[.701] Gameplay comments

Yay:

1. Groups on the cloth map look ... like pieces in xian chi! (Chinese chess, child's version, using half the board and pieces "hidden" upside-down -- a mix of Concentration and Stratego)

2. Tandis's Poison Dart is oddly useful while he's at low levels. Free fire-and-forget damage at one back-rank enemy. I underestimated it until I actually took it.

3. Warrior's Spirits (+50 XP) counts all XP bonuses. Equip your Ring(s) of Tutor, cast Tutelage, and join with that wizard hero, and you can turn that 50 XP into 88+ XP per potion.

4. Healing presents interesting tactical choices. Relying on Healing spells is a serious drain on mana. Potions cost flagons. Tent costs 2 turns. I lean toward Crimson Ring (while Tandis waits to get Harbinger). With all the kills he wades through in melee, it's the most efficient source of free +HP. It works for the unnamed trained units, too (although not quite as well, because they usually pick 1-v-1s). Anyways, with 4 crystals, my Healing gives +22 HP, so every 7 total kills with a Crimson Ring floating around my groups pays me back for 1 Healing spell I didn't have to cast.

Boo:

B1. Throwing Knives seem like a waste of craft goods. Mine lasted for 1 throw in 1 combat, each. I guess that's comparable to a Potion of Damage That Guy, but still ... knives should last a few years, until some monster staggers off and carries one with it.

B2. City enchantments should have a dispel mechanism -- in case they're buggy and I want to replace them with one that works

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Gilmoy

Join Date 12/2009

+41

Welp:

W1. My non-hero group of soldiers took out both Vetrar and the fire dude (Aesenoth?). Normal difficulty. It was ... anticlimactic.

Let small map = USA. I trembled in fear as V and A wandered between my cities around "Nebraska" (while actually doing nothing). I had no heroes nearby:

Tandis + Keplin were in "Arizona", clearing out a ring around SK's fortress.
Varda was up in "Montana" finding my 1st wild horses (but no metal).

So ... just goofing off, I stacked 3 soldiers + 1 Cleric (from a quest) and attacked.

[Vetrar] 3 soldiers + 1 cleric. 1 spell = Graveseal. Many scrolls of Fireball. He moves only 2? And almost never casts any spells (even though he has Blizzard). My guys just stayed away from him and waited 10 turns to cycle through 3 rounds of Fireball scrolls. At 35-50 damage each (plus some prior damage from my outposts), it takes only 6 scrolls to nuke him. My 2 surviving soldiers meleed him to death. Actually ... they hit him down to 1/300, and then poison got him. So he didn't even give me +3 HP for a Crimson Ring kill. Bah. Lost 1 soldier. Only 33 XP total for him?
[Aesenoth] 2 soldiers + 1 cleric. ibid, except with Blizzard scrolls. He promptly cast Embers = 44 fire damage on my Cleric, killing her. My 2 soldiers hit him for enough. Lost 1 soldier + 1 cleric. He's worth ... only 12 XP??? A lone Skeletal Horde (single skeleton) with combat factor 7 is worth the same XP!

Now that I've seen V+A in action, maybe Tandis could just melee Aesenoth straight-up, 1-v-1. He has enough HP to probably survive 1 hit or any 1 spell. Varda might be able to Maul him before he gets an action. Any ranged attack, e.g. archers or battlemages, would beat on Vetrar with impunity as he slowly walks around rocks.

The problem is that as soon as either one casts an area-effect spell, all trained units just die from the damage. That would be anticlimactic in the other direction.

W2. After saving 20+ turns to craft a Sovereign Sword ... I just find one in a golden treasure chest. But it needs Level 18, and Tandis himself is only 15. Boo. (I know I could craft my own, and then use the pop-up window to equip it onto a Hero, bypassing the level reqs -- but that is probably a bug.)

W3. This game (which is my first-ever game, still in progress) has gotten ... boring. The urgency is basically gone.

Vetrar and Aesenoth are dead. I have both keys.
I know where SK's fortress is.
I own 6/7 shards (of 10), and have a pioneer en route to the 7th.
I'm running out of spells to research. (And what a blah selection I had.)
Wandering monster groups are few, tiny, and of no real concern.
Fights are monotonous.
There's no sense of ... controlling space or defending a perimeter.

Now I'm just mowing lawns and going for resources (horses + crystal), which I probably don't even have time to exploit. I probably could beeline to SK, merge my groups en route, max-craft consumables, and win as-is.

I await balance tweaks and new things to do.

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