Yeah I think I'll: Maybe merge Time Circle and Silence Definitely get rid of Lucky Definitely get rid of Shield (except for the shield buffs you get for getting urns when at full health/mana) Change that Shield/Sword Fury/Silence trinket to something else... maybe one that makes Sword Fury really common just for the hell of it? Accepting suggestions. Also accepting suggestions for Old Pendant's effect being changed to something else. If we merge time circle and silence, there's basically almost no buff spells left. And in Crypt 3 I'll remove those doors that trap you in tiny rooms. Mostly because I'm going back and removing all the backtracking-blocking doors I can. That alone should make that level easier. Generally increasing the spell urns by 40% or so in this upcoming update. FUNNY STORY... in beta there used to be three times as many spell urns. That was way too much. So it got reduced to the current number of 30% or so. So I'll bump it back up some and see how that goes. As a final thing, we might give the player an attack spell every time they get back up.
I think that if you let us get m lighting or fire balls, crypt3 is more doable by everybody. To be honest I only find those two spells when I fight bosses
If we had more Fireballs or Chain Zaps, everything would be more doable by everybody. It's like an OP magic fest. @Kepa: While, yes, it's probably good design to make story mode doable by everyone, at the same time I don't think you want to tweak its difficulty down so much that the jump to master mode is an "omg" moment. I forgot about Sword Fury. I hate that spell, too. Could also use a buff. Maybe decrease the time between swings by about 1/3, so you swing 50% faster? @FPE: Lucky spells are useless, I agree. Shield spells are not, even though I do hate getting them. But at least they help stun the pack when you get hit. For starters, you should never lose half your health when you enter a room. There's a pretty generous period of invulnerability after you get hit which gives you time to either get away or hack the monsters around you to death. The crypt is one of my favorite areas because of the strong dichotomy between huge hordes of shambling zombies and limited numbers of more dangerous enemies. General strategies that I use: 1) Always kill the Reapers first. They summon fast, and especially when there's two or more you can't let them keep doing their own thing. Dash past or charge through the initial mob, usually by hugging a wall, and take out the reapers. They generally take 3 hits each. I hope you've been pumping Vigor, because you're going to want to dash a lot. I pumped literally all of my points into it for the first 20 levels. 2) Ignore the Rotting Warriors and kill the horde. Once you don't have to worry about any more of them being summoned, you can clear out the annoying, mindless zombies. Either lure them around in circles to cluster them together, or backtrack to a doorway/hallway where they won't be able to surround you. Then just stand and swing swing swing. 3) Try to keep track of the number of times you hit those exploding zombies. They usually go down after 2-3 swings, so when you think you've downed one or two of them, back up slightly to avoid being hit. Then continue step 2. 4) If a Rotting Warrior charges up to rush at you, either back up or run around the mob to the other side, getting him off your case for a little bit. Once the rest of the zombies are dead (or far enough away that you don't have to worry about them for the moment), you can kill the big guys. Don't be afraid of their sword swing—your sword is faster and will interrupt their attack. Only when they charge up should you retreat and dash out of the way. Then continue the beatdown. Multiple Rotting Warriors aren't any different, they just require more patience. Try to lure them together, like the zombies, so that you can face them and swing your sword without getting attacked from behind. The only difference here is that you need to run whenever any of them charges up, which may be quite frequently if you run into 3, 4, or 5 of them at once. But with enough patience you shouldn't really take damage. There's a mob of 5 of them somewhere in Tower Pinnacle (may be Master Mode, I don't remember), and usually I just Fireball/Shadow Bomb/Chain Zap them because I'm lazy, but if I need to I can clear it without too much effort. Hope that will help. EDIT: Kepa! I had a brilliant idea! Firing Ray of Light through Gnomey causes him to act like a prism, giving it a cone instead of linear area of effect and causing a brilliant rainbow of death. I hate Ray of Light anyway, since it's too hard to hit multiple baddies with it in most of the later levels.
btw I have passed crypt as is ... but only when I found one fire ball and one thunder (first time ever!) and I decided to escape the last fight where the doors are open. Actually, Kepa, you might just want to keep the doors open (I mean the back door) because I also used a trick to keep them open and that made a huge different.
I liked that idea you had before about making enemies randomly be glowing so that they provide a spell. You could also make it something like that the more spells you are holding, the less likely it is for a monster to appear that is glowing. Adding more spell urns may not have the desired effect of just allowing for more spells. Adding more spells but keeping a bit of randomness in it may keep some of the difficulty that you originally intended.
