Monsters’ Den Chronicles v1.02
A new version of the game has been uploaded to Armor Games. Here are the changes:
v1.02
- Online saving has been implemented. This requires a free Armor Games account.
- Randomly generated items will correctly remember their number of enhancement slots
- “Necromancer” stats have been reduced a bit
- “Curse of Mortality” damage decreased
- “A Martyr’s Example” shrine should no longer cause rare crashes
- “Greater Devourer” has a description
- Enemies should no longer try to revive disintegrated characters
- Negative bonuses to healing now work more logically
- Unvisited rooms will now highlight properly beyond the first floor (when mousing over %)
- Confirmation dialogs now mention mention Cmd button as well as Ctrl (for Mac users)
- You will not get campaign unlock messages every time you finish Act V (only the first)
- Sorting a bag by “none” makes more sense, and unpredictable behaviour corrected
- Character customization icon no longer shows up in the battle inspection dialog
- Secret rooms no longer count towards the floor explored percentage (you can get 100% without them)
- Secret rooms are easier to see
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about 1 year ago
Most are for balance and bug fix. Will we have new features in this game ? Or we need to wait for Godfall ?
about 1 year ago
gonna go play campaign II to see if it’s noticeably easier. in the meantime, quick suggestion: make uniform/outfit bonuses scale – probably with the tier of the equipment, and if the user is outfitted with different tiers of the same outfit, average them (or choose the highest tier) to determine the bonus overall. alternatively you could scale with the level of the guy wearing it, but either way I find some of these bonuses kind of laughable.
For example, sovereign armor’s +5 strength, or moonglow armor’s +6 healing skills bonus. At a low level that could be really strong, but up at level 50 there’s basically no benefit to going for that uniform unless the other bonuses are really good, because that amount is so small. I’m looking at my tier 16 moonglow helmet for level 43 and up and I see a bonus of +6 to healing skills when I equip 5/6 of the uniform, and it kind of underwhelms. This item is tier 16 so I feel like that bonus should be higher, since the item’s inherent bonuses are significant (at t16 it gives +16 dex and +32 int. the +32 int probably has more impact than the +6 healing skills at this point). Inherent bonuses on an item to strength or healing skills or such would scale with the item’s tier, so shouldn’t these uniform bonuses scale as well? (Ofc bonuses to non-scaling traits, like damage protection, should not scale up with tier. for example, sovereign armor’s +10% damage protect should probably not become stronger as the armor tier goes up. Traits like power regeneration as well; those don’t usually scale with item tier so i wouldn’t expect a uniform bonus for those things to scale either)
Anyway just a thought. Time to go find out what the necromancer is capable of, and if it can handle my level 45 superparty loaded out with purple-bordered epic armor and legendary weapons (24/40 equips on this party are epic or up, woot!)
about 1 year ago
The game’s only been out for a week and a half, I’m not sure what you’re expecting in terms of new content.
There will be some small things I’m sure.. rare monsters or new items. But not yet.
about 1 year ago
Hi Garin,
I have enjoyed your game – ranks up there with one of my all time flash favorites. Wonderful accomplishment and undoubtedly you are keen for some well deserved rest.
I took the liberty of making some notes as I played. I hardly expect you to even think of modifying your game for several weeks as you have just finished it. However, there are some improvements that could be made. Have a read over them at your leisure. Maybe a month or two down the road you might fancy some of the proposals found within. I imagine many of them are impractical from a developer’s perspective and will take no slight if they are quickly dismissed.
Cheers
about 1 year ago
Monster’s Den Chronicles: Player Feedback
Preface
Herein you will receive feedback from a player with over 20 hours of MDC played. All characters have reached level 60, all achievements have been earned, and wave 100 has been beaten on standard survival mode.
This article will feature proposals for both minor and moderate modification, addition, and replacement of features or game mechanics to further enhance the MDC experience. The author of this article is well aware of the burn-out which accompanies a game release and encourages the developer to read at his leisure. All proposals found herein have been carefully planned and articulated. It is for the developer to decide which are impractical from a development and time restricted perspective and whether he wishes to reclaim his life or to delve back into development hell
Praise
Monster’s Den Chronicles is a fantastic achievement that has surpassed the previous installments in almost every comparable way. In particular the combat, customization, artwork, user interface, monster intelligence, and boss fights have been expanded upon and improved. The game feels polished, the design choices are solid, and the extras in the form of achievements and an expanded cast of characters leave both a sense of achievement and extend the life of the game.
Although it is my firm belief that MDC stands as a complete and enjoyable experience, I have taken the liberty of making notes during my playtime where appropriate in order to identify possible improvements. These improvements in many cases are minor, a matter of personal opinion, or a change which could bring about a friendlier user experience. Other improvements seek to expand upon the replayability of the game.
Areas for Improvement
i) Mechanics
ii) Item Deficiencies
iii) Reward Scaling
iv) Endgame Content
v) Balancing (increasing viability of characters and opportunity for synergy of party)
i. By Skill (Addressing general skill deficiencies of a party)
ii. By Class (Addressing redundant and sub-optimal skills of a class)
——————————————————————————————————————————–
i) Mechanics
a) NEW – Skills require hotkeys.
This could be done using the numbers 1-9 on the keyboard. The user interface already allows for skill icon position swapping via the character information page. This will allow customization for quick and efficient skill use. I have often found myself default-attacking with the left mouse button rather than using a skill because the time saved by clicking 2 times for 2 attacks on 2 characters was more valuable than the time spent using a skill for an additional 10-20% more damage. Obviously this is not true for all situations or all skills, especially aoe ones but it did occur often enough that default attacks were favoured over skills even when energy was at a maximum.
b) NEW – Loot Bag Tab: “Sort According to Set”
Set items are more useful when enough are worn to give a set bonus. I will not equip set items unless I have a minimum of 3, however it is very tedious to find matching set pieces in a bag with 80 different set pieces in it. Sorting by type can alleviate some of the frustration but not all. Sorting according to set would allow a user, at a glance, to quickly identify whether they have all the needed pieces of a set to make it worth equipping.
c) NEW – Automated Passing
Passing a character’s turn is a key strategy to playing optimally. Passing with a single enemy on the field will allow the party to regenerate before the next battle. Passing to allow a cleric to anoint a character before using a high energy high damage aoe skill will increase turn efficiency.
However passing is incredibly tedious in parties with large quickness disparity between characters. This is further exacerbated by the fact that passing removes a half turn of action rather than a full action (which is the correct design choice). The net result is that on occasion you may have to pass up to 4 turns per character in order to wait for a stunned character in the cue to perform a necessary action. Many passes must be performed during late battle regen cycles as well.
Proposal #1 – Pass mode toggle
A character will pass until they are either damaged or buffed
Proposal #2 – Pass set number of turns
A character or the party will pass for a set number of terms
Proposal #3 – Pass until fully rested
A character or the party will pass until all characters have full health, all characters have full energy, or both conditions are satisfied
Implementation of any of these proposals would remove a measure of tedious repetition from the battles.
d) NEW – Team Mate AI Toggle
Occasionally a character is built around a simple tank/dps auto attack build where skills are used very rarely. In this situation a toggle to allow the AI to control the specific character would be welcome.
e) MODIFY – Tooltips (progression scaling specific)
Stat Tooltips need to show the specific incremental gains for each point invested both in primary gains and secondary gains to better enable the player to allocate the points. If an exponential ramp was used, the formula may be provided.
