The Rootless

[Anekron]

1.2.6

• Arshag AMLA bugfix (game will no longer occasionally crash upon advancing)
• Added hint to The Deep informing the player that they can recruit and recall units with Stuurg
• Updated the art license

[Vendrick]

I played through the campaign on Normal difficulty and again on Hard up to the finale. I liked it a lot: there's good scenario variety with strong narrative throughlines, and the story itself is paced well with distinctive characters.

Thoughts on the campaign, with full spoilers:

Spoiler:

The writing is pretty good. Of the three heroes, Toruk has the strongest voice and his unique ability also makes him the most interesting Hero unit. Toruk isn't destined for greatness; he's variation on the grunt, a cheap fodder unit that you kill hundreds of which informs his character really well. I love his arc: a cynical survivor to someone willing to give everything to something real. I'm a sucker for the character.

My first playthrough of S3 was just embarrassing - failing to lure out the spider, realising that enlisting the Yeti to help kill Dwarves would kill a Wolf Rider with good traits and then discovering the Dwarves can't be lured into the Yeti, and having to withdraw across the river from the Dwarves.
The +1 Speed for Wolf Riders seems much weaker than the alternatives - something like granting Skirmisher or Disengage (from UtBS) would make it more of a consideration. My initial impression of the Archer bow was that it would stop working once the unit levelled up, making it also seem useless. (Still not very good because the Player probably already has some L2+ archers.) The Ghost and 20% Phys resistance shield seem like the best two items at face value.

S4 is pretty good. It was well-balanced for a bumbling Normal playthrough where everyone was out of position, but on Hard I didn't even have to sacrifice any units.
(On my first playthrough, Stuurg was spawn camping the Undead from the chasm and got plunged into danger when an enterprising skeleton spawned behind and flanked him.)
Banishing the undead causes Toruk to complain about fighting alongisde the Undead even if you didn't get either Undead unit.
The side objective with consequences on the next 2(?) scenarios is a fun piece of campaign design.

S5 - along the Saurian path - was relatively hard on my first playthrough.
I underrecruited (even though there's 0% gold carryover) until Arshag returned, which led to being relatively close to a time loss. The lack of villages strongly favours Trolls (even more so because everyone kept missing their Drains attacks) which I didn't realise until a ways into the scenario.
On Hard, I recruited only a handful of veterans and then spammed Troll Whelps which cleared the scenario quite easily (albeit with more normal RNG).
The dream sequence is very cool and unique and is a clever way to introduce variation into the campaign.


In S6, I quite like the way Clerila's reappearance plays against type. I like the walking corpse mechanic, but I did mostly end up comitting to kill adjacent higher threat enemy units regardless of whether they would reanimate.
The AI killed the Frost Stoat before I ever saw it which meant I almost didn't notice the pelt.
On Hard, Clerila recruited didn't recruit any Dark Sorcerors in her main force - maybe the AI needs some prompting.
The amount of starting gold is really high - 360 on Hard - and I only had to kill roughly 1000 gold worth of enemy units in the whole scenario.
The conversation with the Nagas doesn't flow quite right. I also think the usage of second person when describing Arshag's wolf ("You can see he longs to run...") is strange.
Toruk's possible death here is such a strong conclusion to his character arc that it almost makes me reluctant to keep him alive.

S7 is a solid finale. I was pretty well equipped with fearless Trolls and Pillagers going in, so I didn't need the gold injection to finish clearing out the Elves (on Normal).
The tsunami effects are very cool and well-foreshadowed.
Since Arshag's wolf is a minor character and with S6's setup, I half expected Arshag to dismount and send the wolf away into the wild once he moves to the keep.
My only complaint here is that the killing Zofaria objective results in shuffling a pile of units up and down the map before it becomes apparent that they won't be needed, followed by pressing end turn until the scenario ends. It would save a lot of walking on the player's part if Zofaria joined the assault herself. (I think a couple of turns of resigned waiting is fine, it's just in combination with the unit movement that it drags.)

[Anekron]

It's so great to read a piece of feedback like this! I'm glad you've enjoyed the campaign.

Toruk is probably my favourite character as well, especially after my friend Mechanical made the custom sprites for him. He really came to life with that.

Spoiler:

Sorry to read about your trouble with S3; dwarves indeed avoid Yeti's valley, but on some difficulties you can instead lure Yeti to attack them. I love your idea about giving the wolf rider the skirmisher ability and will implement it; while i love using disengage, I think skirmisher generally fits better in this case (the orcs are focused on offence, after all).

I want to rework the item crafting at some point, since it isn't even coded very well, so then I'll likely also tweak the descriptions and maybe even other rewards that are somewhat underwhelming at the moment. That being said, every single one of them has an easter egg associated with it if the unit survives long enough and some give really good value back (though the ghost admittedly still shines even in this regard).

I don't remember the Toruk's comment about undead upon completing the ritual, but I'll look into it.

S5 indeed heavily incentivises trolls. I'm aware that drain is very situational here, since Northerner units get few strikes and bad RNG hurts twice in this case. I don't really want to add villages though since they wouldn't make sense and making monoliths heal instead ruins the vibe a fair bit and is kinda boring. I've considered that the monolith could steal like 3-4 HP from any unit around it and give it to whoever stands on it, but that would be hard to explain to the player without text walls (hmmm, maybe a faint red aura effect?).

In S6 on Hard, the units around the Wesfolk Adept line actually turn into Soulless and can immediately attack if it's their turn, so they're much more scary.

AI should definitely not kill the Stoat, some filter probably doesn't work properly. Will look into it. There's actually no recruitment pattern set for Clerila, so I should probably make one in order to make her recruit some Adept line units.

