SXRPG Version 7.2.0 -- 1.18 Server

[Skyend]

not exceed max mana, but got to expensive for it beeing worth to be used

Look, I got lucky to find 2x ability upgrades and matto to not steal them :p

I really hoped to not being forced to buy potion upgrade but that's how it is, also arcane dmg spell (already have cold dmg spell and a fire weapon)

Going forward I'm not wasting ability points on attack spell and chain attack, I don't see why they are getting useless in the late game where all others abilities get better.

I was just lucky to get 5-6 extra abilities, but u can't pray for that. Having abilities that are useless in the mid - lategame are a waste.

[Mabuse]

yes, i also think the combination of chain_attack which consumes a lot mana AND attack Spell is too expensive to sustain
however i think Attack Spell (and only attack spell) will recieve cost reduction of 20% to bring it back into the competition

Going forward I'm not wasting ability points on attack spell and chain attack, I don't see why they are getting useless in the late game where all others abilities get better.

that may be because cleric has higher base base damage output.
i remember you said it was pretty useful, so there was a time you used it, in late game other abilties become important also, so it will shift to other things in later game.

I was just lucky to get 5-6 extra abilities, but u can't pray for that. Having abilities that are useless in the mid - lategame are a waste.

that are the expieriences you make, when improving your build. next time you know it better.


but from what you write i think you made some progress. i personally didnt try uncontested so far, but i WILL watch the replay


the use of attack spell is simply that it is an alternative to direct damage spells, and can be a possibility to deal several types of damage.
also its an alternative for non magic-heroes that dont have access to direct damage spells

[Skyend]

Attack spell is useful on maps where it doesn't get to expensive, means u win before that (mainly chapter I and almost Journal, chapter II)

Well and early to mid. Maybe it's fine to have abilities that are useless in the mid-lategame if u have enough that you need.

But having 2 will for sure make the Hero useless in the lategame - unwinable. (Unless u get lucky, as I did)

[Skyend]

Finally Chapter VI win on uncontested 2p
Version 7.2.0

Me: Cleic - Dwarvish Sentinel
matto: Warrior - Great Troll

We lost many games early on turn ~20, however once we survived turn 25-30ish we were good. The orcs were easy to take out so I thought it's going to be easy from there on, but not at all. Undead was pretty hard and the endgame too.
Matto didn't have the best resi upgrades only Fire, Cold, Arcane pretty high 85-9$%. (he didn't know what he needed for the lategame)
I think having 4 upgraded even if it's only 60-70% is better - late we also got 5% cold and arcane boss item drops.

While I wasn't able to use Extra Attack and Chain-Attack anymore with it's cost increase it wasn't worth it anymore. Got 2x ability upgrades - took arcane damage and potions to buy red and blue ones for half the price (also found a 25% cost reduction). With that I got red ones for 14g and blue for 38g.
For aromry I also had fire, that was the plan to counter fire ghost and dragon while I had iceball spell to take them out, also that allowed me cool movement.

In the lategame the last 30 turns I just bought potions mostly red and a bit less blue (had 8 bag slots)

Divine Heal was pretty useful (in the lategame only) allowing me to attack the enemy without riscs. This way I also was able to 1v1 the finall boss. Went in with almost 1k mana. Glad I build a pierce weapon and got assassin.
Not sure if we could have made it without Teleport, mattos minions also helped destracting the enemy so I was able to go in without fighting to many bosses.

I'm glad that I haven't sold my shield (found), didn't think that I ever upgrade 3 weapons at that time, but that was pretty good. Matto even had 4 upraded weapons at the end.

Overall the map was fun, it's one of the or the best one. Great work . (a hidden spider passage would be cool)

SXRPG Chapter VIMountains of Ulthar replay 20260704-204343.gz

(754.54 KiB) Downloaded 5 times

[Skyend]

yes, i also think the combination of chain_attack which consumes a lot mana AND attack Spell is too expensive to sustain
however i think Attack Spell (and only attack spell) will recieve cost reduction of 20% to bring it back into the competition

Going forward I'm not wasting ability points on attack spell and chain attack, I don't see why they are getting useless in the late game where all others abilities get better.

that may be because cleric has higher base base damage output.
i remember you said it was pretty useful, so there was a time you used it, in late game other abilties become important also, so it will shift to other things in later game.

