I backered it. I am sure that they will get things straight. I want this to do well.
Same. I’m pleased to see the reviews on steam are starting well, 82% earlier and 78% now. Not bad at all. I think the early game is a little rough, like I say, and I worry that’s going to scare folks off (D&D is pretty unforgiving to level 1 and 2 characters) but I suspect now I hit level 3 and especially once I hit 4 there will be few fights I cannot make a real go at.
I played through the backer version up to level maybe 3. Well see how it works out. It does sorta remind me of Temple of Elemental Evil in a off hand real time kinda way.
Can’t you just sell some stuff to Oleg? That’s what I did. Worst case, just drop some stuff? I dropped a bit in the palace just before I set off to Oleg’s.
I’m having lots of fun with this. I really enjoy the story-book scenes, which typically feature several skill-checks and alignment decisions. So far the combat has been manageable for me, but I’ve been moving around cautiously.
Also, the main map is innovative. I disliked it when I made my first journey, but now I’m loving it. For now, at least, I really feel like I’m exploring – moving forward uncertainly. Won’t say more for fear of spoilage.
Rolled up a Half-Orc Magus. I slightly regret the weapon focus I chose for my sword saint as you couldn’t see any descriptions of the weapon types when choosing. I grabbed Elven Curved Blade for my dex build, but I didn’t realize it was a two handed weapon which interferes with the combat casting bonus actions… Do we know if there’s any respec option in game?
Otherwise I enjoyed the opening. The game looks really nice and I didn’t experience any bugs. Having all your choices thrown back in your face as a judge of your integrity and leadership skills was really cool, as was having all the companions pick teams.
You can get some information by mousing over the combat results. For example, I had trouble damaging a particular vermin creature and by mousing over the combat results and trying different weapons, I concluded it was vulnerable to fire. There is an encyclopedia that lists monsters, but it doesn’t seem to have stats on them.
On a similar note, is there any way to see how many HPs enemies have? I can toggle between the health bar and text, but text just says things like “Injured”. I want some actual numbers, so I have a better sense of who to concentrate on.
Is there crafting in this?
There certainly is cooking. I’ve “copied” a couple recipes into my recipe book, and I’ve been picking up various cooking ingredients. I cook routinely when camping. But I don’t understand exactly how cooking works, or even where to look at my recipes. Does anyone know?
As for other crafting, maybe? I keep picking up items whose tooltip says “a crafter could use this”, so I’ve been hanging on to them for now.
I’m sorry, I was referring to magic item creation.
Finally got to the Kingdom Building portion and it looks pretty awesome. Very similar to what we did when we played through the Adventure Path. The weird thing is that it says I don’t have anyone eligible to be my Treasurer, and I don’t remember this being an issue in the AP.
I think my alignment shifted from chaotic good to neutral. I don’t recall seeing any message and didn’t see one in the log. I’ve been picking up loot as I go through the rooms looking for the enemies in the initial location.
Also, I didn’t take the money from the person’s armory.
Edit: Maybe it went from neutral to chaotic good (which I picked at character creation). I reloaded the initial autosave and my alignment said the same thing.
The art team did a great job making everything look attractive. I mean everything, the character sheets and help windows that pop up. As I mentioned above it even looks good on the low graphic settings and I was getting 50-70 fps on my not so great laptop. I switched the graphics to medium and my frame rate is in the 20s. Not sure I notice a huge difference if I don’t examine things closely, so maybe I’ll go back to low.
Oooo, I’m going to have to approach this one a little differently.
I didn’t think anything about breaking into the armory - loots always there to be taken! There was no warning about I’m doing something bad. There was no red hand when I took something I shouldn’t. I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, especially because they spelled out that maybe taking the money would be bad (which I didn’t do). So maybe I’ll have to just be a bit more careful about what I do.
So who decided to follow you into the Stolen Lands? For me it was Linzi, Harrim and Miri.
Not sure if I missed a pause setting. Is there one that will pause whenever an ally or enemy completed their attack / action? I don’t like it when I have to stare at the log because then I’m not watching the battle unfold. But I also don’t like when too many things get added to the log between looks because then it is more difficult to tell what is new and to see what happened.
I think I read that there is crafting, but you don’t do it yourself - rather you commission pieces from artisans you hire as part of your kingdom… or something like that?
It’s in the Manage Camping UI - where you go to assign watch order, and tasks for camping.
I don’t know where to find out WHAT the recipes do though…?
Answered my own question, after resting it’s a buff icon next to the portrait. In fact, it turns out one of my characters LOVES Haggis and gets an extra boost from it!
How do you even get into that UI screen tho?!
Linzi, Amiri and Valerie.
When you set up camp, it’s a button on the left above the current assigned tasks. I’ll try to grab a screenshot next time I camp.
Ok thanks, I tried clicking on a bunch of things when I had my first camp yesterday evening, as I assumed there was a way to re-assign the characters, but nothing worked. I bet it’s really obvious too :)
Eh, not really - it’s a busy UI, and the idea of doing anything more than clicking a “rest” button in an RPG like this is a pretty new concept, I think, so one could be forgiven for taking a bit to acclimate.
Thanks!
Yeah there’s a wee bit too much clutter and the buttons need to stand out more. Like I get why they chose the color for the buttons they did, but the Manage button just sort of slides under your view as you eyes get drawn down to the “assignments” and rest button. Honestly, there’s no reason whatsoever to put either button anywhere other than the middle of the screen, say under the Time passage b anner thingy. And make them bigger. And glowing purple.
So hard mode apparently gives monsters massive stat boosts. +4 to hit and ac, and I suspect a big fat save bonus. I can’t tell how much of the bonus comes from the two different difficulty settings and want to experiment with that. But that is waaaay too much. Cr is based on a 4 memeber party. But there are specific prescriptions a DM Can follow for a larger table. They do not bump up numbers that dramatically except in very specific cases (e.g. boss monster might be given the advanced template and also might have an optional extra buff it can employ). Certainly regular mooks don’t get that kind of boost.
So I’m playing on normal but like I said I want to tweak the settings to look more closely at the numbers to get a better feel.