Currently trying to get through the "Descent to the core" add-on levels, and noticing that I'm just ridiculously outgunned on these levels. I'm noticing that many of the later levels depend heavily on what races you have in your party. There just aren't enough items available with cleanse or hover, and these levels are incredibly frustrating. I also don't like having to manually reconfigure each item of gear, every time I go between levels. I wish at least there was a "clear all" button or something. Too much time spent in configuration and not enough in gameplay. Also, there needs to be a button that allows you to configure gear before starting a level. Currently, I have to exit to the map, go to a store, cancel the level, configure at the store, trying not to accidentally sell what I'm equipping, and then go back to the level.
You can use the store/retrieve party feature to insta-load parties without having to go thru reconfiguration.
Yeah, I've used that a bit, though it's still cumbersome and doesn't account for new gear or expanded capability.
Care to explain in detail what is meant by 'cumbersome' ? and doesn't account for new gear/expanded capability ? Devs would be happy to know why the archive feature isn't working for you.
Cumbersome in that you can only load the saved party, not modify it, without exiting the level and going back to a store. (from the intro page of a level) This absence of modifying ability means that if you have a new item you'd like to work in, or more power tokens, you still have to exit the level to do that.
Well, finally beat that one, still a pain, but I got lucky to get stone wall and cleansing burst in the first draw. I cast stone wall first, then went after the trogs in the middle. There was a rockfall, I used cleansing burst to get rid of a lava pool, and then the geomancers used the grow terrain card, and it made a wall across the whole bottom of the center section. I cleaned up the trogs first, then used the rockfall areas as cover from the lava and acid where possible, then pincered the geomancers from each side. Still was basically a luck of the draw thing, but that's what I did, in case anybody else runs into this.
I'm confused. You mean that loading a party of your choice and build at the adventure screen isn't enuff ? You want to be able to load a party AND modify the item builds right at the adventure screen before you've even started the adventure ? I don't know about others. My preference is to have different party builds in archive, go to an adventure, read the intro, load a party and go from there. Usually, 1 anti-magic, 1 x anti-block, 1 x anti-armor and 1 x generic parties are sufficient for me. When party levels up, I'd just work in newer items, save and continue. Shrugs.. edit: btw, the difficulty curve tends to grow at around lvl 7 so geomancers are intended to be a trifle hard.
Not all of the levels actually have the load/retrieve screen. But also, the party load thing alone is definitely not enough, as different opponents also require different types of attacks, and once you have six characters, five slots isn't a lot. Also, the leveling happens often enough that saves get outdated quickly. Also need a button to clear all equipped items for a character, and it would be useful to have saved equips you could flip through and instantly see what's equipped, for each character. I am a professional designer of many years, by the way. When logging off, I'll start a level to keep my place, as (it seems they've taken away the crumbled gates feature tonight too) the crumbled gates don't help to keep your place when leveling a second team up through the ranks. Also, if I die in the first screen of a new level, I don't want to waste an attempt on that one, so I'll have to leave the level and go back into it, and do a lot of excessive clicks and page loads to get to and back from the re-equip screen. This stuff should be blatantly obvious already, not sure why I'm having to explain it so much. EVERY unnecessary click, page load and button press should be eliminated. Every single one. Anything less is bad design. Hard skill-wise is one thing, but this is too unbalanced. It requires you getting an incredibly lucky series of draws, and turns into (after mastering the strategy) frustratedly pulling the handle of a costly and very time-consuming slot machine.
I have a build called "No Kit", which I use to do the "Drop All Items" button action you want. Rather like Phaselock, I have a set of builds "Magekiller" / "Pointy" / "Defender" to use against specific scenarios, along with the "No Kit" and "Leveller" builds that allow me to make blank / no power token parties. There's a bit of tweaking that goes on with new shiny, but that's part of the game, n'est pas? Unless I'm missing something, which is probably true, I don't think that the actions you describe have an excessive amount of clicks. a) Start in Keep, pick (3) or create build of choice. b) Click Exit (1) c) Click Scenario. (1) d) Read Description e) Enter Battle (1) f) Lose Battle g) Click Regroup (1) h) Either select another build (3) or change items to suit i) Optional path: abandon battle (1) and return to keep(2) Jumping out of the battle if you lose after the first attempt isn't mandatory, but it doesn't add that much to the click count or wait time, I think. A neat trick is to use Smoke Bomb to clear the rockfall / lava terrain. The smoke replaces the underlying terrain and it makes it much easier to run around, whilst also blocking LOS for the pesky Geomancers, allowing you to pick off the Trogs. Also, a little foible of the AI is that it does not appear to like to cast rockfall while your characters are all on rockfall terrain. I won several battles in the first Geomancers scenario by walking to the edges of the rockfall and range attacking from there.
