Few Questions/Some Suggestions

[Slywyn]

Some of the questions(hidden further down to avoid accidentally spoiling someone on mouseover) are spoilers, so just keep that in mind.

1) I don't really understand the economy in the game. The only city I was ever really able to completely utilize for selling/buying stuff was Moon-Upon-Thoss because none of the other vendors in the other cities ever seemed to refresh their money/stocks. Didn't matter how much time I spent running around, doing dungeons, sleeping, etc, they just never seemed to get any money back.

I even tried leveling up the cities later in the game and I was just never able to really seem to get things to "work", and even MUT was starting to be kind of dry for funds later on, and I was barely managing to hover around 150k. This is super lategame so I know it's not really gonna be everyone's concern, but if you wanted to, for example, legitimately acquire the Ship Deed, then this makes it really difficult. Nevermind buying the Witch Solvent if you wanted to do that instead of finding all the herbs.

2) Sort of tangentially related to this, but what's going on with city reputation? I was actually able to get myself to +1 with Wintersholl or w/e it's called just by hanging out and killing things nearby and selling/buying stuff(it was the first relic dungeon I did and it took a great many resets so I was there a long time) but I was never able to increase my rep with any of the other cities, nor did I ever really figure out WHAT increased my rep in the first place. Was it killing stuff? Helping traders? Buying/selling? Doing quests? Just entering/exiting the city a bunch? The game never really tells you what raises it other than rescuing traders(which doesn't seem to be very much considering I never went up with any of the other cities like this) and donating money.

And donating money seemed to be a problem because for just about every single city a donation of 7-10k seemed to raise you to exalted no matter where you were at, but I was never able to get higher than +4 with The Red Grove no matter how much money I dumped into the donation stone thing. Not sure what was up with that.

3) This is less of a question and more of a suggestion- I will say up front that I do actually like the Amber mechanics and the Food rotting/molding system, but I really think the length of time on these things needs to be seriously looked at. Even if you do absolutely nothing but walk from city to city, it will sometimes take 3+ amber oil just to get there, especially if you're slow due to gear or something(though you can take it off I guess??), and if you buy a piece of food in one city it will probably have gone moldy > completely decayed by the time you get there. I would consider at least doubling the burn time of oil and the rot time of food. Again I -do- like these mechanics a lot, I just think they should take a bit longer. Earlygame they're oppressive and lategame it just means you're opening your menu every 30 seconds to apply a new oil in the overworld, and it genuinely kind of sucks.

I do appreciate the free perma-oil on the ship, though. That was a good idea.

4) Is there any way to continue the game after the 'good' ending? I know you could probably just go out and fight things, but is there any content that 'unlocks' afterward? All your Gifts are gone(for obvious reasons) and there doesn't seem to be any way to re-enable them, and I understand why, but it does make combat WAY more difficult. Also some more changes to the world/world map other than 'the amber is gone' would probably be neat? Making it brighter or maybe changing a biome or two because the sun's back? I dunno.

5) Why does armor feel so useless? Physical reduction only goes up to 60% and you can reach that with leather armor and a necklace and maybe one piece of chain/platemail, so a 'full suit' of armor does... basically nothing. Add on dodging and blocking and you can completely ignore armor entirely with basically 0 downsides. The poise mechanic only encourages this because an 'endurance build' so to speak will get poise-broken and clobbered because you're slow and most enemies can attack 2-3 times for every one you get, which makes it feel even worse. Later in the game I was chugging like 4-5 large HP potions a fight with 60% physical reduction and 101% move speed because things could just hit me like 4x more often than I could hit them. Feels like you just go dodge and speed and ignore armor entirely because nothing ever increases your poise.

6) What do the stats even DO?? Strength literally only gates which weapons you can equip, same for Intelligence and Perception(though I think perception might have something to do with spotting traps? But I was spotting traps exactly the same at 0 perception and 30 perception so I'm not sure). I know that Finesse increases dodge and Endurance increases equip weight and therefore speed, but none of the other stats matter -at all-. I literally only ended up raising them because I wanted certain god Gifts(escape is amazing for grinding dungeons) and not because I wanted the stats. They should really do something. And if they -are- doing anything, they need way better explanations as to what it is they're doing.

7) What is Luck? How do you increase Luck? What does Luck do? I played almost 40 hours and beat the game(both endings) and I never once even saw an item that increased Luck, nor did I find any way to increase it other than that.

