My first impression

[ShadowHydralisk-λ]

First off, it is rather clear that this game drew inspiration from both Valheim and Genshin. Whether that is a good or bad thing is for everyone to decide on their own. The game is pretty fun imo, but there is a lot to critique, which I'll be doing now.

1) Enemies
a) Boars
Honestly, there's no enemy as annoying as boars. They're not dangerous or anything of the sort, but they're everywhere and have an aggro range of a million. Please just lower their ridiculous aggro range.
b) Bosses
They're a cakewalk. I was going into the 2nd boss expecting a challenge only to end up killing the guy with like 10 hits. They die WAY too quickly. I'd be fine if that sort of damage was normal on a counterhit, but those were normal hits.
c) Ranged Enemies
Close contender for being the most annoying enemies, especially Skeleton archers since they knock you back. Not all of them are annoying, but the petal sprites, skelly archers and wind slimes are rather annoying because they either attack very quickly, stagger you or also have an aggro range of a mile (looking at you sprites). One thing almost all ranged enemies have in common however, is that it's sometimes difficult to notice that you are getting attacked by one, because their projectiles make barely noticeable sounds and/or look like the wind effects.
d) Enemy health
Closely linked to bosses, but most enemies in the grasslands and forest area seem to quickly get 1 or 2-shot by most basic attacks very early. The only outliers in these regions seem to be the big boys and skellies.

2) Combat
a) Specials
At first I didn't even know most weapons have these. Most of them either seem to fall into the "useless" category or "pretty good" category. I know the sword ones are pretty good, while the hammer ones generally seem to be pretty bad, since they seem to have little range, long windups and by far not enough damage to justify these drawbacks.
b) Dodge
Is this every explained? I found it out by accident.
c) Shields
Admittedly I don't have a lot of experience with them, but since dodges exist, is there any real use to shields right now? I'm especially curious because the few times I have tried to use them, I immediately got staggered by the first hit. Is there a reposte mechanic with them?
d) Overall
Mostly it just seems like a spamfest, since most enemies die very quickly and there are very few stagger mechanics. In the few times you need to avoid attacks, it's usually enough to dash 1-2 attacks and to keep whacking that enemy after each dodge.

3) Progression
a) Levels
Might just be like this for the demo, but charakter levels seem very easy to acquire. I've basically always been at max level.
b) Health/Stamina Powerups
I seem to increase the cap for these a lot faster than I can actually acquire them.
c) Recipes
Please for the love of god bundle the structures together. They cost way more than anything else and take a lot more effort to unlock. Unlocking 20 separate recipes to build proper wood structures is honestly just tedious and it costs more than unlocking every weapon, crafting station, armour, food and potion of the same progression stage.
d) Copper equip
Everything until that point seemed easy to farm and craft, but copper bars take a ton of ressources to create. Despite this, most weapons take 8-12 to craft, which takes a lot longer to acquire. I wouldn't be as bothered by this if this jump wasn't as steep compared to before.
e) Bees
Where in the world do I get Queen Bees from?
f) Tree chests
Is there a climbing feature pending? Cutting the trees in question down doesn't seem to be the correct solution and I don't really want to fortnite myself up trees

4) Misc
a) Inventory Management
Very tedious right now. It'd be a godsend if you could drag items around and split them by holding shift while doing so. Also, a "quick stack" button for containers would be awesome.
b) Grudge defense
You can hit the pedestal. If your pedestal is on a hill of sorts, most ranged enemies won't be able to hit it. You can still repair the pedestal during the invasion. Suffice to say, that it's very flawed right now.
c) Fall Damage
I was sliding down a mountain once (without shield) and died. Falling damage seems to get very extreme at a not too high point, which seems weird since the rest of the game is pretty easy and since it takes a bit of height to start occuring.
d) Tiredness
Seemed very sudden and very inconsequential. I fell asleep during battle and woke up completely fine.
e) Full Screen options
There don't seem to be any options for this.
f) Tree logs
They deal a ton of damage even when they're rolling at snail speed. Also, the thin ones can be very difficult to hit with an axe. Sometimes they're even impossible to hit, unless you're on a lower elevation. A downstrike would fix this.
g) Weapon repair/Upgrades
You can upgrade the non-fragile ones but you can't repair them apparently. ALso when upgrading, the game often shows you materials you might need for another upgrade, but you can't upgrade the weapon/armour again. At one point I could also repair an armour piece that was above its maximum durability (upgraded) and I could "repair" it to its original durability and it would go above 100% robustness.

