This is the hardest bit for me. Stopping at a reasonable hour is one thing, getting my head to stop is another!
So many nights of restless sleep where my brain is still playing the game hours after I’ve gone to bed.
So, I’m hoping to get some advice here from those that have played like @geggis and @Therlun.
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For stats, you get one extra hit point for each star you spend. Is it more efficient to spend them on weapon stats or on raising health, at least initially? It seems like extra health might be a big deal and I’m not sure what weapons my crew will be using yet.
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If I’m trying to get to a specific class, like warpblade, is it better to stay in the prerequisite classes for a while and get abilities and passives from them first or is it better to save the XP for the class unlocks and just keep moving along to the next class? I’m torn on what to do here.
@geggis, Apparently this was added in version 1.5.4 so you may have played the game before it was added. Might be worth another try.
Version 1.5.4: Minimum XP
To alleviate grinding when raising up green crew, there is now a “Minimum XP” level that increases based on your allies’ XP gains! And the Breaker’s ‘Shatter’ ability has been rebuilt to be much clearer and more consistent.
Ah that’s good to know! I think I started playing after that patch so perhaps I was fretting too much over it.
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I prioritised specific weapons depending on what I had in mind for each character then when that got prohibitively expensive started spending spare stars on HP and the like. It all seemed important from what I remember so I don’t think you can go wrong unless you’re spreading yourself thinly and putting stars into stats you aren’t using.
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So my understanding is that passives can be applied regardless of primary or secondary class, so they’re always worth considering if you think they’ll pair well with other abilities along the way. I only unlocked actives if I thought they’d help my current party composition out or if it was a class I could imagine reverting to in certain situations. Some actives are just too useful to pass up! I think what you’re weighing up here is where I started to come unstuck because there are a lot of classes, passives and actives to consider–and XP and stars take time to accrue–and several prerequisites to unlock other classes and paths. Not to mention weapon bonuses per class which affect where you spend your stars! I suppose ultimately it depends on whether you want to get to a specific class fast and risk not bunging XP into actives along the way. I have no real answers here as I was torn on all this myself! :D
Thanks, that does help. There’s a lot to consider. One thing’s for sure, this is a power gamer’s paradise. The min/max is strong in this one. Personally, I love it. So many meaningful decisions and ways you can go, not just in class building, but in how to play the game. I think I might start out trying some guild quests and then some trading once I can afford the buy a Cog and more crew. I started with a Pinnacle and a few cannons, just in case I run into a fat neutral merchant as I go.
For stars weapon/magical element stats are definitely the better investment. A couple of levels in health are nice but I wouldn’t bother with skills you know you won’t use just for the 1HP.
Higher levels get much more expensive and XP is plentiful though. Unless you are obsessed with perfection I don’t think you’ll regret spending a couple on the “wrong” skills.
As for classes I do think beelining for the one you want to try out is a good start. After a reasonable foundation and some experience with it start looking at other classes’ actives and passives for things that sound synergistic.
Thanks! I’ve sort of made a small detour for now over to the scout class to get everyone except my sage the first aid skill and medic passive. It’s just too useful early on in the game. I just did a guild quest to kill a monster den full of spiders and without first aid everyone would have died with all the poison flying around.
Last night was interesting. I finished a guild quest and found a researcher in that city. I signed a contract with him then turned over all the info I’d collected on my voyages to date. It was all worth about 4000 gold. So, I went from totally broke to doing just fine in a snap.
On my way back I stopped at the Hello Kitty capital and signed on with the cat faction. I also picked up another guild quest there. I was returning to my starting port when I ran across a pirate fleet. They attacked me with their 5 galleon fleet so I bravely ran away. My pinnacle was a lot faster so it wasn’t hard.
Soon after that I ran into two independent merchant cogs all on their lonesome so I decided to pay them a visit. One promptly ran away but the other one stayed to fight and hit me with their cannon. I boarded them and since it was a 5 to 3 fight in my favor, I soon had captured my very first ship. My pinnacle did take some damage, though. I limped to port with my prize and was able to repair my pinnacle for 100 gold. The cog’s hold had cargo worth a lot more than that and more importantly, I now had lots of extra cargo room in my fleet. I immediately bought a bunch of gold bullion to sell.
I hired another crew member so I’d have a minimum crew for both ships and set off again. I saw my first grove (a kind of dungeon, I guess) along the coast but decided to come back later.