Alright. I signed up just to say what I feel about the game, Kepa. When I started the game, I loved the controls instantly. The pro swipe is an amazing feature, bravo for it. I know you've been told numerous times your game runs so smoothly, but it had me enchanted. You've done great things optimizing the engine, with all those bouncy bits of broken bones, leaves, pots, etc. Blahnlahblah you made an amazing game. Ha, anyway. When I first started reading the notes in story mode, the diversified language brought me back to the years of Chrono Cross, where every population had it's own dialect, a different way of speaking and writing that was apparent in the dialogue and signs. It's a very immersive feature that is often looked over by many popular titles. Zenonia, for example, I've tried over and over to get into, but every time someone says something out of character like "OMG" or "LOL," sometimes even "WTF," who does that? It drives me crazy. Even with Inotia, with many diverse races, they somehow all knew the same language and spoke proper English. With your game Kepa it gives me a sense that everything was thought out, and it's funny reading what the orcs have to say, drudgor being a buffoon always make me giggle. I'm in tetramonts estate in master mode now, loving every minute of it. I honestly could not finish the pinnacle before the update. However.. I beg you to leave the old pendant alone. When I equipped it with the glowing sword, one of the higher level robes, and 10 20 20 stats I was nearly INVINCIBLE. I could make one haste pot last five minutes or so. For the porcine god I had silence + time circle and I didn't lose a single heart. I let the spells stack up for shields and just defeated the boars forthe extended duration. Before the update, when I realized pots weren't going to appear often I leveled up my vigor and luck as fast as I could, since I knew crits and dashing would be my strongest abilities. I still couldn't defeat the pinnacle though but you're doing a great job keeping connected with the community, and updating the game accordingly. The appearance rate of gnomey is fine. I've found him four times, twice in one level. However, is he invincible or something? At first I thought he was going to give me something but he pointed in a random direction. So since then at every chance I try to beat the living sh** out of him every time. Using a sword doesn't seem to work well, spells do a lot of damage faster, yet he just doesn't do anything but change color then poof! Is this the intended action? Also.. I've scoured the pinnacle, the tower bunker, everywhere but I can't find that last exploration achievement in story mode.
Gnomey doesn't do anything, so don't try to kill him. All he does is give you a pet if you find him 5 times. The last exploration achievement is in Sealed Tower (it's a book, so it's not immediately distinguishable as a hidden location), but it's still bugged, so you can't get it yet. I forgot about the Glowing Sword. How much does that extend your duration per kill, Kepa?
Circle of Silenced Time Silenced Circle of Time Quiet Circle of EPICNESS Why don't you COMBINE LUCKY + TIME CIRCLE + SILENCE and KEEP ULTRALUCKY? Lucky Circle of Silenced Time Lucky Circle of Muted Monsters? Lucky Circle of Silence? I was also going to comment on the other stuff. Change that trinket to 5x hat drop rate at no other losses to decrease "grind time". If your only going for hats no one cares about anything else for that time. Remove shield from spell urns but keep the bonus from getting another health urn with 3 hearts. Keep it so that every time you get another one the duration goes up 2x. So I have 3 hearts, find a shield, then find another shield the duration is 2x longer than if I had 1 shield. Make the trinket do 2x damage with sword fury +50% chance of finding it? Test that out, maybe make it 33% seeing how little urns there was/are in certain levels. Old Pendant should now boost defense. Giving 1/2 hit moves do 1/2 still but 1 hit moves only do 1/2. Is that possible? Player gets attack spell when getting up is fine as long as that WILL NOT WORK with the Phoenix Feather. Otherwise 3 stars will be even EASIER! You should keep the doors that trap you in ALL PINNACLE LEVELS (PLEASE I BEG YOU DON'T REMOVE THEM). Make it so that once all the enemies are killed the doors reopen. That's all. REMOVE all other doors from all other levels but PLEASE KEEP THEM IN PINNACLE TOWER!!! You could also make glowing enemies located in secret rooms. They also won't count towards 3 starring the level. That way they are by themselves out of the way and its different then just running around getting spell urns. You can do this in most of the secret achievement areas. That's my feedback for now. I haven't been at it for a bit, took a break. Will unlock Gnomey soon though, haven't found him once though.
