My Experience so far

[No' Name]

Just played this game for 20 is hours, and came into this completely new, and not knowing anything about the game.

This game does an insanely poor-job explaining, notifying you, or telling you anything, along with all, if almost every single description about anything being piss-poor. A game being in "Early Access" development is not an excuse either, especially when players aren't even aware how they're dying, or what they're doing.

It took me nearly 15 hours of patience, and trying to figure out what I was doing, what I was doing wrong, and repeatedly dying., and you can't use "it's a rogue-like" idealogy either, because in those types of games, you're supposed to learn within each and every new run (minutes, NOT HOURS) of what exactly went wrong. Where in this game coming in brand new, you've absolutely no clue as to what happened. I consider myself someone who catches onto games and gimmicks fast, but finally just scratching as to what the hell I'm doing in 15 hours is beyond insane. It feels like the first time you and your buddies get together playing a new board game, and going over rules for the first time, only it's a more complicated version of "Risk", or "Axis, and Allies".

This is my experience in 15 hours; Boot up a game, have two Npc's talk, try to get through their dialogue fairly quickly, so I can just just try stuff out myself, but oops, you can't do that, because then you don't get your first axe, no way to build said axe, or tables, so I'm left punching stuff until I finally talk and read "skim" over what the Npc's say again to at least try and understand what it is I'm trying to do, or how to get basic harvesting tools. FINALLY after 30 minutes or so, I get my first axe, and able to craft my first work benches that were LOCKED until i've progressed through a bunch of dialogue I seemingly just didn't care about, because it took FOREVER to get to the point.

Also once thrown into the game, there's no basic controls to "Zoom in, or Zoom out", no way to scale your mini-map, the controls feel completely beyond just "out-there". I honestly can't recall anything I've done so far in my 20-ish hours of gameplay I DID NOT have to google, or look up, especially something as basic as "Controls". It's mind boggling.

Spent about 10-20 minutes on the Exhaustion system, and how it works, however, and learned you add up how much work everything added up together does to you're health when you're below negative Energy, not once did the game notify me about how this system worked. The only thing i understood was "Me Hung-y, me die". The game does not even give you a Hunger meter to begin with, on top of very basic function of every RPG (todays standards), which is give you bars, or even simplified numbers just SOMEWHERE to give you any clue of information. No hunger meter, no experience meter. Have to google everything, just to find out, there's no such thing as a Hunger meter, you'll only ever get a tiny notification/status saying "Starving, Very Hungry, Hungry, Filled, or Bloated" (again took me a while to figure out the tiers of the status), with a very basic description of it saying "If you're hungry you won't recover health Naturually", that's it.

The games difficulty is seemingly all-over the place as well. The first "Dungeon/Cave" mission you get is to rescue Poppy (a worthless dog). The cave says "level 2", well alright then, seems simply enough, a challenge for a "level 1", or a beginning player, should be easy right? Wrong a-hole! Every monster even though it says level 2, can one to two shot you, even if you bring along the first companion which you've obtained (mine was the Little Girl), they die almost faster than I do, and the gear they have is completely randomized. I've had one little girl with a cane, and plate armor, and many others with a wooden staff, and nothing but cloth armor that did absolutely nothing to help them. Making it to the second floor a challenge, even surviving the first room should god-forbid it even have two monsters/enemies near the entrance. Naturally, I figure, "okay, I should go and level up and get stronger, or get gear". So out into the wilds I go, at least the few encounters I've done before hand seemed easy enough. But wait, there's no indicator as to what level I am, until "Ding!" you've aquired a feat. I've absolutely no clue how I've obtained a feat. spent 10-20 minutes looking for an experience bar through various stat pages in game, with no indicator what-so-ever, until I find some blue bar with a number. I'm thinking to myself, holy hell, this tiny LITTLE BAR is my experience BAR!? Well, no, it isn't. had to google that little tid-bit too. It's in fact not your level, and just gives you a feat point. and I'm not even sure how, or why it raises still despite keeping an eagle-eye on it for the past 20 hours, there's no such indicator other than it slightly going up in numbers without me noticing while I randomly do stuff, boy, I'd sure love to know exactly HOW much points i'm putting into that feat. bar, just something that indicates whether it's moving, or by how much it's moving, but nope, nothing.