Skill Tooltips need to show the specific incremental gains based on each stat point invested so that builds may be better optimized for specific skill synergy. If an exponential ramp was used, the formula may be provided.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
ii) Item Deficiencies
a) New – Slot Specific Epic Deficiency
Currently, aside from set items, there are no epic items for hands, legs, and feet slots. These items are required to round out the options available to each class. Chest and shoulder slots are very limited in that they have one of each armor type.
Solution: Create epic items for these specific slots
b) Modify – Scaling on Item Tiers
Scaling is non-existent for several items. These items include any item lacking +stats, +retaliation, +health, +health regen, armor rating, and weapon damage. Thus once found they need never be upgraded or replaced by new higher tiered items. Items especially prone to this are rings, cloaks, quivers, some shoulders, some specialized epics.
Solution: Unknown
Scaling is also non-existent on enchantment shards. Any shard with +stats on it quickly becomes insignificant. A +5 int shard with a character base intellect of 30 represents a 17% increase, whereas the same unscalled +5int shard with a base intellect of 300 represents an increase of 1.7%.
Solution: Enchant shards should increase stats based on % rather than absolute value
Scaling on set bonuses is non-existent. While some bonuses do not require scaling (+5 quickness will always be useful) other bonuses rapidly depreciate in value (+5 str).
Solution: Percentage (%) based bonuses where appropriate
c) New – Prefix and Affix Deficiencies
Current modifiers to items include stats, accuracy, critical damage, critical rate, armor piercing, power regen, health regen, stun rate, enemy attention, and quickness. While this is a comprehensive list, the availability of these modifications is severely limited and mostly restricted to specific epics, no doubt due to concern over balancing. Making these modifications more widely accessible will result in greater diversity in character builds.
Solution: Provide a greater range of bonuses allowed on epic enchantment shards to
include all possible affix and prefix modifications
OR
Allow equipment to randomly generate any combination of prefixes and affixes
d) Modify – Lack of Legendary Items
A legendary shard found at the beginning of the game is a wonderful gift. However these shards lose their appeal by around level 10-15 when the anvil should be available in the achievement reward shop. The legendary shard is actually a hindrance at this point as it takes up a valuable enchantment slot with the only benefit being to save 2000 gold every 3 character levels.
As it stands legendary shards are a sub-optimal game mechanic. I felt very little sense of satisfaction when finding what is supposed to be the highest tier item. Introducing real legendary items would add to end-game content as will be discussed further on in this article.
Solution: Remove Legendary Shards and replace with legendary items
——————————————————————————————————————————–
iii) Reward Scaling
a) Modify – Secret Room
There are two ways to find a secret room. One is tedious and involves checking each room on a one on one basis to find the small blue door. The second method is to spend some gold. Neither method currently yields a satisfactory cost to benefit ratio. If secret rooms are meant to incentivise exploration then the reward needs to be ramped up to a minimum standard, say a storied item or better. On several occasions I have received common potions or common armor as a reward.
Solution: IF deemed significant to game play, minimum reward quality for secret room.
If secret rooms are intended as a bonus or a curiosity then they are fine as are. Current optimal play dictates that these rooms should be skipped.
b) Modify – Rewarding Difficulty
As it currently stands there is very little incentive to play on the higher difficulties once all the relevant achievements have been accomplished.
Campaign Mode
In the time it takes to complete one campaign on expert, two campaigns on beginner may be completed. The easier approach has all the benefits including, ease of accomplishment, gold earned, items obtained, and experience gained. This encourages low thought blitz runs on beginner to progress the party. To fully enjoy the complexity of the game the reward for completing the more difficult settings should be significantly revamped.
Solution: One unique item for each campaign completed on Extreme (non-renewable)
One unique item for completed every campaign on Extreme (non-renewable)
Act Boss specific Set Items (renewable as incentive for further campaign play)
Survival Mode
Survival mode has zero difference between the rewards for various difficulties. Experience and Gold is received for each wave completed and a dimensional pocket for every 5 waves completed. Playing on beginner mode will allow greater reward per unit of time as well as additionally requiring less effort and thought. I can reach wave 100+ on beginner mode by spamming heals and default attack.
Solution: Reward should scale with difficulty and be in line with the both the time
required and the effort required. (Experience, gold, number/type of dim. pockets)
Furthermore, gold and dimensional pockets are not a very good incentive for running survival as these can both be obtained through campaign mode. Survival mode should have some rewards specific only to survival mode just as I have previously proposed that campaign mode has its own specific rewards. Otherwise with the chests and gold bags, campaign mode would outpace survival in terms of progress.
Proposal #1 – Dimensional Pocket Grades (difficulty scaling)
Create different dim. pockets which yield different qualities and categories of items. Reward these based on difficulty. Higher difficulty can reward high grade pockets that have a decent chance to produce various epic grade enchantment shards or low grade enhancement potions (+1 stat) as these are highly sought after. Dim. pockets from lower difficulty can reward standard epics and blues as well as an extremely diminished chance at higher grade rewards.
Proposal #2 – Milestones (progression incentive)
Current optimal play is to complete roughly 10 waves of survival and then retreat and restart at wave 1. This is because monster level increases after wave ~10 whereas the reward does not. Waves 1-10 yield the same reward as the much more difficult waves 91-100. If the player is to be encouraged to continue as far as possible then there must be incentive.
Milestone rewards should be introduced every “x” number of waves. This would match up well with completion of boss waves. Bosses could drop dim. pockets that produce a new grade of item – introduce legendary items.
Experience and gold rewards for subsequent waves should receive a bonus multiplier that would be scaled to break even by wave 50 (an extremely difficult wave) in terms of time and effort when compared with farming waves 1-10 – and surpass the method of farming 1-10 post wave 50. A hard or soft cap could be introduced by wave 100 to prevent abuse.
——————————————————————————————————————————–
iv) Endgame Content
The changes proposed in section iii) Reward Scaling should provide groundwork for further expansion of endgame content.
Endgame content should be hidden and unlocked only through accomplishing a goal which only a well synergized and geared party would be able to. This will ensure two important objectives:
…that players unable to handle the difficulty of the early and mid game are not overwhelmed by the looming prospect of a difficult end game… and
… that players able to participate in the end game content will have a reasonable chance at success
Undoubtedly the most suitable environment to test a party’s candidacy for end game content would be through survival mode as it affords no use of elixirs or rest between fights (turn cycling regen not withstanding). Entry to end game content could be set at a goal of beating an arbitrary wave on an arbitrary difficulty. I would suggest wave 100 on veteran or extreme. This is a good place to end survival as from personal experience I become apathetic to completing more waves as the bosses and mobs have since been recycled for approximately 40 waves. The additional 40 waves of recycled bosses are to allow a decent farm if survival rewards are revamped as previously proposed with a bonus multiplier based on completed waves.
Transition to end game content could be presented by means of a message informing the user that their impossible stand against the advancing hoard had drawn the attention of a new tier of enemy.
