Bay 12 Games Forum

I regret buying Risk of Rain.
After finishing it while visiting my younger brother in 4 hours, I have no desire whatsoever to play it.

I put 145 hours into it and I'd put more if it had more content. I think it did a good job being able to quickly start a game with low investment (granted, an entire run - presuming I don't die - might take 2 hours) and also having a very learnable difficulty, where I felt I could actually learn from my deaths rather than curse the game for being unfair (RNG screwing me item- or bullethell-wise), though RNG still plays a part in terms of what items you get. If it had more content (items, secrets to unlock, layouts, level variety, achievements for goals) and interaction between items I'd still be playing it.

By comparison, I enjoyed the 160 hours I put into Binding of Isaac.

(This isn't directed necessarily at you, but merely an opportunity to pontificate on Risk of Rain.)

So can someone clarify this sale metagame for me? If I'm not buying games, and I'm not level 8, but I still put myself on a team, does that mean that I get my infinitesimal chance at free games?

I think as long as you belong to a team you might be one of the 30. I haven't crafted any badges myself yet I'm on a team, I think I joined while I was looking at the adventure page and clicked "get started". (I don't recall the actual name of the button but I think it was, after clicking on the map, the button just below the daily scoreboard that shows "my overview" and "friend overview.")

I'm also only level 6 and while I don't get cards for community voting, I do still get cards for every $10 I spend.

You'd probably have to gen a new world after removing the unwanted reactions from other races; however, I'm not 100% sure it would even have an effect since I would expect the manager to show only reactions available to your current civ (as sourced from all your workshops). Indeed, when I use my manager, I don't have any results when searching for "tribal" (which exists only as some orc-related reactions).

I've been trying to get into this (actually Eador: MoaBW, but there wasn't a title-specific thread and the other one [titled "Eador" only] was last bumped in 2013, so wasn't sure which one to bump) but have trouble getting started.

Even on the easiest difficulty I don't nearly enough gold to actually do anything. I'll build a couple buildings and run out, and by the time I have enough accrued to actually go and start taking provinces the local lord or rival master will mosey over and start knocking on my door. Never mind having enough gold (or contracts or access) to buy guards to keep the lord from taking over my undefended provinces, and good luck taking one back against his guards when they consist of groups three times more numerous than my hero's army and having a dozen levels over my recruits to boot (seriously, how does the computer opponent afford all this?).

With the initial gold I can either build a couple early recruitment buildings (usually spearmen and recruit them) and run out, or unlock the mill or sawmill (so that new provinces can actually provide some additional gold) and run out, or an armory to equip a scout and then run out. Only one of those things, meanwhile exploring and hoping that I can get a location with weak defenders for a little extra gold.

I'm also pretty annoyed at how combat works. On top of being chronically outnumbered, I'm frequently losing units (putting an extra strain on already limited gold income...) due to ranged attackers. My own ranged attackers usually get focused fired and dead after only a turn or two.

Given the effectiveness of the scout (especially on a hill) maybe I should go for one pikeman/swordsman and the rest bowmen (crossbowmen being too expensive given the need for iron and redwood) but it's still a problem of income.

In the campaign, other than the first tutorial map, I've only won one tiny shard and that for some freaking unknown reason because just as I was finally getting a comfortable income (having around 7 provinces, all with income buildings, plus income from iron/horses, and a good success rate with "not quite the weakest you'll ever find" defenders in locations), the local lord up and died on his own. I'd never even met or saw him or ventured outside those 7 provinces circling my stronghold.

I can see how eventually you can use energy to improve your start but in the beginning I can't do anything except increase my starting gold, which is still not enough to get the ball rolling in a start (at least not fast enough).

(PS: Karma is dumb, chiefly because it is almost entirely obscured to the player. Interface screw can be a valid gameplay mechanic, but this is not.)

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All that to say, any tips?

An atrocious and disgusting orgy-like mash-up of several premises:

Mechwarrior, for controls/viewport. You're a mech pilot with limited ability to pop out to third person - which is implied to simply be a display within your own mech, meaning that other players can interfere with this ability in multiplayer scenarios.

Supreme Commander, for basic game play. You drop into an area, collect some resources, build up a small base/army, take out the enemy presence. (Or if your mech is advanced/well geared you could just blow it all up yourself.) Now you control the territory. This can consist of both vs-Player for world conquering, as well limited vs-Computer missions in some context. Also, the concept of Experimental units (which you can choose to run with instead of your mech, improving combat abilities but reducing or possibly eliminating the ability to construct directly with your mech, though you could still start with some engineers).

Utopia/Earth 2025 (just to name one of that sort of thing), for second-tier strategic map province-taking. The game world (it might consist of more than just one planet) is divided into many provinces and conquering provinces advances you toward victory. Victory is actually based around the same sort of premise as these games, where whatever player/alliance has the most points by the end of a term (a couple months) is the "winner" and gets great adulation and nothing else and everything resets. Possibly provinces are generated dynamically so that there isn't really any limit, and new players can conquer NPC provinces in order to get started. Owning provinces -may- provide strategic level resources that will chiefly let you upgrade your mech, loadout, provinces, and access to experimental units to replace your mech. These influences also demonstrate the ability for players to form their own alliances with limited non-player involvement.

Here's the kicker, though. Persistent world with preferably no caps on player involvement. Not individual box maps that are only loaded when you drop into them and then disappear when players leave. Not sure how best to weave this in to a strategic-level province control... maybe there's only one planet that you/the alliance have to conquer in full, which is persistent (control being based around player-constructed nodes which they have to defend, either actively or with constructed defenses) while the resource collection is relegated to off-world provinces where PvP might be more lucrative (since player provinces can be upgraded, but NPC provinces are capped in tech/resource levels) but generally doesn't occur because it doesn't force PvP.

Anyway, I guess I will keep playing it anyway. I guess I will pick up Harmony after all, but need to make a decision regarding anti magic. I don't think I'll pick that up since I don't want to risk not being able to use a juicy piece of arcane gear, and while the shields are nice they're not as important given my current survival rates.

Also considering running Psiblades 5/5 and using 3 mindstars, although this makes the 5 points I spent in reshape almost completely useless.

Auto saving can be switched to yearly or off entirely in the d_init file (or also from the masterwork launcher).

Are you absolutely sure it's the season change causing the crash? In the past some people have reported crashes when invaders spawned while dfhack's digging invaders plugin was enabled. But that was several versions ago so I'm not sure if that crash has been fixed or if digging invaders have to be manually turned on with each new download.