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Author Topic: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG - 0.8 Forgotten Lore Update  (Read 5723 times)

Sharp

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Obligatory Steam link.
Not sure how this game hasn't had a thread on this already.

Stoneshard is a dungeon crawling turn-based roguelike with pretty great pixel graphics.

Quote from: Presskit
Stoneshard is challenging turn-based RPG where your tactical skills will be tested in battles with enemies, diseases and injuries alike. In the world of Aldor you’ll go on the adventure across medieval lands where you’ll decide how to approach each battle and situation. With unrestricted character development you’ll be able to wear any equipment, combine skills and invest in chosen stats to create a truly unique experience.

You play as a mercenary (or relic hunter in prologue/demo) in a medieval land with a baseline mysterious quest about some gem called the Stoneshard. You have some initial main objective of how to get to some city needing some cart and horses but it's pretty open ended in how to do that. You start in the village of Osbrook where you can take some local contracts which pretty much just involve going to a dungeon and killing bandits, or cultists or the undead and maybe recover some item or person, but outside of those contracts you can just go out in the wild, forage some food, hunt some animals, encounter bandits and try and get enough gold to buy some good equipment.

Spoiler: "Big Screenshot" (click to show/hide)

The game is still in early access and much of the skill tree and story is left undone but it's still very much playable and has a lot of content. The demo is a great introduction to the story and the combat but it doesn't let you explore the world.

And just a word of warning to anyone trying the game, once you complete a contract the dungeon gets closed off for a few days and only re-opened when you take a new contract at that dungeon so don't complete a contract until you are happy you've gotten the loot you want out of it. Only dungeons get reset, everything else in the world stays so you can store items anywhere.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2022, 04:13:47 pm by Sharp »
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ThtblovesDF

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #1 on: December 12, 2021, 07:05:51 pm »

I should try that again...
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Sharp

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #2 on: December 12, 2021, 07:30:41 pm »

The City of Gold update has sorted out a lot of annoyances before. Saving on exit being possible now is probably the best because that was super annoying before having to find a bed to save.

Still looks like a lot to be done so if you want to wait for a more finished game then definitely hold on but it seems pretty fun now
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delphonso

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #3 on: December 12, 2021, 07:36:05 pm »

Obligatory Steam link.

I was interested in this since I saw some Youtube videos on it. Sort of just waiting to see when the full game comes out. Development seems speedy enough that I won't be waiting 5 years.

scriver

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #4 on: December 14, 2021, 02:24:02 am »

I really like this game.

But it also makes me very frustrated. It gives me so much hoarder's angst. I hate leaving good loot behind. I just want a cart so I can load up all the goods and get rich.
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nenjin

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #5 on: December 14, 2021, 02:06:56 pm »

Every time I think about picking this up, I read the reviews that say it's unfinished, too large without enough content and it's tedious trying to do anything because of the travel times + inventory space limitations.

I swear I've had the prologue demo in my wishlist for like 3 years. This sorta seems like the game that will never finish. Change my mind?
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
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Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
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Quote from: MrRoboto75
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Sharp

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #6 on: December 14, 2021, 04:36:52 pm »

Every time I think about picking this up, I read the reviews that say it's unfinished, too large without enough content and it's tedious trying to do anything because of the travel times + inventory space limitations.

I swear I've had the prologue demo in my wishlist for like 3 years. This sorta seems like the game that will never finish. Change my mind?

So core gameplay loop is pretty well implemented, take contracts, fight enemies, loot, level up, buy better equipment, fight harder enemies, repeat. Combat feels nice and tactical and I like that they have finished skill trees of certain weapons / magic instead of having half of everything.

There is fast travel between some areas but outside of that it's a lot of walking around, normally walking around isn't that interesting but you may run into wildlife or bandits as you go so normally not uneventful.

Inventory space is definitely a challenge but I wouldn't say it's unfair, it just means you have to really think about what equipment you want to bring and how much to leave for loot. There isn't any real time penalty for the main game so you can take as long as you want, leave a little stockpile of supplies near a dungeon or in it by the boss room, or spend a lot of time dumping all of a dungeons loot outside and take trips to loot it all. There are also backpacks but they aren't that big, it's a little bit extra to carry along.

The latest update has added a lot of content but the main quest is nowhere near finished and still lots of stuff to flesh out, but the map is huge and plenty to explore although might be a bit repetitive in some parts.