Finally when I get a good run going, I think I've finally figured out for the most part "what" a beginner should know in order to kind of make some progress, what I should be gathering, crafting, and doing right away to make progress. Make a basic sword for my Npc to replace the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ staff they started with, make a cane that blinds enemies, which not going to lie seems to be the ONLY way to clear out any dungeons/caves with relative ease, even going so far as to take out a tower that spawned by my base, which was lvl 4 before I could FINALLY clear out that Effing dog cave, again the difficulty seems completely random, as in that ruined tower, despite it saying level 4, I had absolutely no issues , yet despite that, still had issues with monsters nearly one shotting me in a level 2 cave that's essentially your "tutorial" dungeon.

Okay, so finally my first quest done, I can finally move on, and begin to make money, right? Well, turns out, no, that's not the case, and I shouldn't have been doing that at all. What I "really" should have been doing was following the Male Npc's questline despite him clearly giving me an option to do my own thing, which basically tells me, "go figure stuff out", but no, unfortunately, everything progression wise is LOCKED behind his quests, new crafting tables, the ability to sell stuff to make money, etc, etc. I was left so godamned dumbfounded when I finally did all that BS trying to clear the puppy cave only to see this. I immediately felt like I've wasted 20 hours, and need to start all over again, because everything was locked behind this one guy who said "take it easy". I've looked at some video's of this game before buying it, and was full aware there was a "tax" system on your town, and so the way in which the Male Npc worded things, and gave me an option to let me do my own thing until I'm ready, made me assume the Tax-System wasn't going to be a thing until I talked to him again, so I basically thought I was getting my bearings together until I was ready for that system, well, turns out that was wrong too, because the entire time I had taxes thrown at me, with no way of making money, because I couldn't figure out how to sell stuff until I actually talked to the guy and progressed further into it.

TLDR- Game does an insanely poor job of explaining anything to newcomers, there's barely any notifications, no indicators to show you experience for anything, and if you don't progress through the NPC quests, you'll end up playing 20 hours all while the game laughs at you running around like a chicken with it's head cut-off.

That being said, the game is enjoyable once you "sort-of" understand it. But my god, the amount of time, and patience needed to invest in doing so, would draw-off most, if not ALL new players looking to hop into this game.

[Iyasenu]

Yeah, it's actually kind of important to do the "tutorial" quests.
And by that, I also include what currently exists of the main storyline.
The story NPCs that join along the way have some convenient services you'll want access to.

At least during your beginner period where you're still getting the hang of things, it's well-worth putting off your grand conquest of the entire world to go through what exists of the storyline.

[Ann☆ﾟ.*･｡]

in japanese games, it's important to read things slowly so you don't miss out stuff. they put information in compact way
..and by taking things slowly, there is no time limit or such in this game, so you can do things like quest whenever you feel like it (preferably when you are ready)

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by No' Name:

This is my experience in 15 hours; Boot up a game, have two Npc's talk, try to get through their dialogue fairly quickly, so I can just just try stuff out myself, but oops, you can't do that, because then you don't get your first axe, no way to build said axe, or tables, so I'm left punching stuff until I finally talk and read "skim" over what the Npc's say again to at least try and understand what it is I'm trying to do, or how to get basic harvesting tools. FINALLY after 30 minutes or so, I get my first axe

lolwut
You get the woodcutter's axe after talking to Ashland once, using the Land Deed, and then talking to him again. Unless you're going through and reading all of the attributes, skills, feats, etc. before doing anything, how does this take 30 minutes?

