The upcoming official randomizer, what issues can it run into?

[Quenlin]

I'll be using unmarked spoilers from here on in.

As far as I'm aware, the absolute minimum to complete the game (defined as killing the boss of The New World) is the flute and the bell. In a randomizer however, the absolute minimum would simply be its warp stone at which point you can walk to the final boss. Andrew mentioned in a post that he is already considering specific logic for the mounts to prevent softlocks.

One potential softlock I can come up with would occur with enemy randomness. In The New World there's an enemy called Dread Spear that immediately explodes for party-wide TPK damage with almost no chance to counter. If this ends up in a position that is impossible or incredibly difficult to avoid, then you'll end up requiring something to nullify it like Re-Raise which would require ensuring that can be reached without whatever is beyond Dread Spear.

Alternatively Dread Spear could simply be blacklisted from being randomized.

[[DG]Holoman]

having a cleric main / sub with a speed boost. i presume the explosion is fire damage. or the magic damage reduction from items, the % reduction one, cant remember the names. i presume end game enemys would be scaled down? so there no where near as tanky or fast

[Arkhne]

My interpretation of the image release is that Enemies and Equipment will be scaled to be relative to the area they appear in, unless you choose the "Un-scaled" option, in which case it will be natural strength always.

[Quenlin]

Originally posted by DGHoloman:

i presume the explosion is fire damage.

Death Spear uses an attack called Reality Breakdown which does nonelemental damage to the party. My endgame party with endgame gear takes 1600 from it.

[Xaelon]

The developer has been talking about the randomizer in this thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1637730/discussions/0/3425564314012007083/

The things he's mentioned may answer some of your other questions about how the Randomizer will work.

He also released a WIP screenshot of the randomizer's menu:

Originally posted by River Running Games:

I'm glad you brought this up! There will definitely be toggles to choose what you want randomized. Here's the current work-in-progress randomizer menu:

https://i.imgur.com/I1JCdYw.png

I don't remember encountering "Death Spear" in my playthrough, but I believe the case you're worried about can probably be avoided by enabling "Scale Enemies" so as to make the damage of "Reality Breakdown" appropriate to how early the monster is encountered in the seed.

No Randomizer softlocks come to mind for me right now, but having a thread to discuss them is a good idea.

[[DG]Holoman]

i dont think its a major issue but if you want the map from the beach / sea cliff place (near the troll super boss to the south east) dont you need to collect 13 shells to get it from the NPC in the little camp? 13 random chests across the map seems a pain in the ass. maybe some chests should not be random? or make shells dropable somehow.

also, what about drykids? will they always spawn in the same place (once you've found the right flame / location) farming them could be silly if there all across the map.

[Etienne]

One possible concern would be early-game weapons for mid- or late-game classes. The main one being the lack of early-game katanas, although bows and scythes shouldn't be too far. The randomizer would need to either add extra weapons, or scale weapons down to fit this niche.

[Xaelon]

Originally posted by Etienne:

The randomizer would need to either add extra weapons, or scale weapons down to fit this niche.

I believe he's planning on having weapons scale down. The screenshot I linked a few posts above has an option for "un-scaled equipment", implying that the default option scales things up or down (probably based on where in the seed you find it).

[Etienne]

That's indeed a solution, although I presume that some players may want to play with minimal randomization (aka: only randomizing classes).
But that's a relatively short-lived issue, since you get all possible weapons type when you reach the capital, so players may just be slightly restricted in the early game.

[River Running Games]

Originally posted by DGHoloman:

i dont think its a major issue but if you want the map from the beach / sea cliff place (near the troll super boss to the south east) dont you need to collect 13 shells to get it from the NPC in the little camp? 13 random chests across the map seems a pain in the ass. maybe some chests should not be random? or make shells dropable somehow.

also, what about drykids? will they always spawn in the same place (once you've found the right flame / location) farming them could be silly if there all across the map.

I hopefully made it in a way that avoids these kinds of problems, but I'm still testing it so I don't want to say anything specific yet.

Originally posted by Etienne:

One possible concern would be early-game weapons for mid- or late-game classes. The main one being the lack of early-game katanas, although bows and scythes shouldn't be too far. The randomizer would need to either add extra weapons, or scale weapons down to fit this niche.

This is a problem. If you start with Samurai for example, you wouldn't be able to make any real use of it until the capital. Randomizing equipment can help you get lucky and pick up an early Craftwork Katana or something, but otherwise I don't think I'm going to be doing anything specific to fix this. I feel like this kind of thing could be considered a quirk of randomizing for better or worse. Much of the base game is meticulously made to have each class feel powerful as you obtain it with the way equipment is made available, and I don't think there's an elegant way to translate this to a randomized playthrough.

Originally posted by RianQuenlin:

In a randomizer however, the absolute minimum would simply be its warp stone at which point you can walk to the final boss.

I'm actually trying to make the randomizer only make states with no permanent missables just like the base game. It's pretty hard so I'm not 100% sure it'll be totally bug free in that regard, but it is the goal.

[Arkhne]

I appreciate how much time and effort you're putting in to making this a smooth and positive experience for everybody. Top class dev.

[River Running Games]

No problem, it's a ton of fun to make and test! The randomizer adds new fun to the game for me even after already playtesting it for so many hours.

[Quenlin]

Originally posted by River Running Games:

No problem, it's a ton of fun to make and test! The randomizer adds new fun to the game for me even after already playtesting it for so many hours.

One thing I wonder, will the Job/Monster Abilities give new skills to Scholar?

[River Running Games]

Randomizing class abilities can move the Monster Magic to other classes and random abilities can replace them for the Scholar, but the way each individual ability is learned will not change. So if Scholar ends up with non-Monster Magic abilities, then it will need to spend LP to learn those.