*Fight in Trial mode with a fixed set of gem types, spells, and difficulty settings to test your bare hands gemcrafting skills and unlock wizard stashes with various rewards.*

[Ai]

Now i'm worried.

If the rewards include Skills, gems, buildings and spells unlocks then....you might has well clear the entire game in trial mode right away just to unlock all the tools, it's a potential *grind wall* to get to the *real game*.

The other games you could just unlock them during normal levels by meeting a specific condition. It's good because it's part of the main game and your progression matters so you don't feel like you're forced to play a completely new mode that disregards your progression to unlock anything.

Also, if the difficulty of those trial fields are like the vision fields in the other games, it's gonna be very frustrating to unlock what you need, those used to be optional in the other games so you could skip then....but now it's required for unlocking key skills and gem types, so you can't really skip them. (Some of them could also only be beaten by luck... thanks gem damage ranges!)

Still looking forward to the game, i just fear that this change goes against what made gemcraft great : The progression.

Too bad we'll probably need to play over 10-20 hours before we can even mess with the skill tree or fragments, since it's useless in trial mode.

What do you think?

[zoutzakje]

I think there is little point in speculating and we'll just have to see what happens. "Unlock wizard stashes with various rewards" could literally mean anything. All we can do is wait and see how it's implemented. I suspect everything will be just fine.

[Ai]

Well, with the blog posts i read on the gameinabottle site, rewards form the trial fields will indeed unlock skills and probably gems and spells has well.

Here's the exact line :

**Each field will have a Trial mode, which will be very similar to vision fields from GCCS, meaning, available skills and mana will be set for each trial, regardless of how far you have advanced in the game, putting you to challenges you can’t hack by getting to wizard level 1000. Precious loot such as skills and unique talisman fragments will be obtainable by winning trails.**

**Precious loot such as skills**

Source : http://gameinabottle.com/blog/2019/03/gcfw-dev-update-chapter-map/

Unless it get changed, we will have to deal with trial fields for the first 10 hours or so just to unlock all the options, with no regards to progression in the meantime....for a game all about progression.

[zoutzakje]

Well, we still won't know exactly how it would get implemented. Maybe it won't be as bad as you fear.
I for one very much disliked the tome chambers. Forced me to change my newbie strategies and often get less exp than i normally would have. It caused me to replay some of them just to squeeze more out of it. That it didn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, i wasn't aware of yet.
Having to play Trials to unlock skills and other rewards could be a good or bad thing, we simply won't know until we try it for ourselves. Keep in mind that there is probably no way the whole map is unlocked from the start, so you won't be spending the first 10-20 hours beating all Trials before you really start playing. The way i imagine it, it would be "trial, normal field, trial, normal field, trial, trial, endurance, normal field, normal field, etc". It would force you to actually play the Trials along with the regular fields, which could be fun. In GC:CS I'm lvl 29k and i haven't done half the Vision fields, simply because it's not worth the effort. But again, that's just speculation on my part.
The developer knows how much we enjoyed his previous games and the reasons why. I trust he'll make the new one just as fun.

[Ai]

*Keep in mind that there is probably no way the whole map is unlocked from the start, so you won't be spending the first 10-20 hours beating all Trials before you really start playing.*

It all depends if trial fields can unlock other levels or not, if so then yeah might has well get it out of the way right away, meaning a *grind* wall when you start out...until you complete the base game, then replay the game with the actual progression in play once you're done.

If not, we'll need to beat the same map at less twice to not only unlock the next level but also for whatever reward the map gives... it's much worse that the tome chambers since at less you could unlock all you need by just playing the map once, also your progression actually helped with this.


I'd not say that it would ruin the game, but it slows down the early game quite a bit... and unless the difficulty is toned down compared to other vision fields, (Forced to enrage early waves and saves mana to banish monsters for 3-4 laps at the last wave, since you need hundreds of hit to kill a single mod, with no room for creativity or mistakes...then prey that you don't have too many bad damage rolls on your gems.) those fields will be extremely rage inducing to play.


I just hope the difficulty is much lower(At less for those that unlock skills/gems, the rest i won't care), since it's no longer optional.

[zoutzakje]

I do believe the difficulty of those Trials compared to Visions should be toned down a bit yeah. I don't mind if there are hard ones as well, but they should be later in the game. Keep things balanced as much as possible.

It's been a while since i played, but i believe Vision fields can not unlock other fields. I don't see why Trials would be any different.

Vision fields have always been different from the rest. I expect Trials will be too. I agree that having to beat the same field twice in this fashion would be counter-intuitive, which is why i expect it will work a little different. There are many imaginative ways to make it a fun experience.
Unfortunately we just don't know enough about how it's going to work yet.