With such a stiff requirement to enter end game content the developer would not need to pull any punches when designing encounters. Only very driven and dedicated players who are actively seeking a challenge would make it to this point and so risk of player frustration should be much diminished.
Proposal #1 – Optional Bosses
Boss encounters are undoubtedly the most exciting experience in MDC. Bosses are generally well designed, synergize moderately with their party, and most importantly – are unique.
At minimum 3 different end game bosses should be available. The option to challenge one of the bosses should only be offered after completion of wave 100 survival veteran or extreme. Defeat of an end game boss should reset the option such that a player need complete survival again for a chance at challenging. This would allow for slow continual farming of end game bosses rather than rapid farming. Three different bosses and a factor of randomness will lengthen the duration of the incentive.
Rewards should naturally be in line with the difficulty. A unique item for each type of boss would be ideal.
Proposal #2 – Unlock Hardcore Mode
I can understand the developer’s aversion to true hardcore for this game. It would discourage and frustrate many weak or beginner players if it were an option. However, for an experienced player, true hardcore mode, as in all character data for the party is reset upon death would provide the adrenalin rush some seek. Naturally only the current party would be wiped. Thus only 4 out of the 10 characters would be reset allowing for the game to still be salvaged by the surviving characters that might provide gear and rings of experience from the achievement shop to speed up leveling on the reset characters.
I will leave out balancing for now. I have it written but I feel that it is too early in the game’s release for any changes to characters.
about 1 year ago
QA_Tester great words! /singed
about 1 year ago
I agree with most of them, but I don’t think legendary shard is useless because sometimes you find a purple item with great unique ability, you don’t want to lose that item during progress of characters. But I’m not sure how great the anvil is because I haven’t unlocked even though my characters have reached level 38
about 1 year ago
I will offer some counterpoints:
- Not sure about what you mean by a lack of epic level items for hands/feet/shoulders. If you do mean the purple-bordered items, there are purple bordered items for every single item type in the game. I can confirm this as I have collected over 80 of them right now. I have epic lanterns, epic charms, epic tomes, epic orbs, epic foot armor (sabatons, boots and slippers), epic hand armor (vambraces/gloves), epic shoulder armor (pauldrons, mantles, shrouds). It’s all there
- I agree that having legendary items would be nice, but I totally disagree on the lack of utility of a spark of legend. It takes a long time to get enough achievements to unlock apex forge and it’s an extremely cost-ineffective way of leveling up low-level items found in the early game. I’ve only ever seen one scorchwand. It was tier 3 or 4 when I found it. I’m now on tier 16. The number of apex forges required to upgrade this many tiers is ridiculous, and moreover, I wouldn’t have access to the apex forge at that early point in the game. The spark of legend greatly increases the utility of low-tier high-rarity items and the apex forge can only do so at prohibitive cost, much later in the game.
- I don’t have any issue with secret rooms as they are; the current floor completion percentage doesn’t even count them (ie you can get 100% completion on a floor without finding secret rooms).
- I agree that I would like the tooltips to display the full nitty gritty information about skill damage because I love seeing the numbers, but I’m not sure that would be beneficial for all players. Ultimately though it is a necessity for any minmaxing of a character. (For example I recently found a new orb of agnotia, +80 weapon dmg. I had equipped an icon of savantir, +48 int. The icon gives my mage preposterously powerful electrocutes and mage missiles but the orb would increase his weapon damage to match any of those skills, except that the skills would become way weaker since no more int boosts. Choosing between these items would admittedly be easier if I could see the damage formulae)
about 1 year ago
- Hands, Feet, and Legs do not have unique epic items (purple ones). The ones you are seeing for those slots are actually just set items with an open slot (appear as purple). They come with 2 fixed +stat modifiers rather +slot. Unique epic items do not belong to a set. Every other armor slot has unique epics available but not the hands, feet, and legs.
This is detrimental to character build variety as 3 armor slots lack the ability to obtain rare modifiers such as +accuracy, +crit, +evasion for epic items. They are simple stat increase slots. Optimal use of those three slots is for epic prowler set as you can get a nice bonus to quickness from three pieces. It stifles variety however.
- Apex forge is hardly cost inefficient. It costs 2000 gold / item every 3 levels. Not all items are worth upgrading. Rubricite Breastplate (regen), Weapon (damage), some shields (highest armor rating) are about the only things I upgrade. All other items can be dealt with by either replacing as new items are found or ignoring as some items (rings, cloaks, shoulders in some cases) do not even scale with tier. My level 64 characters are using some tier 1-3 items.
Optimal play requires approximately 20,000 gold every 3 levels which is easily attainable by running campaign where the payoff per level is highest.
- Secret items are fine or need adjustment according to the developer’s intended purpose for them.
- Tooltips could be toggled on/off through an option in the settings menu similar to the method by which you may choose to display or not display damage numbers during combat.
about 1 year ago
I’m not ignoring the rest of what you wrote, but I just want to point that that you already can use the number keys to select skills in combat.
about 1 year ago
I’m not sure if this was covered in another post but why do the potions no longer stack (in the amount) in this whereas in the older games they did? Each individual potion taking up a slot is very annoying in my opinion.
about 1 year ago
Hey been a fan of Monsters Den since book of dread, and love the new one.
Noticed a bug, the achievement organized doesn’t work for me and its one of the last one I need. Not sure if its brought up before but I tried everything to fix it besides resetting and at 900+ now so not really trying to do that lol.
about 1 year ago
Omg nm, I figured it out didn’t notice the clog you could click on.
about 1 year ago
Though I like this change, which is in a nice direction, I can’t help but say that the hidden rooms are no longer hidden lol. The colour of the new secret door is even more visible than the normal door.
about 1 year ago
One bug:
If I have two items with ‘on critical’, they don’t both trigger on a crit. At least, blackheart’s mask and skyrosite’s codex don’t trigger together. Only the mask triggers.
With multiple crits they only trigger once, but I figure that’s not a bug.
about 1 year ago
Well, it might just be that Skyrosite’s codex doesn’t trigger enough… I cast litany of pain on 5, one crit, and it doesn’t trigger (this is without any other trigger items equipped too)
about 1 year ago
skosyrite*
about 1 year ago
Are both their triggers 100%? I’ve equipped Heightened Reflexes, Bolster Defenses and Fortify Defenses items all at once and I’ve seen all of them trigger together many times. (Fortify is 75% trigger when the unit is damaged, it’s a relatively rare buff typically only on epic-level items like knight general’s aegis. the other two are 100% when the unit takes damage)
about 1 year ago
yes it says 100%. It seems more like 25%.
about 1 year ago
Also some stats dont have any effect on ‘secondary effects’ like they say. With 220 intellect, I still have only 1% power after battle and 1% chance of free cast
about 1 year ago
minor note on some odd behavior. It strikes me as a bug but I’ve known plenty of RPGs where HP can go over max so it might not be, and it fixes itself once you go into battle. if a unit’s hit point maximum decreases due to a change in equipment (ie removing a high-END item), the bar can go over 100%, as shown in this screenshot here http://imgur.com/4ZC2e . I replaced a +20int +40int item with a +40int +0end item and this was what happened to my mage. I refilled his power to full and the bars balanced back out, but his HP remained over the max. As soon as I entered a battle, the HP was re-capped.
about 1 year ago
Just reset everything to start from scratch.