Also once thrown into the game, there's no basic controls to "Zoom in, or Zoom out"

Being unable to zoom out is 100% by design. You get an item later (Binoculars) that lets you look at the whole map at once.

It's in fact not your level, and just gives you a feat point. and I'm not even sure how, or why it raises still despite keeping an eagle-eye on it for the past 20 hours, there's no such indicator other than it slightly going up in numbers without me noticing while I randomly do stuff, boy, I'd sure love to know exactly HOW much points i'm putting into that feat. bar, just something that indicates whether it's moving, or by how much it's moving, but nope, nothing.

Everything you do adds to that. Skills or attributes increasing gives a large amount, and getting the Travel skill makes you gain it from moving around the world map.

[H.Honor]

I don't think there is a proper way to explain how the game works without having the player having to read through a whole 10-50 page essay during a tutorial
Basicly trial and error like it was in Elona (not the mobile ver)

[twitch.tv/GFYE]

Basically TLDR for OP:

OP is not accustomed to true Roguelikes and probably never played ELONA. Roguelikes have always been heavily rng dependent, sometimes brutally so and the systems take a lot of time to comprehend as a whole. Elona comes from japan and Elin is made by the same developer of that game, both of which are extremely deep and inherently obtuse at times.

OP did the tutorial quests but didn't actually read or think about the implications of those quests. OP have also forgotten there is a HELP button found within the game and the Adventurers Log item which allows you to recall prior tutorial or helpful tips.

OP didn't explore the Options menu to change how the game looks to suit their needs. Yes, even the UI has multi-layered options to fully customize what the game shows you and where.

OP is a newbie and is complaining about things that are likely explicitly their fault/caused by their lack of knowledge of how the game works.

------


IF you're playing on Oath and cannot freely save/load, Thats the first problem as a newbie. The game does NOT hold your hand if you ignore the information it provides you and the very nature of the genre, some things are esoteric requiring you just to experiment during play.

You can change the difficulty ONE time in game at the Resident board to remove Oath/Hardcore. The game is early access, only a real masochist would subject themselves to Early Access, no save load shenanigans.

Combat spikes happen infrequently but indicates you've pushed past the current progression of your character. There are no pre-defined levels and leveling is not clearly indicated because most elements of the game are extremely webbed out and integrate with other systems.

For example:

If you want to dual wield there is a skill for that, but its behind the fighters guild trainer if your class doesn't already come from it. Either join the guild or hope for a book shrine. If you decide to use 2 weapons without it, expect sub 40% indicated hit-rate on the off hand and sub 20% if you decide to use Ride/Symbiosis which also impact hit percents. Magic is the opposite, it doesn't have a hit rate and just checks resistances . . . but leveling for EACH SPELL is extremely slow and the damage range increases as it levels but it takes a LOT of casts to see any gains. Magic cast success is tied to armor/shields and if you don't have the feats to mitigate it, spells will fail more often and this also applies to anything riding or hosting.

That is why combat feels so brutal to you, you don't have any idea of whats going on and your expectations are misaligned. Enemies such as crabs have insane DV and enemies like wasps or pixies have crazy dodge values for early game, so of course they dominate you. Elin wants you to use magic and or debuff enemies with potions/scrolls "this mechanic is a TUTORIAL QUEST, they also cannot miss." The game expects you to have solutions for these problems but the game RNG is also so chaotic that you might not have them. Most dungeons are littered with potions and scrolls, when you encounter a strong enemy you should probably use them.

You aren't really "locked" out of progression, there are many shortcuts and those shortcuts won't present themselves until you've put a lot of time in the game. When I first got the game it took me 30 hours to get my settlement, farm, and cooking stations fully set up. I tried crafting the cooking stations, but I ended up using tickets to exchange for them because I had no luck learning them naturally. My other option was doing nefia and doing an insane amount of wheel shrines, but I didn't figure that one out until the 2nd week I was playing well past the point it mattered.

Thats kind of the point, the game is intended to be a Long Play experience. If you don't like the speed of skill exp gains or vice versa there's a lot of mods already out that fix some of those gripes.