Overall I'd say it's worth trying out, but it's perfectly fine to wait for it to get finished. The core loop is done and there are loads of items and skill combinations to try out to keep occupied. Of course a worry can be that there will be save game breaking updates later so you lose progress but so far the latest patches have all been save game compatible.

I don't think they are going to update the demo / prologue much apart from unlocking other skill trees so that can be played now, your actions in it don't have any impact in the game and it's probably the most fleshed out part story wise and is great tutorial for the combat.

I really like this game.

But it also makes me very frustrated. It gives me so much hoarder's angst. I hate leaving good loot behind. I just want a cart so I can load up all the goods and get rich.

Yes I feel the pain, as stuff gets more valuable you leave the cheap stuff behind though, I used to pick up all the weapons before but now it's just not worth it, you get more money quickly by taking another contract and getting the expensive dungeon loot.

What I find frustrating though is getting into situations where I screw myself over, recently was in the entrance room of a bandit dungeon and saw there were at least 2 enemies in the room next to me but thought I would be clever by setting a trap by the door and going back a few steps, taking out my bow and shouting to draw aggro. And then after shouting a few times with no enemies coming in I go slightly closer and then on the same turn the door opens with 2 mid level bandits, and then another door opens with 2 mid level bandits, they disarm the trap. I manage to kill two of them but I should have just run away, instead I get skewered and I realise it's been a while since the last sleep to save....
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nenjin

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #7 on: December 14, 2021, 05:25:59 pm »

It's the "too big and too repetitive" thing that's keeping me away. People report a ton of running to get anywhere, and basically the same group of bandits over and over and over and over again.

It looks stellar and just based on that I've almost bought a couple of times. But I think I'm going to hold out for an actual release, whenever that is.
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
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Always spaghetti, never forghetti

Cthulhu

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #8 on: December 14, 2021, 11:40:54 pm »

I hated this game.  It was really hard in a way that felt poorly thought out and obnoxious, not adding anything to the game but difficult for its own sake, because it's "a hard game."  The huge number of consumables drastically limiting what you can carry out of the dungeon, most dungeon runs barely bringing in enough gold just to replace the items you used up, assuming the shops even had enough stuff in stock, then yeah, the long travel times and ridiculous stuff you find in the wilderness,  multiple bears standing on the path immediately outside the village or bandit archers that can shoot through walls and kill you in three hits, etc.

Steam says I have four hours in the game, after that I'd had enough and I have no desire to try it again, the things I didn't like about it don't feel like things that will be fixed.
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Sharp

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2021, 06:15:29 pm »

I hated this game.  It was really hard in a way that felt poorly thought out and obnoxious, not adding anything to the game but difficult for its own sake, because it's "a hard game."  The huge number of consumables drastically limiting what you can carry out of the dungeon, most dungeon runs barely bringing in enough gold just to replace the items you used up, assuming the shops even had enough stuff in stock, then yeah, the long travel times and ridiculous stuff you find in the wilderness,  multiple bears standing on the path immediately outside the village or bandit archers that can shoot through walls and kill you in three hits, etc.

Steam says I have four hours in the game, after that I'd had enough and I have no desire to try it again, the things I didn't like about it don't feel like things that will be fixed.

That's fair criticism although some of it may be outdated. I like the inventory system though in that you do have to plan on what items you want to bring to a dungeon or while travelling, you typically can't use all your consumables during a fight anyway so you don't need to bring 5 bandages and 4 splints, but it does also mean you may need to retreat and head back to your storage if you run out during a dungeon run which can be tedious, dungeons are only a few (in-game) hours away from towns though so it's hard to run out of time.

Dungeon loot can be extremely varied, I think my first dungeon had around 3k worth of gold in valuables but I've had others which have like 500, you fairly quickly stop hoarding junk items to save room for loot, and you soon start making lots of money.

Definitely haven't noticed enemy archers being very deadly at all in the latest update, if anything they are more likely to not see you then you not see them now, and luckily haven't run into any bears on edges of maps, although I did try killing a bear recently and it very much dealt with me easily.

I would say a big problem in the game is that there are some skills which you need to take early to have an easier time, mainly ones which allow you to retreat and or immobilise enemies. It's also a learning experience to know what items to bring or how to deal with various enemies. Playing as an archer with the leg sweep and distracting shot skills early help you keep the distance in fights and is probably the easiest build to start with.

The latest update has snakes... lots of snakes, they aren't too deadly on their own but they can sneak up on you and really screw you over with their poison.
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nenjin

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #10 on: December 19, 2021, 06:19:02 pm »

Turns out I have it, I'm not sure when I got it or how.