Usually I don’t a game more than once because most games get boring so fast. But this game really gives me desire to play it over and over again, with different characters, different styles of playing, different combo….This is probably one of the most versatile yet easy-to-begin games ever made.
about 1 year ago
May I bring back the old topic of accuracy ? I just reset everything and started playing Act 1 again, and I found something weird. I missed an attack to an a knight 2 times in a row but the fact was I had 95% to hit. I know a stimulation has been made to show that the accuracy is valid, I start to suspect that there may be some possible bugs making it difficult to hit certain enemies.
about 1 year ago
probably just bad luck, it’s happened to me as well. 95% is not 100% so misses will happen, no matter how unlikely *shrug*
about 1 year ago
I’m you had a 5% chance to hit and you hit twice in a row, would you be as surprised? I suspect not. People expect to hit.
about 1 year ago
Looks like the beta test forums are down. I will post any further feedback here then. Been playing at Armor Games.
about 1 year ago
I have to say very good work in programming this game. And two updates in the first two weeks is pretty quick as well.
about 1 year ago
Legendary shards need to be finished! It’s easily the most potentially awesome item in the game, and the rarest.
As I understand it, it has 2 functions once applied:
1. Automatically scale the item to character level.
2. Increase the item’s power to ‘legendary’ level.
#1 seems to work well
#2 is counter-intuitive, confusing, or it simply doesn’t work.
#2 currently only works for weapon damage. Actually, it seems to only work correctly (ie, increase the power to BoD legendary item levels) on green or blue weapons. A purple axe with a legendary shard in it is less powerful than a blue axe with a legendary shard in it – the previously blue axe now has a higher weapon damage than the formerly purple axe.
I imagine it’s intended to give a bonus to armor and rings as well, but it’s broken there (no armor rating or stat boost). It needs to at least boost armor defense and give some kind of bonus to rings’ stats/effects.
FYI, addicting, awesome game, I just want the rarest item in the game to have an appropriate impact.
about 1 year ago
You’re right, some of this behaviour was bugged. I’ll correct it.
about 1 year ago
I believe it’s been mentioned somewhere that the mage’s spell damage is generally too weak. I have to agree with that because currently my party is at level 11 and my mage’s Incinerate deals at most 6x damage but my rogue’s lowest damage is at 7x …..Somehow I feel that the mage is slowing down the whole team, almost every single killing is achieved by my rogue.
about 1 year ago
Not sure if this is a bug, but just to say:
when a backline enemy is Disintegrated by conjuror, the slot appears to be free, but I can’t kick the frontline enemy into that “free” slot: it acts as if there is still a pile of bones which occupy the slot.
Again, I am not sure if this is intentional, but it would make a good tactical combination if this isn’t the case
about 1 year ago
There should be an achievement of killing all enemies without making a single attack. I was retreating from Act 4, everyone left but my Warrior was staying because he was slow and he was stunned again and again. But I gave him super high retaliation damage, the whole wave of enemies just killed themselves while my warrior didn’t move at all.
about 1 year ago
I noticed some comments on Armour Games complaining about the repetitiveness of the game, and wondered to myself if they had forgotten that they were playing a video game, all of which are repetitive to some extent.
After some thought on this being a kind of preview of the next game I had a few ideas. Perhaps, if not to make the game more varied, offer a grander illusion variation in your next installment (Godfall).
I was thinking chances of encountering elite versions of normal monsters in a party, more sub-bosses and legendary encounters, more item stat variation, and maybe a new way to set up the battle display to be more intuitive and flowing (not to say the current one doesn’t work fine).
about 1 year ago
How do you sell stuff? Iv’e heard there is a sell button by the bag counter, but there is nothing there on mine?
about 1 year ago
Go to the Emporium and click the huge “Sell” text in the lower right.
about 1 year ago
I found a bug about the display of character’s quickness in inventory screen. Sometimes it simply doesn’t show the correct number, but I’m not sure what is causing the wrong number to be shown.
about 1 year ago
This happens to me every time I start another quest. It clears itself up as soon as I enter a battle or go to the main menu and come back to the quest.
about 1 year ago
Also happens when I come back to the game for the first time.
about 1 year ago
Great game. Been a huge fan of Monster’s Den since I played the second one, and this one trumps it. However, I’ve been having a few problems lately.
With the Cloud Saving (love it, by the way), I’ve ran across two problems just today. At first, clicking to enable the Cloud Saving didn’t actually do anything. It just seemed like it tried to do something and just stopped, but I could just go to playing. Now, however, it will let me enable Cloud Saving, but will spin its wheels during syncing and won’t let me do anything at all.
Maybe it’s a problem on my end, but I’d figure I’d put it out there in case it isn’t.
about 1 year ago
Monsters Den Chronicles v1.21 thoughts, comments & critisisms (I endorse #5 comment greatly, so I won’t repeat)
‘Hold the line’ description ‘All allies’ implies it heals all frontline PCs. It doesn’t always do this, even when curses etc are taken into account
‘Hold the line’ /appears/ to apply a defensive buff; this may be subjective, but if so should be described
‘Third Wind’ achievement seems to have a disproportionate reward, considering its power cost, unles it’s possible to have 2 PCs with this ability in the same campaign (not found this yet)
‘Ghost’ acheivement description is unclear: does ‘without fighting’ mean without entering battle; without causing damage; or without aggression (ie entering battle then running away instantly but: damage may be caused by retribution effects, but no active strikes were made on the eneny inclluding such things as ‘holy lihght’)?
Battle is a bit ‘samey’. Other than changing the party makeup. is there any way to introduce a bit of variety here? Different tactics or strategies from the enemies, maybe? All thoughts appreciated!
‘Cold Front’ description says ‘freeze 2 adjacent enemies’; it doesn’t: it freezes 2 enemies in a rank (I think I’ve got that right – the vertical element as you look at the battle screen is what I mean)
‘Missile protection’ in the battle screen terrain buff is inadequately described – it appears to offer protection from some magic attacks (eg fireball) as well as archery. This is understandable AISI but confusing & possibly frustrating for a beginner
It would be nice to have the ability to change default ‘stances’ (eg ‘Empowered’ or ‘Zeal’) & to flee battle once the battle screen is entered but before battle is engaged, ie at the ‘deploy forces’ stage of the battle screen, in case of players not paying attention. I can envision this as being subject of some debate..
The sound effects appear to be pretty proportionate in volume, except for ‘Hold the line’ (& the other one I’ve found that uses the same FX); could this be quieted a little to bring it in line with the others? FX volume in the Options area applies to all FX equally, & it’s just this one I want toned down a little..
Could we have a method of selecting more than one item at a time to drag to different loot bags? Shift-click is the default for MS, but there needs to be an ‘unselect’ option & you’ve used CTRL..