Lol that would be so good. Way better than Phoenix feather. That can't happen. Every enemy that's any threat at all does a full point of damage. You're basically saying "equipping this gives me 6 hearts and every health urn I find heals me double." I agree, the doors in Pinnacle are good because that area is supposed to be like a series of individual fights with a different mish mosh of enemies. Best place to find Gnomey is Gardens-1 on story mode. There's ~170 patches of grass right at the beginning of the level. Also, the combined buff should be called Negative Zone in tribute to Luigi's absolutely absurd final smash in SSBB. Except without spell descriptions people might not understand.
Thanks found him 3 times since your post! Crypt 3 on Master Mode... seriously Kepa... everything was nice and easy and then GJDSFJDLFSJDFLDSFLNM 40 minute map...
I'm going to assume you mean the biggest ones, not the middle sized ones. You attack twice then run away as they charge at you. Attack twice, run. Attack twice, run. Eventually he will die.
The giant ink wraiths...? Is that what we're asking? Every melee enemy (as distinguished from leaping or caster enemies) has the exact same strategy, to be honest. Rotting Warriors, Wraiths, Bull Slimes, those big burly drudge things that like to punch you, and I'm sure more that I'm forgetting. You just run up to it and slash the crap out of it. Their quick melee attacks will get interrupted 95% of the time and they won't be able to hit you. When they flash because they're going to charge, just dash away, then run back to them when they stop moving and do it again. I didn't realize this was really a 'strategy', though. I love Crypt-3 on Master. Love the gigantic, Moria-esque pillared rooms with swarms of enemies. Lots of enemies, but also lots of room to maneuver. So good.
Yeah, that's planned. Most people just lure the enemies out anyway to avoid fighting in the tiny rooms. And that's dangerous because it can break the map. So yeah I'll just take them out. It's a pretty rare spell. It used to be stronger but was overnerfed. I might make it do 50% more damage or something. Those big rooms are really hard to do on the tiny iphone screen. Another thing is that we had to make sure all the enemies were slow moving melee enemies. Chargers or casters in that room would have just attacked you outside of your vision. Yeah in hindsight I shouldn't have made the third level in each chapter way longer than the previous ones. Probably not longer at all, but definitely not 100% longer. I should have thought of them not as levels, but as checkpoints. If there's suddenly a checkpoint that is twice the distance to go as other checkpoints, then it will really throw people off. Ok, I haven't added urns to that one yet. I already decided to do that big urn-adding pass. Pretty much all levels will get around 40-60% more urns in story mode. I don't think I'll be touching Master Mode, where placement seems about right. We do the shield thing already. Each shield you pick up adds to duration. I think I'll just buff sword fury damage separately so it's not a buff people dread getting. The trinket would probably just increase its appearance a ton. I might just leave old pendant as-is, or just increase its power to double instead of 50% more. Pinnacle levels don't even have secrets, so I could even just leave the back-blocking doors in. Making them open back up after a fight is a little harder. Will see how drained I am of energy by that point. 2 seconds. Maybe 3 seconds if combined with the old pendant, I forget. I might just buff old-pendant, since the buffs are getting merged some (silence + time circle in one spell is likely, QUIET CIRCLE sounded like a good name). Right now the pendant does 50% to buff durations, might just make it double buff duration. Will have to test this. Also I liked your gnomey story. Most people tell me that Master Mode feels easier than Story Mode right now. I don't think that's how gnomes work at all. I like ray of light for the Hurgoth fight, and generally I just dash backwards before using it so enemies clump more.
Tough one. For me the main issue is that once again, as I said before, this is (like crypt3) the usual slash, rush, rush, slash .... Since everybody says master mode is great ..l kepa, just let us unlock it earlier because I want to play master mode!
The first two pages of Master Mode are how Story Mode should have been, except a little longer with the additional secret "wall" areas. (With the incredible Master Mode secrets ONLY in master mode). Only difference is the enemy types and the actual amount of enemies. The Master Mode we have now should have an extra potion on crypt three... but don't do this until after this whole spell merge update happens. I feel like I only obtained 2 stars due to getting lucky all the time.
In the next game I'm thinking of just basing the main game more on the pacing of Master Mode. Maybe even with the big enemy groups. Big enemy groups aren't a big deal at all if you have the spells to fight them and the levels (and therefore checkpoints) aren't super long. Also the sequel won't have a separate Master Mode. The plan is to have "main story" dungeons and "optional" dungeons, instead. That way I can just make the optional dungeons as brutally difficult as I want, and the main story dungeons pretty easy with frequent checkpoints. Yeah and the secrets will definitely be more like Master Mode. The story mode secrets weren't designed that way by me, someone else handled those. By the time I saw what was done a lot of them had already been made, so I was all "let's try it out anyway and see if it works".
