
Can you not use the new button to warp to your home settlement?

This intrigues me. What is that new button you speak of?

[edit]
Ah, found it! Thank you for tipping me off!
I guess I should pay more attention to the changelogs. :)
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 08, 2011, 05:41:00 PM
So yes, I just punched out the evil overlord.
He'll be back (http://store.steampowered.com/app/107310/).

Oh wait, here's a question. Will NPCs actually celebrate when you win? Right now I notice they've just gone from moping about evil overlord X to moping about evil overlord Y. Don't get up, people, don't worry, I just punched out a dragon, I'll just go on to the next thing right away. Don't bother to thank me.
We hope to add more reaction, but you'll find that they're all really stoked and basically have 100 morale for the next few hundred turns or something like that.  Go to the strategy map and mouseover the morale value for someone.


: yuastnav
I didn't know that is possible but it does not matter since I am out of reach of any settlement from where I can access the management/strategic map.

[edit]
Ah, I am mistaken. I do have access to one settlement. Thanks!

[edit]
Though it looks like all of the NPCs are out of reach, too.
I'm not sure what you mean by the NPCs being out of reach, but if you have any NPCs in that settlement and can scout over to the pylon and have 200 red shards just left-click on the pylon while an NPC with >= 100 TUs is selected, and it will go poof.

There are some other pylon bugs at play, but that much should work.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 08, 2011, 05:43:12 PM
He'll be back (http://store.steampowered.com/app/107310/).

Hah, yes. This is a great game and easily worth the pocket change it costs, if anyone hasn't picked it up yet.
: Re: Q & A
: yuastnav October 08, 2011, 05:46:20 PM
Well, to be honest, I use the turns very warily because I'm slowly trying to figure out how much I can do per turn without messing things up i.e. letting NPCs die etc. and then there's the whole thing with rampaging monsters which also is a bit scary.
But yeah, you are right. I should have been able to scout and destroy it with a dozen (or two) turns.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 08, 2011, 06:30:59 PM
I'm pretty careful about my turns because it doesn't seem to give any warning when rampaging monsters are coming, so I have to watch the map for each settlement to make sure nothing is in range. With things like an ice bat microboss leading a pack on an ice age tile, this gets pretty bad. I've neglected the strategic half of the game for a while because of that.
: Re: Q & A
: BobTheJanitor October 08, 2011, 11:13:01 PM
Q: Are there supposed to be a LOT of eagles? Just found my first area with some, and there must have been upwards of 50 of them flying around in there. Quite a few spawner nests as well. I started trying to take them all out and then realized that was just silly. Fortunately it was 10 levels below me, so no great danger. If I run across one at equal level, though, I'm going to be in trouble.
: Re: Q & A
: OobleckTheGreen October 09, 2011, 02:37:53 AM
Q: Are there supposed to be a LOT of eagles? Just found my first area with some, and there must have been upwards of 50 of them flying around in there. Quite a few spawner nests as well. I started trying to take them all out and then realized that was just silly. Fortunately it was 10 levels below me, so no great danger. If I run across one at equal level, though, I'm going to be in trouble.

The eagles are a bit overdone. I had a boss fight earlier tonight. 4 giant amoeba's with a gazillion eagles flying everywhere. Good thing the game's not too realistic, or we'd be slipping on bird poo.
: Re: Q & A
: KingIsaacLinksr October 09, 2011, 03:25:40 AM
Ok, we really need to add some sort of in-game explanations on certain things because I'm getting a little too often confused about things (nothing new ofc ;)):

First: How do i link "white nodes"?  It says strategic map but the strategic map doesn't let me do anything.  If this is a level requirement, then it needs to specify this so we're not looking for it...

Second: How do I get to managing towns?  What level is this unlocked? 

Thanks

King
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 09, 2011, 04:35:10 AM
Town managing is unlocked on reaching level 6 with further settlement buildings a few levels later.
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek October 09, 2011, 05:54:41 AM
Nodes are linked from town as usually for some cost - but after you release them.

And be careful with these... I have no idea if current state is the planned one but I got curious and freed six of these and linked them with idea of having constant supply of each shard type.
And now I can do few strategic turns and need to run around my world to hunt rampaging monsters then before I do more turns or they will come knocking to one of settlements.
Fortunately you can unlink these nodes.. in current version it seems a bit overdone in terms of spawn rate.

And with what Bob posted that we can't see directly where mobs spawn unless we exit strategy map to see messages it gets a bit dangerous to advance turns without constant entering/exiting the strategy map.
: Re: Q & A
: KingIsaacLinksr October 09, 2011, 01:58:05 PM
Nodes are linked from town as usually for some cost - but after you release them.

And be careful with these... I have no idea if current state is the planned one but I got curious and freed six of these and linked them with idea of having constant supply of each shard type.
And now I can do few strategic turns and need to run around my world to hunt rampaging monsters then before I do more turns or they will come knocking to one of settlements.
Fortunately you can unlink these nodes.. in current version it seems a bit overdone in terms of spawn rate.

And with what Bob posted that we can't see directly where mobs spawn unless we exit strategy map to see messages it gets a bit dangerous to advance turns without constant entering/exiting the strategy map.

Well, I released the node from the monsters, but it still won't link, so is there some sort of UI button that I'm just not seeing?

King
: Re: Q & A
: orzelek October 10, 2011, 12:14:03 PM
Nodes are linked from town as usually for some cost - but after you release them.

And be careful with these... I have no idea if current state is the planned one but I got curious and freed six of these and linked them with idea of having constant supply of each shard type.
And now I can do few strategic turns and need to run around my world to hunt rampaging monsters then before I do more turns or they will come knocking to one of settlements.
Fortunately you can unlink these nodes.. in current version it seems a bit overdone in terms of spawn rate.

And with what Bob posted that we can't see directly where mobs spawn unless we exit strategy map to see messages it gets a bit dangerous to advance turns without constant entering/exiting the strategy map.

Well, I released the node from the monsters, but it still won't link, so is there some sort of UI button that I'm just not seeing?

King

That should be doable from strategic map with cost in TU's and one of shard types. Tool-tip over the node should show info what is the cost of linking/unlinking the node.
: Re: Q & A
: KingIsaacLinksr October 10, 2011, 12:16:19 PM
Nodes are linked from town as usually for some cost - but after you release them.

And be careful with these... I have no idea if current state is the planned one but I got curious and freed six of these and linked them with idea of having constant supply of each shard type.
And now I can do few strategic turns and need to run around my world to hunt rampaging monsters then before I do more turns or they will come knocking to one of settlements.
Fortunately you can unlink these nodes.. in current version it seems a bit overdone in terms of spawn rate.

And with what Bob posted that we can't see directly where mobs spawn unless we exit strategy map to see messages it gets a bit dangerous to advance turns without constant entering/exiting the strategy map.

Well, I released the node from the monsters, but it still won't link, so is there some sort of UI button that I'm just not seeing?

King

That should be doable from strategic map with cost in TU's and one of shard types. Tool-tip over the node should show info what is the cost of linking/unlinking the node.

I finally figured out that I was a severe case of tunnel vision last night so I found it.  Thanks :)

King
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 10, 2011, 01:23:19 PM
If I change the names in the files found in folders "Names" and "Region Names" I should be able to change names that appear right? Can you add a name to the list or is there a limit so if I add an extra name it'll flow over the edge? I'm pretty sure there should be no big problem but just double checking because I'm paranoid like that.

Also, which name folders relate to which settler types? (apart from the skelebot ones that are obvious  :P)

I'm guessing the villain ones relate to the bosses....

Also I noticed in some of the location noun files it has some of them down a few times. (like Junkyard appears three times) Is that just to make some more likely than others?

(Lastly, on the African/American woman first names....is there supposed to be a ' in the middle of a name? Like A'isha)
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 10, 2011, 01:35:31 PM
If I change the names in the files found in folders "Names" and "Region Names" I should be able to change names that appear right? Can you add a name to the list or is there a limit so if I add an extra name it'll flow over the edge? I'm pretty sure there should be no big problem but just double checking because I'm paranoid like that.
Should be fine, just back up your worlds directory before messing with anything, and don't change any of the non-empty names files to an empty file (_that_ might cause problems).  But just adding or changing, sure, go ahead.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 11, 2011, 04:55:26 PM
If I change the names in the files found in folders "Names" and "Region Names" I should be able to change names that appear right? Can you add a name to the list or is there a limit so if I add an extra name it'll flow over the edge? I'm pretty sure there should be no big problem but just double checking because I'm paranoid like that.
Should be fine, just back up your worlds directory before messing with anything, and don't change any of the non-empty names files to an empty file (_that_ might cause problems).  But just adding or changing, sure, go ahead.

Yeah, as long as there are no empty files you can do whatever with these -- add or remove names, add whole new files in the same folder, whatever.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 11, 2011, 04:56:03 PM
Also I noticed in some of the location noun files it has some of them down a few times. (like Junkyard appears three times) Is that just to make some more likely than others?

Right, that's to affect frequency.

(Lastly, on the African/American woman first names....is there supposed to be a ' in the middle of a name? Like A'isha)

Yes, those are actual names.
: Re: Q & A
: Rekka October 13, 2011, 02:08:10 PM
Q : Is it possible to transfer some of your inventory ressources to your settlement? I can't find a way to do it and my inventory is full of consciousness shards. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 13, 2011, 02:11:04 PM
Yes on the strategy map or settlement map in the top right hand corner where resources are listed right click on the appropriate resource and a dialog appears to allow transfer it's pretty straightforward. You'll be amazed how many shards you've collected.

This also allows transfer of resources between settlements by moving resources to and from your character.

Hope that clears things up.
: Re: Q & A
: pierre dupon October 13, 2011, 02:12:33 PM
Q : Is it possible to transfer some of your inventory ressources to your settlement? I can't find a way to do it and my inventory is full of consciousness shards. :)
Go to settlement view, right click the settlement's stack of whatever resource. That'll bring up a trade window of sorts, choose what order of magnitude you want to transfer (1,10,100 etc.) and hit give. You can also take resources from one settlement and give it to another in this way.

EDIT:ninja'd^
 :D
: Re: Q & A
: Rekka October 13, 2011, 02:20:27 PM
Great! Thanks for the quick answers. I didn't thought of right clicking the ressource panel. Only left clicking. ;) I knew there was a way to transfer ressources. :D
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 13, 2011, 02:57:51 PM
No problem any more queries shout out.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 13, 2011, 03:07:28 PM
Just wondering, when conciousness shards do become global. Will the shards go straight to the global pool as soon as you get them?

