So how long is the game to beat now?

[SmolAnubis]

A friend of mine might be interested but is afraid the game is too much of a time sink. We'll use setting to reduce the grind to a maximum, but how long is it baseline?

[Cheri]

We started on pve brutal and it took 4.5 days to slay drakula. But if u want too play casual style and not try hard as we did, it might take up to 2-3 weeks

[FuNb0Y86]

Well, on default, the game is designed to be played with friends. The game is very grind heavy -- think Age of Conan, meets Diablo with Vampires.

Just like in AoC, you can customize your own private server, inflate material drop rates, damage to enemies, etc.

If you're looking for a standard 60 hour RPG, I would highly recommend tweaking the following settings:

-Material drop rate up 50%
-Stacks to 2 (for double stacks for time management)
-crafting speed increased by 50% at the very least

-No teleport restrictions (base game doesn't let you use vampire portals if you have any materials)
-damage per weapon increase by 50% (1.5 in other words because sponge enemies suck)
-Easy mode due to the fact that every boss is hard hitting on normal through hard for online play. If you think you can handle normal, then by all means have at it. I felt the player progression was a bit unbalanced for solo play, so easy feels more like a Diablo game to me. Bosses are still pretty hard if you make repeated mistakes even on easy.

So those are the things to keep in mind if you want a decently paced game. I have put in over 15 hours so far on a fresh playthrough, and I am barely through the first zone. It's built like a MMO btw, so the more crafting you have to put up with, the spongier the enemies, and the lower your damage done/taken, the longer you will play -- and the more grindy the experience will be.

[SmolAnubis]

Originally posted by Cheri:

We started on pve brutal and it took 4.5 days to slay drakula. But if u want too play casual style and not try hard as we did, it might take up to 2-3 weeks

How did you play each day?

[SmolAnubis]

Originally posted by FuNb0Y86:

Well, on default, the game is designed to be played with friends. The game is very grind heavy -- think Age of Conan, meets Diablo with Vampires.

Just like in AoC, you can customize your own private server, inflate material drop rates, damage to enemies, etc.

If you're looking for a standard 60 hour RPG, I would highly recommend tweaking the following settings:

-Material drop rate up 50%
-Stacks to 2 (for double stacks for time management)
-crafting speed increased by 50% at the very least

-No teleport restrictions (base game doesn't let you use vampire portals if you have any materials)
-damage per weapon increase by 50% (1.5 in other words because sponge enemies suck)
-Easy mode due to the fact that every boss is hard hitting on normal through hard for online play. If you think you can handle normal, then by all means have at it. I felt the player progression was a bit unbalanced for solo play, so easy feels more like a Diablo game to me. Bosses are still pretty hard if you make repeated mistakes even on easy.

So those are the things to keep in mind if you want a decently paced game. I have put in over 15 hours so far on a fresh playthrough, and I am barely through the first zone. It's build like a MMO btw, so the more crafting you have to put up with, the spongier the enemies, and the lower your damage done/taken, the longer you will play -- and the more grindy the experience will be.

60 is pretty chunky. I know of the server settings, and we'll probably be putting every ressource related setting to whatever makes the game fastest lmfao

[Akulvo]

It really depends on your skill level and how much you intend to play and grind. I think a casual play through on a private server would be around a week or so of gameplay. Maybe a bit longer if you're struggling on certain bosses. This is for Brutal difficulty.

For normal difficulty, you could probably beat it casually in around 3-5 days. There is a lot of time spent grinding and crafting and building, especially if you're wanting to build an awesome castle.

If you're not playing casually and trying to speed run to the end on a 1st playthrough, only doing the bare minimum for base building and grinding, I think new players can beat the full game on normal difficulty in 2-3 days.

This is assuming you're playing around 4-5 hours for those days.

[FuNb0Y86]

Yeah, sorry -- I don't precisely know how long the game is tbh. I felt that the pacing with my settings was exactly what I wanted from a RPG. Anyway, you can get through the beginning relatively fast with no need to relocate your castle constantly while playing solo if you tweak things just right.

WIth two players though, you may want to consider leaving damage and difficulty at default or even go with hard.

Edit: It's a really fun game btw. Fights aren't cheaply done for the most part, and most bosses have a rhythm that's on par with some of the best World of Warcraft fights.

[Nerevar]

solo it takes between 40-50 hours to play all the content on normal or higher.

in a group its probaly ALOT faster.

its a good game not overly long.

[SmolAnubis]

Originally posted by Akulvo:

It really depends on your skill level and how much you intend to play and grind. I think a casual play through on a private server would be around a week or so of gameplay. Maybe a bit longer if you're struggling on certain bosses. This is for Brutal difficulty.

For normal difficulty, you could probably beat it casually in around 3-5 days. There is a lot of time spent grinding and crafting and building, especially if you're wanting to build an awesome castle.

If you're not playing casually and trying to speed run to the end on a 1st playthrough, only doing the bare minimum for base building and grinding, I think new players can beat the full game on normal difficulty in 2-3 days.

This is assuming you're playing around 4-5 hours for those days.

Ok, that's a pretty good idea as to what to expect. Cheers!

[Cheri]

Originally posted by SmolAnubis:

Originally posted by Cheri:

We started on pve brutal and it took 4.5 days to slay drakula. But if u want too play casual style and not try hard as we did, it might take up to 2-3 weeks

How did you play each day?

Yes, we played during holydays and weekend, But we played without beatiful castle and farming resorses for that, without servants. Our castle looked like manufacture :)

[Froglover]

On a pretty crowded unofficial brutal pvp server, it was 83 hours to kill Brutal Dracula, get all of the shards and fully gear your 95-100 % blood servants while cosnstantly smacking players down. The 83 hours were split between seven days or so. This is also with 300+ hours of prior patches.

