Remnant: From the Ashes (Souls Shooter)

Add me to the camp of people comparing this to Hellgate London…but in a bad way, lol.

From Reddit: ’ Level Scaling Information

Hi all, tragic (aka Ben Cureton - Principal Designer) here,

There has been a lot of questions and misinformation regarding the level scaling of Remnant and I wanted to clear a few things up and give you the knowledge to better plan out your adventure! We’ve received lots of excellent feedback from our players and look forward to making the game even better because of it. For now, here’s how level scaling works!

(NOTE: This is an edited reply that I posted in another thread):

The game uses a weighted average to determine your potential power. It searches each slot (both equipped and inventory) and finds the highest level item and uses it for that weighted average. So, if you have a +5 gun (so level 6 behind the scenes), a +3 secondary gun, a +2 sword, and +1 armor (all 3 slots) your weighted afterage is probably level 5. Now, each NEW area you go into will be 5+1 (so 6). Your level 6 gun will be doing work, and your armor will be below-par.

Additionally, the resource drops to upgrade your gear is based on the ACTUAL average level. In the above example, using the same gear, your average level is 3.16 (so level 3). It will keep dropping regular Iron until your average is +5. Then it will start dropping Forged. This is to compel you to keep leveling up your weakest gear.

OK, so… If you are level 2 in a level 5 area because you just sprinted ahead and never upgraded, enemies will be doing 30% more dmg than normal (or better said, you wil lbe taking 30 % more dmg than normal). You will also be doing 30% less damage than you should.

If you decide “OK, I clearly need to level up!!!” and get to level 6, that level 5 area REMAINS level 5. It never changes difficulty unless you reroll the entire campaign. This is so that you can absolutely power-up and outlevel the area that was giving you problems. You will now be doing 10% more damage and taking 10% less damage than you would had you been level 5 against level 5 enemies.

Now, if you leveled up to level 21 (+20 all items, the max gearscore), that area that you previously spawned at level 5 would be an absolute joke. You would be doing 150% more damage and you’d basically take almost no damage… because you outlevel them by a massive margin.

Just to be clear, once a zone is spawned at its level, it NEVER levels up again until you reroll the entire campaign. This is so each level starts at a challenging level and allows to you power up and get stronger, thus making it considerably easier should you decide to do so!

EDIT: When I say LEVEL, I mean your GEARSCORE (both weighted average and your actual average). This has nothing to do with Trait Rank. Max gearscore is +20 which equates to Level 21… meaning, the highest the enemies can go is Level 22. Of course, this is all behind the scenes.

EDIT: Reworded some stuff so players understand that it also checks your inventory. Unequipping items doesn’t change anything.’

With their setup (campaigns are random to some degree), seems like a really good system. I hate it when RPGs are constantly level-scaling to you so that you never get a feel of being any more powerful. This neatly avoids that while also making sure that the new areas you go to are challenging, at least until you’ve farmed them heavily.

Based on comments here, especially the connections being made to Hellgate (a game I have some fond memories of and still have a t-shirt from even, though it’s a bit, um, ratty now), I picked this up.

So far I like it. I did the tutorial part and then a bit of exploring. The writing and voice work are adequate; thankfully, the game does not take itself too seriously, while avoiding slipping into self-parody. I do like lines like “It’s the apocalypse; I can be as grumpy as I want!” or something to that effect.

I knew breaking boxes was a way to get scrap, but I found out breaking office chairs and auditorium chairs is great, too!

I kind of like the fact that you can seamlessly move between melee and ranged, though it took a little while to get used to the way they do it.

It’s definitely not a full function 3D world like you might find in Assassin’s Creed; again, the Hellgate: London comparison is apt. Lots of things you can’t climb on, that you think you should be able to climb on (in fact, it seems so far that their is no mantling or non-stair/ladder type climbing), and there are a lot of boarded up openings that look like you should be able to bash through, but you can’t. Still, it maintains a decent illusion of an open-ish world.

The checkpoint system is pretty elegant, with healing and restocking at the price of respawning normal enemies.

And I like the shotgun, like I usually do in these types of games.

It’s pretty impressive how influential Demon’s Souls was in retrospect. Even the new Star Wars game is supposedly going to use the bonfire system.

Heh, shows my ignorance of whole swaths of modern gaming that I never played Demon’s Souls.

Um, damn, this game is hard. I had a tough multiple death slog through some sewers that felt really good when I finally got to the checkpoint. Then, down some stairs, around a bend, and bam, boss fight with some bastard that two-shots me and spawns exploding baddies. Ow.

I suspect this is the sort of game where you fight, die, figure out one part of what the boss does, fight, die, figure out another part, rinse, repeat, until you get it.

And I’ve found exactly zero weapons or armor in the world so far.

Yes, every boss but one for me so far (out of seven or so) has involved learning mechanics before downing then.