At the moment it's a little off putting doing the process of actually giving all my settlements the shards. Which means there's a lot more I could be doing with shards (like rescue people) that I'm throwing on the back burner for now. Or maybe I'm just really lazy. :P

: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 13, 2011, 08:55:51 PM
Just wondering, when conciousness shards do become global. Will the shards go straight to the global pool as soon as you get them?

At the moment it's a little off putting doing the process of actually giving all my settlements the shards. Which means there's a lot more I could be doing with shards (like rescue people) that I'm throwing on the back burner for now. Or maybe I'm just really lazy. :P

I'm really not sure what Keith is planning, but that would seem reasonable to me to just have them go straight to the global pile, sure.  Keith is out sick today, so I imagine he can answer when he's feeling better. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Rekka October 14, 2011, 03:29:37 AM
Just wondering, when conciousness shards do become global. Will the shards go straight to the global pool as soon as you get them?

At the moment it's a little off putting doing the process of actually giving all my settlements the shards. Which means there's a lot more I could be doing with shards (like rescue people) that I'm throwing on the back burner for now. Or maybe I'm just really lazy. :P
I don't know what happens when you die (for now at least :P) but I suppose you loose everything you had in your inventory which your new character can come back to get. If the shards go straight to the global pool when you get them, you may loose some incentive to get your loots back, don't you? But I agree on the transfer of ressources between your inv and your settlement to be a little odd right now (doing it ressource by ressource). Maybe when you enter your settlement, all your ressources are transferred to this settlement. Or if you can have more than one settlement (only level 13 here :P), replace the transfer ressource by ressource by a screen with all the ressources listed under each other to be able to transfer everything you want in one screen. ;)
: Re: Q & A
: mitosis October 14, 2011, 03:54:08 AM
I'm curious about how often I should be advancing the metagame turns.  I've tried searching around a bit but couldn't really find an answer, so sorry if these questions have been asked before.

Is there an ideal turns to civ level ratio?  10 turns per civ level, 1 turn per civ level, 50 per level?

I know that the metagame turns make "everything else out there" progress and expand, etc... or at least some day it will do something along those lines.

Maybe it has no effect now but later on in the game it will?  If so I might not want to have my old world at the 500th metagame turn at level 15 when all of a sudden a new update causes the lutenants and overlords to get impossibly harder because the metagame turn number has way outclassed my civ level.
: Re: Q & A
: Rekka October 14, 2011, 04:22:41 AM
I don't think there is an ideal turns to civ level ratio. It's more a matter of when do you want to rescue some people, build something in your settlement, scout areas and so on. I don't think I have advanced the metagame past 10 turns for the moment because I just explore all around and I don't feel like I need to advance in turns. I did build some stuff for everyone in my settlement (houses, workshops, ...), did some rescues and scout a lot with my people. For me, I pass turns when I want to improve my settlement after a long period of caving and exploration, just to change my mind. :D

For the moment, as you point out, passing turns don't have an effect on the difficulty and I don't think this will change. Or if it changes, I bet Arcen would do something to ensure the compatibility of your old world with these changes so you won't get stuck in an impossible situation. ;)
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 14, 2011, 05:10:56 AM
Just wondering, when conciousness shards do become global. Will the shards go straight to the global pool as soon as you get them?

At the moment it's a little off putting doing the process of actually giving all my settlements the shards. Which means there's a lot more I could be doing with shards (like rescue people) that I'm throwing on the back burner for now. Or maybe I'm just really lazy. :P
I don't know what happens when you die (for now at least :P) but I suppose you loose everything you had in your inventory which your new character can come back to get. If the shards go straight to the global pool when you get them, you may loose some incentive to get your loots back, don't you? But I agree on the transfer of ressources between your inv and your settlement to be a little odd right now (doing it ressource by ressource). Maybe when you enter your settlement, all your ressources are transferred to this settlement. Or if you can have more than one settlement (only level 13 here :P), replace the transfer ressource by ressource by a screen with all the ressources listed under each other to be able to transfer everything you want in one screen. ;)

Inventory is global. When you die, you leave a vengeful ghost which will attack you if you return to that area. If you die four times, the ghosts band up and move to attack your settlement every strategy game turn, until you deal with them much like any rampaging mob.

: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 14, 2011, 05:19:58 AM
Q: Is Ice Cross supposed to be quite so rubbish in close quarters now?

Ever since it stopped going through walls (which I admit was massively cheese-riddled) it's just a bit lame - in the traditional sense - in confined spaces. Given that it's a melee spell, not being able to use it with your back to the wall (metaphorically speaking) in a corner (literally speaking) is a bit puzzling.

It's essentially gone from a useful spell to use when you've run out of places to backpedal to and the bad guys are right on top of you; to a run-in-there-and-blast-them-in-the-face type spell.

I figure this might well be intended, but just wanted to clarify!
: Re: Q & A
: Rekka October 14, 2011, 05:28:04 AM
Inventory is global. When you die, you leave a vengeful ghost which will attack you if you return to that area. If you die four times, the ghosts band up and move to attack your settlement every strategy game turn, until you deal with them much like any rampaging mob.
Ok, so making the shards go in the global piles as soon as you get them without having to manually transfer them to your settlement make really more sense than the way it is now. ;)
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 14, 2011, 05:41:07 AM
Inventory is global. When you die, you leave a vengeful ghost which will attack you if you return to that area. If you die four times, the ghosts band up and move to attack your settlement every strategy game turn, until you deal with them much like any rampaging mob.
Ok, so making the shards go in the global piles as soon as you get them without having to manually transfer them to your settlement make really more sense than the way it is now. ;)

Absolutely. Keith has been talking about doing something in that regard for a while now. I'm reserving judgement until he's had a chance to implement whatever it is he's planning... but I imagine he knows what he's doing!  :)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 14, 2011, 10:41:42 AM
zebramatt: You should be able to use ice cross with your back to the wall, it just wouldn't be spawning the ones right next to you.  At any rate, ice cross and circle of fire are best against groups of enemies in semi-open space.  That's their niche.  If you want something that's for very tight quarters, death touch is the way to go for sure.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 14, 2011, 10:46:43 AM
Roger roger!
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 14, 2011, 03:59:38 PM
Reached level 34 and just tackled a level 32 commodity tower the bosses seemed to be really easy. Should the dificulty between these levels be so easy? Guess I should be aiming higher. Also yet to find the secret in the current patch anyone able to give me a clue?
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 14, 2011, 04:17:37 PM
Reached level 34 and just tackled a level 32 commodity tower the bosses seemed to be really easy. Should the dificulty between these levels be so easy? Guess I should be aiming higher. Also yet to find the secret in the current patch anyone able to give me a clue?

Anything below your current level should seem easy. Anything at your level is a "normal" difficulty. Aim higher than your level for more of a challenge.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 14, 2011, 04:25:31 PM
I knew that was the case but it was really easy and in my current map I have lieutenants and an overlord all well below my level so I gues they shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
: Re: Q & A
: JedTheHumanoid October 14, 2011, 04:54:54 PM
I knew that was the case but it was really easy and in my current map I have lieutenants and an overlord all well below my level so I gues they shouldn't pose too much of a problem.

Just make sure those graves are well dug before venturing out...  ;)
: Re: Q & A
: KingIsaacLinksr October 16, 2011, 05:29:06 AM
So...is it normal to have this much uncovered and not see a single LT or Overlord?  Or am I just not high enough level (yet again).

http://steamcommunity.com/id/KingIsaacLinksr/screenshot/595825477964496595?post_id=650299544_287234281296420#_=_

King
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 16, 2011, 05:31:37 AM
To unvover Lieutenants and orverlords you need to scout the hatched areas of the map with your npc's in settlements. Also I think you need to be level 10 or above before they start appearing.
: Re: Q & A
: KingIsaacLinksr October 16, 2011, 05:38:58 AM
To unvover Lieutenants and orverlords you need to scout the hatched areas of the map with your npc's in settlements. Also I think you need to be level 10 or above before they start appearing.

Figures.  Gah, need to level!!!

King
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 16, 2011, 06:05:17 AM
I find the best places to level up are caves. Clear out the bosses and you can gain 2 to 3 levels easily the added bonus is plenty of gems.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 16, 2011, 06:17:14 AM
Is it normal for vortexes to appear over wind shelters you've already built?


I have another question, since that update that changed the way regions appeared and a whole bunch of new regions appeared. Does that mean no new regions are going to appear until I'm like lv 100 (some of the regions that appeared due to that update were around lv 100) Or will there be new regions appearing every time I level up?

I miss the whole fading in of regions, it was easier to know what was new and what's been there for a while. Maybe there could be a special parimeter scout npc that when you clicked on him told you what regions appeared since your last level up.....or have completely new regions glow or something.

Lastly, I'm a little confused about the whole Environ business. I thought we could name our own worlds?    I thought the save file name we created at the start "was" the name of your world....
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 16, 2011, 09:25:34 AM
Is it normal for vortexes to appear over wind shelters you've already built?
Currently, yes.  I might change that.  There's currently a rule that excludes settlements you've entered, and expanding that to all regions with a guardian stone (the yellow or red hearts, or settlements), whether explored or not, wouldn't be a terrible thing.  But it might also wind up causing problems, so I dunno.
: Re: Q & A
: Itchykobu October 16, 2011, 02:55:46 PM
Lastly, I'm a little confused about the whole Environ business. I thought we could name our own worlds?    I thought the save file name we created at the start "was" the name of your world....

This is a device that has been used in many games (though if you over analyze it, things can get a bit trippy...it's Environ and your world!?!?).

Still, consider old JRPGs - In Phantasy Star II, the main character is 'Rolf' - unless you give him a different name. Or Shining Force, where the main character is 'Max'...unless you give him a different name. There are plenty of old games where you can give the characters names that differ from how they are canonically referred to in any other sources. This tends to be seen less in modern games, though - and perhaps it is less necessary as many modern game heroes tend to be nameless.

Also, this is a case where the world is involved rather than a character. It's like the world is a character!!! This is getting a little trippy again...though I hope that a future update has a boss fight in which you need to take on the world itself.

Still, if it's messing with your head - just remember it's magic!

Edit: Are shining force and PSII considered JRPGs?
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 16, 2011, 03:00:05 PM
Lastly, I'm a little confused about the whole Environ business. I thought we could name our own worlds?    I thought the save file name we created at the start "was" the name of your world....

This is a device that has been used in many games (though if you over analyze it, things can get a bit trippy...it's Environ and your world!?!?).

Still, consider old JRPGs - In Phantasy Star II, the main character is 'Rolf' - unless you give him a different name. Or Shining Force, where the main character is 'Max'...unless you give him a different name.


Yeah but if you edited those characters names, they never showed up in YOUR own game space. Just outside in the main canon stream. I could name one of those characters and be perfectly happy that in my game he's called Bob.