[SmolAnubis]

Originally posted by Cheri:

Originally posted by SmolAnubis:

How did you play each day?

Yes, we played during holydays and weekend, But we played without beatiful castle and farming resorses for that, without servants. Our castle looked like manufacture :)

How much* did you play?

brain small, forget words.

[Akulvo]

Originally posted by SmolAnubis:

Originally posted by Akulvo:

It really depends on your skill level and how much you intend to play and grind. I think a casual play through on a private server would be around a week or so of gameplay. Maybe a bit longer if you're struggling on certain bosses. This is for Brutal difficulty.

For normal difficulty, you could probably beat it casually in around 3-5 days. There is a lot of time spent grinding and crafting and building, especially if you're wanting to build an awesome castle.

If you're not playing casually and trying to speed run to the end on a 1st playthrough, only doing the bare minimum for base building and grinding, I think new players can beat the full game on normal difficulty in 2-3 days.

This is assuming you're playing around 4-5 hours for those days.

Ok, that's a pretty good idea as to what to expect. Cheers!

Cheers and good luck!

If you don't want to spend any time grinding, give yourself all the research tiers unlocked. There are 3 tiers of research which make up a lot of the grind because you have to gather paper, scrolls, an schematics which can be spent at a research desk to get a random research. You can also find books which give you specific ones though.
The grind comes from the randomness and not getting what you need/want.

The kinda stuff you get from research are floor tiles which boost the efficiency of workshops if they're using the right flooring (like furnaces and the smithy with forge floors, or loom and tailoring bench with tailoring floors, etc etc). Or you can get upgraded variants of your weapons. To mine for iron, you need a merciless copper weapon which is the upgraded version of copper. To mine for dark silver, you need the merciless iron. Merciless weapons are locked in the random research, though finding books for them is decently easy enough.

But from the sound of it, you're wanting to skip over the grind and simply enjoy the fights, right? So I recommend just giving yourself all the random researches unlocked already. This won't make the game any easier, just makes the grind faster. You still have to get the materials to craft the ♥♥♥♥ after all.
This does NOT affect the blueprints that the bosses give you when you defeat them. Those you have to beat the boss to get, each one is essential to the next stage of progression.

[SmolAnubis]

Originally posted by Akulvo:

Originally posted by SmolAnubis:

Ok, that's a pretty good idea as to what to expect. Cheers!

Cheers and good luck!

If you don't want to spend any time grinding, give yourself all the research tiers unlocked. There are 3 tiers of research which make up a lot of the grind because you have to gather paper, scrolls, an schematics which can be spent at a research desk to get a random research. You can also find books which give you specific ones though.
The grind comes from the randomness and not getting what you need/want.

The kinda stuff you get from research are floor tiles which boost the efficiency of workshops if they're using the right flooring (like furnaces and the smithy with forge floors, or loom and tailoring bench with tailoring floors, etc etc). Or you can get upgraded variants of your weapons. To mine for iron, you need a merciless copper weapon which is the upgraded version of copper. To mine for dark silver, you need the merciless iron. Merciless weapons are locked in the random research, though finding books for them is decently easy enough.

But from the sound of it, you're wanting to skip over the grind and simply enjoy the fights, right? So I recommend just giving yourself all the random researches unlocked already. This won't make the game any easier, just makes the grind faster. You still have to get the materials to craft the ♥♥♥♥ after all.
This does NOT affect the blueprints that the bosses give you when you defeat them. Those you have to beat the boss to get, each one is essential to the next stage of progression.

oh ♥♥♥♥, actually great advice on that!

[Akulvo]

Originally posted by SmolAnubis:

Originally posted by Akulvo:

Cheers and good luck!

If you don't want to spend any time grinding, give yourself all the research tiers unlocked. There are 3 tiers of research which make up a lot of the grind because you have to gather paper, scrolls, an schematics which can be spent at a research desk to get a random research. You can also find books which give you specific ones though.
The grind comes from the randomness and not getting what you need/want.

The kinda stuff you get from research are floor tiles which boost the efficiency of workshops if they're using the right flooring (like furnaces and the smithy with forge floors, or loom and tailoring bench with tailoring floors, etc etc). Or you can get upgraded variants of your weapons. To mine for iron, you need a merciless copper weapon which is the upgraded version of copper. To mine for dark silver, you need the merciless iron. Merciless weapons are locked in the random research, though finding books for them is decently easy enough.

But from the sound of it, you're wanting to skip over the grind and simply enjoy the fights, right? So I recommend just giving yourself all the random researches unlocked already. This won't make the game any easier, just makes the grind faster. You still have to get the materials to craft the ♥♥♥♥ after all.
This does NOT affect the blueprints that the bosses give you when you defeat them. Those you have to beat the boss to get, each one is essential to the next stage of progression.

oh ♥♥♥♥, actually great advice on that!

One more: Change the Teleport Bound items. Nearly every material restricts you from teleporting, meaning you'll have to run it back via horse or wolf form. Change this so you can teleport back to your castle (once you unlock the teleporter that is). Will save you from immense amounts of headaches and annoyances.
Same with Bat Form, though bat form you unlock pretty much at the end of the game.

I'd say play on Brutal difficulty if you want the fights to be a challenge. Some of them will piss you off, won't lie lol. But it makes each fight an uphill battle that teaches you new mechanics and strategies. If all you're wanting out of the game are the boss fights, play on Brutal or you won't enjoy it too much.

Good luck on your journey, Bat friend

[Munchies]

You can just give yourself end game armor and materials from the get go in the server options .... So basically you can beat it instantly ...