Enjoyed the tutorial but yeah, was immediately struck by the inventory limitations.

Out of the tutorial, gonna see how it do. Going in with what's been said, I can kinda already see how it's probably going to be. A little miffed there's time limits on some of the tasks.
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

nenjin

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #11 on: December 20, 2021, 02:29:28 am »

TLDR, I like it a lot in some ways but it's definitely got some glaring issues. I've put in ~8 hours.

One would hope its shortcomings are due to being in development still (I think the Prologue hit Steam in 2018 which means this thing has been in development for probably....6 years?), but the more I play it the more it seems like a choice of design that has some unfortunate drawbacks.

I took my time with it. Explored probably 10 tiles in each direction from the starting town more or less fully. Visited a couple points of interest. Died plenty. Cleared out the first contract (sorta. I sold the Grain to a vendor ><. Gotta let the contract expire and see what happens....)

So I feel like I've seen a pretty good slice of the game and am interested in seeing more. I love the visuals. The sprites, UI and environment are are great. (The animations are so-so and the bip bopping around people do isn't really to my taste but I can overlook it for all the other things.) The sound design is pretty good. Music is nice and medieval-sounding with a hint of gothic. I love the weather effects. It's nailing the atmosphere. There's lots of interesting mechanical crunch to the game systems to think about and play with. The game's attention to detail and injuries and health and toxicity and yadda yadda reminds me a lot of Project Zomboid. SS want to be a survival game as much as anything else so there's layers of mechanics around it. Combat feels meaty and dangerous (I played as the Maiden Knight.) Strategy, using the environment and exploiting the AI all works and feels good like a dungeon crawler should. Dungeon crawling and exploration is pretty enjoyable, tense and tactical. The story is alright. A little generic fantasy maybe. But there's pretty good characterization in the writing and voice acting. The writing is decent to good so far, just a few bits that come across as a little casual. The voice acting, where there is some, I'd give a good B+ average.

That's kinda where my praise stops though, and the problems begin.

The scale is a problem for me. I get why, what they're going for. But there's just nothing in it except for what they deliberately put there. Oh sure, there's plants galore and random bandits and wolves and a little bit of huntable wildlife. But the good content is like tiny islands in a vast ocean of mass-generated tedium, that brings the game down to look like a BYOND game. I only now just kinda figured out I could pan over to the edge of the tile and have my guy path find their way there. And that helps but only to a degree.

It's not just that the distances are so great. It's that they're featureless tracks of generated, soulless content. The only things of note I found the entire time I played, that weren't located at a straight up marker, were a couple of graves that I dug around in for some loot. It's like DF's adventure mode. But where DF's endless procedurally generated wastelands are a fascinating product of Toady's obsession with detail, SS's expanses just feel like hubris and unfulfilled promise covered in some very pretty art.

There is so much space to deal with, just based on the fraction of the map I've seen, that you kinda know that one of two things is going to happen a) someone is going to tediously spend time trying to fill it and probably never succeed, or b) they never intended to fill it. This doesn't really feel like a prototpye or WIP as far as the scale and content of the world goes. I remember when Darkwood was in Alpha, the forest was just one huge featureless woodland. It was boundless and featureless until they revised it and added some structure and character. SS desperately feels like it needs that. There needs to be more things breaking up the wide expanses of plains and forest. Stuff that's too dense to walk through. Lakes and large rocky outcroppings. It absolutely murders this game's pacing.  There's the implication you'll be able to ride a horse, which I'm sure will make going where you need to feel less tedious. But it doesn't do anything for all the nothingness and unfulfilled potential of the rest of the world.

This is probably my single biggest issue with what I've seen so far and it hit me not even an hour into the actual game. On this front, I think you pretty much gotta say of the game:



Next, the item durability is a drag. While I appreciate the attempt at "realism" with item effectiveness scaling to its durability....at the end of the day it's still a money and a time sink. And in SS its already feels aggressive early on. Topping off all your gear after a string of fights feels necessary because everything needs repairs, even jewelry, and it starts to add up really quickly if you don't stay on it. That, along with humping cheap loot across a huge map to try and stay ahead of your gear, leads to feelings of tedium as well. It's not that you can't keep up, but that keeping up feels like a job rather than fun.

