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Strive: Conquest

A successor to first Strive For Power game, currently at alpha stage · By Strive4Power

Suggestion: Small balancing improvements (mostly items)

A topic by Travikus created Aug 06, 2023 Views: 510 Replies: 5
Viewing posts 1 to 4
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I never posted before, but I played s4p completely, including basically all major mods, same for this game and I absolutely looove it. Congrats to the dev(s?) especially the new class system is great! That said, I have a few suggestions and decided to get them all out of my system. I separated them into different topics for ease of use.

Here are some small, disconnected suggestions on how to improve the balance of individual things (mostly items):

Dragon bones and leather Great materials, absolutely love them, but wayyy too hard to obtain and too cheap (in gold). I suggest making them easier to get (in dungeons and maybe settlements) and increasing the price (in gold).

Blue moss For someone who loves crafting potions (like me) the supply of blue moss is simply too low. Especially when compared to the supply of salvia. Generally speaking, I would suggest a more reliable way to obtain it, at such a low price there really isn’t any reason against it.

Ink base While there is nothing wrong per se with this item, I’d love a way to obtain more of it quicker, like being able to craft it with very expensive materials (adamantine, dragon materials, etc) or obtain more of it as loot in dungeons.

Adamantine Adamantine is made from mithril (which costs 75 gold) and dragon bone (which costs 100 gold) in a level three alchemy lab and with lots of effort. How can it be worth only 100 gold when its materials already cost almost twice that? Also, it’s often a worse choice than dragon bone for crafting items, making it questionable to use the dragon bones to craft it in the first place. And finally, its actually easier to get adamantine than to get dragon bones (in dungeons and because dragon bones are only sold for insane, but justified 500 points by the fighters)! I suggest significantly buffing the properties of adamantine, at least doubling its price (200 gold) and making it harder or even impossible to get in dungeons. Alternatively, removing the option to craft it would be a possibility, since then it’s not really an upgrade from dragon bone, but just another resource.

Growth This may be intentional, but I find it extremely annoying that characters with good growth values are so rare. Especially since slaves you obtain early in the game are always better (more time to gain exp, sp, and loyalty), it’s difficult for slaves obtained later to catch up. This disincentivises players to catch new slaves all throughout their run and steals a lot of the fun of managing an ever-growing harem of sorts.

Master staff The master staff is supposed to be an upgrade from the normal staff, but it really isn’t (or at least not as much) because it requires two hands instead of one, meaning you can’t hold a shield or magic book at the same time. I suggest the master staff should also only require one hand.

More slaves I know this was mentioned already, but I still feel the need to point this out again: 30 slaves simply isn’t enough. In a quite similar game (free cities) I managed over 200! I suggest raising the limit to 50, that’s not an absurd number, but you have a bit more leeway.

Oblivion Potion Put simply, at the moment I cannot see why I would ever use this item since it’s just so bad. Hence, I would either improve it by making it selectable which classes are forgotten and/or give back a portion of the exp used to acquire these classes. Alternatively, a refined oblivion potion with better characteristics could be added.

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Agree with most of these, really.  It's sad that the best way to get high tier crafting ingredients is to check the main markets every day (Aliron, elves, beasts) for items made of high level materials and disassemble them.

Oblivion potion, as far as I can tell, is to get rid of useless classes on newly-acquired slaves.

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I have never bought or made adamantine or sold it for that matter. I get enough through disassembling found item and dungeon finds.  Same goes for dragon bone. Most of my high end tools are ancient bone and mithril. Not the top but more than good enough. It seems to me that both adamantine and dragon bone should be rare. Now I dungeon delve a lot. Later in the game I do 3 hard dungeon a day. Someone who has more slaves could do more.

 I rarely have more than 20 slaves,. A large number may be important to some players, but its not crucial to the game. also, its easy to mod in more rooms. There is already a mod for that.

Maverik says that in the next version only the Growth factor can be raised. So eventually it can be 6 for many slaves. But the other factor will remain the same as at birth. Gives an incentive to careful breeding and weeding.

All of the high tier weapons require two hands. It does make shields and the spell book seem useless.

The Oblivion potion is useless. It doesn't return experience points or allow new classes to cost less. Purely cosmetic, for those who don't like to see a sex toy with the knight class or vice versa.

The game is relatively easy to mod. This can allow players to tailor the game to their preferences while the developers focus on more basic game mechanics.

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Are you sure that all high-tier weapons require two hands? Because IIRC, the heavy sword doesn't... And with the other weapons, (bow and spear) the low-tier version already requires two hands, meaning that the master staff is indeed the only weapon for which it changes.

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You are correct. I wonder why I had that impression. Cali's heirloom sword and the holy sword are two handed, but they are special.

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I agree with having an alternative to random generation from the markets for some of the rarer items, like having guild quests that open up options to purchase the specific items directly from the guilds. That is already possible with the Fighters', Servants', & Mages' guilds through their shops for Dragon Bones, Writs of Exemptions,  Oblivion Potions, and Unstable Concoctions. I already save-hacked to add Dragon Leather to the Workers' Guild, Elegant Chokers & Hand Cuffs to the Servants' Guild, and Energy Crystals & Gems of Energy to the Mages' Guild. This would also make the accumulation of Guild Points passed the mid-point of the game (after all the upgrades are unlocked) still worthwhile. Doing mini quests to, let's say, find and bring a renown herbalist to the Mages' Guild to add Blue Moss/Salvia to that guild's store, or acquiring an Arachne slave for the Servants' Guild who adds Ethereal/Magic cloth to the Servants' shop. It doesn't even have to be people, maybe so much as a mix of coins and materials plus a time delay to upgrade the Workers' Guild with an arcane forge that puts Adamantine into their shop, or the clearing of each type of hard dungeon makes the Warriors' shop carry a limited quantity of Crystalized Ether, Fire Rubies, Earth Shards, Eternal Ice, Chitin, and Ogres' Teeth as NPC guild explorers pawn off their finds from the recently cleared locations.

Story-wise, the protagonist is tied rather extensively to the guilds so it would make sense that the guilds are still important go-to locations for un-farmable resources.