Acid and Chomp

[Malibloo]

Now before I go on this tirade let me point out that I enjoy this game. It's an interesting strategy with a lot of risk taking that can more or less be calculated to a specific degree.
You don't go into battle with low health, you grind a bit if your level is too low, you spend your money at the right time in your second run when you realize economy can royally screw you over. You enjoy the small victories and the close calls.

Then there's Acid and Chomp, which are such high risks and such an exponentially negative spiral which entirely and completely ruins the game and have gotten me to rage several times over.
The idea that acid can remove a player's equipment and permanently penalize them during a fight should not just be 3 tokens (that the AI easily gets every time). Then the ludicrous fact that IT LASTS FOR THREE WHOLE TURNS?!
This is a seriously unforgivable game design choice, shame on whoever thought this up.
You want an alternative that's more about taking risks, and less about being screwed over from the start? Make just the weapons brittle (lose them on complete failure), and let them be repaired at a shop afterwards. It'd make it a lot less significant, but still very debilitating if it goes bad.
A calculated risk.

Above all, giving this to the final boss? You think people can kill a guy with 500 health with just their bare hands? Why!? Which brainless jerk thought of this?

If the devs still care about their game, please change this, because the way I'm fixing it is by save scumming to death, and this game takes way too long to load.
Alternatively, if there's some modders out there that could break this out of the game, that'd be great.

Tirade over.

[FireGryph]

having acid as a threat means make sure you have Panax handy, it cures the acid stuff. Focus the acid enemies.
As for the enemies that chomp an item away, its frustrating yes. But again, mitigate the risk, and carry backup weapons or armor just in case. Avoid enemies that have this ability, to the best you can manage.

[Malibloo]

No. Just absolutely no to all of that. I read other topics that say the exact same thing and I couldn't disagree more.
Why? Because there WAS no more Panax. Used it up in other situations. Even if that weren't the case, there's not enough Panax in the game to prepare for the final boss.
On top of that certain enemy combos make it so that you lose two whopping pieces of equipment before it's even your turn! How is that fair?!

This game does not give out enough equipment/loot to "mitigate" anything. It's not that type of game. It's nothing like Breath of the Wild, where the meta is to collect weapons and equipment because everything has durability, and gives you ample opportunity to do so.
Yes, there's weapons that can break upon critical failure. That is entirely fine, that's a calculated risk. You know what you can expect when you use it.
Acid? Doesn't give a damn. There's no way to see it coming, you just have to deal with it. It's random if you run across an enemy that can do it, and it practically always hits.

Finally, even if you have backup equipment, the only thing that you can equip during a fight is a weapon! That extra defense? Gone. That dodge? Gone! That higher stat for hit chance? GONE.

This. Is. Bad game design. There's nothing else to be said.
It is literally what has ruined this game for me, it needs to change.

[FireGryph]

Originally posted by Malibloo:

No. Just absolutely no to all of that. I read other topics that say the exact same thing and I couldn't disagree more.
Why? Because there WAS no more Panax. Used it up in other situations. Even if that weren't the case, there's not enough Panax in the game to prepare for the final boss.
On top of that certain enemy combos make it so that you lose two whopping pieces of equipment before it's even your turn! How is that fair?!

This game does not give out enough equipment/loot to "mitigate" anything. It's not that type of game. It's nothing like Breath of the Wild, where the meta is to collect weapons and equipment because everything has durability, and gives you ample opportunity to do so.
Yes, there's weapons that can break upon critical failure. That is entirely fine, that's a calculated risk. You know what you can expect when you use it.
Acid? Doesn't give a damn. There's no way to see it coming, you just have to deal with it. It's random if you run across an enemy that can do it, and it practically always hits.

Finally, even if you have backup equipment, the only thing that you can equip during a fight is a weapon! That extra defense? Gone. That dodge? Gone! That higher stat for hit chance? GONE.

This. Is. Bad game design. There's nothing else to be said.
It is literally what has ruined this game for me, it needs to change.

I guess you are playing on the highest difficulty then, which I cannot attest to. Ive not had the desire to delve into such madness myself.

