Doing nicely, then Wow....Dying time

[baggins1]

Hi, I have enjoyed the game so far and have definately put it on my wishlist for the full game when it is released.

I was doing ok, taking my time to explore every nook and cranny and getting a good feel for the game. I was able to do all the fights up to the part where I had the mage join me in the dungeon and I had to go and find the enemy boss. So I crossed the bridge, opened the door and there are 3 powerful henchman and the named boss, all at a a higher level than me. their attacks were brutal hitting several members at once and after just 3 rounds I was completely wiped out. The fight seemed so much tougher than anything before. I had done the statue, the necromancer, all the quests up to that point as far as I know.

As the game conveniently saves before you enter this room, I walked around heading back to see if i had missed anything. The only other location I had not been to is an area described as the lowest part of the dungeon and the dialogue says that I should deal with the enemies I died against first before going down. My main character was level 6, Garrick was 5, My ranger was 4 and new wizard was at 3. Enemy boss was 8 and his henchman were 7 and 6 i think, and their attacks overpowered me completely.

This has not put me off wanting the main game, but it was a very big jump in the difficulty spike for me. as no one else has mentioned it on the other discussions, I guess everyone else passed the group with no problem, so any help would be appreciated.

Looking forward to a mini map for easier navigation, but i can already see that is coming.

Thank you for making the game free to try out, that is a great marketing strategy :)

[the_kraut]

Hi,

Yeah the difficulty spikes at that point. Only advice I can give is to use the taunt skill very often, your mage and your ranger will get 1-2 shot at this point in the game.

What is a bit sad is that it does not seem that defense skills are worth it at all - burning through the monster health and taking it out as fast as possible showed better results for me.
Not having a cleric at this point is also not in your favour - with a bit of healing most fights would turn out very differently.

Since your party and the enemies are doing a lot of damage every fight feels like a dps race rather than tactical combat.

[tinytrinket.games]

Hello everyone, first of all, it's great to see other players engaging in the conversation, it gives us confidence that you enjoyed the game.

Now, on this issue, a more detailed answer.

The Prologue is intended as show of what can be expected of the full game. Because of this, we tried to illustrate, in different moments of the game what can the player expect from it:
simple, fast and easy fights, to be enjoyed (the whole Daeg Forom area), quest mechanics, followers that join or leave the party, the different items or areas that can be accessed only by having certain classes in the party (bridges summoned by Wizards, mechanical locks that can only be accessed by Rangers) and all the other things you could find in the Prologue.

But we also wanted to make clear there will be some tough fights. As I said, the fights in the first part of the game are not meant to be hard, even for the Necromancer encounter the enemies are tuned significantly below their base point. It's just there to let the player get to feel and enjoy the use of a few decently leveled characters and quickly dispose of a group.

Going into the dungeon we tried to progressively step up the difficulty as the atmosphere got darker, with 3 fights, the one you mentioned being the first. Probably we underestimated the difficulty jump, but from our private testing on the Discord server there did not seem to be a significant issue with that particular fight, but your feedback is noted, and we'll look into balancing the difficulty curve better.

Regarding the abilities balancing and usefulness, the skills trees are getting an overhaul, and we'll look at the numbers and see what worked and what didn't.

Saving - working as intended, we expect some players to not be able to complete a fight first time, and this will still be the case for many fights in the main game, as every fight and every new enemy is different and a learning curve is expected. What we don't like is running back half a dungeon because you forgot to save, it's unpleasant and adds nothing to gameplay, only to (frustrated) game time, so we set-up auto-save points where we expect things might go wrong.

"Not having a cleric at this point is also not in your favor" - totally intended, to experience first hand how different party compositions work, with easier fights and back-up heal vs dps & protection fights later on. Good use of taunts & well placed protection spells can do wonders even without a dedicated healer in the party. But the player will have freedom of choice, totally, in the main game.

A local map was meant to be in the Prologue, but some things still don't work right, so we left it out and will be added in a patch.

To wrap this rather long post up, yes, we're aware of the difficulty increase, we were not aware it is such a high difficulty spike for some players, we'll have to look into how we can avoid this while still keeping the game enjoyable for those who like more of a challenge.

This is one of the purposes of this Prologue, to get feedback from players and let them feel the game first-hand. If you like the game and want to follow more of the development, you cal always join us on Discord: https://discord.zoriagame.com

[[OP]Dannibal]

That was an interesting fight indeed :)

[stretch]

Just ignore it. Go down into the dungeon and level up a little before coming back,
You should be 8 and even the mage will be 6 or 7 by the time you are truly forced into this fight.

[Wish Bear]

did you kill the undead in the room opened with the golden key first? I failed on him twice then went back and cleared that room. it gave my mage another level then i did it again....lots of protection and expect the mage and ranger to die...other than that it is just attack then protect or bandage, just attrition game i found....also spread out your units so the AOE doesn't hit all of them only 2, perhaps 3.....the scripting for the combat seemed easier the 3rd time around.