Because no one mentioned this . . . Hover and Terrain-removers are just part of the strategy. A tiny part. Smoke Bomb, as stated, is also great fun--though I personally see so few copies of it that I've never used it on these levels. The rest: Ranged Attacks. Just plain ranged Attacks. The enemies slow you down and keep you at range, so render the slowness irrelevant. Movement, specifically Step cards. Sure, you're inching forward one step at a time; but you still DO it, and that's better than using a single default Move card to make a single step per turn. And then, once you're in range, your remaining Step cards are conveniently Attack cards. Free Move is another "wishful thinking" card, but a team based on Elvish Mobility can go far. . . . Lastly, let me say I'm surprised by the number of complaints about Geomancers. Ever since I first saw enemies dropping Terrain on me (Acid Imps), I was waiting and planning for the day that this game DID SOMETHING with Terrain. Then it did, and I enjoyed it! But still, it's best if the level designers USE the game mechanics that are put in more regularly, else the player isn't prepared for those occasions where it matters.
Hmm, haven't seen smoke bomb yet. But yeah, the main problem is that I'll only have one character in the party who will even be able to use any of these things suggested, and range past two squares, and the AI seemed to target that character first every time. That character was also very weak against the trogs. There is a rock-paper-scissors effect going on, depending on what party you chose at the beginning of the game, unless you A. pay for more lvl10 characters. B. level more characters up through everything. re: extra clicks, the list looks more like this: Enter level- page load- find there isn't a save/restore option on the "core level"- click return to map- page load- do the scrolling around to find a store, or scroll all the way to keep (a lot of action with a laptop touchpad) - dialog load- are you sure?- load the store - hit save/restore - page load - load a party - hit exit- page load - exit store - page load - do the scrolling to get back to level - enter level - longer page load - click thru intro dialogs and battle button - longer page load -watch your key character get wiped out before they get a chance to attack, or get a terrible draw, repeat this cycle of exiting and re-entering a couple times. Find that the setup you loaded is old and needs to be updated - hit menu- page load- and then wait for the dialog about being in fullscreen mode to quit blocking the buttons - hit resign battle - dialog load- are you sure?- yes - page load - return to map - page load- do the scrolling to get to a store or keep - click on the store/keep - dialog load- are you sure?- yes- page load - individually examine each equipped item and unequip each one individually, etc, etc. Having a blank load seems like a good idea, but again, there are still two problems 1- you can't instantly preview what's equipped when loading a party. 2- 5 slots is not enough, especially when levelling up a second party to get to the first party, in order to have the right kind of characters to beat a level.
This isn't that hard. The low level adventures are easy once you know what to expect (and how the game mechanics work), they can borrow the good stuff your old party was using, and you can skip troublesome adventures to do higher level ones which level you faster (dungeons two levels above your char will give a full level of XP). I've been playing a full set of chars (three parties, all race/class combos) since level 7, and the biggest issue is exhaustion preventing me from leveling everyone each day. I would like to have more party save slots though (ten would be about right).
heh ok, I give you that, though I guess I should've added "and do all the add-on levels that weren't unlocked when I came up through them before." The second time is easier, though borrowing items is only somewhat useful for a while, until you get some power tokens. I'm also kind of an obsessive completist. I still think an easier system would be to integrate the save/load into the equip screen as dropdown menus, and have individual equip setups for each character.
Just a quick comment. I believe its an intended design for a single party per module for all the adventures. The idea is to recreate the retro pen and paper dnd rpg dice feel in a flash f2p context. So the party load feature only works at the start and is part of the strategy aspect. I believe this dev diary explains the motivation: http://www.cardhunter.com/2011/07/dev-diary-1-edited-version/