Because then there's item #3: farming and grinding. The game wants you to feel the scarcity of the economy and yet you're surrounded by endless supplies of things to eat and sell. I haven't needed to really buy food because I just stay topped off with berries while I run around. I feel like selling herbs to the herbalist is honestly faster than humping crappy weapons back to sell to the merchant. XP similarly feels like a huge grind. There's 2s and 3s of bandits and wolves scattered all over the place, but the bandits are worth jack compared to how much XP you need to level, even early on. If you stay on the roads you'll find plenty of bandits and, at least for me, they weren't hard and didn't use up any resources if I played reasonably smart. But it just felt grindy. And repetitive, again because of the copy/paste feeling world you're hunting around in.

Lastly, I already kind of touched on this above, but there's a pacing / difficulty curve issue that comes together with all the other issues. The game makes a point in the tips to say that leveling and stat boosts don't help you nearly as much as new skills and better gear. So the difference between what you can win against and what will fuck your shit up feels pretty stark. 2 bandits, handled properly? 100% chance of victory. 1 single wolf? 50% chance of getting killed. Different but also similar looking bandits at a PoI? 75% chance of being killed 1v1. It makes the range of things you can do feel pretty narrow, or make you feel like you have to grind trash for way too long to try and get some parity. All while trying to make money. And this is playing as what seems like the tankiest starting class, armor, sword and board. Which is probably why I didn't feel the pinch on healing consumables too much yet, as long as fights didn't come down to the last few HP I could regen out of most stuff. Anyways, the bottomline is you need to explore to find books and better gear, and win fights to level up. But to get there you have to be strong enough first, which with no other options than random bandit and animal spawns, means you have to spend an inordinate amount of time looking for stuff to kill instead of going interesting places, eating berries to stay alive and picking flowers to repair your gear. It is......singularly uninteresting. And while I appreciate the whole "save your game by renting a room at an inn" gimmick, if I died on the return leg of a 45 minute long trip and had to restart from when I set out....I'd probably just turn the game off. Again, there's some "hardcore/realism/immersion" mechanics in SS that actively work against it being a game you want to finish.

I'm going to give it some more time, get a little further and see what's out there along the beaten path. (Because the amount of hours I spent off the beaten path didn't yield much.) I'm enjoying a lot about the game and it sadly just isn't done yet. That's EA for you. There's just lots of promise to it on an already enjoyable visual and technical bedrock. But I'm kinda worried some of its decisions are already too developed on to change. And while it's technically and artistically competent AF, some parts of the design seem amateurish or like early work that no one revised or stopped and asked if it was actually helping the game. There's a lot of polish on the game but the "big picture" literally has problems, and that makes me wonder if it's one of those games that will never live up to its own potential. SS is trying to be a lot of different things at once and I don't know if it's succeeding on some of them as much as others. I think it makes for a better dungeon crawler RPG than it does open world survival game right now, and the dungeons are wwaaaaayyyyy too few and far between.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2021, 06:32:01 pm by nenjin »
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

nenjin

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #12 on: December 23, 2021, 03:12:45 pm »

Finding myself kinda disappointed by Stoneshard on the reg but still compelled to keep seeing what else is out there.

I'm disappointed by it routinely because I keep telling myself....I just need to explore more. Find more stuff. And at this point, I've explored about 1/4 of the map.

But SS just refuses to pay out. Every site I find is barren of loot, obviously a contract quest so there's no dungeon door until you have the contract. And if there IS loot.....it's smack dab in the middle of way, way too many enemies.

I failed the second contract as well because I simply couldn't understand how you're supposed to beat the Necromancer and 3 zombies at the same time. No amount of baiting him out of the room or rushing him down would do it. Even without the extra zombies he'd be dangerous. With the zombies he's basically untouchable, and his magic frags you before you can do anything. Luring him out of his lair just puts him in front of other corpses to rez, so instead of 3 zombies it's 5, 6....I find it kind of unbelievable this is the second contract they give you. MAYBE if I could destroy corpses it would be doable but that didn't seem to be an option for anything except bats and rats via skinning.

And the 3rd contract is similarly looking like I'm not prepared for how tough it is.

It sucks because dungeons are where all the real loot is and the real fun is. The minor PoIs have a little bit of loot, sometimes you get a lucky roll on a chest. But in the time I've been playing, I've found 4 enchanted items, and each has sold for less than the scroll used to identify it. They've all been garbage. Imagine playing Diablo 2, and all your enchanted loot is Tier 1, more than half broken and even fully repaired is less effective than the starter weapon the game gave you.