With Environ it's popping up in text in-game sometimes. It's just sort of strange. Is my world called Environ or Zironia (the name I gave it)
: Re: Q & A
: lisa107b October 16, 2011, 04:29:11 PM
Forgive me if I'm sounding a little slow here, but, what is the purpose of the strategy mode exactly?

I know its to scout other regions for resources etc, but it seems to me that already occurs in the world map screen?

Again, as a new player things are very much brand new to me.

Thanks,

Lisa
: Re: Q & A
: eRe4s3r October 16, 2011, 06:52:48 PM
Its there to discover whats in a region without YOU having to enter each "chunk" of a region yourself to find out, you basically just uncover the fog of war (which generates those regions on the fly) when you move in the world-map - to actually know whats in a region (without visiting it yourself) you need to scout..

This'll likely be much more important later on, for now you can just do few things in that mode, which might make it a bit superfluous

As for the Environ thing, i suppose thats something that'll only really be implemented with the whole story, once story is in you can always make a %20% code in the text that takes your world name and puts it there. But before its done it'd be a waste of time to do that ;p
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 17, 2011, 10:35:39 AM
In terms of the "name of the world is environ" thing, that's not something we'd been particularly planning to change honestly -- I guess perhaps we could, but really the "name of the world" stuff is meant to be more like "Chris's World" or "Test World" or "World 5" or whatever.  It's just a savegame descriptive name, not something used in-game.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 17, 2011, 11:04:04 AM
I figure it like this...

Environ is infinite. All time, all space, laid out on a flat horizonless plain. And more than that: all possible  space and time, too. It encompasses all worlds and all individuals who survived the cataclysm which brought it all together, blurred all the boundaries. All dimensions wrapped around and on top of one another into a single limitless realm.

So your "world" is really just one path, one history written in this infinite soup. The history of Environ for your world is your world's history - but it's only one history in Environ.

Or something?  ;)
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 17, 2011, 11:17:39 AM
That's very deep sounds like something from Dr Who  :)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 17, 2011, 11:26:21 AM
And I love that sort of description, too -- in a lot of respects that's how I think of it, too.  I love stuff with the multiverse concepts, and that's how I've always thought of this.  Each "version" of Environ is unique to the people in it, because what you're really naming is the multiverse itself, each with its own unique version of Environ in it.  That's really the best way to explain it, in a lot of ways.
: Re: Q & A
: lisa107b October 17, 2011, 11:28:40 AM
And I love that sort of description, too -- in a lot of respects that's how I think of it, too.  I love stuff with the multiverse concepts, and that's how I've always thought of this.  Each "version" of Environ is unique to the people in it, because what you're really naming is the multiverse itself, each with its own unique version of Environ in it.  That's really the best way to explain it, in a lot of ways.

and, if you're really adventurous, you could connect all the worlds out there in player's pc's together in one big patchwork quilt of worlds ;)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 17, 2011, 11:31:50 AM
Oh my goodness!  That would indeed be a feat. ;)
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 17, 2011, 01:17:07 PM
In terms of the "name of the world is environ" thing, that's not something we'd been particularly planning to change honestly -- I guess perhaps we could, but really the "name of the world" stuff is meant to be more like "Chris's World" or "Test World" or "World 5" or whatever.  It's just a savegame descriptive name, not something used in-game.

Yes well I reject your reality and substitute my own.

Zironia :3
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 17, 2011, 01:20:24 PM
Yes well I reject your reality and substitute my own.
After years of following trails of evidence, it's finally discovered that the reality shattering apocalypse all started when Adam and Jamie got a letter asking if it there was any truth to the story that...
: Re: Q & A
: Rekka October 17, 2011, 02:06:11 PM
Q : Is there a way to destroy a building in your settlement? I misplaced one house and I would like to be able to destroy it to make my little square of houses looks like a square again. :P That's not a big deal though but I was wondering... ;)
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 17, 2011, 05:36:19 PM
Will there ever be settlements in the deep?

I know they're supposed to be hostile and all....but it would be pretty neat. Maybe I just like the idea of settlers getting disorientated on their way to the market place every morning.

Hey what about making prisons in the deep? For no good criminals. I can totally see the deep being home to a dank prison that holds the most evil, feared and diabolical overlords locked up in chains with entrapment spells all around them so they can't escape.

Although you could would probably just kill them if you got the chance......but what if you couldn't?

: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 17, 2011, 05:59:37 PM
After battling quite a few local Lieutenants I was almost ready at level 41 to take on the level 20 Overlord when after a quick bit of exploring I saw this:

 http://steamcommunity.com/id/hyfrydle/screenshot/540656382568830175

Six regions to the south of the first overlord another one at level 43 sits and waits. If I attack the weaker one will the stronger help like Lieutenant?

Not sure if this is a problem or not so haven't raised a Mantis report.

: Re: Q & A
: wyvern83 October 17, 2011, 06:01:39 PM
I'd like the ability to transfer NPC's to other settlements. I have two non-cold weather NPC's in my town that I rescued and I'd like to move them to my other settlement that has warmer weather so they don't stick out as much.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 17, 2011, 06:17:46 PM
It's possible, there might be settlements or prisons in the deep -- it's a bit early to say on something like that.  That's more of a later sort of refinement, I think.

Regarding the second overlord, Hyfrydle, no worries -- the second one won't help the first one at all. :)

wyvern83: Sounds like a good feature suggestion for mantis, although I'm sure Keith is already aware of the idea.  Putting it there would remind him and give folks a chance to come out in support of doing it sooner than later if need be, though.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 17, 2011, 06:22:37 PM
Regarding the second overlord, Hyfrydle, no worries -- the second one won't help the first one at all. :)

Phew!!! I was a bit worried about that. As far as I can tell all the local Lieutenants are out of the picture so I should be able to take on the first Overlord. My worry is I haven't uncovered many regions to the south. Would a Lieutenant on a hidden higher level region help at all?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 17, 2011, 06:26:38 PM
Hidden doesn't matter, but higher-level does.  Only lieutenants of a lower or equal level will help the first overlord.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 17, 2011, 06:30:13 PM
That settles it then I'm going for my first Overlord!!!
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 17, 2011, 06:30:48 PM
Awesome!
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 17, 2011, 07:10:23 PM
Everything went well the Overlord is no more but I didn't get much due to the difference in level. When I saw over 1 million hit points I got a little worried but it just took a bit of time to whittle himi down.

The next one is level 40 so a bit tougher can't see any Lieutenants yet though so I might strike while the irons hot  ;)
: Re: Q & A
: wyvern83 October 17, 2011, 07:18:09 PM
wyvern83: Sounds like a good feature suggestion for mantis, although I'm sure Keith is already aware of the idea.  Putting it there would remind him and give folks a chance to come out in support of doing it sooner than later if need be, though.

Already done, Jerith made one already two weeks ago. I'm the only one to have voted on it so far though.  http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4491 (http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=4491) (tigersfan marked it for considering)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 17, 2011, 07:22:54 PM
Yeah, that one will be a much tougher affair.  You really left the other one until fairly late, so that made him easier to roll by the sheer difference in levels.  But still -- congrats!
: Re: Q & A
: TechSY730 October 17, 2011, 08:23:49 PM
Some dumb questions.

1) What do wind shelters do?
2) Similarly, what is wind, and how does it effect things?
3) What does scouting in the strategy map do that can't be done by getting details on a region from the over-world map and/or exploring the region yourself?
4) Some regions have asterisks next to their level. What does that mean?
5) What is the penalty for entering a region that has not been scouted in the strategic map yet?
: Re: Q & A
: nat_401 October 17, 2011, 08:59:52 PM
1) Shelter the surrounding regions from windstorms
2) It's a dangerious magical weather pattern that normal humans cannot survive in, and it double's the damage you recieve from attacks in area's out of a shelter's radius
3) Nothing, it's just faster
4) There is a windstorm in that area
5) None

Hope this helps
: Re: Q & A
: TechSY730 October 17, 2011, 10:12:17 PM
1) Shelter the surrounding regions from windstorms
2) It's a dangerious magical weather pattern that normal humans cannot survive in, and it double's the damage you recieve from attacks in area's out of a shelter's radius
3) Nothing, it's just faster
4) There is a windstorm in that area
5) None

Hope this helps

Yep, thanks.

One more thing. Is there a list of weather conditions and their effect on the player character and/or environment?
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 18, 2011, 02:16:45 AM
I know that Overlords are essentially placeholders at the moment but I think their health might be just a little too much. They're just soooo grindy right now, especially when they're many levels below you.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 18, 2011, 08:30:58 AM
I know that Overlords are essentially placeholders at the moment but I think their health might be just a little too much. They're just soooo grindy right now, especially when they're many levels below you.

What percentage shift would you recommend?  I haven't fought one with the recent balance changes.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 18, 2011, 08:55:25 AM
30% less?
: Re: Q & A
: nat_401 October 18, 2011, 09:23:39 AM
@ techsy730
there is just windstorms in the game, at the moment anyway, I dont think there are any other weather conditions planned but you can always make a suggestion on mantis if you have an idea
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 18, 2011, 09:31:51 AM
I think that makes some good sense, will look at it.
: Re: Q & A
: Penumbra October 18, 2011, 10:27:39 AM
I have a question about how the Lieutenants and Overlords interact. I was level 25 and found the Overlord's keep on a level 29 region.  Well, went I got to his room, all his friends came along, and they were all level 29 as well.

After getting soundly trounced, I redoubled my efforts to explore regions in the settlements view. I found another Lieutenant keep in a level 10 region. I figured it would be pretty simple, but when I finally reached his room, that Lieutenant was level 29.

I had killed Lieutenants before at much lower levels. Is the Lieutenant supposed to upgrade to the level of the Overlord? I get it for when they join to help out, but should they still retain that when they go home?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 18, 2011, 10:29:08 AM
That sounds like a bug, really -- should go in mantis.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 20, 2011, 05:22:40 PM
Does the 5th modern century, industrial period have any male settlers?

All I've come across are females, or maybe it's just a massive coincidence.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 20, 2011, 06:55:24 PM
No males yet, no.  The genders line up about 50/50 overall in the game, but it's really skewed in each time period.
: Re: Q & A
: Teal_Blue October 21, 2011, 03:53:28 AM
:)  Just wanted to ask if there would be more crafting as we go along, i really really like the crafting, though i was hoping it would get more in depth, but we are just starting, so there is still a long way to go, also, what are the blue and white and orange and white things on the ground and by the buildings, they look like tabs, but have no idea what they are, they look sorta out of place, unless i am misunderstanding what they are?