-----
EDIT:

I just started a succubus rogue about 30 minutes ago. I went to puppy dungeon and found the crabs were a problem, public performers and eyes wreck me. What fixed that? potions and a boomerang, with my little girl keeping them occupied. I gave her a few bandages and so far its not become a problem. If I need to heal, I will pull the enemy to the stairs and then rest outside of combat by going up the stairs. If she dies I walk back to base and get my companion again.

I already have most of the pre-level crafting 8 tools and nothing is stopping my progress at this point. I have all of the crafting tables from the work bench within the first hour of this character. The only thing I need now is gold bars for more recipes.If I had tried to play this game as I did 300 hours ago, that tinker station would've been mostly unused and I wouldn't have nearly anything.

1 hour to finish all the tutorial quests that are lined up in the quest board and a base ready for a settlement as I took bonus that gave me a ticket and ally scroll. If I was to save scum I could get a performer, archer, or another little girl/npc that will make this play through a cakewalk.

It really just amounts to you needing to play and learn.

[Stray]

I know this is gonna be bizarre to read, but here it goes lmao..

This game does an -excellent- job of everything it's doing.
Not a poor job.
Wanna know why?

Everything you complained about are things that 99% of people that came here to play this game, want.
Welcome to one of your first true roguelike experiences. Except this one has massive quality of life compared to first roguelikes which were almost just Rogue sidegrades.

It's probably shocking to read, but this game is a crunchy upgrade and pretty much what a lot of us have been looking for after E+ & EMobile.

[archonsod]

Originally posted by No' Name:

This is my experience in 15 hours; Boot up a game, have two Npc's talk, try to get through their dialogue fairly quickly, so I can just just try stuff out myself

Right, so you basically skipped through the tutorial in order to 'try stuff out for myself' and now you're complaining the game doesn't explain itself very well. Do you not think these may be related?

not once did the game notify me about how this system worked.

Whenever you start a new game, the first time your stamina hits zero (or below), the fairy pops up and explains the stamina system.

you'll only ever get a tiny notification/status saying "Starving, Very Hungry, Hungry, Filled, or Bloated" (again took me a while to figure out the tiers of the status)

Seriously? It took you a while to figure out what 'hungry' meant?

The cave says "level 2", well alright then, seems simply enough, a challenge for a "level 1", or a beginning player, should be easy right?

That depends. If the player was paying attention when given the quest they would note the character explains that it's probably a good idea to put together some decent equipment before going to the cave; in fact on the off chance they didn't the first time they enter the cave that annoying fairy pops up once again to suggest that it might be a good idea to turn back if they don't have at least every armour slot filled and reminds you that the combat system is covered in the in-game help.
Of course, if the player just skips all that, say because they want to try stuff for themselves, they'll be given a short and rather brutal lesson on the value of PV and DV, but then that's exactly what they're asking for at that point, no?

It's in fact not your level, and just gives you a feat point. and I'm not even sure how, or why it raises

Goes up every time a skill improves, which for the most part means any time you use a skill.

TLDR- Game does an insanely poor job of explaining anything to newcomers

The game has an extended tutorial and an annoying fairy that pops up every five minutes to tell you about stuff and constantly point you at the in-game documentation where said stuff is even more extensively explained. Of course, there's nothing in game that forces a player to make use of it, nor should there be. That's on the player, not the game.

[No' Name]

You guys seemed to have missed the part "From a NEW Player coming in".

It's great this is more of what "you guys" want. And it's nice "you guys", are enjoying the game. All the power to you.

[twitch.tv/GFYE]

Originally posted by No' Name:

You guys seemed to have missed the part "From a NEW Player coming in".

It's great this is more of what "you guys" want. And it's nice "you guys", are enjoying the game. All the power to you.

