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(2 edits)

Well looks like my review of each of the elements is going to be on hold for awhile considering how things have changed. On the changes having played this for about 6 hours so far today, I can say they are somewhat exciting. I finally was able to bring a non summoner will build to the void thanks to changes and the dex build has become...different. I think this will add more diversity of builds from what I've seen.

The change to focus actually encourages you to have at least 2 points in every stat and it makes the humbaba mubarizun build deal insane damage when you stack it. Ironically it's probably not all that good for str two hander builds. Dual wielding is dead thanks to this, it used to rule dex builds but this also means that you are not as item bound with finding a claw, and a rinoir and makes spears actually usable weapons. It also made the whip, usually a frustratingly useless nothing weapon into one that's worth using. On the other hand a dex mubarizun really only wants to stand and fight when they need to heal in combat with blood rage, otherwise they should be constantly on the move. You can't just tab and forget with the build now, it's a very active and engaging playstyle. The changes actually incentivize you to just focus martial though, as the massive damage bonus from skera is no longer a thing, though I do enjoy that skera and shamshar are no longer weight locked  I do think they are less useful overall.

I think you'll enjoy knowing that life/blood is now a very solid build thanks to the introduction of vinakenisis and the changes to piercing vines now doing blood damage instead of piercing. I think it fits thematically just as well as life/death. A Naqui Ascetic of Mehtar is an incredibly solid build that has an answer for most things, they can summon for the early game to get off the ground. They have solid area damage, and with Piercing vine they have very good damage with bleed but can fall back on the ever reliable blunt damage. With access to Mehtar they can reliably heal themselves as well. I'm glad to finally see something mesh with blood because along with the psychic and astral power pools, I think that blood needs a lot of love as they are all fairly weak. Related a similar build exists for life/ice with obedient ice and cryomancy, though this one is far more passive and focuses mostly on just catching enemies in your damaging area.

A suggestion that I thought of that might incentivize mixed stat builds. It was something when I saw how focus works with it's passing attacks. Consider giving different weapons and powers a primary and a secondary damage stat. Perhaps for axes for example, str has 2x damage multiplier and dex has a normal 1x multiplier. This way you get more from investing in str but the few points you do put in dex actually make a very big difference as well. A character that has a 12 and a 1 in dex would hypothetically get 24 damage out of the axe but if they invested 2 points into dex they would end up with 72 because the dex acts as a multiplier. Something to consider is all.

*Edit: Recently got time to test out the infinite scorch build, it's not really overpowered at all. Scorch only goes off on game turn which for some builds can be a rather long time, on top of that any enemy that can have upwards of 10 instances of scorch applied to them has more to worry about than the scorch in the first place. Any attack that could apply enough instances of scorch to be worrying would be an attack that either kills any monster in one hit, or kills it in two hits. Keep in mind, that to apply ten instances of scorch with pyromancy you would have to do 1000 damage, and the scorches themselves would only do 300 damage in total. Could be powerful with immolation but again if you're doing 1000 damage in fire, the next hit doing 2000 or 3000 or even 4000 isn't all that important, you can only make an enemy so dead and there are easier ways to do 2k or more damage by the time you reach the void. Best way to do so would be through hadad's blessing so far as I can tell.

Also the changes to focus really hurt str based melee builds specifically (though once again it's great for dex based ones). Rampage would help but rampage is too MAD or multi attribute dependent and costs too much to be useful. When you're nearing the void, anything that is going to trigger rampage has to have gone through your armor which means it's dealing over 200 damage more than likely. At best if you do an even spread between str and will (which would be suboptimal in almost every other aspect) you would have to sink 5 skill levels into rampage to not lose health on it on average and around 200 damage is pretty average for what you run into near the obelisk. This would in an average run leave you with enough points to buy one focus to increase the speed damage of rampage, which would admittedly do over 1000 damage in retaliation but the real question is for how long and the major difficulty would be simply getting to the point where it actually became powerful enough to matter. I've tried running any build that could make it work and I usually die before I get past the green tower. Playing the most efficient character possible you will see positive returns at around level 10 or so, when getting hit returns 33 hp. The build is unfortunately a hot mess up to that point and just reaching that point requires a good amount of luck, the kind of luck I didn't find in 10 runs with the appropriate class. I would honestly suggest either knocking points off the cost or lowering the divisor. Even if the build was to reach late game its HP would be low because instead of getting to a certain strength bench mark you'd have to evenly spread between str and will to make this work, which requires insane rng when it comes to items, enemies, and level lay out. A more balanced build would take 4 rampage, 5 vitality, and 1 focus but that would be a bandaid and the vitality would struggle to keep up with the eventual attrition from rampage just not keeping up even with a perfect balance.