Grills in the ground?
Or basketballs?
Or orange tear off tabs?

Just curious

-Teal


: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 21, 2011, 09:13:57 AM
We've been adding new crafting recipes every couple of days, if you follow the release notes. ;)

The things you're referring to on the ground might be vents, but I'm not sure.
: Re: Q & A
: wyvern83 October 21, 2011, 09:24:40 AM
That's what I thought of when I read his description, the 'air vents' in the ice age regions.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 21, 2011, 01:09:36 PM
I don't think I really understand how the memory crystals are going to work.

You get one and then you get a piece of a story from it? Isn't it going to be hard to build a proper storyline when the game is ever expanding? :S
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 21, 2011, 02:05:46 PM
I don't think I really understand how the memory crystals are going to work.

You get one and then you get a piece of a story from it? Isn't it going to be hard to build a proper storyline when the game is ever expanding? :S

There's not just one story, though.  You've got various pieces of world history, you've got history of various overlords and their minions, and so on.  So you get a piece of one of the multiple storylines floating around, is the idea.  But Keith has a lot of rework planned for these, based on his feeling that the older approach just wasn't tenable, so there may be some planned changes there that I'm not aware of.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 21, 2011, 02:09:49 PM
I don't think I really understand how the memory crystals are going to work.

You get one and then you get a piece of a story from it? Isn't it going to be hard to build a proper storyline when the game is ever expanding? :S

There's not just one story, though.  You've got various pieces of world history, you've got history of various overlords and their minions, and so on.  So you get a piece of one of the multiple storylines floating around, is the idea.  But Keith has a lot of rework planned for these, based on his feeling that the older approach just wasn't tenable, so there may be some planned changes there that I'm not aware of.

So it'll be like Dwarf Fortress? It has a sort of chronicle/history mode that outlines everything that a person or evil monster did over time.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 21, 2011, 02:16:37 PM
Eh... maybe. ;)  I'm really the wrong one to ask about this, as that part of the game is all Keith and I've been keeping my mental energies elsewhere.  I don't want to say something that commits him to something he hadn't intended, and I think at the moment he wants to do more prototyping of the story bits before really committing to any specific approach.  Doing a somewhat procedural story is certainly challenging, and so he's experimenting around with different approaches on that.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 21, 2011, 02:37:02 PM
Yea, I had a more or less procedural approach to generating the story "threads" that the crystals would reveal, but then certain other facets of the overall design became more apparent and I realized that probably wouldn't work in a way that would actually be fun.  The underlying structure of what's already there is probably what I'll still use, but I've got some different ideas on what to actually fill it with.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas October 21, 2011, 03:13:37 PM
The things you're referring to on the ground might be vents, but I'm not sure.

No one else ever really seems to be sure, either.  That one type of object seems to have been the source of more "What the heck is that supposed to be?" questions than anything else in the entire game, which is funny when you consider how mundane it is compared to all the other crazy stuff surrounding it.  I think it might be that it's just a bit of an odd angle to see them from, so it's not entirely obvious.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 21, 2011, 03:25:35 PM
Yeah, at some point I probably need to replace those.  If they are what she was asking about, they are indeed vents.  But still.
: Re: Q & A
: Teal_Blue October 21, 2011, 03:42:39 PM
Thank you for the answers, appreciate it.

:)

-Teal

: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 21, 2011, 03:43:12 PM
You bet!
: Re: Q & A
: Gallant Dragon October 21, 2011, 05:16:51 PM
But what are random air vents doing sticking out of the ground?  ???
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 21, 2011, 06:22:34 PM
There's stuff down there! This is a technological ice age. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Rekka October 22, 2011, 09:18:23 AM
Q : What's the formula to craft the Storm Rush spell? ::) I can't find it while going through all the different type of gems I've got. ??? Does it need a special type of gem I haven't found yet? (level 26 here)
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 22, 2011, 11:30:25 AM
When are those wandering mobs going to learn that when they oppose my iron determination they will be shown no mercy?

It's like they want to ripped in half by my energy pulse.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 22, 2011, 11:48:03 AM
When are those wandering mobs going to learn that when they oppose my iron determination they will be shown no mercy?

It's like they want to ripped in half by my energy pulse.
Maybe they get points for dying ;)
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 22, 2011, 02:56:38 PM
Q : What's the formula to craft the Storm Rush spell? ::) I can't find it while going through all the different type of gems I've got. ??? Does it need a special type of gem I haven't found yet? (level 26 here)

Citrine - Cherry - Magma.
: Re: Q & A
: Commiesalami October 22, 2011, 03:21:09 PM
Q : What's the formula to craft the Storm Rush spell? ::) I can't find it while going through all the different type of gems I've got. ??? Does it need a special type of gem I haven't found yet? (level 26 here)

Citrine - Cherry - Magma.

Quick Question about the crafting system:  Would crafting Citrine - Magma -  Cherry result in the same product?  Logically yes, but computers and programing dont respond to logic very well sometimes.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 22, 2011, 03:28:01 PM
As it happens, you can't combine magma with raw citrine, only if there's a cherry in the mix.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas October 22, 2011, 03:44:49 PM
computers and programing dont respond to logic very well sometimes.

Wait, what?  I wasn't aware they responded at all to anything else.  Now they finally tell me after all these years that I've been doing my job wrong this whole time.  Maybe I should try talking to it about its feelings next time.  Heh.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 22, 2011, 05:07:17 PM
How many tiles high are the large boss skelebots?

I'm making another boss map but the large boss skelebots end up spawning in a tight space which makes it hard to fight them and makes it hard for them to be very effective. So I'm trying to close in the space height wise.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe October 22, 2011, 05:08:20 PM
Quick Question about the crafting system:  Would crafting Citrine - Magma -  Cherry result in the same product?
Order matters, they would be separate recipes.

Logically yes, but computers and programing dont respond to logic very well sometimes.
If you don't think computer logic generally cares about the order of operands, try that with "0 / 1" and "1 / 0" :)
: Re: Q & A
: pierre dupon October 23, 2011, 06:39:26 PM
Q: How does the world get revealed these days? It used to be you walked around the perimeter of the world and new tiles would appear but now it seems to expand randomly. I gained 2-3 civ levels recently with no noticeable change in the map.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan October 23, 2011, 09:11:34 PM
Q: How does the world get revealed these days? It used to be you walked around the perimeter of the world and new tiles would appear but now it seems to expand randomly. I gained 2-3 civ levels recently with no noticeable change in the map.

Basically, it reveals automatically every time you gain a level. You won't notice the new regions while on the map, but, after you gain a level and go back to the map, you will see the new regions that are now 10 levels higher than you.
: Re: Q & A
: pierre dupon October 24, 2011, 02:15:31 AM
Q: How does the world get revealed these days? It used to be you walked around the perimeter of the world and new tiles would appear but now it seems to expand randomly. I gained 2-3 civ levels recently with no noticeable change in the map.

Basically, it reveals automatically every time you gain a level. You won't notice the new regions while on the map, but, after you gain a level and go back to the map, you will see the new regions that are now 10 levels higher than you.

Really? Then how come I'm seeing level 60+ regions at level 29?
Mantis?
: Re: Q & A
: c4sc4 October 24, 2011, 03:00:41 AM
Really? Then how come I'm seeing level 60+ regions at level 29?
Mantis?

When did you create your world? Before or after version 0.520?

If you created it before version 0.520, with that update to the world gen, all generated but hidden tiles were revealed. In my world, I have regions over level 200 because of this.
: Re: Q & A
: pierre dupon October 24, 2011, 06:10:30 AM
I've had that world since 0.500 so that'd explain it. I guess I won't see any new tiles till level 50 or so then...
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan October 24, 2011, 07:21:14 AM
I've had that world since 0.500 so that'd explain it. I guess I won't see any new tiles till level 50 or so then...

Yep, that's correct.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 24, 2011, 09:42:36 AM
How many tiles high are the large boss skelebots?

I'm making another boss map but the large boss skelebots end up spawning in a tight space which makes it hard to fight them and makes it hard for them to be very effective. So I'm trying to close in the space height wise.

Generally speaking, to have enough room for all the various bosses, you need at least one 8x8 section.  The skelebots are thinner than that, but that's how tall they are.
: Re: Q & A
: Kronic October 24, 2011, 01:59:55 PM
So, what's the best course of action if you have a coastal settlement and some rampaging monsters are sitting in the 5 levels higher than me ocean tile beside it? >.<
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 24, 2011, 02:02:03 PM
So, what's the best course of action if you have a coastal settlement and some rampaging monsters are sitting in the 5 levels higher than me ocean tile beside it? >.<

Don't, for the love of all that is good in the world, advance the turn!
: Re: Q & A
: Kronic October 24, 2011, 02:07:07 PM
I can't deny that's solid advice.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 24, 2011, 02:20:20 PM
My advice would be to bring a lot of health potions and fight them in the ocean.
: Re: Q & A
: pierre dupon October 24, 2011, 04:13:30 PM
Transform into a bat and build some platforms above the sea. Then lay down the smack in whatever way you see fit.
: Re: Q & A
: Kronic October 24, 2011, 05:44:03 PM
Ooh, smart thinking there. Then all I have to do is not get knocked off and deal with their level advantage. Thanks. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 25, 2011, 09:06:34 AM
Something I noticed...

Is it supposed to be that on the map editor the tile that blocks bosses spawn also seems to block doors and items spawning there too?

It's not a massive thing but it would be nice to have just a standalone boss spawn blocker and let other doors and items spawn wherever.

: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 25, 2011, 09:30:07 AM
Something I noticed...

Is it supposed to be that on the map editor the tile that blocks bosses spawn also seems to block doors and items spawning there too?

It's not a massive thing but it would be nice to have just a standalone boss spawn blocker and let other doors and items spawn wherever.

Ah, yeah -- actually I meant to clarify that, but it does indeed do that.  There's not a way to make something that would just block bosses very easily, because of how the seeding logic works internally.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 25, 2011, 10:25:54 AM
Something I noticed...

Is it supposed to be that on the map editor the tile that blocks bosses spawn also seems to block doors and items spawning there too?

It's not a massive thing but it would be nice to have just a standalone boss spawn blocker and let other doors and items spawn wherever.

Actually, you can probably achieve this somewhat by simply only allowing space for doors - 3x1 - or items - 1x1 - or enemy spawners - 1x2 - and covering the rest of the background with the anti-boss spawner.

Not sure on the actual sizes above but in theory that should cover it!
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 26, 2011, 06:23:01 PM
Just reached level 55 and still no sign of a second settlement in my world. Each level I think this time and so far no luck.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 26, 2011, 06:28:37 PM
Just reached level 55 and still no sign of a second settlement in my world. Each level I think this time and so far no luck.

