Store refresh

[derekscottroberts]

First, this is my second feedback post and I'll mention first for the devs that I think this is a great game. No real complaints. Loading times are especially great, on an SSD the game starts up and shuts down remarkably fast. There aren't any major bugs, never crashes to desktop, and I appreciate the hard work.

The store and enchanter tower refreshes could use some work in my limited experience. In my current game my characters have just gone from level 5 to level 10 using equipment that was all gained while they were level 5. The store refreshes were just not even close to items that my 4 main characters would use. One of the refreshes in the magic tower was 3 items for Vanguard class (only bonuses to hide or surprise attack) (out of 7 total items in that refresh). Also those books in the magic tower are useless. 700 of the currency for a buff that only lasts one mission on one character? Take all of those single mission books out of the item list, we get plenty of those items from loot containers already.

The regular merchant is a similar story as far as variety goes. Or lack there of. It seems like each refresh heavily caters to only 2 or 3 classes, and at these early levels they seem to heavily favor arcanists and vanguards. Heavy armor and two handed weapon runes are very rare, and there's almost no equipment that really favors the sage. If you want a one handed weapon rune for your sage you pretty much hope to get something with a plus to backstab as one of the bonuses, and the other bonus will be for hide, and the item is clearly meant for a vanguard but you just have to live with it as a sage.

5 levels without being able to upgrade any equipment is kind of rough. I mean, I'm playing on hard so it isn't "rough" as in the game is too difficult. But there's some kind of "what is going on?" feeling for like the last 3 times the stores have refreshed.

I really enjoy the story and graphics and gameplay and am looking forward to the new end game content, again thanks for making this a quality product and continuing with updates.

[CursedPanther]

Just the other day I found a tome from the tower that could remove a negative trait on the selected hero and for a second I thought I read the description wrong. Bought it in a blink of an eye for Lady Boudicea and now she can safely get loyalty boosted with a knight title. That's RNGesus for you.

I'm not against your idea. I also do wonder if those faster refresh and quality upgrades are simply some unnecessary huge resource sink.

[LastMinit]

The stock is random, you just had poor luck for a few levels. Heavy armour and two-handed runes are not rare in the scheme of things, nor are non-vanguard one-handers. Luck will come your way before long.

[Uryens]

It also depends on what you want. I just want the tome that removes a bad trait, but I never see one on sale, while I have got at least three times the book that gives an extra skill point, which will likely be more useful for other people.

[Hugh J. Load]

In any game. I've never been a fan of RNG for stuff like stores. I much prefer the idea of upgrading the store in some way, which then unlocks better gear. It allows the player to decide how they want to play, and allows them to plan ahead as to what builds or playstyles they want to try.

Since King Arthur is a gear-dependent game, at the very least I think once a character reaches level 8 or 9, level 10 items should start appearing in the store and tower (along with level 5 items). In my first playthrough, all my early-game gear was defenders or vanguards, and I found I was struggling a lot; however, in my current playthrough, I got some good luck with champion gear and now Balan is already an absolute beast at level 7. The difference in difficulty is astounding.

Originally posted by Uryens:

It also depends on what you want. I just want the tome that removes a bad trait, but I never see one on sale, while I have got at least three times the book that gives an extra skill point, which will likely be more useful for other people.

Man, I went through an entire playthrough and not once did I see this tome appear. I was convinced it didn't actually exist. Hopefully I get one this time! If I have no luck this time either, I'll do an "honour system" and change the config file to remove a negative trait, and then not buy the tome if it appears.

[derekscottroberts]

So, I just finished the Fisher King mission, the end of Act 2 I guess it is. When I got back to Camelot both the merchant and the tower were on the last day of their reset, and I had a joust. So I saved the game and spent the entire day save scumming looking for good gear. Normally not something I would do, but frankly I'm amazed I made it as far as I did in the game given that some of my gear were relic items from before level 5 (they had no minimum level requirement on them). So I just had to upgrade some stuff, and also had enough resources to buy 2 or 3 relic items each from both the merchant and the tower, and it was basically a miracle that the merchant and tower both refreshed with lvl 10 equipment after a joust so... now was the time. Here's the result of my trying, just posting for fun.