5) Bugs and similar
a) Bugged placement
I had a riddle statue placed in a way, where the reward chest spawned in mountain rock, which I couldn't mine. I also had a monster camp whichs totem I could never purify. I don't know if an enemy spawned in the ground, but I couldn't seem to find him.
b) Map symbols
Sometimes the game doesn't seem to start drawing the symbols on the map or removes them when you log off from the world and rejoin without closing the game. Generally fixed by restarting, but caused some confusion at the start.
c) Bee humming
I'm not 100% sure how I triggered this, but I had the bee house selected once in construction and then exited the construction interface without building it. I heard the bee house noise in the location its silhouette was shown, but it wasn't there. Was fixed by restarting the game.
d) Goblin Thug volume
Whenever they hit something the volume of the hit sound is way too loud

6) Requests
a) Cosmetic slots
We already have cosmetic sets. It'd be nice if we had a slot for each armour slot and if cosmetic sets were split up into these slots, so that we could possible mix and match.
b) Painting
I'd just like to paint some parts of my house at some point.

I might've forgotten something, but that should be most of the critique I have currently. The game is still pretty fun right now, so I'll continue to check it.

[ShadowHydralisk-λ]

Now after playing a bit more and having my run abruptly ended because my PC died (fault of my PC, not the game btw), I have a few more things to say and some that I forgot to say initially.

1) Game stability/Bugs/Jank
a) Savefile corruption
After my PC bluescreened (again, a problem with my PC, not the game), my save seems to have been corrupted. My character appeared in underwear in the world selection and I had an infinite loading screen when trying to enter. After repairing my files, my world was gone. After creating a new world and entering it for test purposes, I found that almost everything my character had, except the stuff that was equipped, was gone Atleast the stats persisted. I'm not really keen on refarming all that stuff in 1.5 days.

b) Music stuck
Sometimes the music wouldn't change, so I had dungeon music playing in the swamps or sth.

c) Phantom enemy
Sometimes I had a marker towards an enemy and battle music kept playing, despite there being no enemy anywhere.

d)Attack hitboxes and timings
The jump attack of all giants has a super weird timing and is super difficult to avoid because of that. Also, the lizards attacks seem to come out later than the animation suggests. Might just be NA lag, though. There are a lot more weird timings, but these are the most impactful and noticeable ones.

e) Double Flaming Sword
Might be intentional, but the dungeon in the black forest I had to complete had 2 flaming swords on the same spot.

f) Castle Recipes
You unlock some after defeating the forest boss, despite being unable to build them.

g) Weapon Recipes
You unlock weapons of a tier above the one you can currently acquire. For example you unlock Bronze when you can't gather tin, Iron when you can't gather Iron, Mythril when you can't gather Silver. Also why Mythril when it's made of silver?

h) Regenerating puzzles
Some puzzle totems seem to regenerate and be accessible again a bit later. This allows you to do them and gain another reward indefinitely.

i) Prospector Goggles
They state that they find ores, but they show you all treasure chests on the map. Even the ones inside/outside of dungeons, which is mildly irritating.

j) Bossless Dungeons
Self explanatory. Some of the mountain dungeons and challenge gates had no enemies whatsoever, offering a free reward.

k) Wall clipping.
Climbing next to a wall can allow you to clip through a wall. This happened several times to me in the forest dungeon with the 3-story room with a chest in a corner you need to platform to.

m) Sealed chests
Some chests never seemed to unseal. This is true for one chest in the grasslands, all sealed chests I encountered in the mountains and one I encountered in the swamp.

2) Gameplay
a) Metal tools/weapons
Metal weapons are way too expensive. Yes, they're good. But they also take an eternity to farm. 12 iron for a sword? Yeah that's 24 ore, 48 charcoal and an hour of waiting for the bars. Not to mention that your durability will quickly decline with all the fighting you have to do. This isn't even the worst part. The worst part are the pickaxes that you'll constantly need to remake with metal to get more metal. Either make atleast the tools repairable or make them cheaper. This feels very anti-player and very extra-grind-for-the-sake-of-grind right now. Currently I'd just buy the elemental weapons in the shop any day I need a melee weapon.

b) Temperature
I wore 1 piece of the warm-clothing set and I was already dealing with a damage debuff. Luckily it's easily outhealed with sausages. What I don't understand though, is how I can be scorching with the full set in forests and still be at the bottom of the temperature meter in the snow mountains. Also, the temperature sometimes jumped a bit, so that I was only "cold" for a short time periodically.

