Thea 2: The Shattering

You do need higher resource tiers to increase the value of your items. You’ve probably noticed that basic wood has 0.5 essence or whatever term that is. The next level of wood might be 0.9. Are you also using the larger numbered slots. Many items will ask for 20 or 30 wood. With basic that would increase the value from 10 to 15.

You can build something to get kids in a village. I guess in the sequel you don’t need a village, but it seems like an easier path to follow.

I just lucky and got a Zerca as a reward for completing an event on the second island that appears to be full of goblins and undead. If I can ever find any wood there I might go ahead and put down a village. My traveling nomads are up to 11 in number now.

Thanks. I watched a vid on crafting and I think I have it sorted now.

One of the new buildings, Sawmill, in the sequel can create wood, but I don’t know how much. Probably still best to be near some.

I’ve had villages without wood and they work out okay. One option is to send out your best gatherer (or two) for a few turns and stock pile it if it’s nearby. The other is as @belouski says the lumber mill which works well enough (make it with high enough material and you can get two a turn, which is what you need to make it through winter.)

As far as getting different classes in your party, for kids I give them pets that boost wisdom or mysticism, and if they are ever offered luck I take that. In my last game that went on for some 250 turns I had an assortment of different demons (like five of them) and a goblin. If fact the only warrior I had was my starting one. I got really lucky on the chance (the pure chance) option (first getting it at all and second not getting scoundrels.) That game though I never made a village because I couldn’t find a spot with food + worthwhile resources (one or the other, not both) and that’s after visiting most of the islands. Those island were crawling with assorted baddies (my team could handle it but it was pretty much none stop.) I eventually gave up and restarted. :/

The other way to get different classes other than kids and random events is to work on goblin, orc, dwarf etc faction and recruit classes from them.

I managed to put down a village and it got killed by bears while my A team was away.

Then my population shot back up as I got new children. I think it actually makes sense to suicide away anyone who doesn’t fit your plan, as you only seem to get new kids below a certain threshold.

Wondering if I can risk building a village on the second island. My second 7 might not be strong enough to survive there.

I think the village mechanic needs a bit of work.

I got pretty lucky on the goblin island. Not only did that event Zerca join me, I also had a child event not too long after that. And then I ground out some rep with a goblin town to get to friendly with them and recruited a (ridiculously expensive) goblin shaman. I had a couple of really good codexes on me I got from the goblins as quest rewards, including a legendary one, so I gave them to my new magic lads and I’m loaded for bear now.

I’m going to go over to the starting island again now and see if I can kill the lightbringer towns there and plop a village down where they were hogging up all the good resources. I have a bakers dozen in my crew now and hopefully 6 in my town with the town guardian can hold it against any intruders while my main party is off questing.

Main quest is a bit of a mess, branches that don’t go anywhere, chances to get stuck. I guess there is a fallback route with the nasty dwarf?

Once you get to the alchemist and the red cave, the quest splits. You can either try to free the dwarf prisoner (very hard) or go to the various islands and talk to the various settlements of dwarves, elves and goblins to get allies to solve the quest without help from the imprisoned dwarf.

Thanks, I’d actually gone a bit past there, and found I had to visit a village I had destroyed… so I followed a different route through the quest. It felt more like I was blundering around than making interesting choices though.

Ultimately the Chick parabola on this one seems pretty short. I’ve done one playthrough and I could maybe do one more where I go straight for the things I know are good.

I really enjoyed my first play-though and beating the main quest. It unlocked a couple of new gods and a bunch of god points so I’m playing again with another god this time. I guess I was pretty lucky the first time because this time though it’s been much tougher and I’ve been struggling to get anywhere near the power level I had in the first game. So, it seems pretty variable. And I haven’t even messed with the custom difficulty settings yet.

I wonder what happened to @Nesrie? I thought she was a big player of this game? I figured she’d be posting here a lot after it was released.

She’s been off the boards for a little while. Hopefully, she is really enjoying playing it with her sister somewhere.

I’ve been enjoying this one so far. I loved the original, and I like a lot of the UI improvements in this new edition. Also, it’s terrific that the auto-resolve now tells us what the auto-result and lets us decide whether we want to auto-resolve or fight manually. Now I just need more time to play…

This game certainly has that ‘one more turn’ appeal. It’s been hard for me to tear myself away from it.

I’ve played so much of this game it’s kind of silly. 165 hours so far, and it’s the only game my sister will play with me now; she will literally play nothing else. I’ve also found out, she’s exceedingly slow.

Since it’s still early in, I am playing a lot with the kids trying to figure out how to mostly reliably get the classes I need. I am using a luck a lot. It seems to be working, also sacrifice several slots to start with an elf child… they’re pretty awesome, these elves. As expected I wound up with a demon in my party (chance child) and an elf and there are several more options in story based quests open to me which is really cool. If you don’t know that having a variety of characters can open up options… totally check it out if you can. Getting those extra characters, especially as children is risky and can not work out.