Wow, that's crazy.  If you post your world (you can leave out ALL the region folders, so it would be really small as an upload), I can take a look at it and give you further info.
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt October 26, 2011, 06:38:03 PM
I just hit 35 and finally found settlement number 2.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 26, 2011, 06:42:50 PM
Wow, that's crazy.  If you post your world (you can leave out ALL the region folders, so it would be really small as an upload), I can take a look at it and give you further info.

Is it the World.dat file you need?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 26, 2011, 06:57:56 PM
Wow, that's crazy.  If you post your world (you can leave out ALL the region folders, so it would be really small as an upload), I can take a look at it and give you further info.

Is it the World.dat file you need?

That and regions.dat together.  Just none of the subfolders.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 26, 2011, 07:07:21 PM
Can I upload in the forum?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 26, 2011, 07:10:58 PM
By all means.  We only want it in mantis when it's attached to a report, which isn't this.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 26, 2011, 07:13:33 PM
Here are the files requested I've now reached level 57 and still nothing.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 26, 2011, 07:18:03 PM
Okay, I experimented around with it in debug mode, and I got a new settlement at level 61.  That's not to say you definitely would, as the world map is nondeterministic and so you'll get a different result than I would.  That said, having the second settlement only come that far apart is definitely unacceptable -- I'm going to take a look at the logic we're using and make sure that they are not quite so random as they currently are.  Thanks. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Cyborg October 26, 2011, 07:20:12 PM
Logically yes, but computers and programing dont respond to logic very well sometimes.

I had to respond to this. A computer is not a magic box. It just runs programs. Without logic, it doesn't exist. There is no randomness.

Ever. Never was.

And as a programmer, I can assure you that there are no languages which are free of logic. Every language cannot escape the basic, grim reality of what a computer is: the expression of binary instructions. Without rules, you have nothing.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle October 26, 2011, 07:24:29 PM
Okay, I experimented around with it in debug mode, and I got a new settlement at level 61.  That's not to say you definitely would, as the world map is nondeterministic and so you'll get a different result than I would.  That said, having the second settlement only come that far apart is definitely unacceptable -- I'm going to take a look at the logic we're using and make sure that they are not quite so random as they currently are.  Thanks. :)

I don't really mind as long as I get one at some time and it's not causing an issue with my world. Having so much fun with the game now it's chalk and cheese from the first beta release. I actually need to plan my expeditions based on needs which I think is cool.

My main loadout is the Ball Lightening spell and in the world currently I don't have a desert region in my level range to allow an upgrade to the spell so I may have to change loadout or venture in to a deeper cave. really like all the decisions the game is starting to throw at me as my world expands.

Also who came up with the boss room over the water? It was a real test and I lost a character to it. Went back and had my revenge so it was okay in the end but it was a really different boss fight.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 26, 2011, 07:32:24 PM
Cheers, no worries -- glad you're enjoying it so well, too.  And the decision space is really expanding in a way I'm pleased with, too.

Glad you like the boss room over the water -- there are several that fit that description, but if you're talking about the one with all the crates over a pit of water, that one was me.  There's a number of folks who have created water/lava boss rooms, though, and I think they all turned out really cool. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 27, 2011, 02:04:12 AM
Logically yes, but computers and programing dont respond to logic very well sometimes.

It would be more accurate to say programmers don't respond to logic very well sometimes.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas October 27, 2011, 03:06:19 AM
Logically yes, but computers and programing dont respond to logic very well sometimes.

It would be more accurate to say programmers don't respond to logic very well sometimes.

Ah, there we go.  I think we have a winner.
: Re: Q & A
: wyvern83 October 28, 2011, 05:49:34 PM
What do you do with the TU's of a town with over 50 NPC's after you've given them all upgraded housing, jobs, built a library, and scouted every tile on the world map? My starting town is nearly to this point as I've only upgraded a couple houses to level 3 but I've done everything else. I could build even more houses there but I only send arctic people and robots there.

I effectively have a pool of 10,800 TU's with nothing to do with them until I hunt out more NPC's. I have alot of housing upgrading to do in my second town of around 46 people but they'll reach this point too. Now my world map is one of the older ones so it won't expand till I hit level 50 or so and I'm only level 29.

Could there be a way to use the TU pool of one town for another? Transferring rescued NPC's would be one way, a suggestion that has already been made, but I was wondering if we could spend some conscious shards to turn NPC's into traveling workers, maybe with a small TU penalty? It would help alot with getting a new settlement started provided you had an established one already.
: Re: Q & A
: pierre dupon October 28, 2011, 06:45:51 PM
What do you do with the TU's of a town with over 50 NPC's after you've given them all upgraded housing, jobs, built a library, and scouted every tile on the world map? My starting town is nearly to this point as I've only upgraded a couple houses to level 3 but I've done everything else. I could build even more houses there but I only send arctic people and robots there.

I effectively have a pool of 10,800 TU's with nothing to do with them until I hunt out more NPC's. I have alot of housing upgrading to do in my second town of around 46 people but they'll reach this point too. Now my world map is one of the older ones so it won't expand till I hit level 50 or so and I'm only level 29.

Could there be a way to use the TU pool of one town for another? Transferring rescued NPC's would be one way, a suggestion that has already been made, but I was wondering if we could spend some conscious shards to turn NPC's into traveling workers, maybe with a small TU penalty? It would help alot with getting a new settlement started provided you had an established one already.

Build a spaceship and find another planet. One without wind...
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 30, 2011, 11:15:24 AM
Something I've been wondering...

Will there ever be children (young people in general) in this game? Maybe they could become adults after a certain amount of time and then be able to go adventuring/work in the settlement....and you'd have to erect a school building for them to go to. Maybe npcs themselves could age and die over time (naturally) so there would be a good sense of believability and progression for npcs and their lives in Environ

I don't want to sound like I want the game to be the sims (I don't) but it would be interesting to have some similar concepts.

Edit: Also, was fall damage implemented recently?
: Re: Q & A
: @B0FH October 30, 2011, 02:43:35 PM
Fall damage exists in the lava flats I believe, though not elsewhere from memory.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 31, 2011, 09:29:58 AM
Yep, fall damage is in the lava flats only.

Regarding children: probably not in 1.0 is all I can really say.  But it's something we might explore longer-term.
: Re: Q & A
: superking October 31, 2011, 12:30:05 PM
now we need some mega-projects/TU sinks, like fortress building, rail links, military training..  :D
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas October 31, 2011, 01:11:27 PM
now we need some mega-projects/TU sinks, like fortress building, rail links, military training..  :D

Apollo Program/space victory?  Screw you, overlords.  I'm getting off Environ and finding a better planet without wind.  Why yes, I did "just one more turn" my two hour Civ session into a ten hour one yesterday.  Heh.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 31, 2011, 06:20:36 PM
Is it possible to find Skelebot (Junkyard) settlements?

Or settlements with those knights (and the chinese neon dressed woman) or those magic users with the crazy hair? Or a settlement in one of the modern towns?

So far I've found settlements of:

Ice Age (8 settlements)
Evergreen Forest (2 Settlements)
Bronze Age/Desert (1 Settlement)
Grasslands (2 Settlements
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 31, 2011, 07:13:43 PM
Yes, all are possible to find.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 31, 2011, 07:56:12 PM
Yes, all are possible to find.

I actually just found a new settlement about 10 minutes ago in the deciduous forest.

That's nice to know. :)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 31, 2011, 08:00:27 PM
Yeah, it's cool because you might not run into all of them in a given game for a really long time, but you can find settlements from every time period.  In the meantime you can much more easily find NPCs from any time period of course, but the settlements themselves are harder to find. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 31, 2011, 08:03:04 PM
Actually, that brings something else up.

What about the wild garden age?

I found an illari stone cave in the lava flats once and it said I unlocked the people from that era but I don't think there was any npc in the room.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 31, 2011, 08:05:05 PM
Heh, yeah, it shouldn't be having neutral ilari in that age, that's something for mantis if you don't mind -- there are no people, robots, or NPCs or anything from the wild garden age.  Maybe dinosaurs you can play as at some point... not sure.  There's going to be a lot of dinos in that age, but I've not yet decided if any will be sentient at all.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 31, 2011, 08:08:17 PM
Oooh I'm all for playable dinosaurs! :D

and sure I'll put that in mantis.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 31, 2011, 08:11:52 PM
I know I definitely want to do raptors as a transmogrify spellscroll at the least, so don't worry about that. :)

And thanks on the mantis thing.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard October 31, 2011, 08:18:38 PM
I quite fancy the idea of discovering a sentient dinosaur species that are actually far smarter than any other npcs and spend their free time reciting shakesphere, discussing the space time continuum and carving long difficult algorithms into large rocks.

Or they could always just be of standard intelligence. :p

(I'm all for non human settler npcs in general though, spice things up a bit)



: Re: Q & A
: x4000 October 31, 2011, 08:26:38 PM
Yeah, the main question in a lot of senses is not if, but when with things like that. ;)
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas November 01, 2011, 01:49:41 AM
I quite fancy the idea of discovering a sentient dinosaur species that are actually far smarter than any other npcs and spend their free time reciting shakesphere, discussing the space time continuum and carving long difficult algorithms into large rocks.

Smart dinosaurs (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/4/4/)?  Sign me up.  He even travels to different time periods (http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/7/).  It'd be perfect.  Heh.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 01, 2011, 10:34:42 AM
Hahaha, I'd forgotten about Rex Ready.  Love PA also.  I was thinking in some ways more the Repitites, heh.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 03, 2011, 11:17:21 AM
I wonder, will there ever be any slight politic aspects in the game?

I don't mean turning the game into the next "civilization"....but maybe titles you could give to npcs that help the settlement and you're civilization overall. Like Mayors and such?

An npc that appears to run the town sort of....and maybe there could be like a central group in the capital city that they have to report to.

I'm probably explaining it badly. ::)

: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 03, 2011, 11:21:20 AM
Not sure, that's really more Keith's side of things.  Mostly it depends on what players are interested in seeing us develop out further when it comes to those aspects of the game.  We have 1000% more ideas than we can reasonably implement, so part of our decision making on which ones actually would get into the game depends on what people (including us) are most interested in at the time.
: Re: Q & A
: TechSY730 November 03, 2011, 03:06:52 PM
: 0.537 Release Notes
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.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 03, 2011, 03:22:21 PM
: 0.537 Release Notes
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.
: Re: Q & A
: TechSY730 November 03, 2011, 03:28:01 PM
: 0.537 Release Notes
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.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 03, 2011, 03:48:45 PM
You bet!
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle November 03, 2011, 04:24:00 PM
All this new elemental information sounds very complicated is it visually clear in game how effective spells are?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 03, 2011, 04:32:09 PM
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.
: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle November 03, 2011, 04:41:09 PM
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.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 03, 2011, 04:46:10 PM
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. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 03, 2011, 05:37:09 PM
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.