I still like both, but I don't understand and hate it that they are useless in the lategame. Why would I spend 350 mana on an extra attack when I can buy a blue potion for 38g (or even less with more upgrades/alchemy).

Even with maxed out I'd never spend more than let's say 125. I finished most enemy bosses in the late with spending around ~120 mana. When I'd needed more a blue potions was ofte the choice.

[Skyend]

It would be better if max mana cost cap is also reduced. With that you can have based max higher. I found some cost reductions efficiency buffs, but there is difference between 300 and 350 also when it's stright up to 350 after the shop.
Then I can see a range from 200-250 to be ok.

[Mabuse]

Finally Chapter VI win on uncontested 2p
Version 7.2.0

Me: Cleic - Dwarvish Sentinel
matto: Warrior - Great Troll

so i see it is done. You two proved the map can be beaten on uncontested
Congratulations, you are true Heroes

will watch the replay and see what conclusions can be made.

then i can upload my solo test run on grandmaster. which i wasnt able to reproduce yet,
but as an excuse i can say that i also spend most of the time in development.

Overall the map was fun, it's one of the or the best one. Great work . (a hidden spider passage would be cool)
SXRPG Chapter VIMountains of Ulthar replay 20260704-204343.gz

this is the reason i wil go for bigger maps now.
ofc ulthar map is also difficult because it is pretty tight, but these small maps leave not much room for real secrets.
on big maps i can hide even gargantuan cave complexes

but in the near future:

- next step is enemy ranged upgrade will be done
we will see how it turns out, it is mainly done to increase difficulty in mid/late game
the current approach is that ai uses it on its own turn, which doesnt allow the player to react, only to prepare
(and actually there arent many possibilities aside getting resistances and HP up and avoiding ofc .... after all its always a matter of balance)
but it think it wil be cool.

another approach could be to make it passive, that ai uses ranged attacks to react on player movement (ofc limited to 1-4 times per turn) so player can react, this is more complicated though. and maybe its not so cool as i think, as it takes away threat from ai move

- and also "tournament" maps will be made, with CastleOfCantar Tournament the first and Temple Of Bones the second

these 2 steps will happen pretty fast, alongside im gathering resources for the next map and evaluating how to make it and the exact "story"


--------------------------------

maybe i will add a blessing to the Store that refreshes the revive if you have none left (and bought the ankh)

[Mabuse]

Finally i was able to watch the replay as i had to change some things in order to be backward compatible
becasue version 7.2.x was uploaded with parts of the ranged stuff, that went crazy causing OOS with the new stuff.

but i was able to figure it out.

Finally Chapter VI win on uncontested 2p
Version 7.2.0

Me: Cleric - Dwarvish Sentinel
matto: Warrior - Great Troll

map-side everything worked as intended, so you two did a solid job

i dont know though where all the mana comes from though, i think 1k is a little bit high, so we might reestablish mana-decline even after killing ai8
and see if we can reduce this a bit

Matto didn't have the best resi upgrades only Fire, Cold, Arcane pretty high 85-9$%. (he didn't know what he needed for the lategame)
I think having 4 upgraded even if it's only 60-70% is better - late we also got 5% cold and arcane boss item drops.

i general i think going for all 70% or 60% (and even end up with one 55%), is better then going arc, fire, cold 80%+ and rest 50%
because many combination are mixture of blade/pierce/impact and arc/fire/cold - so in the end you always use 50% resistance, then better go 55%, 60%, 70% all

warrior has not that many option to bring the machine to life (once it is running nothing can stop it, as it does not depend on mana), so after maxing res out you can only go HP. so yes, make a good spread with RES instead of specialization and then buff HP.

and warrior needs yellow potion, advanced alchemy upgrade, so he can also just buy double health every now and then. however, since you got all the xtra ability upgrades, i think its fair that you finished the job.



next version

some actions like dying and go immedate rampage again are not possible because of new petrify of revived players, and, if there are no other units with moves left i guess turn will be ended

[Mabuse]

heres my replay of the Map,

SXRPG Chapter VIMountains of Ulthar The Legend of King Kull Templar Warrior Grandmaster Turn 86.gz