The blue used for the mana bar in the battle screen could be a shade or two lighter; it’s difficult at times to make it out against the (mostly) dark background. Alternatively, or maybe as well, a tooltip could pop up when hovering over the mana/health bar giving ‘Current/Total’ points. This could be used in the map screen as well
‘Power siphon’ ability appears to work only on selected enemies – usually the most likely to be dangerous with power, eg mages – but not all & not always; another inconsistency between effect & description
Stunned protagonists on both sides should have their defence nerfed temporarily, as well as quickness
Curses such as ‘Oblivion rune’ & similar need to have their time limit reduced in order to make them effective in all but the very first level battles
I feel it would be good to have a small ‘knockback’ chance on all non-piercing weapons, increased for ‘rare’ (blue) or above
‘Turn undead’ doesn’t seem to provide as effective an effect as I feel it should – maybe scale with level?
Stunned characters (on both sides) should have a random (say) 10% chance of reducing or increasing their nerf by a certain amount (10-25%, say?) when receiving a successful hit while stunned – possibly proportional to the amount of damage taken?
In addition to above stunned characters should have their defence nerfed by (say) 25%
In a fighter-heavy party, ‘Hold the line’ is a good idea; however in a more balanced party my fighter spends 90% of his time holding the line, & only really fights at the clearup stage at the end of a battle. Could this be readjusted somehow, eg a time buff, or make the ability available to ranger or cleric, or.. discuss
‘Snare protection’ should be changed from file to rank
————————————————
That’s all so far; I’m just going through the last mage style now (conjourer) & will be progressing to rogues shortly after..
about 1 year ago
while some of these points are legit, I will point out some things you missed and some things I disagree with:
hold the line shows a tooltip next to it indicating the buff it applies. this is the same for all buffing skills in the game. in addition, below the name of the skill (in its tooltip) you can see a list of tags that describe the skill; i’m pretty sure buff is on the list for hold the line which indicates it is a buffing skill. in the same vein, many magical skills and attacks have the missile tag in this list, which indicates that they are affected by missile protection
you can change default stances by going to the character pages (ie if you’re on the dungeon map and you click the circle of a unit, it will go to the character page, not the inventory). the stance selected on that page is the default stance for the character
I strongly disagree with all your comments on boosting the power of stun. stun can be game ending esp against slow characters (if you ever dealt with a dwarf veteran’s hammer slam during survival mode of book of dread, you’ll understand what I mean here). While it seems illogical for a stunned enemy to be able to dodge or defend themselves adequately, flavor must give way to balance. especially for a human player who knows how to use stun intelligently (ie stun shortly before a unit takes its turn, so its action clock is as full as possible), stun can be extremely dangerous, and coup de grace emphasizes the power. This would definitely make pin too good since there is no other class in the game that can consistently inflict stun on the enemy, and warden is superb as it is
as for your note about front line fighters spamming hold the line… frankly front line units will never be useful for dealing damage and this is not a surprise because they have to allocate stats to endurance to stay alive, seeing as they’re front row. That means their damage-dealing stat (depending on what weapon they use) will never be as high as a backrow unit that for the most part couldn’t care less about durability and can put every point into damage, so they will never be able to match damage output. As a result a front row guy’s prime use is for soaking damage while backrow guys do the killing, and so spamming hold the line is not only normal but probably the logical action most of the time for a warrior; I don’t see this as a problem. In addition hold the line is a very powerful skill (a well spec’d captain can heal bigtime with it because he’s taking +int anyway for shrug it off, and if captain’s healing skills like shrug it off get changed to endurance it will be EXTREMELY powerful. I was initially in favor of the change to make shrug it off/hold the line +end rather than +int, but I realized that it could be too strong since one of the main weaknesses of the captain over the champion is his increased squishiness since he needs int. Letting him take pure endurance totally mitigates that flaw. in addition, all +armor buffs are powerful by nature. +15% armor from bolster defenses on a high level armor item is easily equivalent to +1500 armor rating) so I don’t think putting it on clerics is a great idea; clerics are a powerful class on their own esp thanks to healing flash and the versatility of smite.
knockback is a very situational effect, and double edged. If you push a character into the backrow it can make them more difficult to target and control. for example, I never push a nexus engine into the backrow. it can still use void cannon from back there which is its most dangerous skill so I don’t gain much, and if he drops a dimensional rift on me, the voidstalkers might all end up in the front and that increases his longevity that much more; I need the guy in the front where I can rack up damage more easily. Another good example is a skeletal guard – it can attack from the backrow, and its huge missile protection means that it actually is harder to kill if it’s not within melee range because rangers can’t do anything to it. Vs a necromancer+guard team that could be the losing factor in a battle if he revives a backrow guard at the wrong time for me. For that reason I don’t really like the idea of backrow being possible for any weapon; that’s something I want to have control over where as almost never will a stun or debuff (eg sunder armor or poison) be a disadvantage to me; worst case scenario something dies a little sooner than I planned where as knockback could be the reverse depending on the affected unit. Again while it seems logical from a flavor standpoint, I see little reason to justify this from a gameplay standpoint, esp since there are 3 classes in the game that can facilitate knockback and they’re all good (conjuror can summon wargolems, and both warrior variants have kick). Besides, from a flavor standpoint, most blunt weapons have a chance to stun which reflects their smashy-ness (maces, mauls are basically the only kind of blunt weapon).
about 1 year ago
New saving bug found.
I entered a Act 5 just for buying equipment and selling things. I brought myself a Bloodletter and some rare items. After equipping the items, I exited to the map screen and then closed the browser directly.
When I came back I found that the new items were lost but my money was not returned. I could’t find the Bloodletter in the shop suggesting that I had brought it.
I am not sure if this is a bug. I’m using the online save system.
about 1 year ago
Every time you log in, the game warns you what you need to do to ensure a sync. You didn’t quit to the main menu or save via the options screen.
I’m not sure why it seems to have partially saved.
about 1 year ago
Still there’s a bug in the shop. I found it yesterday.
1. Enter game. Do not log in.
2. Restock the shop until you see something useful
3. Back to main menu and log in
4. Money is back but the shop is restock with the useful things.
about 1 year ago
Though I was exploiting it to save money, you may want to fix it.
about 1 year ago
Ok, I will look into that. There’s a new version coming this week.
about 1 year ago
Congrats on a great new addition to the series Garin.
A few things that struck me:
Map:
- Walking around the map is slow, especially compared to the instant travel from Monster’s Den/BoS.
Can we hope for an update in the future to increase travel speed? If there is one, feel free to call me a blind fool, but I can’t find it.
- Map Scrolling/Zooming.
Love the bigger maps, but scrolling is a little on the slow side, and again, I didn’t see any option to do so.
Likewise, Zooming in/out to check details or see the big picture would be awesome.
Gameplay:
Love the new system, very smooth, much more involved.
- Inventory.
On the plus side, multiple sorted containers is awesome.
One problem for me with the inventory system though is probably just a matter of the scope – finding new stuff is a a pain with so many items in there.
- There’s no “show stuff that is ‘?’ rated”, if it’s ‘?’ rated, I have to search my whole inventory for it.
- There’s no indication when an item is new or not, and the icons aren’t big enough for me to memorise at a glance, so I keep checking through the same stuff looking for a potentially new item. I suppose I could filter everything new to a bag and move them out when I’d looked at them, but that sort of kills the autosorting.
- The “is better” calculation and I disagree. A lot. And sometimes it disagrees with itself (“Mine’s better.” *swap* “Mine’s better.”). I’d honestly prefer it to be looser with its suggestions and show me several potential items from each category rather than just “the best”.