I eventually found a port selling the trade good the guild quest wanted for the quest and bought it. I was also able to sell the bullion and pearls in my cargo there for a goodly profit. More importantly, the town has a repeating dungeon there. Some ruins that I can run once a week. It has 5 levels and each level gets tougher. I decided to give it a try and managed to clear the first 2 levels. I got a push trigger stone, gold, some steel armor, steel and chiton weapons, and an armor crafting kit. I don’t know how to use the trigger stone so I’ll have to figure that out. Today, I need head back to that grove and take it on.
So, I now love this game. It’s like some unholy combo of Sid Meiers Pirates, Merchant Prince and Battle Brothers except with a lot more rpg, skills, classes, equipment. A lot more of everything, really. This game is just brilliant. It’s rapidly moving up my list of all time great games.
Just adding this is Steam Deck verified now as well so you can play it on the pooper. Great game, gonna restart on deck soon.
This game has a really cool ‘rolling horizon’ effect with the earth’s curvature rolling in new parts of the map from the edge of the world as you travel in that direction. It’s a really great effect that I don’t recall seeing in other games. Can anyone think of any other games with something like this?
Hmm Didn’t Uncharted Waters scroll like that? NES/SNES game that was an inspiration for this one?
Yes I loved that effect too! Reminded me of Animal Crossing.
I found out that apparently the dev has made some previous games, one of which is Voidspire Tactics. That name sounded familiar so I checked my Steam library and sure enough, I have it and apparently played it years ago. I’m going to have to load it up again after I finish Horizon’s Gate. I remember that I enjoyed it but not much else.
He made three games with that tactical combat framework.
First Voidspire Tactics. It’s somewhat in the vein of the classical (1-6) Final Fantasy games. Classes, open-ish world, story gated. The tactical system is in its first iteration. Good first effort but except for the combat I thought it didn’t really stand out compared to similar games.
Next was Alvora Tactics. There is a evil thing threatening the world and you manage a dungeoneering outfit to deal with it on mix of randomly created and handcrafted maps. The story exists only for the initial setup and the final win condition. You embark on numerous runs for loot and experience and manage a roster of heroes.
The tactical system is expanded.
I liked Alvora Tactics much better. It strips away the story and open world and instead just focuses on the dungeon expeditions. The flow works really well and the tactical combat is satisfying and pretty diverse.
My only big complaint is a flood of abilities with many useless options (Horizon’s Gate nicely solves this by drastically cutting down on the number of similar skills).
Horizon’s Gate then goes in the opposite direction and adds a bunch of world-framework. Exploration, trading, premade dungeons, factions, ship combat. Each individually relatively simplistic but most of it works well and really adds to the game.
I played this and enjoyed it, but never finished it. I think I got to some cave with a dragon in it, that was part of the main quest. It wiped the floor with me and I had no idea what to do about it.
I have a sharpshooter with multishot and combined with a blunderbuss that skill puts out some insane damage. Which is needed because the fights have been getting tougher. Of course the blunderbuss has to be reloaded every other turn but I’ve kind of solved that by getting the ‘rolling reload’ passive skill from the shiftcloak class (allows reloading after using a no-cost movement skill) and using the ‘dash’ skill from the rogue class. That allows me to reload at the beginning of the next turn after firing but it has a super long cooldown. It works for a quick reload once a battle anyway.
This game is no doubt the best game purchase I’ve made this year. I’m having a terribly hard time tearing myself away from it. The hours just fly by when I’m playing.
You’re tempting me to go back to this! I think I quit because at some point I felt like my progress was stuck and I didn’t know what to do about that. But that was a couple of years ago and it looks like there have been a whole bunch of updates since then.
I’m already thinking about starting a new run after finishing this one. Apparently there are some really nice mods for the game so I’m going to load some of those up after this initial vanilla run is done.
I love the game but I’ve decided that the naval battles part leaves something to be desired. I think the problem is that it’s just too simplified. Every ship only shoots one cannon per turn, no many how many they have equipped, that means that a tiny 600 gold cog with 2 guns are just as good at doing damage as the most massive 50,000 gold warship with 5 guns. The warships just have more hit points. Due to this, you can go into a battle with a small pirate fleet of 4 ships and easily lose a ship worth 50,000 gold. Me no like.
I think I may have to make a giant fleet of tiny and very cheap cogs and just swarm pirate fleets to death with them. That way lost ships won’t hurt at all.
The dev of Horizon’s Gate announced his next game Kingsvein, planned for release this year.
A larger roster of rotating fighters exploring a larger location. Classes and adjustable skills in turn based tactical combat encounters.
This time with a “metroidvania-style exploration”. Which I assume means mostly/entirely hand crafted maps you visit repeatedly.