Post-Sacrament Feedback

[Father Goose]

I've been running around after getting to Sacrament, sold a bunch of stuff, bought some stuff, fought a bunch of stuff, so I have some more general thoughts.

• Mob difficulty pacing feels off. I'm fine with mobs that have brains, but I can't help but feel like there should be more mobs that you just kind of slap around with a little bit of care. I've run into like 5-6 of those fatties with the huge ax, and those feel like they should be gatekeepers, not just kind of in random places. The Greatshield mobs that also punish you for hitting their shield (at least with the Nail Biter I have), they have plenty of time to hit them after they swing, but again, I'm just a couple hours into the game.
  
• I can't find a place to regenerate all of my health bar for free, which feels like a miss. Even if they don't want whispers themselves to be a free heal, I should at least be able to run back to my room in the Rookery and "rest". As it stands, I have to blow another 2 food since I'm sitting around 10%, which, constantly worrying about not having enough food because 1-ish hit is another food down isn't a great feel. Maybe the game is supposed to feel survival/subsistence?
  
• I was excited to try playing as a caster, and I discovered that the Staff is just another weapon you have to try to melee with until you build enough focus to cast 1 spell. 50 focus isn't a HUGE amount, and Fireball does good damage, but I feel like I'd rather have a choice between spells that only cost like 20 focus so I can sling more as part of my gameplay. It isn't wrong design, but definitely made me sad.
  
• I wish focus generation was faster by default, or if some runes were put on a cooldown instead of requiring focus. Even if the power of the runes was diminished, I think the variety and flexibility would be good spice.
  
• Overall, now that I'm a bit more into the gameplay loop, I feel like I'm wrestling with it more than enjoying planning out my next goal. Wrestling with where to go on the map to get to places, wrestling with mats, wrestling with health.
  
• That said, I still think the visuals are top-notch, I love the weight of combat, and I want to want to progress. I just feel like I'm a fresh Elden Ring character dropped into the middle of Leyndell instead of Limgrave.

[Nightrunner]

Agree that its annoying not to have a non-consumable way of healing. Either at a whisper, the rookery, or just an out-of-combat slow regen would be great. I managed to enchant a weapon with healing, but then I enchanted too other items that together do -90% healing. Enchanting feels a bit pointless because there seem to be limited negative buffs and the ones you get early on significantly hamper progress.

[Crylz]

You'll get used to different type of enemies if you pay attention to their cooldowns, what triggers them and timings to counter some of their most telegraphed attacks. It's a learning process, with time you'll get more confident and instead of rolling or playing cat and mouse you'll sprint around them in the blind spot, see that they are far more vulnerable due rotation locks and even discover timings when they are open for execution.

Regarding health issues, there are few enhancements in game that give you health regeneration. Some have hp gain on kills, damage or parry. Best choice is to get Heal aura rune in store and get used to how and when its best time to use it. In theory, ai is relatively dumb to follow you around corners or reach you whenever you get high ground, so dashing in giving few slaps and then running away, healing in safety is one way to progress. You can also get ruby enchanted into a hat for hp recovery increase and additional hp if enchanted in chest.

Again, there are enhancements that can help you with focus. Some even recover it passively, there is channeling rune that you spend hp to get focus with, consumables that grant focus. Haven't looked into whats required to craft them, but generally learning each enemies "range punishment" gap closer animation timing to counter will grants you all the focus you need. If you planned to just stay comfortably at distance and attack with magic, this isnt the type of game. There are however weapons with long reach that can help you deal with everything at safe distance, as long as you aren't too close or too far by managing spacing.

[Father Goose]

Originally posted by Crylz:

You'll get used to different type of enemies if you pay attention to their cooldowns, what triggers them and timings to counter some of their most telegraphed attacks. It's a learning process, with time you'll get more confident and instead of rolling or playing cat and mouse you'll sprint around them in the blind spot, see that they are far more vulnerable due rotation locks and even discover timings when they are open for execution.

Regarding health issues, there are few enhancements in game that give you health regeneration. Some have hp gain on kills, damage or parry. Best choice is to get Heal aura rune in store and get used to how and when its best time to use it. In theory, ai is relatively dumb to follow you around corners or reach you whenever you get high ground, so dashing in giving few slaps and then running away, healing in safety is one way to progress. You can also get ruby enchanted into a hat for hp recovery increase and additional hp if enchanted in chest.