I've already lowered the gold here once, but I might lower it again if it's still too easy.

Fun fact, the death cutscene is fairly new, added around 1.2.0 on request of my friend Konrad2. Hence I can actually agree it fits into the story well without sounding pretentious, as it isn't entirely my doing. Will fix the second person with the wolf, well spotted! Also which conversation with the naga do you have in mind? They either join you at start, or only when you discover the lake on the map.

I love the idea of Arshag releasing his wolf near the end. I'll add it and credit you among playtesters if you don't mind.

I agree that the AI turns take too long here. I'll think about your suggestion of making Zofaria charge the player. It would change the flow of the entire scenario, which might of course be for the better, but I still do want to think it over.

Thanks again for the time you've took to write all this down, I so love to read the feedback!

[Vendrick]

My S3 woes are my own fault; I just thought it was a little funny that none of my initial ideas worked.

Toruk's line at the end of S4, after the Undead are destroyed: "I hate Undead. Fighting them is almost as bad as fighting alongside them. At least they're gone now."

I wouldn't worry too much about S5, my RNG on Normal was exceptionally bad: bottom 5% hits inflicted and top 85% hits taken. The current mechanic makes positioning more interesting anyway. You could buff the drains effect with magical or something, but I think it's probably fine as is.
I could also have screened the Orc units with the Trolls if I had recruited more units to start with.

I didn't know the AI got Soulless on Hard: checking the kills for S6 on Hard, it looks like I only killed 4 Soulless total and at least 3 of those are from the ambush. Dark Sorcerors are really good units, especially compared to Outlaws, so if there's more of them the scenario will be harder anyway.
I got the Nagas from the Deep scenario branch, with the loyal Naga still alive and recruiting them at the start.

In the finale, I didn't really have a problem with AI turns (I leave Show AI moves off), it was only that I moved most of my army towards Zofaria, gave Toruk the kill and then had to retreat all of those units back down the field.
I had killed most of the Elf units by the time Zofaria gets the small gold injection and recruits some L1s, so Zofaria advancing around that point shouldn't influence the main battle too much.
That's very kind of you to add me to the credits as a playtester; you have my permission.

[Anekron]

Patch 1.2.7

• The Dark map updated so the fisherman is only accessible with the naga or the ghost
• The monolith attack now correctly shows and the strikes doesn't stack in the next scenario
• Killing the eyestalk inside the easter egg now awards XP
• The Rootless player gold lowered
• Wolf Rider's return should now work correctly
• The line about Arshag's wolf was rephrased

The next patch (1.2.8 ) will likely arrive quite soon, fixing yet other small bugs and implementing some of the recent feedback, notably by Vendrick and Konrad2.

[Anekron]

Patch 1.2.8

• craftable necklace now grants the skirmisher ability (h/t Vendrick)
• Marshinar now talks to caged Grokutin if moved to the hex
• bats won't enter the dream anymore
• Clerila's recruitment pattern adjusted to favour the Wesfolk Adept line
• enemies now won't kill the Stoat in The Rootless

[WLFobe]

How does one kill all the humans in The Hunt? One left to go get the elves, and when he returned, he was surrounded by high-level elves. I had killed the humans that remained, but apparently that wasn't enough.

[Anekron]

Hi! It's admittedly a bit tricky, but should be doable, as only one of the first batch of elves is mounted. Meaning if you move Arshag close to the signpost before the elves start coming, you can just snipe the Cavalryman and then end the scenario by reaching the signpost.

Now that I think of it, it might be too convoluted and aimed too much at dedicated achievement hunters that don't mind playing the scenario twice. I should probably turn this into a hidden achievement and create a new one that's doable without prior knowledge of the scenario. Thanks for the message!

[zx_speccy_gamer]

The description says "slay all human units during the hunt". It wouldn't register for me (see spoiler below):

Spoiler:

I killed all the humans before the elves arrived and it did not register.
So I tried waiting with one human unit left (not Morvin). When the elves appeared I kill the human but the achievement did not trigger.

I looked at the event code in the scenario, which is as below:

Code: Select all

[event] #achievement for killing all humans
    name=last breath
    first_time_only=no
    [filter]
        side=2
    [/filter]
    [filter_condition]
        [have_unit]
            id=Lord Logalmier
        [/have_unit]
    [/filter_condition]
    [if]
        [have_unit]
            side=2
            [not]
                id=$unit.id
            [/not]
        [/have_unit]
        [then]
        [/then]
        [else]
            [set_achievement]
                content_for=RTL_SP
                id=RTL_humans
            [/set_achievement]
        [/else]
    [/if]
[/event]

If I read that right for the event to trigger you would have to kill "Lord Logalmier"? That would be impossible without moving enough troops to surround where he spawns (3,44) before he appears and then kill him when he does. The Elves spawn endlessly which would make this suicidal. "Lord Logalmier" is not a human but an elf so referencing him with the achievement doesn't make sense to me.

This event may work better if the event Should that not be "Morvin"? However, it says kill all humans so if there were other humans left then the objective has not been met.

An alternative could be:

1) Making the Elves side 3.
2) The logic could then trigger when side 2 *the humans" have 0 units.

My WSL markup is not very good but could something like this might work:

Maybe use an "attack end" event and count the number of units.
If the count is 0 then they are all dead.

Code: Select all

[event]
    name=attack_end
    human_count = wesnoth.get_units { side = 2, filter = { } }
    [if]
    [variable]
        name=human_count
        equals=0
    [/variable]
    [then]
        [set_achievement]
            content_for=RTL_SP
            id=RTL_humans
        [/set_achievement]
    [/then]
    [/if]
[/event]

Liking the scenario so far. Thanks for making it.