Changes from Early Access

[Stübi Senpai]

SO I gave DD2 a try half a year or longer ago when it was still only on Epic (And AFAIK still classified as EA) and was pretty unimpressed after a few hours, and decided to drop it and see where it'd go in the future. So I wanted to ask about the state of the game to see if I'd give it another chance.

My 3 major complaints from back then:

- The Relationship mechanic was too intrusive and RNG. It basically felt like there was a whole other game going in the background I had little to no control over. Whether your crew likes or dislikes each other seemed like a dice roll, and some of the penalties could be run ending. The constant combat interruption also felt very annoying after a while.

- Run variety was kind of an issue. You had to unlock other class abilities via shrines you found on the road, and hero unlocking was generally slow. So it was quite likely you had to replay the same run, at least from a lineup standpoint, for hours on end until you unlocked enough other stuff to at least make it feel fresh.

- Bosses seemed overtuned. This could honestly be just an experience issue, I played the game for somewhere between 10-20 hours and in that timeframe, tackling bosses seemed a) unrewarding since they didn't even drop anything majorly interesting and b) since you got more candles from getting further, and bosses tended to leave your party majorly ravaged, I eventually just stopped fighting them entirely. Which is a shame, because the game seemed to have content problems even before I started deliberately ignoring some of it.

So hows it these days? Any input appreciated.

[HighLanderPony]

Relationships were changed: The actual buffs/debuffs don't apply till you leave the next/current inn. You only build or reduce affinity inbetween inns, no triggers. This changes the chances of +/- relationships forming. Then based on your affinity, you get the triggers after resting at the inn. I like this a lot better. You can use some inn items to affect affinity if they're available.

I don't know what you mean by slow. For reference, I can hit 4 hero shrines in about an hour, hour and a half (if I do a boss). A hero needs 5 to max out its skills. Unlocking characters is fast, I could afford it after a single win in chapter 1. It took 1-2 hours approx.

Bosses can still be overwhelming. You might die to them 1-2 times if you go in unprepared or aren't familiar with them yet. Some curveballing applies which can be annoying. Once you understand them though you can kill them fairly consistently. The trophies they drop are pretty powerful and feel good to get. They changed chapter 1 in that you don't need a trophy to access the mountain there, so if you're struggling with the tougher stuff that comes later, you can still do runs in chapter 1 and get a good amount of candles and learn about the game there. I've been doing that and it's been fun.

[Stübi Senpai]

Originally posted by HighLanderPony:

Relationships were changed: The actual buffs/debuffs don't apply till you leave the next/current inn. You only build or reduce affinity inbetween inns, no triggers. This changes the chances of +/- relationships forming. Then based on your affinity, you get the triggers after resting at the inn. I like this a lot better. You can use some inn items to affect affinity if they're available.

I don't know what you mean by slow. For reference, I can hit 4 hero shrines in about an hour, hour and a half (if I do a boss). A hero needs 5 to max out its skills. Unlocking characters is fast, I could afford it after a single win in chapter 1. It took 1-2 hours approx.

For the relationships, do you feel you actually have control over it, or is it still up mostly to RNG?

And as for slow, the shrines used to be rare-ish, I usually would see 2 at most during a run.

[StimJunky]

All three of your complaints are presently still an issue to varying degrees.

The relationship mechanic is completely RNG and is quite annoying to deal with. The only real way of dealing with it is spamming whiskey and card decks which may or may not be available at the Inn provision tab.

Run variety - yes you're grinding candles by doing throw away runs or retreading the same path. The fact that you can't spend them until after you complete or abandon really makes it feel monotonous.

Only a handful of bosses are overtuned but not all of them. Low level heros get stomped but it gets easier after you've grinded candles to up your characters' resists. But, again, this is makes the second issue all the more annoying.

[HighLanderPony]

Originally posted by Stübi Senpai:

Originally posted by HighLanderPony:

Relationships were changed: The actual buffs/debuffs don't apply till you leave the next/current inn. You only build or reduce affinity inbetween inns, no triggers. This changes the chances of +/- relationships forming. Then based on your affinity, you get the triggers after resting at the inn. I like this a lot better. You can use some inn items to affect affinity if they're available.

I don't know what you mean by slow. For reference, I can hit 4 hero shrines in about an hour, hour and a half (if I do a boss). A hero needs 5 to max out its skills. Unlocking characters is fast, I could afford it after a single win in chapter 1. It took 1-2 hours approx.

For the relationships, do you feel you actually have control over it, or is it still up mostly to RNG?

And as for slow, the shrines used to be rare-ish, I usually would see 2 at most during a run.

You can control the percents, you can't control the RNG tied to the percents. If you work for it you can have positive at 90% success rate. Variance applies ofc but even the negative stuff isn't completely dooming. It's been feeling good to me.

You'll still find 2 shrines per region at most (at least in Ch1). So on a full Ch1 run that's 4 shrines at most. So 4 stories completed pretty consistently every 60-90 mins (I already mentioned this).