New trailer for the expansion, now coming in March
Aw, nurtz.
He reuploaded it now, dunno why. I changed the url.
Thanks! Looks great!
The game for one dollar…
Price of the expansion is even cheaper than I thought
Shara impressions:
The DLC has some new ‘misc’ content, like a new pair of areas, new enemies, new relic items, etc. It also has the new random adventure generator, the Wanderer Jouneys, I still haven’t reached that. But apart from that, the main thing it offers as a minimum two new playthroughs, one for the new story, Shara, and another for the new job, the Calligrapher.
Shara’s gimmick is that she isn’t just like a new job (class), but she plays even more different than usual. She heals in another way, she charms monsters in another way (no corral for you), she progress in abilities and stats in another way.
In special, it’s interesting how she gains abilities. She gets one new random ability (from the general pool of abilities of all jobs!) to choose from 2 or 3 when you open a Pandora’s box (that reminds me of other RLs that advanced in that way, offering a choice of a few random abilities with each level up). Additionally, she also gets a new exclusive ability when she rests in campfires between floors. Which also has a twist, they are also random, in reality you will need more than one game to see them all. So putting two and two together, she is going to be a replayable character, for people who loves the random build aspects of some roguelikes, like for example Slay the Spire.
An example, my first choices
The game warns you this Shara mode is for veterans and blahblah, but at least the start is actually easier than the standard game, because her initial abilities are very good. Shield is OP. However I suspect as I advance things will change, and in the tough fights not having the health flask available will make things very dicey.
I finished Shara’s story. It was ok, the last boss made me sweat but I still could beat it at the first attempt. Not a lot of story really, in any case it was a prequel and you could imagine how she had reached the point she is in once Mirai meets her. There is cool teaser at the end about the world’s secrets and stuff, for an eventual Tangledeep 2, maybe.
In any case, the point of the Shara’s campaign wasn’t the narrative, but to have an alternative mode of playing with a different, more random progression, and in slightly shorter times (9 hours in my case).
As flaws, the end game is a bit of a slog, with big maps full of champions and no respite, only combat and more combat. The worst part was imo the balance. The dev, Zircon, showed to be receptive, at least.
As you can check in this thread, I complained about the balance/difficulty of this game before, hell I even did a few mods related to that, but I think here it was even worse. Which is funny as the game warns you how Shara’s story is for “experienced players” and blah blah blah and in the end it was easier than the average Mirai run, at least during 80% of the game, the final 20% and the bosses are fine.
In fact that will make balancing it tricky, because you don’t want to make harder all her run by modifying a global parameter, otherwise the endgame and the boss fights will get too hard (or do it but he will also have to nerf the difficulty of said areas). The main problem imo is that her two core abilities, the one she starts with, are superb. With the shield and several pawns you are invulnerable 90% of the time, and the game only gets ‘interesting’ in the other 10%.
On the other hand I liked the new class, the calligrapher. It’s a dual wielding magical warrior, she has four magical AoE abilities that scale half with the Spirit stat. Her dual wielding bonus puts her in an unique niche, and I like how each of the four abilities have different shapes, different secondary bonuses and different damage types.
What I thought it was the most interesting part of the DLC is the Wanderer’s Journeys. It actually reminded me to my Turin Condensed Campaign mod, as it’s a standalone dungeon adventure with less bloat and less cheese, thanks to most of them not having pets, no dreamcaster (it has a cute one-time use automatic-upgrade mini-dreamcaster!), and less opportunity for multi-classing. Ironically I thought the difficulty was better adjusted here than in Shara’s story :P.
There are 9 of them, each with different biome themes, and special conditions. For example there is one where the boss starts with you and you have to run away. Of course this being a roguelike the maps themselves are random.
The cool thing here is that ENEMIES ARE ALSO RANDOM, they are generated by selecting a sprite, a name and them giving them a series of attributes and skills. So in every dungeon you have to learn which ones regenerate health, which ones have a pull, which have a nasty paralyze+bleed attack, etc.
The Journeys tie up with another new feature, a new tier of even more powerful items, the relics. You can keep them once a Journey is finished, unlike the rest of items. Which sounds cool for the metaprogress but… I will warn you, it also can trivialize the rest of the campaign once you resume it. On the other hand there is also a new super high level dungeon as optional endgame as part of this DLC, which is the place you want to go once you are fully geared up with relics, but I haven’t seen it.
The only thing that I dislike from Journeys is that while they have random conditions and random enemies… you still play with your default class, from level 1. Again and again. I really dislike that, already I consider the original campaign a bit too long, so now in addition of playing your 20 hours as say, Paladin, in the normal campaign you introduce new separate dungeons of 15-30 floors to play inside the same run with the same class, starting them with a level 1 Paladin. So, how many times are you supposed to play Paladin, by how many hours? Given there are 13 classes in the game, and given the dungeons themselves are supposed to be stories of adventures you are told, there should be some of them where the class is also random.
But hey:
I guess I can use the console and switch jobs.
edit: I forgot, there is also a new series of abilities for everyone, the ‘runes of knowledge’. You find them as a rare item, pay 500jp to use them and gain the skill.
There is a new DLC. I haven’t played since the Shara expansion release so I can’t say a lot. Just pasting from the Steam page:
It’s pretty cheap (4€). New dungeons, new bosses, new weapon type, new equipment type (wraps) , new monsters and a some new mechanics for crafting.