Again, there are enhancements that can help you with focus. Some even recover it passively, there is channeling rune that you spend hp to get focus with, consumables that grant focus. Haven't looked into whats required to craft them, but generally learning each enemies "range punishment" gap closer animation timing to counter will grants you all the focus you need. If you planned to just stay comfortably at distance and attack with magic, this isnt the type of game. There are however weapons with long reach that can help you deal with everything at safe distance, as long as you aren't too close or too far by managing spacing.

I'm already generally used to the different types of enemies, but my feedback is that I don't think the gaming population at large is going to take to a game where every enemy except crabs requires patient observation and nuanced hitbox-avoiding movement to optimize killtimes. This is the starting zone, after all. Sure, having a "Whoa, who is that" big fatty here and there is fine, I just think they're trying to do too much with every single mob right off the rip. Not every mob has to be a miniboss, sometimes you can just have chaff.

Also, there have been plenty of times where I've gotten hit by a swing that looked like it wasn't near me, so if they ARE going to go for the bullet-hell swing avoidance design, they better be absolutely pristine with conveying where the weapon is hitting relative to where you're standing.

Your solutions might be solutions, but they also basically serve my point: you have to wrestle with this game. Get lucky with enhancements, slot the right runes, play tag-and-run-away just to get health back.

Re: "If you planned to just stay comfortably at distance and attack with magic, this isnt the type of game.", you actually can't say that at this stage. Magic in games like this isn't always cozy ranged tea-sipping gaming, you're often immersed into learning animations because many mobs have natural counters to general spell-slinging. Plus, it being in early access, they could easily change their mind about early game Staff design and give it 1 rune that generates Focus and does pebble damage, with a 2nd rune by default that spends the Focus. I just like magic, so I want to use magic in games with magic, but in this game I have to wrestle with it early on to cast magic, and it was a letdown. That was my only point.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Nightrunner:

Agree that its annoying not to have a non-consumable way of healing. Either at a whisper, the rookery, or just an out-of-combat slow regen would be great. I managed to enchant a weapon with healing, but then I enchanted too other items that together do -90% healing. Enchanting feels a bit pointless because there seem to be limited negative buffs and the ones you get early on significantly hamper progress.

at the enchantress you can buy a heal rune that you can use like a weapon art

[ひちみこ・ハスキア]

Play some more, some of those points become a reality. The pacing, balancing at the start might be hard, but you can get very op. Its probably why the devs called it an arpg.

At some point with greatsword i can 2 shot a lot of enemies. 4 shot bigger ones. Its diablo like in that aspect that you can get stronger then a souls-like experience fast. small enemies cant stagger me, and after killing them i regain all the health they took away. So they became braindead easy. Bigger non elite ones need a few dodges but die fast.

Items can have affixes for passive health regen. Its not fast enough for in combat healing, but good enough for inbetween.

Mages can slot a gem that gives passive focus regen or regen on cast ( with 1 spell its even positive regen, which might be rebalanced). Also there is an abundance of potions as an alternative path to infinite spells.

Edit: spam some enchanter till you get op affixes combination. Wearing heavy armor with huge weight decrease and poise increase, with healing increases ( 1 heal essentially full heals me)

[Father Goose]

Originally posted by Jormungunndyr:

Originally posted by Nightrunner:

Agree that its annoying not to have a non-consumable way of healing. Either at a whisper, the rookery, or just an out-of-combat slow regen would be great. I managed to enchant a weapon with healing, but then I enchanted too other items that together do -90% healing. Enchanting feels a bit pointless because there seem to be limited negative buffs and the ones you get early on significantly hamper progress.

at the enchantress you can buy a heal rune that you can use like a weapon art

Which I've thought about doing, personally. I still don't like that there's no bed or anything, though.

[Father Goose]

Originally posted by Hichie The Husky:

Play some more, some of those points become a reality. The pacing, balancing at the start might be hard, but you can get very op. Its probably why the devs called it an arpg.

At some point with greatsword i can 2 shot a lot of enemies. 4 shot bigger ones. Its diablo like in that aspect that you can get stronger then a souls-like experience fast. small enemies cant stagger me, and after killing them i regain all the health they took away. So they became braindead easy. Bigger non elite ones need a few dodges but die fast.

Items can have affixes for passive health regen. Its not fast enough for in combat healing, but good enough for inbetween.

Mages can slot a gem that gives passive focus regen or regen on cast ( with 1 spell its even positive regen, which might be rebalanced). Also there is an abundance of potions as an alternative path to infinite spells.

