Suggestions for game-play smoothness.

[topper]

Note moved from the end of the post: I did not intend this to become a book, but it did.  None of these things are criticisms from my side, I am enjoying almost everything in this game, but especially because it allows me to play the way I want to. Removing the cap on missions through CP and adding the store really helped this. Most of these are small things that may or may not help the game much for most people based on playing style.

I just finished Continent 2 with most things unlocked and I have a few suggestions that would make the game seem smoother.

1. Healing: To regain health without killing a lot of monsters, I find a warp gate, warp to the first chunk in the area, then go to the edge of the chunk to exit to the continent map, then run over to the settlement, then storm dash over to the green stone and back. At this point I need to do all of these actions in reverse just to get back to the point I was exploring. Is there an easier way?
My suggestion is to cut this off at some earlier point to allow healing without wasting time. What I would personally like is to regain to full health just by running over to the settlement in the continent map instead of having to enter it and run to the stone. However, since most of the string of actions feels unnecessary once you reach a warp gate, it might be changed so that you heal as soon as you reach the continent map, or even as soon as you enter a warp gate?

2. NPCs: Right now I am struggling to find a few of the different types of NPCs (I know at least one is still locked to me on continent 2). It would be nice if on the unlocks menu it listed which regions and/or types of building you are most likely to find each race. Also, once there are a ton of NPCs in town, it gets difficult to glyph transfer to the correct one since they are all running around and they tend to form a group around you. Maybe when you use a glyph transfer it brings up the settlement residents screen and you can then compare all of them and select the one you want in one simple step? I would like it if the residents screen showed health/mana/attack for each character instead of having to click each one.

3. Other unlocks: On a similar note to unlocking new NPC types, it would be nice if the rest of the unlocks gave more hints as to where to find them. For example: Find a stash in a deep wood house. What region type do those appear in? Same with listing which regions some monsters are most likely to appear in. Also, the ones that are not actually possible to unlock yet should maybe be marked that way.

4. Store: Can we have some option for selling things back to the store for a small amount of shards? I am not using most of the traps and have so many platforms and crates. At this point stashes are not really worth going to because the only thing I gain value from is enchant containers.
Also, can we have the option to buy enchant charge containers or full (random) enchant containers at the store at an appropriate price?

5. Mission rewards, advancing time: I am seeing a lot of rewards of white witch hair, and others of sunstone or moonstone. Both of these are often combined with gems that I do not need any more of. It seems like maybe the seeding of these is too high considering the very low amount of spells that use them. I have a high mana character that can cause time to advance by the day and night spells, but it is a pain to switch to her because of #2 above, and it is also kind of a pain to go into an area, cast the spell a few times, check the continent map... repeat. It would be nicer if once you have an NPC with enough mana, you could cast those spells directly from the continent map regardless of if she is your current character.

6. New continents and multiplayer: For a little while on continent 2, I was stuck without being able to build wind shelters. The building I needed was in a difficult area, so I wanted to advance time and get it to seed in an easier place. However I think I was stuck on the continent since all of my deep sea ports were in the wind! Likewise, when I go to look at continent 3, all of the ports are in the wind, so will I be stuck there as soon as I land and until I can get wind shelters? Can you make it so that each continent has at least one open deep sea port?
This was also a problem because my wife joined in on multiplayer and she spawned on continent 1. She wanted to play there for a little while to get a feel for the game without messing with the current continent, but I could not leave continent 2 to go play with her until I built some wind shelters.

7. Continent overlay: The continent map could use some additional information. I find myself hitting escape and bringing up my loot goals almost constantly, can loot goals be added to the continent map permanently or as a toggle? It would also be nice if it showed the number of tier X orbs/spells you have versus your maximum so that you know if you have all the orbs you want before advancing the tier. (Maybe a server admin command could be to lock all of the lieutenants and overlord at the current tier until the max number of orbs has been reached?)

8. Minor bug? I saw this across two different computers on the latest beta, but it was not consistent enough for me to be sure it was happening or to catch a trend of when it would happen. Mech units were occasionally not dropping either health or consciousness shards. I am also sometimes seeing the orange marker appearing in the top left of the mini-map like they were when shard drop was first added.

9. Minor bug? Lava flats Fix Anachronisms in cave mission had very few native monsters, and none of the ones I was expecting. This was on low continent tier and the only monsters in the area were non-natives except for some skelebot kneecappers. I thought they did not belong so I killed two of them, and there was only one of them left at the end of the mission (1 native monster in the whole cave compared to 8-9 anachronisms!). I think this means there was probably only one non-anachronistic monster in the entire mission. Did I get really lucky, or did something go wrong?

Edit: Just remembered one more. The blade and spike trap infestations are really too much in some areas. In particular, when I come across an abandoned town building with a spike or blade trap room, I am likely to just skip it and go back rather than search the building. It might as well be a destroyed room. A narrow hallway with a row of jumping spike traps is going to hurt you way more than anything you can find in the building will help you. Teleport is not accurate enough to get around these and my normal jumping/dodging tactics do not work when the spikes fill 1/3 or the corridor. I also had a rescue survivor from deep cave mission that was infested with tons of blades. I turned back after about 30m because there was no way I was going to get a live NPC out of there. I am fine with how damaging they are, but the risk does not match the reward at this point, especially in narrow spaces.

[Vinraith]

An alternative solution to 1), and something that I think makes sense, would be for the to be a simple means by which to get directly from a warpgate to the settlement without any of the additional fiddling around.

[magnus17]

I think a lot of these are good ideas, but some of them don't fit the style of the game, as I see it, and others are really hard to implement. Several of them (NPC info, loot info, info in general) I totally agree on, and I think it's been the game's biggest problem for me; a lot of stuff isn't explained well or at all, and we either need a wiki (made by players and just crammed with every detail we can find) or better information in game (which has been coming, piecemeal, over time, and I greatly appreciate that).