I may also be misremembering, but I have it in my head that I used to be able to compare gear for characters right in the loot screen, and drag it to them accordingly. If that’s been lost in the name of progress, then fair enough, but needing to autoloot and then manually go to my inventory to check out .
Classes
Again, great improvements, though it took a bit to wrap my head around the abilities.
I do have one major issue, and this might be just differences of thematics:
Why do:
Mages have a rapidfire spell (Magic Missile).
Warriors have a rapidfire kick (Kick).
Clerics have a rapidfire heal (purify/healing flash).
Rangers have rapidfire traps/buffs (Swiftness, at least).
But Rogues, the only half speed abilities are for the thief?
I’m not suggesting making the Assassin’s abilities half-time or anything, but it seems strange that the class that’s theoretically centred around agility, damage dealing and debuffs that they’ve got nothing that actually does the job as quickly as something mages start out with at level 1.
- Flash Powder
- Sap
- Cripple
- Hide
Any of these could make a suitable “fast” skill for the Rogue, assuming they were toned down accordingly. Perhaps if Sap were half-time, reduced power by 30 rather than 75?
about 1 year ago
as for your question on whether an item is new or not: I agree with you here, although use of the autoloot settings REALLY helps alleviate this problem. I set the top bag to be completely unsorted and to loot all armor/weapons, so new items appear at the bottom of the bag (where as if it was sorted it would mess the order up instantly). Then when a battle is over, I can hop into that bag and flip through the last five items or so, knowing that they’re all new equips for me to consider. I use that bag to just drag around all the armor and weapons I accumulate but don’t want to use.
I also agree with your complaints about the suggestion system, but to be fair, monsters den is a procedurally generated game and the possible armor/weapon combinations are extraordinarily numerous. Trying to make a computer intelligently select the best of these items is a virtually impossible task. If I found a bolstering campaign helm of healing, I’m pretty sure I’d keep that item even if it was 20 tiers below the wielder because both those effects are so damn good to me (bolster defenses is the #1 most important buff in the game for a standard looted armor item imo, it typically bestows more damage protection than the item itself. My inquisitor currently has 45% damage protection, but if you hit him once his armor goes up to 90%. have fun killing him when he’s regenerating 10% of his HP per turn and he’s taking a tenth of the damage you deal to him). not everyone agrees in this regard, and it’s tough for the game to properly interpret the weights that people put on the various armor/weapon effects, so it just has to give it its best shot. if we create a system for us to explain our preferences to the game, we now make the suggestion system way too complicated to be useful. *shrug* in other words I totally know what you mean about the suggestion system, but I don’t think there’s a reasonable solution for this problem
Also agree with the flavor for rogues but I would like to point something out. of the half clock skills you listed, only one kicks ass: healing flash, because at high levels it is actually nearly as strong as heal (seriously it’s like 90% as strong for just over half the mana, and half as much action clock. crazy good!). So while I see the flavor benefits, I don’t think the half turn would change my attitude on most of the rogue skills you listed. If we look at the other half turn skills, mage missiles is good if you keep your int really high but it is EXTREMELY mana intensive and often dumping all your mage’s mana into an all out attack like that is not worth it in a protracted battle (you benefit more from saving the mana for electrocutes/fireballs/wargolems, all of which are very strong if your int is high enough to capitalize on mage missiles in the first place), while a short battle just isn’t worth the trouble and you need more immediate damage if you’re going for flawless (I never use mage missiles when going for flawless, which I do in every 3-enemy battle I enter, because it doesn’t get a unit from 100% to 0 as quickly, even though it’s more damage in the long run because of my mage’s titanic int). Ranger buffs like thorns and swiftness have to be half clock because they’re far too weak to be worth using a full turn, but sometimes justifiable if they only cost half. honestly that’s true of the vast majority of buffs (purify as well – it would be worthless if it was a full turn, seriously). Kick is extremely situational and deals incredibly low damage compared to a regular attack that consumes a full turn and often deals well over 2x the damage of a kick; the only reason to use kick really is if a unit is nearly dead (so kick would kill it and let you get your next turn faster – this is quite rare) or if you have one of those rare situations where pushback is useful – even rarer. In other words, the main reason most of the half turn skills are half turn is because they’re weak and situational, and cannot be worth using a full turn on, rather than because there’s a logical reason for them to be half turn – who knows how long it takes my ranger to set up snares? healing flash and mage missiles are the only two exceptions to the rule.
Compare this to the list of rogue skills you listed. flashpowder is frankly really weak and doesn’t last long enough to be worth a turn or even a half turn, as do most skills that do nothing but debuff. I could see this being half turn from flavor standpoint. Sap and cripple, I don’t think these skills flavorwise are suited to being half turn even if they are nerfed beyond being useful, and frankly they aren’t even very useful right now. Hide… hide is dangerous. Very dangerous. I fear that if it was half turn it would be OP. You can’t do this strategy anymore because you have a max of 2 rogues now, but I remember in book of dread people would make survival teams using four rogues that used hide and extremely high levels of the rogue passive poison skill (inflicts a powerful permanent poison debuff to every enemy they attack with their weapon. remember, in book of dread, most buffs/debuffs were permanent!). They would hide all the rogues to prevent their enemies from killing them and then stab for massive damage (boosted by hide) + poison every turn. Nowhere near the survivability of the more classic warrior/cleric/conjuror/ranger techniques, but titanic damage output which is really useful in survival mode for picking off those damn dwarf veterans. The fact that this strategy was even being discussed speaks to its effectiveness and so I fear that hide being half a turn would be broken… probably requires testing yes, but it is definitely not out of the question. Basically what I’m saying is that I don’t think cutting these skills to half turn would change very much about the rogue at all. If the focus is entirely on the flavor though, then I can wholeheartedly agree that the rogue needs some more half turn moves.
about 1 year ago
For Suggestions, my only possible suggestion would be that rather than the “top choice” being the only one suggested, giving the “top three” or so might be better. I appreciate the suggest feature is just a loose guideline of value, but with a larger pool to choose from, that might allow it to avoid getting caught on something it thinks is *awesome* because it has 10% stun protection.
I use Missiles for the occasional double tap, finishing two injured targets before either gets a turn rarely happens, but I like having the option (and yes, theme is important!). Since I quite enjoy having both mages in the party, sometimes machine-gunning everything is fun.
It’s gratifying to have it confirmed that those skills are as lacking as I thought they were.
I confess after playing more, it’s not just flavour – maybe it’s just sour grapes, since Rogues used to be pretty much the quintessential single target damage dealer class, but with Rangers and Mages getting straight damage bonuses from fighting styles (better than assassin’s crit boost for those who prefer their rogues to be deadly, not lucky), never-miss abilities, and none of the target limitations of Rogues.
It just feels like something’s missing that gives the class its old pizazz – so much about the class was built up on dealing long-term, permanent debuffs that it just hasn’t made the change as smoothly.
Possibly replacing one of the more mediocre skills with an actually decent single target damage ability might be nice. Even the Ranger’s Envenomed Arrow beats insidious poison, and the ranger has dual a healing role.
Hopefully by crowd-sourcing it class balance can be investigated and tweaked more easily.