All of this makes sense, but I'm 6 hours in and have encountered none of it. I just spent a good couple hours trying to get to a quest marker, and I think I just left the wrong exit out of town because nothing quite got me there.

I don't have any recipes for potions that give focus, I can only make two food meals. I'm not sure how to even craft gems yet, unless just slotting the basic type is fine? If the game wants me to sit and pour over the scrolls to figure out exactly how to do what I want to do, that's fine, but I hope they are prepared to be an unpopular, niche game in that case.

[ひちみこ・ハスキア]

Recipes you buy from vendors or get as random loot in chests or from daily/weekly quests

In town you can upgrade sellers.

Lv2 potion seller sells medium recipes and potion crafting station (i think lv1 he has basic recipes, but no crafting station)

lv2 smity has smelter, so you can make copper ingots and increase your weapon damage. It can even go to lv 2+ with iron, so if a low lvl weapon gets a good roll, you can use it for a long time just upgrading it.

Enchantres can enchant items for 1 silver. I'm still lv 17, not completed the story, so somebody might know better knowdlege. But from what i gathere you want a higher dmg roll white weapon (base weapon dmg can differ) to get a + some kind of elemental dmg., my claymore for instance has +20% electric damage. I have problably spent ~60s just rolling items.

Alternative path for the crafting stations is buy your own home and put it there, but i think you need to do orban glades story quest line first, so its slower path.

For gems, i currently just slotting in basic ones, don't know if there is gem crafting. Different item slots do different things.
weapon - type of dmg increase, using grey for just basic dmg %, using my claymore since lvl 6, since failing to roll a better weapon, even though its purple with -20% health.
I use helmet - yellow for focus regen
chest - red for % health
arms - all are parry specific , so i just use feather lower weight as i dont parry.
legs - don't remember what gems do, had a really good rolls but heavy piece so just put in feather, haven't changed it since like lvl 8

For the gem of restoring focus on use, i just seen that it exist from the current endgame dungeon online.

Also just generally exploring there is a lot of chests and they respawn, when the map gets fog of war again. From my experience higher lv = better chest drops, more blue/purple items.
The chests also contain a lot of potions. did not craft any so far, but have 20+ of most basic potion types, and less of diffrent element ones or medium ones, as they i think did not spawn in the begging.

The more you advance in lvl, town, your item power, the easier the game becomes.

[Deven]

Spells are OP in this game. Grab a staff, put Channel on it and grab any piece of regeneration gear and you kill everything with zero problems. Even if you can't get the regen gear which for me was available in droves, you can just use the obnoxious amounts of food the games gives you.

[Father Goose]

All of this just proves my point. The game has levers you can pull that give you breathing room, but when you don't know what you don't know while starting off, you have no idea if there are going to be levers to pull at all, or how much they will actually ease whatever is nagging at the player.

For me in particular, I think this game is great, but at this point I just don't want to play. When I start a character in Diablo 2, I run out and I'm popping zombies and fallen and it feels good to run around. When I start a character in Diablo 4, I run around nuking mobs, diving into dungeons, fighting massive packs, it feels viscerally satisfying. When I start a new character in Elden RIng, you can slap most mobs on the critical path with just a few swings of even a basic 1H longsword, while bosses are the mechanical test.

With this character in No Rest, I'm 6 hours in, level 6, and I just kind of don't want to go fight anything. I don't feel motivated to really dive into the meat of the game because I feel like it's been serving me raw lettuce all this time, and only the forums promise that there's some wonderful main course on its way, just trust us, it'll only be another 10 hour wait. I've got two small children and limited gaming time, with a number of incredible options already, so I have no incentive to wait it out until the mechanics flower.

My biggest argument is: what would be wrong with flowering some mechanics sooner? If it turns out this game just isn't for me, that's fine. At this point though, I really want this game to succeed regardless, and I think this game is going to be for few enough people that it'll generally flop as another Mixed title on Steam that flounders and ends up dying before its time.

Any counter-argument that boils down to "It's easy, just know exactly what to do ahead of time and know what options you WILL have later in the game" is going to bounce off of a whole ocean of playerbase. Maybe that'll just be more incentive for the gatekeeping-style gamer to feel even better about their choice of game, but I don't know that that community is big enough to support the game long term.

And I just don't know what the game loses by easing some of these early game pressures if it's OK with making itself way easier later on.

[Rappel]

First off once you get to housing you bed also regenerates health.

For non food healing unlock the 2nd main weapon slot and slap healing aura/repair/return on it. So you just have to switch between the two weapons after a fight.
Dont equip gear with minus health gain instead grab plus healing.