I'm typically the kind of person that prefers loot to be rare so it feels special. But this bordering on ridiculous. This game is SO FUCKING STINGY with loot. Finding a viable upgrade feels like a once in a blue moon event if you don't buy your gear from a vendor. And even though the patch notes said they just reduced the rate at which durability on gear wears down, it's still too much! I just did like a 3-day in game sprint down a road headed East. I basically did a full loop from the brewery, around the mountain and back to the brewery. Along the way I managed to acquire about 700 gold worth of various kind of loot.

Every. Single. Coin. Went back into repairing my gear. The fucking splint boots I found, easily the best item I've found in the game so far after 20 hours? Costs $1000 gold to repair. To make money you have to sacrifice durability. To the point you're so deep in the hole that you either need an alternate set of gear or settle for having zero defenses because all your armor is busted. It's like Stoneshard's fantasy is you being an underutilized merc with rusted gear and a broken sword. That's the power fantasy this game wants you to have.

As someone who likes survival games and adversity, I do like SS. But it's pushing my tolerance to its limits with its stinginess and how much time it asks you to invest to FIND ANYTHING TO FUCKING DO.

The amount of time I have spent running down a road, or explore a tile to find a PoI, or cross cutting 25 tiles to get somewhere, just to get fuck all in the end, is at least half my play time. If I spend 25 minutes getting somewhere in your game, fucking make it worth my time! Don't give me yet more roads that run through 4.2 million bandit and wolf pack spawns that just DEAD END AT THE MAP EDGE. Don't give me another burned farmstead where my big loot is a bucket.  If it weren't for the handful of actual bandit camps with actual chests at them, the amount of PoI's I've found that actually had something for me would be close to zero.

The game has such great atmosphere, and the dungeons you do get to do are great. But everything ELSE is bollocks. The infinite tiles of copy/pasted plants and enemies. The empty PoIs. The roads to fucking nowhere.

I keep telling myself that I just haven't found that big hub town, that place where things start to open up. Where I might buy some skill books, learn some magic, get access to more than the 5 skill trees I've got unlocked, find some NPCs that can pay me for something other than selling garbage loot collected from combat. I've spent hours looking for such a place only to be regularly disappointed and then saddled with another 20 minute journey back to the starting town because I'm overloaded with garbage loot, wounded, low on food and water and all my shit is broken. Most games would throw you a bone and be like "there's a big town to the South you could visit." Not Stoneshard. No, Stoneshard expects you to walk every road and check every nook and cranny for something worth your time. That's perhaps the game's biggest sin, is that they've created this massive world for you to explore and don't give you even the merest hint of guidance other than the PoIs. No road signs saying which of the dozens of roads might actually lead somewhere you want to go. Everyone talks about Brynn but no one says where it is or how to get there.

It's like if someone bought you 1000 gifts, but only 10 of the boxes have something in them. And you must take 3 minutes to open each box. So you open box after box to disappointment, while the person that bought them for you rubs their hands together and cackles with glee as you open each empty one, and goes "Haha, isn't this GREAT."

Stoneshard borderline doesn't respect your time and that is a serious failing for any game. I shouldn't have to put 20 hours into your game and STILL be looking for the fun with two hands and a flashlight.

Just doing some quick math here. Wolf Pelts (about the most consistent loot available) sell for about 40 gold a piece. The odds you'll get an actual wolf pelt from skinning feels on the order of 20% or 30%. Taking the generous upper end, in order to repair my boots I'd need about 40 wolf pets to cover the cost. That's like....almost ~150 wolf kills to get enough pelts. And that would eat up, oh, I dunno, at least 5 full swords worth of durability, which each full repair costing probably 200 gold. And this doesn't include the time cost to hump all that loot back somewhere to sell, or the RNG that one wolf will just shred you to pieces because of some lucky crits or bleed.

It's asinine hardcore balance and it's stupid. This isn't an MMO and whoever is doing the balancing is a masochist who thinks this is the only game you should be playing. I really want to chalk this up to EA like I said above......but equally distributing worthwhile content seems like an insurmountable goal, and someone worried about the game being "too easy" has cranked the dials to 11 and added an absolute metric fuckton of filler to this game.
« Last Edit: December 23, 2021, 06:19:03 pm by nenjin »
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

nenjin

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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #13 on: December 27, 2021, 03:50:13 pm »

Ok, so I've put some more time into this. And I do have to walk back some of my criticisms.

Not completing the first two contracts really, really hurt me. For the Necromancer contract, which may or may not be the second one you have to get no matter what, I still think it's way overtuned. Even at level 10, a 1 skull Necromancer contract is tough when you actually have to fight them Necromancer. I think I had to take 6 or so attempts and some real cheese in order to beat them. And in truth if their AI had not derped out/gotten scared, I might not have won at all.