Either way, even if it works exactly as you fear it will, the odds are I'm still going to have a blast with the game. I'm especially looking forward to Endurance.

[ferrelas]

Ok, first off, 'trial fields' isn't a thing, you'll play the trial mode on regular fields, and I think just beating them the old fashioned way will unlock the rest of the fields.

I've shared the same concerns with the dev on facebook, and he ways these will be easier.

And worst case you can always look up a solution on youtube, given the quite deterministic nature of the game, if you do a certain sequence of actions you are guaranteed a win.

[Ai]

Funny thing is, even with a guide you still needed luck on some vision fields since you could still lose even if you have the perfect set up due to gem damage RNG. (Only a couple were like this, but still.)

The difficulty is not the only thing that bothers me, but also that you can't really ignore them.


With that said, i can't wait to try endurance mode in this game, since the lag problem will be gone.....hopefully.

[ferrelas]

Well you couldn't ignore skill tomes either, and a lot of those were ANNOYING. So there's no differences to CS in that regard.

[Gem of Temporarity]

Where does the assumtion that it would block ALL the stuff come from?
There may be a diffirent way to unlock some skills, gaining skills(at all) from trials doesn't nessecerily mean that ALL will be gained this way, same for talisman fragments.

As long as it will be possible(even if actually harder) to just beat the grindable mode without much trials, I wouldn't mind. Neither would I if their rewards fueled the late-game.
With <metal> Wizard I hope it's obvious it'll require at least some of them.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ai:

With that said, i can't wait to try endurance mode in this game, since the lag problem will be gone.....hopefully.

Don't tell me you want to set a whole field up with absurdly quickly firing lanterns that reach barely less than the entire field.

[Ai]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Gem of Temporarity:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ai:

With that said, i can't wait to try endurance mode in this game, since the lag problem will be gone.....hopefully.

Don't tell me you want to set a whole field up with absurdly quickly firing lanterns that reach barely less than the entire field.

Maybe, at less for experiment purposes, but that won't beat the good old 8 amplifiers buffing the kill gem.

If the lantern skill can buff the range (even just a little bit) then a lantern with 8 amplifiers might give it the range to cover quite a bit, if not I'd wager that slow and armour gems will be much better in lanterns that traps.

Who knows, maybe even gems like poison will be viable for late game, would be nice to have them viable for endurance runs, maybe placing them in a lantern right after a mana farm could work wonders.

[ferrelas]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ai:

If the lantern skill can buff the range (even just a little bit) then a lantern with 8 amplifiers might give it the range to cover quite a bit, if not I'd wager that slow and armour gems will be much better in lanterns that traps.

Looks like they will have a cap on how many monsters they hit, not really sure how that won't make them useless though.

[Ai]

Oprindeligt skrevet af ferrelas:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ai:

If the lantern skill can buff the range (even just a little bit) then a lantern with 8 amplifiers might give it the range to cover quite a bit, if not I'd wager that slow and armour gems will be much better in lanterns that traps.

Looks like they will have a cap on how many monsters they hit, not really sure how that won't make them useless though.

Ah...that's too bad if true, but i think the actual limit is how many of those you can build, not the numbers of enemies it can hit, unless that info was posted on discord or twitter that is.
.
Even so, you still get a consistant effect that can affect most of the map(now that we know skills can improve range), unlike traps that only cover about 3 squares..

Might not be great for a mana farm since the lantern skill don't improve the gem specials, but it should still be userfull with a 90% slow blue gem for example.

[Gem of Temporarity]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ai:

Ah...that's too bad if true, but i think the actual limit is how many of those you can build, not the numbers of enemies it can hit, unless that info was posted on discord or twitter that is.

That's from a screenshot from the blog. It literally said "3 lantern target limit".
Lint to image: http://gameinabottle.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/gcfw-20190731-skills.jpg
Link to post: http://gameinabottle.com/blog/2019/07/gcfw-dev-update-battle-modes-and-traits/
My guess is they became the building you can place anywhere and not give a thing about where it will reach, 'cuz it'll reach everywhere, even from corners.

[Ai]

Oh durp! I confused it with the bulding limit instead of target unit for some reason.

I'd rather take the bulding limit over the target limits myself, but i'm not the one making the game.

Quite a harsh limit, i hope i'm wrong but i really hope it's not *Overbalanced* due to the fear of the dev of it being too OP since it usally ends it with something so weak it's not worth using over other options.

Since improving the lantern skill don't even improve gems specials, i fear that it's gonna be useless for endurance runs, unlike traps that does scale. (Unless it's changed)

I just hope it have a use for endurance runs, otherwise it will probably only be used to slow down enemies and nothing else.

[ferrelas]

He has said it's still highly subject to change, so there's a good chance the limit will be higher at least. Not really sure what the actual use for it would be like this though.