I mean you said it yourself, you didn't read and haven't payed attention....... I was literally in your shoes a over a month ago. I was frustrated at times because of how slow progression felt, but it ended up being a "me" problem. I also did the same, I skipped all the text and just jumped right in. The difference is you can fix the issues if you just slow down.

Theres a number of video guides on you tube from newbies at the time that go over what they discovered just experimenting and reading the wiki. If you aren't sure how to progress, theres enough reddit, steam, and discord information to help you out man.


I listed a few suggestions to help you out above. I just tested a new game rolling another character after all these patches and play I've done. Knowing is half of the battle. :)

The wiki has been a great friend the last month or so, while outdated the majority of what you need can be found.

[No' Name]

Originally posted by twitch.tv/GFYE:

Originally posted by No' Name:

You guys seemed to have missed the part "From a NEW Player coming in".

It's great this is more of what "you guys" want. And it's nice "you guys", are enjoying the game. All the power to you.

I mean you said it yourself, you didn't read and haven't payed attention....... I was literally in your shoes a over a month ago. I was frustrated at times because of how slow progression felt, but it ended up being a "me" problem. I also did the same, I skipped all the text and just jumped right in. The difference is you can fix the issues if you just slow down.

Theres a number of video guides on you tube from newbies at the time that go over what they discovered just experimenting and reading the wiki. If you aren't sure how to progress, theres enough reddit, steam, and discord information to help you out man.


I listed a few suggestions to help you out above. I just tested a new game rolling another character after all these patches and play I've done. Knowing as half of the battle. :)

That's fine and all, and I appreciate the suggestions, I've already downloaded some QoL mods, such as picking up everything after leaving a zone, which never thought it'd help as much as it did, most of them are cosmetic mods though.

I also probably did pick a class/race that wasn't recommended, being the Nefu race, and Sword Mage. Had to turn on that one option to be able to pick them.

As I said, I enjoy the game, but there's a lot HUD/UI related that could be fixed, or explained without a 5 page essay. I wouldn't expect people to sit through 10 pages of something just to get to a point, or at least my attention span doesn't reach that far anyways.

Also the female Npc just handed me a chest with lvl 50 lockpicking required and said "it's a tutorial open it, here's 12 lockpicks!" Sure, I'll get right on that...

[twitch.tv/GFYE]

Originally posted by No' Name:

Originally posted by twitch.tv/GFYE:

I mean . . . enough reddit, steam, and discord information to help you out man.


I listed a few suggestions to help you out above. I just tested a new game rolling another character after all these patches and play I've done. Knowing as half of the battle. :)

That's fine and all, and I appreciate the suggestions, I've already downloaded some QoL mods, such as picking up everything after leaving a zone, which never thought it'd help as much as it did, most of them are cosmetic mods though.

I also probably did pick a class/race that wasn't recommended, being the Nefu race, and Sword Mage. Had to turn on that one option to be able to pick them.

As I said, I enjoy the game, but there's a lot HUD/UI related that could be fixed, or explained without a 5 page essay. I wouldn't expect people to sit through 10 pages of something just to get to a point, or at least my attention span doesn't reach that far anyways.

Also the female Npc just handed me a chest with lvl 50 lockpicking required and said "it's a tutorial open it, here's 12 lockpicks!" Sure, I'll get right on that...

Truth be told, I didn't know I could customize my UI until over 50 hours in "low priority at the time." I also learned over 100 hours later that the theme, size, and everything can be changed but those options are hidden behind right clicking the panel within Widgets and I started sprucing up everything. Some things took forever to learn because I didn't care or it didn't matter. There are a lot of RIGHT CLICK and MIDDLE MOUSE advanced menus throughout the game. The alternative in Elona was a lot of keyboard dancing pressing various combinations to get to menus. The ability to sort and ban certain item types from your containers or backpacks makes a huge difference in QOL too, that was something I tinkered with very early on. It took about 80 hours until I went full boar building an income generating base across 3 bases. Thats the problem with JRPG's they tend to have an obtuse manner with how the world works, Elin doesn't have that due to the in-game documentation . . . but again it takes a lot of reading. Modern games aren't paced like that and this game still has it's roots in an era ago, the core designs are still about as old "yet refined" as the 15 year old original.