But basically after completing the first contract, the world does open up a little. You get a fast travel option to another town, there's more of everything you need (vendors to buy stuff, a steady supply of identification scrolls....) and the game does start giving you a little direction on what's worth your time to do. I spent a lot of time in the early game exploring and trying to make ends meet but that was obviously wrong. The contract system and how it ties into the main quest is your primary source of income. Ignoring it is just wasting your time and substituting a fun and profitable dungeon crawl with a ton of walking and unrewarding exploration. The rub comes in when the contract you can do is too tough for you; at that point you need to let it expire and get a new one. Which kinda sucks for the 3 to 4 days you'll need to kill for that to happen.

Also once you're high enough level, the lower level contracts do become a good, consistent source of cash. Between a dungeon full of loot and a contract reward, you can actually start making some progress on gear. Heavy armor is still hellishly expensive to repair but at least you get enough cash to repair everything else pretty easily. And can also find repair kits which, point for point are worth their weight in gold. You find a guy that sells Treatises so you can unlocking skill trees and in general the game starts feeling like you have options.

A lot of things seemed tied to your character level in the background. Like what kind of stuff will drop, what kind of enemies will auto spawn (I noticed a whole new tier of bandits started spawning in the usual places once I hit a certain breakpoint. Now they're a regular part of most bandit packs.) The early game feels so loot barren I think because so much is scaled to your level in terms of what you can get.

Some complaints remain, like the world being too damn big. (Which I guess this map is part of the newest update. It used to be much, much smaller. I'm sure for people from previous updates this seems like a godsend. But as a new player it's just like "That's too many 64x64 tiles to wander through.") The item economy is still a big "hrmmm." Breaking through to enchanted or rare gear that is actually worthwhile seems distant still. You can enchant a piece of gear using a scroll and get like "+3% healing efficiency." But that's one extra stat line on standard gear. So far I think I've seen two blue items drop (2 to 3 extra stat lines), and one of those was on a run where I died. If you like magical loot being rare in your games, Stoneshard seems to be living by that.

Assuming they fill this behemoth out with content, SS will be a pretty substantial game. I'm really looking forward to more skill trees being unlocked. Particularly the generalized or survival skills that would make living off the land a lot easier. SS seems like the kind of game that will eventually let you build a home somewhere and I'd like that a lot, it'd really help you feel like you're living in the world.

The game is a borderline recommend from me. There's a ton to like about it, but some glaring design choices that will rub some people the wrong way. When it pays out it does keep bringing me back.
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Re: Stoneshard - Early Access - Turn based Roguelike RPG
« Reply #14 on: December 27, 2021, 06:10:34 pm »

It can be addictingly frustrating which tbh I think I like in games. It's not the first game I've managed to kill myself and lose a lot / all of my progress and just rage quit, but hate is not the opposite of love, apathy is, if you hate a game it can mean in a perverse way that you love it.

So yeah enchanted weapons don't really sell for a lot (although you do find a guy who will buy cursed items, although not for lots either though). With enchanted gear it's only really worth identifying if you think it's useful to your build, if you have a two handed sword guy it's not really worth identifying anything which isn't a two handed sword.

For the mid to late game the only valuable loot is the valuables really, gems, rings and necklaces hold their value well and once you make it to Brynn you can sell them for a lot at the jeweller, and in Brynn identification scrolls are quite cheap as well, but also nowhere to really good to sell weapons, generally better off carrying valuables or furs instead of weapons especially if you are selling at Brynn.

Random bandit encounters are linked to your level, eventually to horde size of higher level bandits but never really a threat unless you are wounded from another encounter.

It is frustrating that you can't really set up a campsite and have to hope the random generation gives you nice locations, hopefully that improves even if it means some risks later like bandits or bears occupying your campsite if you can set one up somewhere.

I think playing with a ranged character is pretty easy, can take longer to get high level skills when combining with a melee skill as well but it's useful for sniping off necromancers or harder level enemies and you have skills to help you run away from any fight you can't handle.

The game is so RNG in generation though, one dungeon I had the necromancer in the first room next to the entrance, I also had a spike trap right by the entrance so it's pretty easy to kite enemies to just keep getting spiked to death, any resurrections are just bonus xp while necromancer becomes a pin-cushion. And another dungeon I had 8 bandits surround me because of a dog barking which I barely survived with copious amounts of drugs, was left sucking my thumb for a while to recuperate around the corpses.
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