8) What does having extra devotion to the gods do? I did notice that having 'extra' devotion that you hadn't spent to some of them has effects(lower Kindling costs to camp with the Wolf and lower Metal costs for repairing broken minor constructs for Dust) but I wasn't ever really able to figure out what any of the other gods did if you had extra devotion. I think I ended the game with like +8 devotion to the Angels(I super ground them early and put almost all of my tears into them before I did their tasks) and I could never really figure out what, if any, bonus that gave me even though the Wolf and Dust devotions were super relevant and easy to find.

9) The devotion tasks feel... ick. I only ever completed like 3 for the Jester god(getting their relic and going to their city and getting the legendary rapier) because the rest of them seemed really difficult. I know that getting cursed by everyone else is pretty easy to do, I just didn't do it, but killing enemies while mad and getting all the status effects feels ridiculously difficult. Madness wears off pretty damn fast and even when it doesn't, Stun is a great way to get yourself killed. And I had 14/15 status effects and could never figure out which one I was missing because status effects aren't ever listed anywhere. I'm pretty sure it was Deafness?? But I genuinely couldn't figure out who/what ever caused that status.

10) Adding to the above, some of the status effects feel... bad. Rot staying around while you're wet when it's super easy to get Rotted(moldy food does this a lot) and also super easy to get wet(it seems to rain A LOT) feels horrible because it's such a massive debuff to your damage output. Fire is AWFUL because basically every single dungeon later on(and especially the Tether dungeon) is absolutely COVERED in lava and you will get set on fire CONSTANTLY, and it eats through your HP like crazy. I was devoted to the Angels for most of the game so being Blind was actually GOOD, but I never figured out what being Deaf did. Bleeding has a similar problem to fire in that it eats your HP way too fast, Madness is fine/fun/funny, Stun is a bit obnoxious, and most of the others just sort of... exist. Deathly was only ever really a problem when there was a Siren singing a Deathly Song, and Poison basically meant that every single scarab I ever encountered(nevermind Hornet Queens, UGH) gave me 1/2 hp immediately upon spawning them. Some of the status effects feel terrible(rot/poison/fire/bleed), and some other ones feel like a complete non-factor.

11) The legendary weapons are just straight up awful. Like I really hesitate to call anything outright 'bad' in this game because so much of it is amazing, but I will absolutely do so here. They're just bad. Almost all of them 2h, which I can't imagine most builds would actually use, there's 0 legendary armor which seems like it would be a neat idea, and most of them don't actually even do any more damage or have any more "use" than normal weapons, but come with a 30 stat requirement. Literally the only benefit the legendary shield has over a normal Kite Shield is that it gives a tiny amount to all status resistance, which feels like it doesn't actually do anything at all. If you wanted to do any sort of 'sword and board' build your options are the Rapier(Finesse) and the Dagger(intelligence), neither of which 'synergize' so to speak with Endurance/Strength which you'd think would be the useful melee/tank stats. Endurance does kind of work that way because it lets you wear the heavier armor, but as I already mentioned above armor itself feels pretty dang useless. I think we need a lot more variety in the legendary weapons, especially since they require basically a multi-step 'quest chain' to even acquire. (Ship > Cannon > Boss > Find each individual dungeon > kill the boss). They need some sort of 'unique' utility other than "they do split magic damage", and there need to either be more of them, or more of them need to be 1h. The one that requires endurance(the club) should DEFINITELY be 1-handed because A) this is the 'style' that encourages you to use a shield the most and B) I think every single other endurance weapon in the game is also 1h. The bow is like... fine? but I still went back to using the Great Arbalest because Stun was 9 times out of 10 more useful than Bleed.

12) This isn't really a question or a suggestion. I just genuinely think that this game is really, really, incredibly good. I know some of my questions/suggestions up above probably felt whiny or mean-spirited or something, but I am recommending this game to basically everyone I speak to who I think might enjoy it because it's free and it's really great. I don't want anything I said above to take away from that, which is why I'm putting this at the end, to make sure it gets reinforced. This game is amazing. Easily like a 9/10 and for sure a 10/10 if some of the weird balance choices and other problems get fixed. World building is awesome, I really enjoyed the story, the bosses are fun, the dungeons are fun, it's really challenging but in a good way(never have I died so many times in a game and not felt the least bit salty about it), and I just love basically everything about it other than the probably-nitpicky stuff that I mentioned above.

Thank you for making this game. I have no idea how/when it ended up on my Wishlist, but I'm really glad that it did. It was great.

[Mog]

7) Luck influences critical damage and dodge. It's increased using the Harlequins' gift "Luck". An item which increases luck is hidden in the Red Grove hardware store.

[Slywyn]

Originally posted by Mog:

7) Luck influences critical damage and dodge. It's increased using the Harlequins' gift "Luck". An item which increases luck is hidden in the Red Grove hardware store.

Hey thanks!!