For Rogue half-time skills, I see:
Hide (50% damage bonus) – Hide is essentially a Zero sum skill anyway, you’re trading a turn of inactivity (where your teammates suffer in your stead), to deal equal damage next turn. Half-turn hide means that the rogue isn’t dawdling as long, and has a harder time remaining perpetually hidden. Compare this to Eagle Eye, which is a free auto-crit and some power regeneration.
Sap (Half Damage, -30 Power) – This would probably change the skill from a “stop fully charged enemy from using their super move” to “suppress two mage-type enemies from doing anything useful by keeping them at 0 energy”. Thematically I like the idea of a rogue harassing his enemies with rapid attacks so they never get a chance to attack.
Cripple – Not sure, an attack that can’t possibly kill a target combined with an ability that lasts a short while? This could possibly be half-time without any adjustment except maybe, possibly, debuff duration. Concerning flavour, I think it’s pretty much the same as the Warrior’s doing – Kicking, just in a more sensitive location!
Flash Powder – A single target 50% miss chance for one turn on one target that deals no damage should probably be cheaper and half-turn anyway. If it dealt a fraction of intellect damage then it might even be a decent cherry-tap move.
about 1 year ago
hide != eagle eye for sure. For one thing, standard critical damage is 150% – a turn and a half’s worth of attacking – so the half turn cost of eagle eye makes more sense there. you need a turn and a half’s worth of action to use it, and you deal a turn and a half’s worth of damage – if you would have used a reg attack, now you deal a reg attack and a half. hail of arrows? now hail of arrows, and a half. hide on the other hand is 2x damage. it should consume 2 turns, and it will only do so if it takes a full action.
furthermore, the +2 power regen is pitiful. power regen in general has been crippled in this version of monster’s den (I don’t really have a big problem with this tbh) and it’s just not as useful. In book of dread, I could build a cleric that regenerated 30 power per turn and could drop free heals every single turn indefinitely without ever running out of mana – hf getting that much runed equipment together in one place in chronicles. In comparison, hide’s secondary effect altogether protects a unit from taking any damage – the enemy doesn’t attack it at all because it doesn’t know it’s there. crowd control that results is significant and has way more impact on the battle than +2 power regen.
Eagle eye does cost no mana so that power regen will profit you, but not as much as it sounds – +2 mana regen over 6 seconds is a measly 10 power (unless you line it up perfectly and score six regens with it. you score a regen at the start of each second) which is not much unless you spam eagle eye over the long term which is generally not worthwhile – the right way to use eagle eye is right before a massive attack like hail of arrows and you won’t have enough power to perform that attack multiple times in most battles. otherwise eagle eye simply slows down your damage output and provides minimal profit over spamming regular attack. Hide DOES cost mana – quite a fair bit if you’re spamming it alongside sneak attacks – but frankly when you have the ability to take a unit completely out of enemy view I don’t see any problem with having to pay some power for it.
Overall I just don’t see the two skills being at all comparable, eagle eye is so much weaker in so many ways
As for sap, the problem with sap being weakened that far is that sap is truly most useful at the very opening of a battle… when everyone’s power tank is full. As a result you need to hit the power bar hard if you want to make the skill useful, because your window of opportunity to use it is right before anybody takes a major move. If you sap an acolyte or a neophyte and prevent the guy from summoning those wretched voidstalkers/aetherguards (both of which have been nerfed from book of dread imo – aetherguards were VERY strong in book of dread), you’ve made a huge gain because of how much you’ve slowed down the opponent’s battle plan. But in order to capitalize like that, you need to really nail a BIG chunk of the guy’s power. If you take 30 off his full tank, he’s still got 70 left to throw around, more than enough to use a power skill. If we take a look at action clocks from the start of the battle, the rogue needs one full turn to deal his first sap if it’s half turn, and then another half turn from there to take his next sap. In the rogue’s 1.5 turns to perform sap twice, his prime targets will have definitely received one full clock, taken their actions already (this btw is why I do not use mage missiles when going for flawless – it takes 1.5 turns to deal the first two missiles and that extra 0.5 turns is the difference between killing an acolyte, and letting him summon a voidstalker that slashes your backrow with its huge quickness and ends your flawless) and the value of the skill will be vastly reduced – what’s the point of sapping a neophyte if he’s already breached aether? Almost none and at that point it’s just a waste of the rogue’s power. While the use of sap as a suppressive skill seems more logical if it’s halved, the actual utility of the skill is almost entirely dependent on how much power it drains because it’s really most useful at the start, and I would much rather have it take a full turn to drain a significant amount of power (i admit it deals quite a bit of power damage right now) than spend half a turn to do something inconsequential. This also raises another flaw with sap: it requires a melee weapon, so the most appealing targets (the spellcasters, they’re the most dependent on their mana tanks) are all out of reach in a typical battle. I have a crazy proposition at the end of this gigantic comment that might address issues like this but to be fair this proposition of mine is really crazy.
As for cripple… after taking another look, I may have underestimated. 30 quickness is a lot. my issue here is that unless you equip a bow (I think rogues can? idk because I tend to stick to knives or swords/maces) cripple by default cannot target the backrow where all the fast moving problem units are (acolytes, ascendants, necromancers). that really limits its utility compared to the terrifying reliability of the ranger’s Pin. perhaps what this skill needs is not a half-turn cost, but rather a longer duration. I think this is one on which my opinion was a bit misjudged; I will have to play this more to be certain
Anyway I think if we really want to take apart the rogue’s weaknesses and flaws in md chronicles, we’re looking at it from a fundamentally wrong standpoint. What made rogues good in book of dread, that has changed in chronicles? If you look at their skill sets, surprisingly not all that much. Key skills like coup de grace (frankly this has always been the #1 most important skill for rogue. Look at warrior’s execute in survival mode of book of dread if you don’t believe me, execute was a freaking monster) have remained, and powerful debuffs that inflict poison or slow have also remained. In addition the rogue retains the ability to attack the backrow with a melee weapon which no other class does well (except warriors with polearm). The only thing rogues definitely lost was create opening. This skill, if i recall correctly, had reduced accuracy and damage, but if it hit, an ally would instantly perform a followup regular attack on the targeted unit. Create opening kicked ass in campaign but frankly wasn’t all that good in survival, which imo was the most serious mode of book of dread.
What has changed? it’s the very nature of debuffs themselves and I believe this is what makes rogues so weak right now. In MD book of dread, most buffs/debuffs lasted an entire battle (ie there was very little time limiting to most buffs, with the exception of special ones like anoint that disappear on action). I will keep referring to survival mode here because I consider it the most intense way to play book of dread. Buffs like natures balm, inspire, eldritch aegis, adrenaline were absolutely incredible in survival because THEY NEVER WEAR OFF. you open up with inspire at the start of a campaign battle, whoop dee doo +15% damage protection for a battle that’ll prob last 3 cycles. fantastic. But in survival mode? Buffs like inspire were nothing short of mandatory. Another example: dwarven warrior’s punishing blow dealed a -50% damage dealt (akin to cult guardian’s pummel in chronicles). This debuff NEVER WORE OFF BY TIME. if you lacked the ability to dispel it in survival mode, the affected unit was basically neutered for damage for the rest of the game, ie indefinitely. For this reason, the cleric’s benediction was game-winning in survival mode and absolutely crucial to success, because benediction in book of dread was a passive that had a chance to dispel all negative effects and debuffs when you healed someone. This gave you the ability to dispel curses like punishing blow that would otherwise never wear off, and that difference was absolutely essential to long survival runs.
