Bulwark: in the credits, I saw one of your testers is Fernando Torres. Is it THE Fernando Torres who plays football for Atletico Madrid?? Excellent game, I can't say this enough. The more I'm playing it, the more I'm enjoying it, so much that's it's currently my favorite game of 2015 (at least so far!) Can't believe it's been completely ignored on iOS. I hope it did better on Steam.
Ran into another gamebreaking bug: This time, my party is stuck on the overland map of Act 3, see screenshot. The party shows one hex off to the right of the road, and cannot go anywhere. Tried to backup the savegame before starting a new run, but iOS 8.3 changed something and currently no external filemanager works. Second one is a question if it's a bug or not: When you get loot, e.g. from winning a fight, and you don't have enough inventory space to pick it all up, some stuff gets left behind in a little blue bag on that hex. Are those bags just decoration? I'd expect that you can come back later and get things (otherwise, why put the bag there at all?) , but I cannot figure out a way to do so. Third, a suggestion: Please add more inventory space. I get that inventory management is part of how to play the game. But the current slots are filled up way too fast, especially when you start getting the permanent buff items like the Spyglass or Pillow. Fourth, another question: Did anyone have the egg hatch already? Trying to figure out if there is anything special I need to do (I have a suspicion, but didn't work so far) .
You can go back to that hex and open your inventory screen. Items that were left in the bag show up in the 5 or so waste bin tabs on the right side of your window. You can drag and drop between them to choose what to leave and/or swipe it all back to your inventory from there.
I am curious as to what the egg does, too. Had it each of the last two games and it never did anything and it doesn't have any resale value.
Finally had a victory last night where I got there in time to save dad. For those of you who have achieved this victory, what did you think of the "ending"?
Ah, that's how it works. Thanks a lot! @Kurtalb: About the egg. As it says something like "store cold and dry", I suspect it might hatch after you rested at campfires several times. I think I did that 3 or 4 times so far, but no hatching yet.
Some tips and tricks So, I almost won a game, admittedly on Easy with all my folks being lvl 10 (except for the Thief) . On the last battle, my hero got killed when the last boss was down to 1 HP: too bad it was his turn and he hit (think he has the "always hit" special you can get too) . To make life easier for folks who struggle like me, here are some tips and tricks I discovered during my various plays: 1) Use your potions. Inventory space is so limited that I run out all the time. No need to hog potions (exception below), use them whenever a good opportunity presents itself. 2) Save all of those red 3HP potions for the last (or other tough) battles: See above for the fate of my last playthrough. With one more potion, I would have won. 3) When you see materials for level 2 & 3 upgrade, and you don't have everyone maxed out, buy them. Especially the lvl3 material is pretty rare. 4) Buy campfires. That is, if you want to save yourself a few trips back to the Inn. 5) I rest up whenever my fatigue goes down to "no bonus". However, plan ahead a bit: E.g. no need to run back to the Inn and rest, when you only need to win the last fight of a stage to get to the next Inn. 6) The Mystery runes are killer equipment, see screenshot. You need three in one weapon to get the bonus, so plan ahead a bit. 7) Do not buy anything like runes (exceptions below) before you have cleared the map. Happens quite often that you e.g. buy 2 "+3 HP" runes, only to get 3 "+1 armour" as loot directly afterwards. 8) Exceptions to 7: Really good and rare stuff. All the permanent buff items like the Spyglass or Pillow. Runes like "Reduce Cooldown" and "Skill use costs no AP", "+35% Crit", etc. Oh, and good Ring runes. 9) Focus on a character's strengths. E.g. when you start out with 20% Crit, I don't think it makes sense to try to catch up from 0% Dodge (3 levels at 7% each, which you can use for better stuff). 10) Get Armor. Everyone needs at least 1 Armor Point. More is better, obviously But don't go overboard. No need to add a third "Armor 1" rune, when you have an unused +20% Dodge lying around. 11) Get something to take care of armored enemies, and plan ahead a bit for it. E.g. the Archer guy is great for this, when you take his 2nd version with the multi-attack and stack a "does 2 Armor damage" rune on top. For hard-hitters, "ignore armor" is really good. Coming up next (maybe already tomorrow): Example party setup, and reasoning behind it.
Good list! I would also recommend bribing the Royal Guard (unless it is a weak group), particularly in the second part of the city area. It costs a lot of gold if you don't have the bribe or bluff book, but once I did this I've had much better success rates (four "soft" victories and one full). They can be very tough at that point in the game and taking them on costs lots of valuable resources.
Thanks Nullzone, a very interesting read! Personally I don't have that much free time to play the game as often as I'd like - having a 2 year old boy and an 8 months pregnant wife does cut the quality time I can spend with my iPad! It's insightful even on a design standpoint on how many little details the devs put into this game. Balancing it all must have been a real challenge.