[Mog]

Originally posted by Slywyn:

Hey thanks!!

You're welcome
6) The other stats are explained in the leftmost column of the gods' menu. In brief, apart from gating weapons:
Strength is for push-back
Finesse is for stealth, dodging and trap detection
Intellect is for magic item repair
Perception is for sight, range and accuracy
Endurance is for equip weight and speed, as you said

[Mog]

8) So ancient metal costs depend on stats (and dedication), not devotion, and presumably the same goes for kindling and phials of blood. I don't think extra devotion does anything by itself.

[Slywyn]

Originally posted by Mog:

7) Luck influences critical damage and dodge. It's increased using the Harlequins' gift "Luck". An item which increases luck is hidden in the Red Grove hardware store.

So i did go get this item and uh... I can't figure out what Luck actually does, because it isn't(at least as far as the character sheet shows) giving any bonus to dodge, and there's no way to see critical damage that I know of.

[Mog]

Yes, good point. It turns out critical hits do double damage regardless of luck. "Lucky critical hit" pops up a lot under the influence of the Harlequins' gift, but not with the Gambler's Amulet alone.

[Mog]

1) I'm also curious about the functioning of the economy. I wouldn't be surprised if there were only a finite amount of money in circulation. I wonder if spending more would help, or if inexorable decline isn't maybe more in keeping with the spirit of the game anyway.

[K0rp0]

I'm playing with experimental builds on, and it can be clearly seen that Luck affects the critical hit chance. 5 Luck (like from the Gambler's Pendant) nets you +10% chance (doubling it to 20%).

[K0rp0]

@Slywyn

"10) Adding to the above, some of the status effects feel... bad. Rot staying around while you're wet when it's super easy to get Rotted(moldy food does this a lot)"

Yeah, eating moldy food is a bad option indeed. I drank blood, never had a food problem.

"and also super easy to get wet(it seems to rain A LOT) feels horrible because it's such a massive debuff to your damage output."

I never figured out why it stuck so long, but you can dry yourself with towels if needed, also there's a potion to remove rot.

I was super happy when it rained, because fire effects basically do not matter then. Without Rot there would be no downside to being wet at all.

"Fire is AWFUL because basically every single dungeon later on(and especially the Tether dungeon) is absolutely COVERED in lava and you will get set on fire CONSTANTLY, and it eats through your HP like crazy."

Use a water potion - choose "Apply" and you'll gain wetness. I carry over a dozen water potions with me when entering dungeons for this reason. Also, some of the fire dungeons still have some pools with water where you can refill and splash yourself.

"I was devoted to the Angels for most of the game so being Blind was actually GOOD, but I never figured out what being Deaf did."

You don't hear game sounds, which can make you miss out on cues for taking damage and recovering poise, mostly. And I guess it would negate the effects of Deathly Song.

"Bleeding has a similar problem to fire in that it eats your HP way too fast,"

Bandages are one of the most common loot drops, though. Even if selling some I typically carry a dozen.

"Madness is fine/fun/funny,"

Agreed! :)

"Stun is a bit obnoxious, and most of the others just sort of... exist."

I personally find "vulnerable" to be very tricky at times.

"Deathly was only ever really a problem when there was a Siren singing a Deathly Song,"

I mostly got it from having to pass through traps, it's very punishing, I find.

I think there's a potion of deafness you could drink if you have it.

"and Poison basically meant that every single scarab I ever encountered(nevermind Hornet Queens, UGH) gave me 1/2 hp immediately upon spawning them."

Somehow I have encountered poison the least.

One of the rather hindering status effects is "Torpor" conveyed by healing potions. You're already without poise, on the ropes, and you get an effect that disadvantages you further when you actually used a resource to help yourself...

"Some of the status effects feel terrible(rot/poison/fire/bleed), and some other ones feel like a complete non-factor."

I found most of them matter, but I also learned to counter most of them - or not let them build. Especially with having to wade through status traps I learned the value of Staria potions combined with teleport gifts.

In the end, without the status effects there would be not much to challenge one in the game - the mix of difficult enemies and status effects makes things exciting. Sometimes a bit much...

"and if you buy a piece of food in one city it will probably have gone moldy > completely decayed by the time you get there. I would consider at least doubling the burn time of oil and the rot time of food."

I fully second this for food. Since I drank blood I could avoid this, but before that food was a major problem. One can't even really stock up for going to a remote dungeon. You'd basically forage a lot - and monsters never drop food, just animals. So the food system is indeed close to broken.

Amber oil, on the other hand, is easy enough to come by. Have a few empty flasks on you before entering most any dungeon and by the time you get out you have stocked up 5 or more. My amber oil stash rarely drops below 20.