Secret mission switching to regular mission upon death "bug"?

[topper]

I was playing yesterday on the 1.006 beta. I entered a region (I think it was desert) which showed a "Fix Anachonisms" mission on the continent map. When I entered the chunk, I did not immediately notice the entrance to the mission zone, so I continued into the next few areas where I found the entrance to a secret mission area. The secret mission was my first "Defend supplies from metor shower" mission,  so I failed miserably. The crates and I were mostly dead by the time I realized that melee spells with knockback were the only effective thing in those missions. Although I didn't really mind the whole panic of "my spells are not doing anything to those! I better try something else", maybe the mission tip should suggest equipping a melee spell as opposed to recommending shooting them down?

The "bug" came when I died in the meteor shower secret mission. Instead of spawning back at the settlement, it put me in the entrance area of the "Fix Anachonisms" mission in the same chunk. I imagine this is not the planned behavior. Has anyone else seen this before? I do not know if this is actually a bug or not, and I do not have a save game to reproduce it in.

One unrelated question. Is there any need for the "w" key in normal keyboard+mouse play with wasd controls? I realized yesterday that it seems unnecessary since the only up movement seems to come from jumping and if I mapped jump to that, then I could have one additional spell slot mapped to space-bar. (sudden thought, maybe it already does jump, but I have never pressed it?  )

My biggest confusion probably comes when I look at the mission rewards and have to try to decide if that is something I want. It would be nice if the encyclopedia was cross-linked in such a way that if I click "Earth Essence", then at the bottom of the entry it say "This is used in:......." with links to all the spells that I currently have unlocked that use the material. That way the encyclopedia would go full circle instead being a one-way track where you have go to each spell to see what resources it requires. Also, the settlement building and guardian powers mission rewards have amusing descriptions, but it seems like there is not an easy way to tell what it actually does from just clicking on the mission reward.

Overall, awesome game! Just like AI War, the longer I play it, the deeper it becomes; and I am only Tier 2 on the first continent  . The 1.007 patch looks sweet! Hope to try it today since the shopping list should help me stay on track and not just get distracted by every shack or ruin  .

[TechSY730]

I was playing yesterday on the 1.006 beta. I entered a region (I think it was desert) which showed a "Fix Anachonisms" mission on the continent map. When I entered the chunk, I did not immediately notice the entrance to the mission zone, so I continued into the next few areas where I found the entrance to a secret mission area. The secret mission was my first "Defend supplies from metor shower" mission,  so I failed miserably. The crates and I were mostly dead by the time I realized that melee spells with knockback were the only effective thing in those missions. Although I didn't really mind the whole panic of "my spells are not doing anything to those! I better try something else", maybe the mission tip should suggest equipping a melee spell as opposed to recommending shooting them down?

The "bug" came when I died in the meteor shower secret mission. Instead of spawning back at the settlement, it put me in the entrance area of the "Fix Anachonisms" mission in the same chunk. I imagine this is not the planned behavior. Has anyone else seen this before? I do not know if this is actually a bug or not, and I do not have a save game to reproduce it in.

I believe this was fixed in 1.007.

One unrelated question. Is there any need for the "w" key in normal keyboard+mouse play with wasd controls? I realized yesterday that it seems unnecessary since the only up movement seems to come from jumping and if I mapped jump to that, then I could have one additional spell slot mapped to space-bar. (sudden thought, maybe it already does jump, but I have never pressed it?  )

No, it doesn't jump by default.
The key mapped to up (w by default) does not have much use in the mouse+keyboard control scheme, but it is VERY useful in the keyboard only control scheme. In keyboard only controls, sons any other way of targeting (tab targeting, explicit spell binds on mouse buttons, etc), the direction you fire is the same as the direction key/keys you are holding (forward if none are held).

My biggest confusion probably comes when I look at the mission rewards and have to try to decide if that is something I want. It would be nice if the encyclopedia was cross-linked in such a way that if I click "Earth Essence", then at the bottom of the entry it say "This is used in:......." with links to all the spells that I currently have unlocked that use the material. That way the encyclopedia would go full circle instead being a one-way track where you have go to each spell to see what resources it requires. Also, the settlement building and guardian powers mission rewards have amusing descriptions, but it seems like there is not an easy way to tell what it actually does from just clicking on the mission reward.

Yea, I agree that there is all kinds of places where handy popups/clickables referencing the built-in encyclopedia (and from encyclopedia page to encyclopedia page) would enormously help user friendliness.
Still, I'm glad that there is an in-game guide at all.
Some deep exploration games (like NetHack) don't bother to tell you what anything is or how to find it, just tells you basic controls and leaves you to figure it out (mostly through dieing ) yourself.

Overall, awesome game! Just like AI War, the longer I play it, the deeper it becomes; and I am only Tier 2 on the first continent  . The 1.007 patch looks sweet! Hope to try it today since the shopping list should help me stay on track and not just get distracted by every shack or ruin  .

I'm going to use the shopping list feature, but I still am going to get distracted by random shacks. Enchant charges and upgrade stones are just too tempting to skip sometimes.

[topper]

No, it doesn't jump by default.
The key mapped to up (w by default) does not have much use in the mouse+keyboard control scheme, but it is VERY useful in the keyboard only control scheme. In keyboard only controls, sons any other way of targeting (tab targeting, explicit spell binds on mouse buttons, etc), the direction you fire is the same as the direction key/keys you are holding (forward if none are held).
....
Yea, I agree that there is all kinds of places where handy popups/clickables referencing the built-in encyclopedia (and from encyclopedia page to encyclopedia page) would enormously help user friendliness.
Still, I'm glad that there is an in-game guide at all.
Some deep exploration games (like NetHack) don't bother to tell you what anything is or how to find it, just tells you basic controls and leaves you to figure it out (mostly through dieing ) yourself.

Thanks for the response!
For my control scheme, setting W to jump and having space bar free should make it even better. I have a 5 button mouse mapped to the first 5 slots, space can be the 6th. I put all my used spells in the first 5 slots of rows 1 and 2 of my spell inventory and have similar spells in the same slots. For example:
-Ranged spells in slots 1 and 2, melee in 3, logistics in 4, and misc in 5. I will probably add a movement spell in 6, so that gives me twelve (or 18,24...!) easily accessible spells and I know that I always have a set of workable spells. I also set Q and R as forward and backward switching of rows since I do not use targeting, so i can still store stuff in the other rows without making switching sets harder. I prioritize one row for my best/ most commonly used spells and change it whenever I enter an area full of monsters that resist one of them.

About the tooltips and encyclopedia, I totally agree and think that the ones in this game are far better than just about anything out there. I am glad to see that others have the same feelings about how it can be even better.