Forgive my nostalgia, I loved survival mode in book of dread (I can’t get back my 30 power regen cleric from book of dread now that I’m playing chronicles… T_T). Anyway, if you compare that buff system to the system we have now, almost everything wears off by time! And for the most part, this is a good thing. Can you imagine if the cult ascendant’s energy flare never wore off over time? -40% accuracy for eternity in survival mode would be absolute hell! (especially because out of all the debuff types, arcane is the absolute most difficult to dispel. without liturgy on the forgiveness of frailties, an epic level censer, you basically have no way to get rid of it except by waiting it out) The same issue plagues rogues. While their debuffs are still strong, they don’t last long. When you have to spend a turn or even a half turn to inflict those buffs, where is the lasting impact? Where’s the long-term result that, over the course of a protracted battle, will make me say “damn I could have lost that one if not for flashpowder/sap/cripple/etc”? If we look at holy light in book of dread survival, that skill was game-winning and typically reduced enemy damage output by as much as 50%, vastly reducing the healing work a cleric had to do to keep the party alive. Where are these returns on a rogue’s debuffs? The answer is that we can’t find any because the debuffs don’t last long enough. Flashpowder won’t cost an opponent very many of its crucial attacks when it only lasts 3 seconds (it’s a melee range skill so you’ll be hitting the slow guys in the front. at most you’ll affect them for one or two turns of action). It just doesn’t pan out.
For short battles, there is no fix. Short battles are naturally unforgiving to debuff-based skills because there’s almost no reason to use them when you could just end the battle a turn faster by focusing on damage. A rogue’s utility in short battles will be almost entirely dependent on his damage output, and basically nothing can get around that because the battle is too short for anything else to matter. But in a long battle, that doesn’t have to be the case. Debuffs CAN be powerful in a long enough fight, if they last long enough to have an impact. So after thinking about this, it makes me wonder: what would happen if the classic rogue debuffs never wore off, like in book of dread? Flashpowder becoming permanent for an entire battle instead of ending after 3 seconds (it can still be healed off or dispelled, but it never wears off from time) would be an incredible change to its utility. You could instantly neuter the threat posed by a high-damage output unit that takes a while to kill, without having to kill it outright – something like a defiler or a deathknight – and you could be certain that it would stay that way. Cripple being permanent is OP for sure though lol. Permanent duration for rogue’s poison stance vastly increases the damage potential of poison in a long battle, something that ranger’s envenom cannot hope to match (I mean cmon, look at envenomed arrow. It deals more damage than ranger’s regular attack, has higher DPS than rogue’s poison, AND lasts longer. All this for less than 40 power. no way rogue’s poison can compete). Basically what I’m getting at is that debuff utility is closely associated with how long the battle lasts, and how long the debuff lasts; rogue debuffs currently don’t last long and that’s why it’s such a weak class. We can’t do much about the former, but we can definitely extend the latter to improve debuffs that are currently too weak. In fact, we can extend some buffs to simply never wear off.
The other suggestion I will make is one that I think is quite thoroughly double edged and has a lot of potential for abuse, but at least deserves some thought, if only because it shows that there are people (eg me) crazy enough to believe this is a semi-good idea. Remove the sneak attack skill altogether, and set the Elusive stance so that, while wielding a melee weapon, all power costs go up by 15 for all single target skills including the standard weapon attack (15 is the cost of sneak attack while elusive is on, so you will have to pay in exchange for this utility), but they can target any enemy the same way sneak attack can. In effect this means that, in exchange for 15 extra power cost, any skill can now be used to target the backrow, a la sneak attack. You can still do a regular sneak attack by just performing a regular attack while in this stance. But more importantly, you can now sap or cripple backrow units while holding a melee weapon, without having to kill frontrow first. Just pay an extra 15 power to use those skills – more than reasonable if it means you can get your debuff action going from the very start. Now the rogue can really pick on the units that are susceptible to its skills; rather than just damaging them with sneak attack we can now debuff them or eat into their power to ensure they don’t pose a threat while we work down their HP. We can then replace the opened skill slot with the classic Create Opening skill, or some other wild idea. What do you think of THAT craziness, eh?
about 1 year ago
The custom sprite option is a little buggy.
Say I link a picture that is 170x170px. It automatically resizes it to ~85% and says that it is smaller, even though in actuality it is still 170×170 px (As in it says it is 85% of the original of the size, but it is actually 100%). Then when I drag the bar to make it 100%, the picture is blurry and bigger than the original 170x170px for some reason.
about 1 year ago
Ah nvm, it seems that its just that transparent bg counts as sizing in the game but not in the application preview
about 1 year ago
Yo Garin, Hackedfreegames.com is looking to add some cheats to your game. Looks like they already gave a god mode to BoD. Perhaps you could give them a version for people to run though. One that starts with lots of money and multible ‘spark of legend’ enhancements.
Unless you were already on it. Just mentioning man.
about 1 year ago
Related to the v1.1 crashes, I posted this on AG, and I think it’s relevant so I’m posting it here for more visibility.
I’m using Win 7 with Chrome and FF.
I spent about an hour doing some testing for you, since I’m eager to get grinding on v1.1
I noted over 2 pages of stuff in a text document, and here I’ve condensed it into the major patterns I’ve discovered.
Every possible action in the game can be put into one of 2 categories:
1. Actions that immediately crash the game.
2. Actions that never crash the game.
#1 is performing *some* battle actions and mousing over *some* items, and #2 is everything else. (ie, most of the game is fine)
Mousing over items and performing battle actions can be subcategorized as follows:
1. Mousing over them immediately crashes the game.
2. Mousing over them never crashes the game.
#2 contains the majority of items in the game – every consumable, every item in the “special order” shop, and some gear. There is not yet an apparent pattern for which gear crashes or not. #1 is *only* gear.
Mousing over non-items has yet to result in a crash for me.
I hope this helps.
about 1 year ago
The categories for mousing over items and performing battle actions should read:
“1. Mousing over them or successfully performing them (ie, the action hits) immediately crashes the game
2. Mousing over them or performing them immediately crashes the game.”
about 1 year ago
And I forgot to add that the battle actions I’ve noted that crash the game are melee attacks and projectiles.
about 1 year ago
I think equipment with triggered effects was screwed up by the encryption. If you’re having crashes please try this version and let me know if it works better for you (load your cloud save)
http://monstrumgames.com/test/chronicles.html
about 1 year ago
I haven’t found any way to crash it yet. I was able to complete battles using a variety of skills, and I checked out everything in the inventory and shop without crashing.
about 1 year ago
And the updates/fixes that I’ve discovered so far are very very nice.
about 1 year ago
I think v1.11 fixes the crash issue, except I can’t play v1.11 anymore after playing it once. I closed the window and 2 minutes later when I try to get back on, it says movie not loaded. Let’s hope it’s temporary
about 1 year ago
That’s because I’ve taken it down.. I just needed confirmation that it worked. I didn’t want to leave it up while the game is technically still exclusive to Armor.