: Re: Q & A
: Hyfrydle November 03, 2011, 06:01:20 PM
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.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 03, 2011, 06:17:15 PM
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.
: Re: Q & A
: Nalgas November 03, 2011, 06:22:39 PM
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.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 03, 2011, 06:30:42 PM
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.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 03, 2011, 07:16:55 PM
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.

: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 03, 2011, 07:18:44 PM
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.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 04, 2011, 07:20:53 AM
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.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 04, 2011, 09:02:28 AM
Not yet, no, but that's part of the upcoming variety I want to get in there, for sure.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 04, 2011, 04:57:02 PM
Do buildings underground (that have stash rooms) have a higher chance of spawning a lot of magic potions?

I've found the above ground stash rooms will usually give you about 1 potion each....but in underground buildings I've been finding more X10 Magic potions.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 04, 2011, 05:02:11 PM
Actually, all of the stash room logic is identical for any building; it's just luck and chance that you've been seeing that pattern.

Additionally, no stash room will ever give you 1x of a potion as part of its actual stash logic; the 1x potions are coming from the regular "tiny goodies for any room logic," and then the stuff that is more unusual or in larger quantities are the actual stash goodies.  If you care. ;)
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 08, 2011, 02:48:05 PM
In this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FHdo6A9e7A

Are those yellow enemies supposed to be skelebots?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 08, 2011, 08:27:18 PM
In this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FHdo6A9e7A

Are those yellow enemies supposed to be skelebots?

Yep, skelebots were the first and only enemies in the game at that point.
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 08, 2011, 10:28:34 PM
What's a good civ level to take on my first leiutenant? It's in a lvl. 12 region, If that changes anything.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 08, 2011, 10:40:53 PM
He'll be level 12 to match the region, so plan according to that.  The type of lieutenant it turns out to be will have some substantial effect on the difficulty of it, too; you can always brave his keep, get to him, and then see if he seems overwhelming -- if so, run for the exit and then warp out to the edge of the region from the next room.  You can then come back in just a single warp potion once you're ready to tackle him, and at that point you'd have much better intel on specifically why this guy was hard and what would best be usable to kill him, etc.

In a very real sense, the best time to take on a lieutenant is a personal question that is based on your own skill and playstyle.  If you're really awesome at dodging attacks and landing tricky hits with a variety of spells, then you can probably take him early.  If you're relying more on planning and properly outfitting, and/or even on overleveling the opponent, then you'd want to level up more before taking him on.  The game is really meant to be able to cater to both action-oriented players and more thoughtful planning-oriented players.  When it comes to this game, I'm the former and Keith is the latter, so we'd both have completely different answers on how to deal with something like this. :)

Hope that helps -- I imagine other players can weigh in, too!
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 08, 2011, 10:49:01 PM
Thanks! I only have the trial, so I'm capped at 6 for the moment. I plan on buying the full game as soon as I can though, It's been a lot of fun!

EDIT: Owwww, I just got horribly beaten by the first boss room (Which was using one of my templates, with lots of lava. Did not make it easy.) I'm definitely going to come back once I get the full version and a higher civ level.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 08, 2011, 10:59:47 PM
Glad you're enjoying it!  If you're capped at level 6 then I'd suggest getting some tier II equipment -- adventure in level 10 areas and get some crystals there, and you can then get some better gear to beat on that lieutenant with.  It will be quite a tough battle, but I think it should be doable with the right gear and skill. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 08, 2011, 11:00:43 PM
Glad you're enjoying it!  If you're capped at level 6 then I'd suggest getting some tier II equipment -- adventure in level 10 areas and get some crystals there, and you can then get some better gear to beat on that lieutenant with.  It will be quite a tough battle, but I think it should be doable with the right gear and skill. :)

Ah, so that's how you get better equipment. Cool, I'll try that.

And random note: Why do settlers refer to the leiutenant in the plural? "Atito the Cruel oppresses us, but it seems there is a higher power behind them..."
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 08, 2011, 11:10:12 PM
My pleasure.

And the reference is actually in the neuter, which sounds the same as the plural and thus awkward.  We need to get that actually doing gender tags, and that's on our list, but it's not done yet. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 08, 2011, 11:15:07 PM
My pleasure.

And the reference is actually in the neuter, which sounds the same as the plural and thus awkward.  We need to get that actually doing gender tags, and that's on our list, but it's not done yet. :)

I see.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 09, 2011, 12:44:15 PM
Is it intended that an overlord will only have one lieutenant? I'm around lv 131 now and the "lv 140" overlord has appeared with one lv 140 lieutenant close by. There doesn't seem to be any others (and I've scouted all of the available map now, except for most of the ocean)

I noticed too there isn't as much suspense or mystery surrounding where the overlord is now. I know when I reach lv150 that the newest patch of unscouted area will hold the next overlord.

Whereas before when there was a much more hap hazard unveiling of locations it all seemed much more unpredictable. I would like if a few more locations appeared per level up...and also that they didn't all appear together in one clump on the map.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 09, 2011, 12:47:13 PM
Is it intended that an overlord will only have one lieutenant? I'm around lv 131 now and the "lv 140" overlord has appeared with one lv 140 lieutenant close by. There doesn't seem to be any others (and I've scouted all of the available map now, except for most of the ocean)

That really would vary, but it should be between 1-3 or so per overlord.

I noticed too there isn't as much suspense or mystery surrounding where the overlord is now. I know when I reach lv150 that the newest patch of unscouted area will hold the next overlord.

Hmm, that is a problem I had not forseen, yeah.

Whereas before when there was a much more hap hazard unveiling of locations it all seemed much more unpredictable. I would like if a few more locations appeared per level up...and also that they didn't all appear together in one clump on the map.

Problem was, worlds were getting really way too large too fast.  I may need to make it so that on overlord-spawning events or lieutenant-spawning events that it does a cluster of regions rather than just one group, though -- I think that's worth going in mantis.  That happens infrequently enough that it wouldn't cause the worlds to get too large too fast, but at the same time it would provide a lot more suspense on where the overlords are when they are appearing.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 09, 2011, 01:07:40 PM
So you're saying at the level where a new overlord appears there's a bigger more varied introduction of regions than if it was a normal (non overlord spawning) level up?

I'll put it in mantis.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 09, 2011, 01:09:45 PM
Yep, that's the idea.
: Re: Q & A
: Penumbra November 09, 2011, 01:27:19 PM
I can't find the exact post, but someone once suggested generating a small "region bridge" to another larger area. I thought it was quite interesting. It would allow those settlements you have freed to actually be free. This wouldn't happen every time an overlord is spawned, but maybe every 5 or so. The intervening area could be generated as normal, in small spurts.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 09, 2011, 01:58:14 PM
That would be a pretty major overhaul of the way that the world map works at present, but it's possible that we might split things into multiple "planes" for the world map.  Having a contiguous world map that is infinite gets unwieldy past a certain point, so perhaps every few hundred civ levels it would be a good idea to split these out into larger shards you have to move between.  Not sure; it's not a technical requirement, but it might be good for long-term usability.  I've got various things like that swirling around in the back of my mind, but it's too early to say what would really work best, and feel best to players.
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 11, 2011, 02:24:34 PM
Nevermind, this one was my fault.

: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 12, 2011, 08:58:03 PM
Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but I noticed that minibosses do not regain health whn you leave and return, but Leiutentants do. Is this supposed to happen? I died while fighting a miniboss (Curse you Jevel the Gruesome! That was my first character!) and then came back with a second guy and the boss was at the same health I had left it at. Then, I was fighting the leiutenant (No small matter, he was twice my level) and hit the wrong hotkey by accident. that was my "Warp to map" Scroll, so I came back and He was fully rehealed. He was at 4000 of about 300000 health, I'd just spent quite a while kiting him around. Are leiutenants supposed to recharge differently?

I beat him anyway, though. That was a really epic fight, more stressful than attacking an AI homeworld.
: Re: Q & A
: syndicatedragon November 13, 2011, 10:49:42 PM
Q: I found a neutral Ilari stone and what appears to be another NPC in a cavern. I don't seem to be able to interact with them though. Is there something I should be doing?
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 14, 2011, 12:36:39 AM
You can't use those like you can the Ilari in your settlement. The neutral ones only heal you/restore mana.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 14, 2011, 02:11:45 AM
Q: I found a neutral Ilari stone and what appears to be another NPC in a cavern. I don't seem to be able to interact with them though. Is there something I should be doing?

The only thing you can do with them is recruit the survivor when you are at one of your settlements. An icon for saving a person will be over the tile in which you found the underground npc.
: Re: Q & A
: wyvern83 November 14, 2011, 06:59:54 AM
Are plum trees in the game yet? I've yet to find one and I'm at level 54.

Also given how common it is to have magma in recipes, is magma supposed to be so rare?  Magma is scarce as it is right now, especially when compared to moonstone and sunstone that are involved in fewer recipes but literally liter my world map. Are new worlds more magma plenty these days?
: Re: Q & A
: Underfot November 14, 2011, 07:41:14 AM
Plum trees are in there, but they're nearly impossible to hit.  Energy pulse can't reach low enough to hit them, so you have to stand directly in front of the tree and fire touch your toes.  I believe I found most of mine in abandoned towns.
: Re: Q & A
: wyvern83 November 14, 2011, 08:04:58 AM
So in other words it's a bush? I've have to take a closer look then, thanks for the tip.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 14, 2011, 11:09:46 AM
Hey guys,

Been away as noted in the last release notes, but I'm back now and going through all my backlog.  100+ emails to catch up on today -- not a lot of time for much else!  Whew.  To some of the questions:

1. Plum trees actually look like trees, but their hitbox may be in appropriately miniscule.  Will need to investigate, but if so that would be great in mantis.  If you look at the grasslands areas with trees on the world map, there should be plum trees all over the place there.  Also I think maybe sometimes in the small towns, but that would be more rare.

2. Regarding boss health regenning, that's something we haven't fully settled on yet in terms of how it will work, but what you're describing is intended for the time being.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 14, 2011, 11:10:48 AM
Oh, and:

3. Yeah, magma is meant to be really rare, but not quite THAT rare.  There's some new stuff that is coming for rare commodities in general so that they won't be so scarce; and even in existing worlds this will help a ton. Hopefully this week.
: Re: Q & A
: wyvern83 November 14, 2011, 06:33:10 PM
I found them, but they were no where to be found in either of the two grassland regions with groves, 22 and 32 in level. I found six in the first abandoned small town region I checked. One of them was practically right at my feet when I entered the first or second surface region.  I assume a grassland with grove would have had more.

