Ashen Woods is an absolutely awful play experience

[Kienan]

Sorry, but it has to be said.

I greatly enjoy this game, despite its frankly astonishing amount of bugs. All the other maps are enjoyable. Ashen Woods can absolutely get [censored].

The light dims incredibly quickly, and the whole setup encourages behavior completely opposite every other system in the game, which is ridiculous. Want to sit near a chest for another level or two, so you can fuse? Have fun in the dark. And good luck recovering; enjoy running around in complete darkness, bumping into trees and stuff.

Want to prioritize only getting the lanterns, because the darkness is so ridiculously punishing? Well...hope that the next six lanterns in a row that you try to collect don't randomly disappear when you get there. Because yeah. Grab an air totem/magnet-thing? Either suck in all of the light in the area, wasting it, or grab a bunch but (I think due to the disappearing weirdness) it barely does anything. You can suck in like ten lanterns and only have the brightness go up a single level. So you're still stuck in the mostly dark...and now don't have any lanterns anywhere near you.

Want to do an event, like helping the Engineer, or feeding the tree? Well...good luck making your way out in the dark, because it took too much time.

The whole design - and especially tuning - is just completely off. If I wasn't at 99% achievements, I'd just leave it; it's that unfun. Due to that lanterns disappear, the whole thing is pretty luck-based, unlike the rest of the game.

As for fixes (outside of removing the mechanic entirely), off the top of my head...some combination of slower light drain, ability to "overfill" the light collection (i.e. it would take awhile to even reach below the 100% light level, if you had like 150% light max, for example), and...have lanterns stick around instead of vanishing.

Anyway, that's my rant.

[Bone]

Agreed. This game has a lot of potential but the bugs and then certain design decisions absolutely hamstring it - namely the Ashen Woods mechanics you mention and the current inventory size which you will max out very quickly if you try to grind gear at all.

The light drain mechanic is just really annoying before you have the minimap not actually showing the right stuff and you run after a lamp.

It should probably have a maximum darkness of like 50% of the screen or something, going all the way dark is insane. And it's just not very fun anyways to be honest, I'm not sure it serves a purpose outside of theming and difficulty which could be accomplished with a perma-50% darkness and appropriate tuning of enemies (which we all know enemy tuning is already completely busted anyway, some enemies do no damage and then all of a sudden you get 1shot by something with no visible way of knowing what the hell even hit that hard.)

[Kienan]

Yeah, inventory is insane; you can fill up half your inventory in a medium Endless run, if you have high Luck. So, you have to scrap dang near everything if you want new gear; you can't really build a decent collection, if you also want to farm efficiently. Yet another weird design decision. It really seems like they don't even play their own game, sometimes...

Yeah, I forget to mention having a minimum darkness level, thanks. It's really silly to go fully dark.

As to enemy damage tuning, my least favorite is the second 'circle wall' enemy variety. They always appear around you, often one-shot you, and if you're moving fast (or mid dash) you are basically already touching them when they spawn; impossible to dodge, and you just die. Whoo.

[里里特]

and the fuxxking bird can kill u in one attack and they fly so fast

[Paratech2008]

How about the underwater level where you're drowning and spending more time getting air than fighting monsters? or some characters having few hit points having practically no chance to finishing areas, or it trying to push you to level 4 just because you beat level 1 a few times?

I like the game but these issues make me wonder how we're expected to play through all the areas. I even have an achievement only 20% or so gamers achieved defeating 1000 brains. It makes me wonder how much time people play the game before getting burned out.

[Arc]

Originally posted by Kienan:

. It really seems like they don't even play their own game, sometimes...
.

Lol, if you just spawn in on any map at all and press left, the icon in the map has a black mark on it because it doesn't fit right.
Literally visible within seconds of playing, never been fixed