4. Selling back to the store, I don't think will happen. It seems to go against the game in both a lore and a mechanics sense, as it's built to be a relief valve for a cruel RNG. I know what you mean about excessive items, though. Also, you can buy enchants from the store, and they're not really that expensive. (only a few thousand shards, depending on the type)

5. On the day/night cycle, it's a good idea, but I don't think it'll really work. Maybe the spell should just be cheaper, from the world map, at least.  (Don't use it, so I don't know how much it is)

6. I know what you mean about the ports, but considering they've mentioned it in the updates that you get trapped on new continents, I don't think they'll change it. It's part of the challenge.

As for healing, good ideas (topper and Vinraith both), but I don't think they would work. A warp point directly to the settlement would be problematic, starting with how would you structure the map to let you warp from one continent square to the other without covering the entire bottom right hand side of the screen with green and blue and gold squares?

Healing at the continent map isn't such a bad idea, or just wandering over the settlement map, but getting rid of the warp to first chunk, walk to exit, turn around, go back, warp to where you were would be counter to AVWW. This is a game about efficiency; stash rooms exist because they give more stuff than normal rooms, saving time. Leaving to heal is terribly inefficient, so doing so is naturally discouraging to the player. Maybe not something we like, but I don't think it's something they'll change. At least until you hit the continent map. And, to be honest, I like it that way.

[Vinraith]

From an implementation standpoint you just need one more box, which either takes you to the settlement directly or to the world map.

That it would be so easy to implement and hasn't been, however, is a general indicator that it's probably not a desired part of the design. At present, though, I'll note that it's less trouble to just die than it is to heal.

[magnus17]

Wow, I should probably go to bed. That's really simple. At least, going to the world map. Getting to the settlement would be easy, but getting back to one of many chunks would take a lot of doing and design. Of course, you could just have it as an emergency escape valve (and considering how rare those escape scrolls are, I wouldn't mind that).

Having done everything I can to not die (and succeeded, at least in my main world), I'll take your word for it. But don't the vengeful ghosts pose a problem?

[Frelor]

1. Healing: To regain health without killing a lot of monsters, I find a warp gate, warp to the first chunk in the area, then go to the edge of the chunk to exit to the continent map, then run over to the settlement, then storm dash over to the green stone and back. At this point I need to do all of these actions in reverse just to get back to the point I was exploring. Is there an easier way?
My suggestion is to cut this off at some earlier point to allow healing without wasting time. What I would personally like is to regain to full health just by running over to the settlement in the continent map instead of having to enter it and run to the stone. However, since most of the string of actions feels unnecessary once you reach a warp gate, it might be changed so that you heal as soon as you reach the continent map, or even as soon as you enter a warp gate?

I can't stress enough how much I would like to see something like this happen. I registered here just to support this.
I like difficult games. If a game isn't challenging it gets boring very fast. Therefor I play on higher difficulties. There ,like expected, the enemies do a lot of damage and the amount of healing done after defeating an enemy is very little. So at some point I have to go back to the village to get my healing. That is where the game drags on unnecessarily. You have to walk there and back again and we all know that only a certain little creature had fun doing that. From my point of view there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to heal in a warp gate. If you reach one there is no danger whatsoever to get back to your village. So it would make the gameplay a lot more fluent if I could just pop into the gate, get my heal, and carry on playing.

[NyQuil]

For healing, what if in certain chunks, one of the npc stones from the settlement spawned after all the enemies in the chunk were cleared.  My suggestion would be either boss chunks or stash chunks.  For balance, they could even charge you shards.

[Oralordos]

3. Other unlocks: On a similar note to unlocking new NPC types, it would be nice if the rest of the unlocks gave more hints as to where to find them. For example: Find a stash in a deep wood house. What region type do those appear in? Same with listing which regions some monsters are most likely to appear in. Also, the ones that are not actually possible to unlock yet should maybe be marked that way.

Related to this, clay needs to be updated to let you know that ice age buildings spawn vastly more vases then anywhere else.

[zebramatt]

For healing, what if in certain chunks, one of the npc stones from the settlement spawned after all the enemies in the chunk were cleared.  My suggestion would be either boss chunks or stash chunks.  For balance, they could even charge you shards.

+1

[yllamana]

I was a bit flummoxed yesterday by about a gazillion blade traps in a corridor in an unavoidable chokepoint going up a lieutenant tower. I ended up dying and now it's an unavoidable chokepoint filled with a gazillion blade traps and an angry ghost spamming purple stuff.

A couple of things it didn't occur to me to try were the spell that makes you tiny and the bat scroll. I wonder if those would make it doable, though double damage blade trap would be pretty brutal (though noting that I think on the platforming difficulty I had, the latest release would leave them doing the same damage they do now with Miniature running).

I like the healing suggestions. I'm not sure about entering a warp gate doing it, since you can certainly run into cases where you're in danger even escaping from the first screen because you have so little health left, but at the very least returning to the world map should probably heal you and healing in the warp gate might be a worthwhile sacrifice just for gameplay flow.

[EtherealOne]

Perhaps once you enter the world map you are immediately healed to full health and you can warp directly from a warp gate to the world map but it costs say 10 health. That way if you are low on health then you will still have to risk running away.

[Mánagarmr]

For healing, what if in certain chunks, one of the npc stones from the settlement spawned after all the enemies in the chunk were cleared.  My suggestion would be either boss chunks or stash chunks.  For balance, they could even charge you shards.

I dunno if this has changed a lot lately, but earlier in the beta, you could find independent Ilari chrystals in caverns, hiding out among the bosses. They'd supply healing away from home.