Energy Pulse went right through it, leaving it standing by itself. I had to aim down to get it.  There's already a post in mantis about the plum tree's hitbox so I just made one for plum trees not spawning in the appropriate grassland regions.

I look forward to rare commodity stuff you have coming soon. Now if only there were other places to find citrine gems. I have a desert of deserts in my game and I'm not looking forward to walking everywhere in regions where I can't fly without taking damage.
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 22, 2011, 01:55:03 AM
Why do neutral skelebots require food? It seems like they wouldn't be the type to eat.  :D
: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt November 22, 2011, 05:12:44 AM
They run on a naturally derived organic fuel.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard November 26, 2011, 09:06:53 AM
I think it may have been mentioned before but I'm unsure of the answer.

Will there ever be physical weapons in the game? Or is it going to be all fuelled by magic?

I was thinking it would be neat to have a system where you could apply spell effects to weapons. (Like having war hammer that also causes a rock slide when swung (or maybe only charged up attacks)

: Re: Q & A
: zebramatt November 26, 2011, 06:00:59 PM
I think the major limitation on non-magical weaponry is animating it - so we'll definitely see more traps, and projectile weapons; but melee weapons, guns and the like will almost certainly not be a part of the game for the foreseeable future. That's not to say it'll never happen, mind you - although I think Chris wants to shy away from guns in general, so that's less likely.

But being able to augment physical traps and projectiles with magical effects sounds like a winner. (I'm put in mind of Link's various magical boomerangs in the later games.)
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 28, 2011, 12:01:14 PM
Yep, no plans for any weapons that require physical new animations for characters.  Something like a sword that you summon and it fights away from your character would be a definite possibility, but the chance of us adding sword-swing animations for 120 planned character sprites (and growing) is vanishingly small. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Professor Paul1290 November 28, 2011, 01:31:20 PM
What sort of AI can we eventually expect out of normal enemies?

I noticed that you mentioned a new AI behavior system and described some of the new behaviors being applied to bosses and higher level normal enemies. Now that I think about it, behavior for most enemies in 2D platformers tend to be really simple even in ones that people regard as difficult.

It seems like an area where the game could make quite an impression for new players.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 28, 2011, 02:10:29 PM
Well, for "normal" enemies that varies quite a bit.  By normal I presume you mean non-boss.  But in that sense, there's still a lot of kinds of enemies, such as those that swarm you, those that are simple and for newbies, those that are rarer and tougher and smarter, etc.  You should see a pretty good variance, but bear in mind that when the number of abilities an enemy can use is limited, the options for making them amazingly smart-seeming are pretty limited, too.  Aside from bosses, you won't see many multi-ability enemies until a couple of dozen levels into the game for the most part.

For me, AI in a platformer can only be so good.  My goal isn't to make stellar AI here, because I feel like there's only so much that you can do with that.  Rather, what my goal is is to make varied and interesting AI, especially with the bosses, and I think that's definitely attainable with the new AI behavior system that the game now runs on.
: Re: Q & A
: Professor Paul1290 November 28, 2011, 03:12:48 PM
A lot of that pretty much does fit what I would think is pretty good for a 2D platformer.

When I say AI in most 2D platformers is really "simple", I could say it's often almost non-existent. Most normal enemies in 2D platformers don't do much other than charge straight at you or move back and forth and hurt you if you happen to run into them.

Even for a simple one-ability enemy, little things having it so certain projectile throwers try to keep their distance or perhaps even try to take cover behind something would be a significant improvement over what you'd normally see.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 28, 2011, 03:29:25 PM
Oh yeah, I quite agree.  A lot of the simpler enemies here already do things like that, such as having the skelebot snipers kite you a lot of the time, etc.  But there's only so much of that sort of thing so far.
: Re: Q & A
: Professor Paul1290 November 28, 2011, 03:37:46 PM
I suppose if there is an opportunity for something rather interesting it would be in maze rooms. I think since maze rooms aren't pleasant if they occur too frequently anyway, so it could be interesting to make them more difficult and hide some even nicer goodies in them.
I'm kind of picturing maze rooms filled with a large number of somewhat over-leveled enemies that are capable of navigating the whole room (going up and down ladders and such) and if you do nothing they would path-find in a way so they tend to surround you and come at you from all sides. There would be quite a bit of opportunity to use traps and such as well.

Think Pac-Man except vertical.  ;D
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 28, 2011, 03:43:17 PM
That seems like a great suggestion for mantis. :)

It would need to be a maze room with all loops instead of dead ends, but it could be really fun. :)
: Re: Q & A
: TNSe November 28, 2011, 03:48:47 PM
What language is AVWW written in? Any chance of getting hooks so we can implement our own AI's and submit?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 28, 2011, 03:53:54 PM
It's in C#, and modding support is unlikely due to the complexity of doing that; more or less the whole world structure would have to be accessible in various fashions for the hooks to be of any use.  My thoughts on modding, as opposed to community submissions of other kinds, are at length in some of the other threads.  Sorry!
: Re: Q & A
: TNSe November 28, 2011, 03:55:51 PM
I knew I recognized the C# icon on the game this one time. Too bad tho, as I code C# myself!
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 28, 2011, 04:06:40 PM
It's definitely a good language!
: Re: Q & A
: TNSe November 28, 2011, 04:28:39 PM
If you ever need an external programmer for anything lemme know :P
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 28, 2011, 04:31:22 PM
Much appreciated. :)
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 29, 2011, 01:20:05 AM
Umm...

I entered a stormy region. (Lvl. 5, I'm level 6) and pressed 3 (ball lightning.) I hear the sound and then I'm dead.

Also, my inventory looks like this:

(http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/502/63525544m.png)


Worthy of note, a lot of the pink squares have odd names such as "Absorb Attractive Items From Container, Skelebor Circle of Fire (I don't have Circle of Fire), Skelebot sniper shot, Use ability object: infinite, Convert Building Site to Building and so on.

What did I do? D:

Clicking some of the more strange icons causes a tidal wave of errors.Also, I have some spells I've never crafted in my inventory now. Storm dash/RTL are mysteriously missing. It hurts.

EDIT: apparently my initial death was because upon loading, my ball lighting was replaced by "Ball lighting explosion" which kills me instantly. I'm racking up quite a few dead characters.

EDIT2: I can use the skelebot sniper shot. Fun.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 29, 2011, 09:48:48 AM
0.544 is now out, sorry about that.

* Fixed a bug wherein many of the abilities in player ability bars from past versions of the game were improperly offset. The downside of this fix is that any new abilities that were picked up during 0.543 will be similarly wrong. Whatever you do, don't use any of the "pink box" abilities, as many of them will suicide your character. Just dump those out of your inventory somewhere discreet in your world. Sorry about the goof!
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 29, 2011, 10:35:58 AM
0.544 is now out, sorry about that.

* Fixed a bug wherein many of the abilities in player ability bars from past versions of the game were improperly offset. The downside of this fix is that any new abilities that were picked up during 0.543 will be similarly wrong. Whatever you do, don't use any of the "pink box" abilities, as many of them will suicide your character. Just dump those out of your inventory somewhere discreet in your world. Sorry about the goof!

Thanks for the fix so quickly! Wow.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 29, 2011, 11:05:38 AM
My pleasure!
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis November 29, 2011, 07:20:04 PM
Will the player ever encounter Slimes in other places than the tutorial? It seems odd that they're pretty abundant in this one region but nowhere to be found elsewhere.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 November 29, 2011, 07:23:06 PM
Will the player ever encounter Slimes in other places than the tutorial? It seems odd that they're pretty abundant in this one region but nowhere to be found elsewhere.

Yes, but I have to make more kinds of slimes first.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard December 01, 2011, 01:45:20 PM
How many people will be able to play in a multiplayer world at once?

Will entering a multiplayer game be like how it's done with Terraria/Minecraft?

Lastly, what will we be able to achieve in multiplayer that will feel different than playing single player? Like will we be able to sort of claim responsibility for specific settlements. (like I'm the mayor/leader of "TownA" you're the mayor/leader of "TownB"
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan December 01, 2011, 02:26:30 PM
How many people will be able to play in a multiplayer world at once?

Not sure right now, that's going to depend a lot on how fast the server is, and how fast it's upload connection is. There is no hard limit right now that I'm aware of.

Will entering a multiplayer game be like how it's done with Terraria/Minecraft?

This isn't set in stone yet, AFAIK, but as it stands right now, you're either going to be dropped into the first settlement or the intro mission the first time. Then, every time you log in after that, you will start from the last place you were in, just like single player works now.

Lastly, what will we be able to achieve in multiplayer that will feel different than playing single player? Like will we be able to sort of claim responsibility for specific settlements. (like I'm the mayor/leader of "TownA" you're the mayor/leader of "TownB"

At the moment, there won't really be any different things you can achieve in MP over SP. Except that you will be able to fight bosses/ go exploring together.
: Re: Q & A
: Dizzard December 01, 2011, 02:36:38 PM
You know, I said before that I wasn't that interested in multiplayer...

but I think now it might be pretty neat to have a second world I go to and develop with other people. To go and then come back and see how much has changed while I was offline.
: Re: Q & A
: tigersfan December 01, 2011, 02:40:39 PM
You know, I said before that I wasn't that interested in multiplayer...

but I think now it might be pretty neat to have a second world I go to and develop with other people. To go and then come back and see how much has changed while I was offline.

I'm kinda the same way. As a general rule in most games, multiplayer has no interest for me. But, I can definitely see how I might be interested in taking part in a world with other players.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 December 01, 2011, 03:24:57 PM
For multiplayer player count, that's something that we'll discover through the beta period, to be honest.  I am thinking that over the Internet something like 8ish players should be really reasonable on most setups, and maybe substantially more than that.  The new multiplayer model we have is incredibly forgiving of lag and bad ping without affecting your gameplay, so it should be pretty robust.

In terms of LAN play, the only barrier should really be the RAM on the server, plus general CPU processing power on the server if everyone is going in different directions at once and triggering a lot of chunk transitions that require mapgen to do its thing constantly.  But actually this is super forgiving on the CPU on the server aside from mapgen, too, so that's more of an intermittent concern in most scenarios.  I really think that 30 players ought to be reasonable, and maybe more than that, but it remains to be seen for sure as the most we've done so far is 2. ;)

And that's concurrent players, by the way.  The worlds could have thousands of players if not all of them wanted to be online at once.  It would save the state and such of all of them on the server, bringing them back where they left off, but as long as not too many of them were online at once for the specific server and network specs to handle, they could all rotate in and out as much as they wanted.
: Re: Q & A
: @B0FH December 01, 2011, 03:48:45 PM
In terms of LAN play, the only barrier should really be the RAM on the server....

