Finished the (Early Access) Game: My thoughts

[The Boy With The Hentai Tattoo]

I am not going to get into "oohhh where is 'x' skill or you should do 'y' skill." There is probably plenty of that. I may revisit this subject later in development.

Overall experience: Fantastic
I was able to defeat the dragon with about 14 hours of playtime, which includes exploring, testing some of the building mechanics, upgrading gear, etc. Its fun to see a take on translating a MMORPG to a survival game.

Lets start with the few bugs that I found while playing. First, the final dragon fight, he got stuck in an animation loop and didnt launch any attacks. This may be due to me failing my first attempt and re-entering the arena, but it was effectively a free kill. Second, there were a few instances of when I cut a tree down and the felled log gets glitched into the map and falls through it. Third, there's a weird LoS defect when trying to deconstruct. There were a few times that I was looking up to try and deconstruct a roofing tile or something and it deconstructs something on the gorund level isntead. I guess it may be due to the dot technically being pointed at something else because of the POV. Fourth, when the dragon attacks, his '''fireballs''' go through roof structures and buildings, ehich kinda defeats the purpose of taking shelter when it happens. Lastly, Sometimes when waking up from the bed, you get stuck for a few seconds.

The general gameplay is overall pretty fun. The combat, for the most part, is good. My biggest gripe with it is the pull distance and the aggro level of the creatures. For instance, a level 1 chicken will charge you and peck you, interrupting whatever you are currently doing. I'm not sure what the correct approach is, whether its based on gear level or some sort of "Combat Level" but at some point the lower levels should certainly not draw aggro. It just becomes a massive nuisance to pull a bunch of random low level creatures when trying to mine or chop wood. These creatures even interrupt spells, so if you're fighting something and a chicken/wolf/ram decides to run up, you pretty much get locked out of using spells because more often than not when there are more than 1 attack pattern, they offset. Due to this, there's no time to make space and use the spells you want. Secondly, I dont think a dragon sending mortar shots every so often really adds to the game. I found myself trying to design/build and the dragon shows up and I cant really do anything until it leaves. I understand that its suppose to represent world building and impending danger of whats around you and whatnot, but it does nothing but take away from the experience after the first time, having to stop what you're doing and wait until it leaves. Maybe this can be fixed by adding some sort of warding furniture to prevent it from happening at base or something similar, or just have it not nuke the entire playable area. The gear progression also needs to be tweaked a bit. The defense between bronze and iron is massive. With bronze you pretty much get 2 shot from the Garu, while with iron you can take like 8-10 hits. It was very frustrating trying to run around a level 3 area trying to get iron and pull aggro on these dudes and getting 2 shot by arrows or berserkers.

I was impressed by the building mesh and the different options that currently exist for just a little bit of build customization, im sure more will be added soon. It was fun experimenting and seeing what I could design. I have no real complaints about it, besides the potential bug mentioned above. It was interesting to see that some crafting stations are required to be outside while some are required to be inside. It forces the player to get creative if they are trying to maximize aesthetics.

The runescrafting and spells seemed a bit off. Not once was I ever in any danger of running out of runes. They are just so easy to get and abundant that you can almost never interact with the mechanic and do fine. Some of the spells also trivialize a lot of the systems in the game. For example, a spell that repairs your gear for you? Thats crazy good. That abyssal whip that requires you to kill the abyssal demon to get the materials necessary to repair? Nah man just use the spell. Additionally, the bark-to-bones and bones-to-peach solves your food problems indefinitely. With that being said, I do enjoy the utility spells like speeding up a furnace, slowing your fall, or felling trees for you. Its not OP but adds that little extra reward for those who use the systems.

I do like discovering new materials and recipes as much as the next guy when done correctly, but sometimes ill just hoard a resource and have no clue what its for. Some of them may not have functions in the game currently but it would be nice to see the potential of what some crafting amterials are used for. Additionally, I never figured out how to make enchanted jewelery. Im not sure if I missed a crafting station or its not in the game yet, but hiding stuff like that behind a deep discovery campaign it becomes easy to miss some stuff.

With all of that being said, I think this is a really solid game. So far its super fun with a really good foundation. Given some time in the oven, this could be a real banger. I would certainly put it at the same level as a game like Valheim, if not better.

I look forward to what comes next