My 50 health food heals for 96.

There is higher focus gain later on. Even focus return on hit.

[ひちみこ・ハスキア]

Oh i agree with the begging being to difficult. Souls-like always have a hard beginning with the ability to overlevel yourself or over increase your weapon tier to make early/mid game easier.

But this game has this problem/effect together with diablo like itemenisation. Wich makes the game hoards easier with strong items. ARPG + soulslike mechanics combine to create a harsh beggining that becomes easier on combined forts of luck and your own skill.

I personnaly got lucky. I explored the 2 areas before town a lot, i think i missed just 1 chest. This gave me lots of starting gold, i looked around all the shops, bougth pickaxe and axe and roll all other gold into random enchants. That i just instantly threw all into 2 claymores and armor. Got lucky with getting a strong claymore and semi strong armor. For a bit i was kinda squishy but did a lot of dmg. I used this to farm the original areas for trees, copper, food, chests. (My brain wants to complete available town quests as fast as possible xd) which gave me more options. Progressed some story, rolled on items, got items to not be squishy anymore.

But from this paragraph there comes a problem. What if the player doesnt look around all the shops. What if they dont realise the benefits of items and dont roll a bunch, dont get lucky with items and use white, bad roll blue items trough the game ?

So i just got kinda lucky. I reached town in ~5h, got stronger, at 8-10h, weakest enemies became easy.

The game really has exponential winning effect. The stronger you are the easier you farm, the more gold you have to become stronger. But it all depends on luck.

The developers need/have to balance the game around this problem. The game is really harsh with white gear. But becomes easier and easier with items to the point that a magic build can have unlimited magic with a teleport ability.

They need a better onboarding experience in town and they need to decide whats the maximum power level a player should reach. Is teleporting wizard with unlimited focus is a goal a player should reach to do the hardest endgame content, should it be not needed, but a fun endgame result from lots of grinding (godroll chase items), or should this not even be possible for a player.

Edit:

Better onboarding experience examples.

The game should give you a quest to make your first town upgrade. For instance lets say upgrade the inn. This rebuilds an inn with a bed. Currently like all other lv2 builds it costs 10 wood and 5 copper. But the quest could give you 1 wood 1 copper for a quick intro into town building.

The game should introduce item enchanting with a quest and give a guaranteed good item.

For foods the developer wrote that they are planning to have a farm in an update. This should also be introduced in a quest and give free food as a reward.

All of this doesnt fix the pre town experience. But quickly would onboard the player into the game loop and make the game become easier without luck or pre knowledge.

This a bit reduces the point of the game i feel developers want to emphasize exploration. So some item vendors should maybe not have quest. But in the current map layout. If we would have enchenter, inn quests. You would meet all the npcs. So Knowing that they offer good stuff, the player would be encourage to explore the other vendors thelmselfs.

The game is an interesting combination of survival(healing+town upgrades), arpg, souls-like. And all of the parts are important for success. So developers should introduce all the parts. Not just the souls-like part (pre-town) which is a bit over tuned probably.

Edit2:

One thing I forgot. White items have more gem slots & rune slots. So potentially. 4 gems can outweigh affixes, you can have a secondary weapon with 4 runes. But that's endgame decision complexity. Atleast at my level 17, the gems seem still a bit rare to let's say have 4 health's to stack into a chest piece

Another point in The game has a lot of depth, developers needs to ease the player in better.

[Father Goose]

Originally posted by Rappel:

First off once you get to housing you bed also regenerates health.

For non food healing unlock the 2nd main weapon slot and slap healing aura/repair/return on it. So you just have to switch between the two weapons after a fight.
Dont equip gear with minus health gain instead grab plus healing.

My 50 health food heals for 96.

There is higher focus gain later on. Even focus return on hit.

Thanks for letting me know about the bed with housing, but I only have the Rookery, and I don't know when housing is available. Does it really need to be restricted to housing?

I've heard later on the game opens up. I just wish it didn't feel so closed early on, because to me, it doesn't feel worth slogging through to get to a point where it feels comfy. I also don't know exactly what the game gains by feeling so restrictive early on, because it seems like there's a massive point of "oh my character grew by leaps!", after which, how do you keep growing a character by leaps? I'd rather they make the early game comfier and reduce the enormous OP gains later.

That's just my personal pref, given as feedback for the EA. If they choose not to do it, that's fine.

[Tovarish Nikolay]

Ah, wait till you get to the Echo chamber!)