Almost every reload, if the merchant has a relic weapon for sale, it is an arcanist staff rune, and something like 80% of all the weapons that the merchant had available were arcanist staff runes. This could just be a result of recruiting Merlin on the Fisher King mission, but this also seems consistent with all of the store resets in my play through so far, so I don't think it is just because I recently recruited Merlin. It's very rare for the merchant to have a two handed weapon rune of any quality. It seems more common for a relic two handed weapon rune to appear in the tower than for a blue or green two handed weapon rune to appear in the merchant. Which just seems crazy to me. Maybe they are trying to balance and discourage players from taking two tanks on missions? But it is difficult to find good equipment for even 1 tank now, meanwhile you could easily outfit an entire team of arcanists with all relic gear (assuming you had the finances to buy it all).

There are more books that show up in the tower! As someone else mentioned, there were a few times when the Tome of Release (removes negative trait) and a skill point Tome both showed up. I would never buy one of the single mission bonus Tomes, but removing a negative trait and a skill point, I think those are both worth the 1350 relic dust to purchase. These two book do cost almost twice as much as the single mission bonus books, but I think the cost for them is at least reasonable since they are permanent buffs.

Side note: I tried the Tome of Release on Lady Guinevere and even though it removes the Disloyal trait from her trait list, her loyalty did not actually increase, and when hovering the mouse over her loyalty it still shows -3 from trait. So I'm not actually sure if this book as been fixed as per the June patch notes. I understand this was/is ongoing, just a heads up.

So I do have two saves for paths forward. One is with the event First Treasure of Tuath De Danann and the other is with the event Roaming Blacksmith (you get a random relic for 300g). The First Treasure save also had a Tome of Release for sale at the tower so I think I'm going to move forward with this save, even though I'm not totally sure that the Tome of Release is really working as intended yet. Maybe I just need to enter a mission with Guinevere and then it will display her loyalty properly after the next real load. Like maybe her loyalty display just isn't refreshing fully when clicking on the book but the book is working properly? I suppose I'll naturally be testing it out here soon and report back.

[LastMinit]

Originally posted by derekscottroberts:

Almost every reload, if the merchant has a relic weapon for sale, it is an arcanist staff rune, and something like 80% of all the weapons that the merchant had available were arcanist staff runes. This could just be a result of recruiting Merlin on the Fisher King mission, but this also seems consistent with all of the store resets in my play through so far, so I don't think it is just ecause I recently recruited Merlin. It's very rare for the merchant to have a two handed weapon rune of any quality. It seems more common for a relic two handed weapon rune to appear in the tower than for a blue or green two handed weapon rune to appear in the merchant. Which just seems crazy to me. Maybe they are trying to balance and discourage players from taking two tanks on missions? But it is difficult to find good equipment for even 1 tank now, meanwhile you could easily outfit an entire team of arcanists with all relic gear (assuming you had the finances to buy it all).

I wonder is there some seed at work that pushes gear one way or another per run, or per stage of the game, because your results are not at all typical.
My first run I got a lot of defender gear, and better marksman gear than arcanist.
My current run, I'm around level 10, I'm getting a lot of good champion stuff, and very little for arcanist.
Also, it could be that reloading one single save will only draw from a limited pre-seeded pool, the same way that reloading a chest will generally give the same result. But I'm pretty sure it's not the devs actively trying to deter players.

Anyway to some extent it makes sense to build around the gear you get. That certainly worked for me in my hard/roguelite double defender run, and it's working even better now for my very hard/no vanguard double champion. Balan and Lanval are kicking ass, having both acquired items that make the first basic attack cost 0ap, a big boost for champions as it frees up 4ap for movement.