Yes, some games require a lot of reading and that is part and parcel a thing of these times where culture and society has steered away from various expectations/systems. 10 pages is nothing. I understand in some aspects of how you feel, my ADHD hasn't gotten better over the last decade...........

Example:
I was having to read 100s of pages worth to learn how pets builds work in a different game Grim Dawn, needing to pour over spreadsheets and look up potentially 100s of items that can be used in a summoner build is way more than what I have had to do with elin. Massive PDF dissertations about how calculations work, what items work best with up to a dozen different build types for a single build category with item descriptions and why they were chosen.

Yes, picking a sword mage was a rough call there but you will have great scaling later on. Some player experiences end up being poor because they pick the wrong start. Inscription stuff is tied to a completely separate system that requires actual hits in melee, of which are less frequent early on. The lower initial life of Nefu hurts a bit too, but as long as you eat good foods you can overcome it. Its good you're enjoying the game, the entire Elin game community across all platforms will be very helpful if you ask or inquire. :)

The chest is a gag, an easter egg from the first game. Some oddities in this game are due to inside jokes you don't know yet. XD That chest took me over 100 hours of casual play. In December I built a practice chest and sought after making more of them but forgot about it entirely until I had naturally raised my Lockpicking and found some + gear for it.

[Chaotic Woofer]

After reading through OP's first documented experience of this game, as a veteran Elona player of thousands of hours and with about 200 hours of Elin in, I have only one response: Ya, it's a great game ain't it?

[Question]

This game does an insanely poor-job explaining, notifying you, or telling you anything, along with all, if almost every single description about anything being piss-poor. A game being in "Early Access" development is not an excuse either, especially when players aren't even aware how they're dying, or what they're doing.

What most new players dont get is that most of the content in the game is copied directly from Elona, which was the free predecessor game made in 2006. I think it was some kind of personal project at the time. A lot of basic things like poor or non-existent tooltips are a result of the original game being very, very, unpolished.

Many things in the game are illogical and not because its meant for you to figure things out yourself, but because the dev just didnt have the time or will to have them make sense. For example, all golems are weak to electricity...even wooden golems. Why? Because copied pasted race stats, thats why.

Why are there chicken bandits? Because the dev dumped a ton of monsters into a list used to generate bandits and called it a day. Why do NPCs want you to deliver items like vomit? Same thing.

Its not because the game is intentionally some kind of "hardcore roguelike". The original game was just poorly designed and i dont even know whether the dev intends to fix some of the old issues from Elona. Having to google what a spell does because theres no description on the scroll or spellbook is quite silly in this day and age.

Not only does the game currently have a steep learning curve but the early game is extremely rough because a lot of basic things are missing from the game. The main issue is that you have to do almost everything yourself. E.G. Instead of getting a thief into your party to disarm traps and lockpick chests like in most RPGs, you have to grind all the thief skills yourself (and it costs way too much to pay a NPC to open a chest for you).

Want to buy a backpack to expand your inventory? Good luck on that, because furniture vendors will almost never sell it, so you have to grind the crafting skills to make one yourself. Etc, etc.

Once you grind all the skills you need to a decent level, can start making good food, have a good base going to support you, the game is very smooth to play...but it is a huge slog to get there without cheating.

[pipey]

Poppy is not useless at all, does not use the resident slot, so a free base worker and can collect treasure map after sometimes. Setting job/hobby to the energy generation is good early starting if you need to power up your workbenches as well.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Question:

Want to buy a backpack to expand your inventory? Good luck on that, because furniture vendors will almost never sell it, so you have to grind the crafting skills to make one yourself. Etc, etc.

lol just use the literally free Packages that spam comes in, or the Packages that Delivery Box deliveries are sent in.