I’ve found a few weapons and a new armor set so far and out of those, two of the weapons are available right near the beginning (and shouldn’t be based on campaign RNG). Both were hidden, though, one of which took me a while to figure out how to get to it. It was well worth the time, though, it’s been my go-to since.

If you want a hint or a spoiler let me know and I’ll throw it in spoiler text.

Yes, hidden weapon spoilers please.

I’ve only got past the first boss so far but needed the help of Mr McMaster. Wombat if you want me to join your game and try and help then let me know.

I thought the maps were randomly generated, does this not apply to weapon availability or placement? I’m not challenging anybody here, only curious.

I have my game set to “friends” for joining. Does that mean Steam friends?

There’s an armor set and gun that can be found by everyone at the start as it’s based on the starting room on earth and a puzzle in the Ward 13 base. After that it’s basically RNG. I’m bummed as I could of got a new armor outfit but I didn’t have the right item at the time :(

Okay, here’s spoilers for the two weapons accessible at the start or shortly after the start, regardless of campaign RNG.

There’s a SMG hidden in Ward 13. It goes into the Secondary slot and is a huge upgrade over the starting pistol. It’s basically a second primary weapon, as far as I’m concerned.

Head over to where you went to start the Reactor, but go down another level instead. On this floor, you can find a new Trait by playing some audio tapes. The Trait gives a % bonus to EXP earned throughout the game.

There’s a locked door that you access via swiping your key card, but the reader has no power. You can find a fuse on this same level. Follow the electrical conduits to find the fuse box, put the fuse in, and flip the switch. This will enable to to swipe your key card and get access to the other areas.

Once you’ve opened up the doors in B3 using the key card, you need to go back to the fuse box and flip it off. That’s because there’s a giant fan/turbine that’s spinning, and you need to cut the power so it stops. Once it’s stopped, you can walk through it to room that’s hidden behind it. Here you loot the Ward 13 Master Key and a few other items. The key’s the important part.

Go back up to floor B2, all the way to the end of the hallway. There’s a locked door there that the master key will open, and is where the SMG can be found. Enjoy turning monsters into swiss cheese.

The other weapon that can be found really early is the Sniper Rifle. You can get it at the Church, which should be found shortly after you kill your first boss. It’s where you defend the Tree Mother, or whatever her name is. There’s a waypoint by it if you’ve already passed it. The sniper rifle is in the basement of the church. It’s behind some pallets, so just start smashing them and you’ll find it.

There’s randomness to it for sure, but the two weapons I was referring to are in fixed locations right near the start and not affected by RNG.

So, uh…what’s the verdict on this game? It’s been over a week since I’ve purchased a game (my bank must think I’ve passed!), it’s Friday, and this and Rebel Galaxy Outlaw are in my crosshairs.

I like it a lot, it has a similar gunplay feel to destiny but the enemies are more interesting and varied.

I like it a lot, personally. To give some context, I always like Dark Souls but the co-op mechanics in the game always killed it for me eventually. There’s a couple friends I have that love to go through these games, and trying to do Dark Souls consistently with two other people was a nightmare. One other person was fine, but there was always one person (different each time) that couldn’t see the summoning sign or other issues like that. After 10 minutes of fiddling with it, I’d finally get it working and then I’d get invaded in the most BS of places, or take an unlucky shot from the boss and have to start the process all over again. Even if everything goes well, we then had to repeat the process two more times for each friend. For a game that is already difficult and frustrating, it eventually just sapped my will to play it each time (I realize it’s designed more for pickup co-op, but my friends and I all wanted to play it together).

Anyway, Remnant allows us to have a Dark Souls-like experience but co-op is just a breeze to set up and play. No more resummoning after every boss or death, no more being unable to see each other’s signs or whatever. Just play and have fun. It has the finding secrets and weapons like Dark Souls and difficult boss encounters. Basically, I’m getting a lot of the things I liked from Dark Souls without a bunch of the crap I had to put up with previously.

I think they’ve done a really good job having a sort of Dark Souls type combat but with guns. The pace of the game is more Souls than shooter which adds a lot of stuff I like, like having to carefully time boss (and other) attacks, roll out of the way, etc. I like the balance of guns vs melee as well, where ammo is never scarce enough that I’m unwilling to use them but not so abundant that I just ignore melee.

Overall, big thumbs up for me. My expectations were pretty low given how difficult it can be to pull a game like this off and the unfamiliarity of the developer. While it’s not perfect, it definitely exceeded my expectations.

Thanks for the feedback!

I’m not the best when it comes to WASD controls in games, so I tend to favor a controller in such games. Does this play equally well with a controller? Or is K&M superior?

I’ve only played with a controller, seems to play great. One of my friends played with KBM and if there were any advantages they didn’t see notable.