@Kurtalb: guess that' different on Medium. On Easy, I don't have any problems defeating the Royal Guards. @Gihubb: I have a 3.5 year old here, so I know what you are talking about
My take on party building, part 1: Our Hero My ideas on party building, based on what I am playing with currently. I don't have the last two Mercs yet, so I cannot comment on those. Our Hero: We'll go with version 3. Role: Support and Tank. He starts with 4 Strength, 7 HP, 20% Dodge, and the "Watch Out!" skill. Watchout gives Guard Mode for free for everyone in the part, including the Hero. This synergises really well with the other party members I chose, as we'll see in a bit: - Halfarus can range-attack 2 targets when in Overwatch - Melic also can attack 2 targets (in melee) when guarding - Jeda goes invisible immediately, saving her an AP Now, if the Hero dies it's Game Over, Man, Game Over!. So, making sure that he survives a beating is a good idea. Ignore Critical Hit when leveling up: he starts with 0% chance, needing 3 levelups just to get him to other folks' starting value. We can use those better elsewhere. The other folks should be dishing out the hurt, so any damage our Hero does we can treat as a nice bonus. Two main options here: 1) Increase Dodge: Whenever you can, raise Dodge at levelup. Keep in mind that you can add 3 +20% Dodge runes to his Armor. Focusing on Dodge runes means you only need 3 levelups (+7% each) to get him to 100% with 3 runes. Which gives a whopping 7 skillpoints to use elsewhere, but also leaves him pretty naked with 0 Armor. 2) Increase Health and Armor: I prefer this path, with a mixed approach. Give him at least 10 HP. If you want to play it super-safe, raise HP whenever you have the option at levelup; you should end up with 12+ HP. In any case, we can then decide if we want to go for more STR to do more damage, or more Dodge as additional defense layer. Keep in mind that in later stages you can get runes with +2 Armor or "+1 Armor +7% Dodge". I always go with a mix, getting him to 10+ HP and add a few STR points on the way. What Runes to use: 1) Weapon: Best setup in my opinion is to give him "-1 skill cooldown" and "skill use costs no AP". This way, we can use "Watchout" every turn, getting Guard Mode for free for everyone. In the third slot, put whatever suits your fancy, e.g. a +STR rune for more oomph. 2) Armor: I go with whatever I can get, gradually upgrading as the game progresses. E.g. starting out with a +3HP rune because I got one as loot, then upgrade to +1/+2 Armor. 3) Ring: Whatever you want. As he is pretty specialised, I prefer to give Ring runes to my other characters first. Next episode coming soon to a theater near you, stay tuned.
Interlude: Just trying to do a speedrun on Normal, see how that goes (pretty well so far ) . Strange thing I noticed, did anyone else get that: I did not have all my Mercs available right from the start. Instead, in the three inns so far, I got different Mercs to select from (e.g. Halfarus and the Knight in Inn 1, and Knight and Jeda in Inn 2) . Oh, and the Egg hatched Seems you just need to carry it around for long enough. What do I do with a paragon specimen of chicken now?
I wanted to add a line about the rarity of the "-1 Skill Cooldown" rune somewhere. Well, not so sure about that anymore, I got 4 already; and only started stage 3... I bought one in the store in stage 2, got 2 as reward there, and stage 3 has another in a store (skipping on that one for now, out of gold) . P.S.: Will add Halfarus tomorrow. Got him pretty much written down, but want to polish it a bit.
On Normal you only get two mercenary options per Inn. Once you get all the mercenaries unlocked, some of them will not be available in a game. Makes it more interesting in that you can't always use the same group of mercs.
I've never gotten the lockups when the Hero bites it, but I have had four lockups in combat when Zoe (three times) and Valana couldn't move or use their normal attack (had to restart). I have used Zoe in two full victory runs since the combat bug, so it appears to be a sporadic issue.
Yup when my hero dies in step three the game locks.. Has only happened to me in step three.. Really enjoying this game and hoping a fix comes soon ###
Nullzone: I'm really enjoying your commentary, great stuff , keep it up! On a side note, I got one of my friends to also buy and try the game. He had a hard time getting into it. The reason according to him is that the tutorial is extremely barebones and I have to agree. He even missed that initially he should have clicked on the jester to get started. The combat also has lots of details which are vital such as understanding "opportunity" and the "backstab" for example as well as the skills. He just didn't get how those work and was ready to give up. Even more severe, he is one of the more patient people I know and with today's mobile crowd that want their hand held otherwise they quit and delete, this isn't a good thing. My suggestion would to have a tutorial menu in the front page, which runs through those by specifying what to do on each move. Currently, reading quite a bit of dry text, which is easy to miss, according to him, and I have to agree, turns most off and he thinks one of the reasons the game hasn't done so well.