[CursedPanther]

Originally posted by HintrGlactic:

Originally posted by derekscottroberts:

Almost every reload, if the merchant has a relic weapon for sale, it is an arcanist staff rune, and something like 80% of all the weapons that the merchant had available were arcanist staff runes. This could just be a result of recruiting Merlin on the Fisher King mission, but this also seems consistent with all of the store resets in my play through so far, so I don't think it is just ecause I recently recruited Merlin. It's very rare for the merchant to have a two handed weapon rune of any quality. It seems more common for a relic two handed weapon rune to appear in the tower than for a blue or green two handed weapon rune to appear in the merchant. Which just seems crazy to me. Maybe they are trying to balance and discourage players from taking two tanks on missions? But it is difficult to find good equipment for even 1 tank now, meanwhile you could easily outfit an entire team of arcanists with all relic gear (assuming you had the finances to buy it all).

I wonder is there some seed at work that pushes gear one way or another per run, because your results are not at all typical.
My first run I got a lot of defender gear, and better marksman gear than arcanist.
My current run, I'm around level 10, I'm getting a lot of good champion stuff, and very little for arcanist.
Anyway it makes sense to build around the gear you get, whatever it might be.

Now that you mention it, I think it does follow the player's chosen playstyle. I don't have a Marksman in my active roster anymore and the store and tower seem to have stopped providing Marksman related gear also.

[derekscottroberts]

Originally posted by CursedPanther:

Originally posted by HintrGlactic:

I wonder is there some seed at work that pushes gear one way or another per run, because your results are not at all typical.
My first run I got a lot of defender gear, and better marksman gear than arcanist.
My current run, I'm around level 10, I'm getting a lot of good champion stuff, and very little for arcanist.
Anyway it makes sense to build around the gear you get, whatever it might be.

Now that you mention it, I think it does follow the player's chosen playstyle. I don't have a Marksman in my active roster anymore and the store and tower seem to have stopped providing Marksman related gear also.

It might be. I have Ector and Merlin so two arcanists, but only 1 champion as I dismissed Kay for Tegyr. I have a couple of defenders and see enough 1 handed weapon runes, but only 1 sage...

It's so hard to tell what is confirmation bias when dealing with RNG and reloading the same save.

[derekscottroberts]

Originally posted by HintrGlactic:

Originally posted by derekscottroberts:

Almost every reload, if the merchant has a relic weapon for sale, it is an arcanist staff rune, and something like 80% of all the weapons that the merchant had available were arcanist staff runes. This could just be a result of recruiting Merlin on the Fisher King mission, but this also seems consistent with all of the store resets in my play through so far, so I don't think it is just ecause I recently recruited Merlin. It's very rare for the merchant to have a two handed weapon rune of any quality. It seems more common for a relic two handed weapon rune to appear in the tower than for a blue or green two handed weapon rune to appear in the merchant. Which just seems crazy to me. Maybe they are trying to balance and discourage players from taking two tanks on missions? But it is difficult to find good equipment for even 1 tank now, meanwhile you could easily outfit an entire team of arcanists with all relic gear (assuming you had the finances to buy it all).

My first run I got a lot of defender gear, and better marksman gear than arcanist.
My current run, I'm around level 10, I'm getting a lot of good champion stuff, and very little for arcanist.
Also, it could be that reloading one single save will only draw from a limited pre-seeded pool, the same way that reloading a chest will generally give the same result. But I'm pretty sure it's not the devs actively trying to deter players.

Anyway to some extent it makes sense to build around the gear you get. That certainly worked for me in my hard/roguelite double defender run, and it's working even better now for my very hard/no vanguard double champion. Balan and Lanval are kicking ass, having both acquired items that make the first basic attack cost 0ap, a big boost for champions as it frees up 4ap for movement.