Won't the limit be Unity though rather than physical RAM? For example I have 8GB on my desktop, but regularly run into memory errors on AI War still (with my extreme games).  Or will there be a separate (x64?) dedicated server executable?
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe December 01, 2011, 03:55:23 PM
Yes, it's the unity managed heap size limit (800MB) that would be the limiting factor.  That doesn't mean 800MB on task-manager/process-explorer, as the ram footprint noted there includes unmanaged memory (where most if not all of the actual textures are, etc).
: Re: Q & A
: Olreich December 02, 2011, 06:54:27 PM
So, we have a 800MB memory limit for characters. How much does any one character cost against that? Is that thousands of characters, or is it 100? What's the maximum memory consumption an AVWW server can take (before the program explodes because it can't address any more memory)?

What are the bandwidth rates like for active players? Could I reasonably set up a dedicated server in my basement and run it off my 10Mbps connection with 1000 characters (assuming infinite machine power)?

Is the current server multithreaded? How many cores can it scale to?

How many regions (based on averages) could be loaded at any one time into server memory?

I'm just looking for rough numbers, but an idea of max theoretical limits on multiplayer could help to give us an idea on how massive our worlds can be, and also give the crazy ones who want to set up dedicated servers ideas on what they should be running on.
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe December 02, 2011, 07:20:52 PM
So, we have a 800MB memory limit for characters.
~800MB for all managed memory, which includes GameEntity objects (the actual in-game objects and actors), NPCStateDescriptor objects (the additional data stored on settlement folks, certain bosses, etc), the World object, the SuperRegion and Region objects (world map stuff), the RegionInteriorData objects for any regions that currently have players inside them, the actual Chunk objects for any chunks that actually have players inside them.  All the localized text in the game (and probably all the other strings too).  Tons and tons of other stuff that would take too long to list here.

How much does any one character cost against that?
The character itself?  Not much at all, probably no more than a few kilobytes.

The main cost is the Chunk objects, which have a big ol' array of Tile objects (each of which can have multiple TileLayer objects), as well as all those GameEntity objects (every tree, every platform, every monster, every projectile, etc, though there is some partitioning into sub-data objects based on category and thus a tree does not need as much memory as a monster).  I don't know offhand how big a chunk is at this stage in the game's development, but whatever that is divided into, say, 500MB will probably give you the maximum number of "safe" players on a server.  BUT, if there's 10 players logged into a server and 9 of them are all in a single chunk and the other is somewhere else, that's basically the same RAM load as 2 players in 2 separate chunks.

What's the maximum memory consumption an AVWW server can take (before the program explodes because it can't address any more memory)?
Total, including unmanaged memory?  I've seen my client process get north of 3GB before dying (edit: this was during some buggy infinite loop tomfoolery, not normal operation), so it's capable of getting pretty far up there.  But all the chunks and that other stuff I just talked about needs to fit into about 800 megabytes or out-of-memory crashes tend to start happening.


What are the bandwidth rates like for active players? Could I reasonably set up a dedicated server in my basement and run it off my 10Mbps connection with 1000 characters (assuming infinite machine power)?
Is that 10 Mbits download, or 10Mbits upload?  The upload is the bottleneck for the server: the data coming in from the clients isn't all that big, though with 1000 characters it might get pretty bad.  But sending data out to 1000 characters, particularly if one or more of them is asking for something big like the initial world message or a chunk or whatever (which are actually pretty small because they're compressed) is probably more than a normal residential connection is prepared to handle.  I'm not even sure how well your computer would do handling that many separate connections, actively sending data or not.  But I'm not a networking expert.

Is the current server multithreaded? How many cores can it scale to?
Entirely singlethreaded.  The server doesn't actually do much cpu work (almost all the in-chunk simulation is local to the clients) except to generate new chunks when needed (and, at level-up, new regions), and if that gets to be bad we can probably rework the chunk-requesting message processing to hand off the chunk generation to a separate thread and defer execution of that transition until the chunk is ready.


How many regions (based on averages) could be loaded at any one time into server memory?
I don't know the average footprint of a region offhand, but it's pretty small because we keep most of the "interior data" (the dungeon map stuff, chunk metadata) on disk unless something needs it.  It used to be that a server running by itself after just loading a world only held about 50MB, and it didn't grow much as regions were added.  Right now the numbers are different but there's been some changes that might have the server loading more than it needs to.   Anyway: how many regions?  A whole lot.  One of the old alpha worlds has like 12000 regions, and the single-player was able to hold that, and I think that's even before we split out the interior data.


I'm just looking for rough numbers, but an idea of max theoretical limits on multiplayer could help to give us an idea on how massive our worlds can be, and also give the crazy ones who want to set up dedicated servers ideas on what they should be running on.
The multiplayer opt-in alpha is available now so you're welcome to give it a try.  I'm sorry that I don't have much in the way of numbers for you right now, pretty tired :)  Mainly when I think about those questions my response is "does it need to be more efficient?  I can probably optimize it".  It's more a matter of developing the game quickly and then finding the bottlenecks, and if they're bad fixing them.  But Chris and I are both performance-optimization junkies so once the game's off the ground we'll probably have you guys running dedicated servers on your toasters (not really; but I like to think so).


Anyway, the bottleneck to many-players-servers that you're most likely to A) hit and B) be-able-to-control is the server's upload connection.
: Re: Q & A
: Olreich December 02, 2011, 08:28:53 PM
I don't know the average footprint of a region offhand, but it's pretty small because we keep most of the "interior data" (the dungeon map stuff, chunk metadata) on disk unless something needs it.  It used to be that a server running by itself after just loading a world only held about 50MB, and it didn't grow much as regions were added.  Right now the numbers are different but there's been some changes that might have the server loading more than it needs to.   Anyway: how many regions?  A whole lot.  One of the old alpha worlds has like 12000 regions, and the single-player was able to hold that, and I think that's even before we split out the interior data.
All of those were in managed memory? Does that mean we could have players in thousands of different regions with the current memory allotment?

Anyway, the bottleneck to many-players-servers that you're most likely to A) hit and B) be-able-to-control is the server's upload connection.
I definitely understand that. I'm definitely not planning on trying to get everyone to play on the same world, but the idea that you could have a second box in your house (or a high-end computer) and be able to run a server with hundreds of people on at any one time is... tempting, to say the least.

In the future, could it be possible to remove the need to have the server have a key, and/or have it implemented such that a specific MAC address (or some other identifiable info) could have authority to connect despite having the same key as the server? It would simplify life for anyone wanting to run a server on a separate machine (or in a data center for the crazies).
: Re: Q & A
: keith.lamothe December 02, 2011, 09:35:09 PM
All of those were in managed memory? Does that mean we could have players in thousands of different regions with the current memory allotment?
Sorry, I meant the regions, not with any chunks loaded (well, 1 or 2 for wherever the singleplayer entity was).


I definitely understand that. I'm definitely not planning on trying to get everyone to play on the same world, but the idea that you could have a second box in your house (or a high-end computer) and be able to run a server with hundreds of people on at any one time is... tempting, to say the least.
Yea, that idea has really appealed to me too.  Kind of going the "modestly multiplayer online game" route ;)  But in practice I don't think it's going to get all that high.  And the game design really can't accomodate the kind of singleplayer and tight-knit-group co-op gameplay that we're aiming at and also deliver a compelling experience to 100 people all doing their own thing on the same server at once.  That doesn't mean they couldn't have fun, but the game's not designed for that kind of usage.


In the future, could it be possible to remove the need to have the server have a key, and/or have it implemented such that a specific MAC address (or some other identifiable info) could have authority to connect despite having the same key as the server? It would simplify life for anyone wanting to run a server on a separate machine (or in a data center for the crazies).
You're quite welcome to run the server with the same key as you run one of your clients at the same time, and have that client connect to the server (or another server, or run singleplayer), it should work just fine :)  I was just doing that a minute ago, actually, with a normal copy of the game.

But yea, perhaps later we'll remove the need for the server to have a key at all, I don't think we really thought about it.
: Re: Q & A
: freeformschooler December 04, 2011, 09:11:09 AM
I've got a question. What are these?

(http://img.ie/1225a.png)

I cleared out a stash room and now they're bobbing up and down in the air. I can't seem to interact with them at all.

EDIT: Nevermind. Hehehe :)

I've got another question. How do you skip the intro mission?
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis December 04, 2011, 01:28:03 PM
You can't skip the intro mission, but I recall X4000 saying that it can be done in 3 minutes including fighting the bosses.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 December 05, 2011, 09:06:44 AM
You can't skip the intro mission, but I recall X4000 saying that it can be done in 3 minutes including fighting the bosses.

Yep, for the moment it can be speed-ran really easily, but in the future we'll have a way for skipping it.
: Re: Q & A
: Toll December 13, 2011, 10:37:31 AM
So... I got really really really bored and started going through Mantis issues and found a whole bunch of them that are either A) already solved, or B) irrelevant at the moment. Should I comment on each of them to prompt their closing, or send a list to someone, or just post them in a separate thread?
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 December 13, 2011, 10:41:54 AM
Commenting on them would be great, and would bump them up to our attention -- I'm not surprised there's a lot of cruft in there, what with all the recent changes, but I've not had time to go back through.
: Re: Q & A
: Toll December 13, 2011, 10:53:37 AM
I hope y'all are prepared for a heapin' helpin' o'updates then!
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 December 13, 2011, 10:58:02 AM
Thanks! :)
: Re: Q & A
: Toll December 13, 2011, 11:22:03 AM
Oh, and... uh... reporters, you might want to use "Hide status" and set it to "Resolved" *ahem*
: Re: Q & A
: Coppermantis December 13, 2011, 05:30:45 PM
Any advice for taking down an overlord? I'm level 21 (Got the full version in the giveway on Indiedb! Yay!) and the overlord is 20, however even with my most powerful spells (Mk. III Ball lightning, which the skelebot overlord has weakness to) I can barely chip his armor. Getting Mk. IV spells is jsut about out of the question-going to level 30 regions is suicide. I've already got two ghosts floating in the room with him, which doesn't help.
: Re: Q & A
: x4000 December 13, 2011, 06:49:47 PM
I'd suggest over-leveling him, given all of the above, at the moment.  You'll gain power, he'll lose health, and you'll outmatch the ghosts as well and be able to take him on more easily.  Balance on the overlords is a work in progress at the moment to be sure, but over-leveling is currently one main way around it.