Hey Nesrie glad to hear from you! I may pick up Thea 2 some day. The first was a little rough but had enough interesting bits in there for a couple play throughs.

@Nesrie, what are your overall thoughts on the game? Like it? A classic for all time? Terrible? Something else? :)

I’d like to hear from @Nesrie as well. In the meantime… there is a demo if anybody didn’t know.

I’m up to about turn 60 in my second game, having lost miserably in my first, and I’m really enjoying it.

There are lots of improvements over the first game of the series. The seasons and time-of-day are more interesting and relevant to game play; they affect my decision-making more than I expected. The new combat system is more intricate and fun, especially with the inspired auto-resolve system, which previews the result for you (in general terms), giving you a chance to resolve manually instead. The world is more interesting too, with multiple islands instead of one big mass. As Nesrie said, gathering is tougher now. Everything seems a bit more challenging, in fact. I like that.

With possibly one minor exception: level-up decisions? Maybe @Nesrie or someone else can help me with this. When asked to level up, you get to choose one of three attributes to increment. One of the 3 can always be incremented by 2, whereas the others can only be incremented by 1. Is there ever a reason not to choose the +2?

Overall, though, I’m really enjoying this. I’ve only got 5-6 hours in it, so I can’t rate it or declare whether it’s a candidate for “Game of” something, but I like it. Will report back after I’ve played more.

Steam says I have 108 hours played for this game. I’ve completed 2 games so far and really do like the game a lot. I finished the 2 main quest lines in the first game I played and then ended it. In the second game I did all of that and then continued to play until I got a Domination victory.

Despite all of that, I’ve managed to unlock a grand total of 2 additional gods to play. And that’s my biggest issue with the game right now. I’m not going to put in 1000 hours to unlock all the gods and other options.

Particularly frustrating was the fact that it said I had unlocked a god in my second game that I had already unlocked in my first game. So, I basically ended up only unlocking one that game in spite of it saying I had unlocked 2.

So, over 100 hours and I still haven’t unlocked the gods I’d like to try out. It’s a really, really fun game but the unlock scheme is a bit nuts.

As far as I am concerned, there still isn’t really another game like Thea or Thea 2 out there. To me it has the one more turn qualities of the earlier Civilization games combine with the randomness of a story based game that also changes based on measures of chance and just choices you’ve made. I mean if you play with an elf character, suddenly the same event you’ve seen a dozen times before just feels different and you know it’s because of the elf because an option shows up that makes it clear that you are getting a choice here that you didn’t get before because you an elf, or a dwarf, or a demon or a ghost…and you’re wondering what kind of neat outcome there will be. 2 is hugely flexible when it comes to difficulty. I play at 139%, but it can be easily tweaked to be a lot harder or significantly easier.

I think Thea was a sleeper classic that Thea 2 builds on well. There will definitely be a segment of the gaming population that will find it repetitive. It’s designed to play again and again and again and get just enough chance, whether it’s your characters, your gods, the resources you get or choices you make to make it feel not entirely the same path. It’s also a game you’re meant to lose, like give up and start-over which some will hate, like really hate… but starting over still gives you those points for gods so it’s not really a waste at all.

Now Thea 2 does have a design flaws that might make it seem less worthwhile than 1.

I think the island approach was actually a mistake. The idea of building varying levels of rafts and tying it to weight makes the nomad option feel kind of… meh to me. I mean there is a fair amount of chance in the game and there was such excitement to find a rare resource early on in 1, even if going for it that early often wound up being a mistake. I just dislike this designated island stuff so much but… a couple of steps back doesn’t detract too badly from the game.

They’re still changing stuff, and if they support it like the last one, maybe a few new voices will be heard and they can make some shifts.

It really is a game you learn via playing, doing it right and wrong, learning for the next time. I think I am at around 170 hours now (400+ on the last one), and 90% of that is an MP experience which means molasses speed but… I get excited every time I see a new quest, every time I see an old quest with a new option, every time a kid grows up

some minor notes.

I don’t consider the auto-resolve a cheat, especially in MP. It speeds things up so much, especially for groups you know you will win, the easy ones. Even if I get a good result with auto-resolve, I often do manual if it’s not the best, especially for yellow. I still feel it’s off for yellow challenges (intellect/wisdom). If it’s a new group, it’s best to learn what you’re up against.

Most of the time, the +1 is a primary attribute and the +2 are secondary.

Leveling, not children, is usually focused on their class. Warrior can benefit from strength, primary, and perception, secondary. Hunter meanwhile is mostly focus on precision although sometimes I beef them up on yellow too and they wind up being heavy hitters there too (but sadly not too much life). And then it can be a little situational. I’ve given a hunter strength just so they can carry some armor, and a +2 Wits is often exciting to me. Getting my people upfront to bring something down fast can be the difference between a total wipe and victory.

Keep in mind your gear should show you what is being used to attack which can help you choose what to pick too… like the witch might be using destiny or mysticism depending on what item she is using.