Yeah some of this is almost unbelievable to me. I do believe you, not doubting what you're saying, but it's so backwards from my current game (which is only my second playthrough, and the first was right after the game released so I don't really remember it). That 0ap weapon would be awesome for the champion. I've seen that bonus drop on a one handed rune but it was always with poison damage as one of the other bonuses and I'm not using a vanguard so other items have been more worthwhile.

[derekscottroberts]

I bothered to upload screenshots. This is what my store refreshes have looked like all game, almost everything has been for Arcanists and Vanguards.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851510351

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851510378

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2851510412

[Hugh J. Load]

Originally posted by derekscottroberts:

It might be. I have Ector and Merlin so two arcanists, but only 1 champion as I dismissed Kay for Tegyr. I have a couple of defenders and see enough 1 handed weapon runes, but only 1 sage...
.

My hero... I'm glad I'm not the only one who gives Kay the boot! I know people here say he's the best champion, but I'd rather use other, more interesting characters :P

Originally posted by derekscottroberts:

I bothered to upload screenshots. This is what my store refreshes have looked like all game, almost everything has been for Arcanists and Vanguards.

This playthrough, I've noticed a trend of marksman and champion gear in the store. Even got 3 bows in a row at one point, sadly.

It's hard to say whether it adapts to your playstyle or not, though it certainly could. In my current situation, I've been using champions every mission (typically 1, but sometimes I'll bring 2); however, I use a marksman maybe every 3rd mission. Despite that, marksman gear still shows up as often as champion gear. I'm also disregarding the fact that I'm not getting any defender gear despite bringing Mordred on every mission

[Uryens]

I have knights of all classes and I always see items for all them. But sometimes I find more marksman gear, and sometimes it can be more champions gear.
The quality is random too, I can buy 4 green and blue heavy armours and one relic light armour, for example.

[derekscottroberts]

The White Knight is ready to exchange sexual favors for some lvl 10 relics.

[holy-death]

I like how the Store and the Tower work in general.

On one hand it allows you to gather enough Dust/gold to buy them, on another it works as a cooldown before the items refresh and new ones appear. While sometimes variety was skewed I am sure it's just because of the RNG.

If I would change anything then having an edict that instantly refreshes items could be useful in some situations, but other than that it felt like a good addition to loot obtained from missions.

Originally posted by TheGrongler:

My hero... I'm glad I'm not the only one who gives Kay the boot! I know people here say he's the best champion, but I'd rather use other, more interesting characters :P

That's a strange thing to say, considering he is one of the characters who has access to more unique skills than most.

[derekscottroberts]

Originally posted by holy-death:

Originally posted by TheGrongler:

My hero... I'm glad I'm not the only one who gives Kay the boot! I know people here say he's the best champion, but I'd rather use other, more interesting characters :P

That's a strange thing to say, considering he is one of the characters who has access to more unique skills than most.

AP is still the limiting the factor for Kay's usefulness in combat. Not more limiting than most other characters, but I'd rather use the White Knight or Lancelot on the appropriate playthroughs. The White Knight makes use of Rage and Bless Weapon to gain back 2 AP for each kill, which is like each attack only costing 2 AP, so he gets more attacks than the other Champions each round, which is more useful than having skills he can't use because he runs out of AP. It's pretty common for the WK to kill 6-8 enemies in a turn and still have more AP than he began the round with. Especially if you can find one of the items that grants the skill to teleport to the next enemy after each kill, and if you give him the free strike upgrade to the Combat Expertise skill and the Earth Shaker skill, he just doesn't stop killing. I'm using WK and Lancelot on hard and most combats are only a single turn and I rarely use all of the campfires on a level. It would feel like cheating except I'm not using console commands.

And Lancelot gets the Assault ability so he's more mobile. Both Kay and Lancelot get the Juggernaut skill, but Kay doesn't have anything like Assault to actually help him close the distance on enemies so he has to spend AP to get there.