c) Lynd
The dialogue that was supposed to play before the fight played after. Additionally, it was a huge slogfest, which suprised me considering the previous bosses. I think I was supposed to put the sealing stones on the pedestals to weaken it, but I didn't know that until after the fight. Luckily it didn't to anything when I stood far enough away. I usually don't like cheesing bosses, but this one was pretty boring, so I don't feel bad about it. I can't exactly test it properly anymore, since my save got deleted.

d) Jumping "puzzles"
They don't work. I'm talking about the castle ruins and the ruined swamp house with the cauldron above. Jumping against walls is fuzzy and can cause you to stop midjump. They require a minimum jumping level which is often very high. You can't always build stuff there because nature prevents it. Falling off can cause you to die.

e) Ranged enemies
They are weirldy aggressive to buildings made by the player.

f) Blast Furnace
Literally a Furnace with different recipes. Super unnecessary right now.

g) Arrows
Once I got to dungeoneering in the forest, I never ran out of arrows. Dungeons provide so many and some of the structures in the forests, swamp and plains also have arrows. I couldn't even fire them quicker than I got them, except if I decided to craft a ton of crappy bows.

h) Coins
I think this is legitimately the only game where I willingly dropped money. They weigh a ton, you get so many of them and there's little use for them.

i) Invasions
They're annoying. It's always the same enemies. They can happen anywhere. I feels like there's an invasion every 2 days. There's no reward or urgency to doing them. Overall feels very pointless.

j) Night time enemies
I know that they're supposed to be somewhat punishing, but they should still drop something. Usually things like these are designed as "high-risk high-reward" type of things, because that tends to be more fun to people.

k) Weight increases
Right now I've only seen a blue accessory increasing it by 40 and a talent which increases it by an unknown amount. Being essentially stuck at 200 while you inventory size keeps expanding is rather annoying.

m) Potions
Attack potions are generally good, Defense Potions are okay to eh and Health Potions are just bad. Their overall effectiveness also fluctuates greatly, being op at the start, good in the forest, ok in the Plains and then becoming good again in the Black Forest. To me it seems like there should be more tiers. Health Potions also don't heal nearly enough to justify their cooldown. Every time I needed one, it wasn't nearly enough.

n) Crops
I'm not 100% certain how long it was, but iirc it was 16h of real time for crops to grow. Would be kinda fine, if you'd atleast get seeds back. Right now you'll never have a big farm cuz you barely get any seeds. Essentially farming is pretty useless. Also some of my crops just vanished (bug or feature?) and some of them had -17h to grow, essentially going into the negatives

o) Spears
Give them more than 1 attack in the chain. The thrust is basically just a normal attack with more movement and the throw is super weak and janky as hell.

p) Dragon eggs
Where do you need to bring them to? If you need to transport them all the way to the NPC, then hell no, I'm not doing that unless the reward is extremely good. I tried transporting one to the other pedestal nearby once, but it simply broke.

q) Plains ruins cubes
Their attacks have pretty much no indicator that they're happening. This is especially bad for the laser, since it hits you instantly.

r) Shelter vendors
Do they ever restock? If no, they become very useless very quickly.

s) Durability upgrades
When upgrading equipment, it doesn't increase that equipments maximum durability, but only its current durability.

t) Food
Instant healing food seems pretty bad, since it removes the ability to eat buffing food instead, which is usually just better. Also, bread takes way too many ingredients. 5 wheat per flour and then atleast 5 flour (forgot the exact number) per bread AND some milk, which to my knowledge you only sometimes get when killing cows? I'll stick to my sausages and mushroom soups.

3) Misc
a) Forbidden Areas
Talking of Desert Gobi and the far sides of the map right now. Would be nice if you had some sort of warning that you're entering a forbidden zone before you actually entered it and got forced back every few seconds. Also at one point it happened twice in short succession, which got my character stuck in a loop running in a circle. I had to tp to get out.

b) Water travel
Seems pretty pointless right now. The Wailing Seas don't seem to have any content and even if they had, they're very small right now.

c) Servers
Add an EU server. I don't wanna play a release with >100 ping.

d) Weather
I feel like almost every day starts with bad weather.

e) Music
Day/Night music for the various biomes please. Also, the only tracks I found decent were the Grasslands non-combat and Dark Forest combat themes. The rest was rather bland.

I'm fairly certain I forgot something again, because I didn't periodically save my document where I was saving what I wanted to write here. Since my save is kinda ded rn, I won't be playing again in this demo. Hopefully this game can become more than just janky Valheim x Genshin in the future. I also very much hope, that this game doesn't continue the trend of abusive marketing in the shop. It didn't do so in the demo, but it definitely has the systems to do so. There's also a lot to fix as one can see.

[community_dawnlands]

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