(624.93 KiB) Downloaded 4 times

Grandmaster difficulty.
"The Legend of King Kull"

Templar (Grand Knight), Warrior Class, on Grandmaster Difficulty, there were some tries and fails beforehand and somehow things went smooth in this run when i had a plan. i wasnt able to reproduce it so far. but you cant play the same game twice anyway.

templar has the strongest default pierce attack (to take out psyker fast), for this reason it was chosen, resistance-wise Paladin COULD be better and may end up having 10% more or something which is nothing to sneeze at. also paladin has strong pierce too.

maybe its not the best choice (paladin (keep spear, sell arcane) MAY bew better in long run, but would struggle more with psyker), but for killing psyker fast Grand Knight it was a good choice.


so we have a solid collection of 5player run, mixed player run and solo run.


But i think now the time has come to spice up gameplay a bit with competitive things like adding PvP element (nobody knows how it will turn out, in early stages most players will simply be taken out by a bomb )

also ranged attacks of ai will add more danger and offensive capabilities of ai, and increase difficulty

and the next map, will be bigger with some kind of quests (city is under siege, in order to get able to stop the enemy army heroes must discover ancient artefacts (armours, weapons) from forgotten sides as side quests, the main quest is to stop the siege), you can also lose if the king of the city is killed.

maybe also this time mercs and stuff will be more important.



as a gameplay improvement i think mercs-ability will also get an "acolythe" as option, a unit which has teleport ability and can be used as an external teleport device by non-magicusers.

[Mabuse]

(a hidden spider passage would be cool)

btw, now i see what you referring to, matteo searched for something like this.
there is (or at least i some development path there WAS) a "hidden" passage, but you didnt trigger it

paso also didnt trigger it.

but its also not worth to search explicitly for it, because its not a secret wall or something.
it triggers if a certain event happens before another.

but its not that important.

the next update with Ai-ranged-weaponry will probably encourage players not to mess with the "correct order" of things

[Mabuse]

so the next update is in the pipeline, actually there is some extensive testing going on.

so basically the framework is done and working. (some) enemy units will summon eg. fireballs or other ranged projectiles,which will then attack the player, will always hit, first strike, and be dismissed after first hit.

basically there are two types of enemies

- stationary enemies (will never move or only move if enemy is in sight)
- moving enemies.


for the first type (stationary) there are 2 possible approaches

a) will spawn their spells at the beginning of their side turn and fire them immediatly using micro ai simple attack (if enemies are in range)
pro: clean approach, makes sense, no complications
con: players cannot really estimate what to exspect if going near a certain position, range of spells cannot be estimated
with high game speed you wil just see fast moving projectiles leaving player clueless

b) projectiles are spawned at the beginning of a new whole turn (always, since we dont know if players will move into range later)
pro: players can estimate what to exspect, develop plans, look for enemy ranges and act properly even interacting with the projectiles (they can be attacked, and while they will always do their damage, player may heal, react otherwise and/or use them to get movement points. projectiles can be destroyed by player spells (ofc spells get destroyed if their creator gets killed)
con: may look partially messy, especially positions with many spellcasters may be cluttered by projectiles waiting for their turn.


- Moving enemies will only spawn projectile if they dont attack enemy and if enemy is in spell-range AFTER moving.
(this is ok and nasty but fair)



in the playtesting option B was much more interesting and favorable, since option a will only result in players moving somewhere and getting annihilated within seconds (especially with enhanced gamespeed), not knowing why, when, where and how to avoid.
Option B resulted in careful planning and enhanced difficulty as desired, however the messy approach will force me to optimize code and gfx, so it may be a bit more delayed,

while i also will not give up option A and maybe we can mark spellcasters with some kind of overlays or halo-gfx so player will know that there may be danger, so there wil be some more time needed to finish the representation


also, since the difficulty is increased, there may be a restriction that is is only for EXPERT of higher difficulty, so casuals can learn the basics without being molested by expert stuff



edit.

Now the decision is to

- get it out for version 7.3.0, since there are also important bug fixes (item gfx dont get destroyed by player spells, pretrify killed players) restrict it to grandmaster and uncontested and lets the experts playtest it, and fix the gfx and other problems in version 7.4.0

- wait until it is gfx fixed

- 7.5.0 will feature 1st tournament-map