On the chance you are not, however, you have me perplexed. Ive not once in all my hours playing this, in all my run throughs of each scenario, ended up using up every panax available, AND having an issue with acid to this degree. By choosing your battles, and doing things as a group rather than 3 individuals with a good mix of classes, you can most definitely over-gear yourself and have things like panax to spare.

Acid is, without a doubt, frustrating. It is certainly one of the most aggravating, and threatening, effects. It may not kill you, but losing a prized piece of gear can cost you a LOT. I dare say it could cost you a game. Which is why you do all in your power not to get acidified. Save at least one Panax per character for acid. You can live with poison, and all other effects wear off with time or after battle.

If you absolutely cannot deal with saving panax for whats vital, there are a few items that grant acid immunity. https://fortheking.gamepedia.com/Acid_Immunity

[Malibloo]

That's kind. But I've talked about more situations than just running out of Panax. I do play with 3, I have mixed classes, I was overgeared until I kept running into monsters with acid attacks. Or you know, those enemies that do a random magic effect that practically always puts acid on 1 person.
Then there's enemies that put acid on all 3 at once, byebye Panax. Not sure how you can't imagine running out of it, unless you have some kind of secret Panax shrine where you can buy an infinite amount of them.

Regardless, it's still not okay. Sure, you can have a bunch of Panax, and then you'll still run into enemies that have chomp, like those clams. It's bad design. The game simply does not support this type of gameplay.
It is not fun. It ruins games. It has ruined mine. I likely won't play this again until it's fixed.

[OpticalShadow]

I personally have only ever lost one thing to acid, and very few times has chomp taken something, and never that big a deal. Panex, Pearls are obvious choices, dont forget that there are some weapons (mage/bard classes) which have cure abilities that also remove acid.

As for chomp monsters, to my knowing the only things that remove inventory are clams, mimics, fire demons, and theives. Theives are often no real issue for a party, there are steal immune items. Clams and mimics are faced fairly rarely, even in the water adventure the only place your ever forced to fight them is in sea caves, and mimics are few between, and you can use a scroll to avoid them too. the fire demons to my knowing i have only seen with the item destroying skill in the airship quest as final bosses.

Ive just personally not seen the issue your having, there have always been pretty amble ways of dealing with all these challanges.

[Malibloo]

As much as I'd like to say the same, I've finished two whole games and in both games I've lost probably 30 or so equipment items over them.
Most of them were during the final boss, where one person was actually acid immune. Ironically the other acid immunity item was chomped before.
But probably around 10ish items throughout the run. And it were always the rares and relics with other immunities. The backbones of my equipment, which instantly caused a spiral of constantly dying, whereas I was doing absolutely fine before.

So far what I'm hearing is that people simply weren't as unlucky as me. Or I'm somehow playing the game wrong. ....which shouldn't be possible when I'm still actively trying to win.

[Gavener]

was pretty WTF moment when I got chomped by a clam and lost my sword I just got and sold my old one, didn't know about chomp

[FireGryph]

Originally posted by Gavener:

was pretty WTF moment when I got chomped by a clam and lost my sword I just got and sold my old one, didn't know about chomp

Such is the nature of these sort of games. You play, you learn, you know better for next time. Theres a reason you are greeted by a message when booting the game up telling you be prepared to lose.

[Malibloo]

Honestly, I expected it to be a hard game, where you take difficult and calculated risks. I wasn't expecting ...this nonsense. Right now it feels more like a disclaimer that they made a badly balanced game, and are just telling you to deal with it.
Not only that, but it's the go-to quote for whenever a player runs into anything unfair. It's a sign of laziness.

[FireGryph]

Originally posted by Malibloo:

Honestly, I expected it to be a hard game, where you take difficult and calculated risks. I wasn't expecting ...this nonsense. Right now it feels more like a disclaimer that they made a badly balanced game, and are just telling you to deal with it.
Not only that, but it's the go-to quote for whenever a player runs into anything unfair. It's a sign of laziness.

Im sorry to say, but this feels more like an issue with your own playstyle than it is with the game. The very idea of losing 30+ items in 2 playthroughs is a HUGE red flag that you're doing something wrong. The amount of unluckiness required to lose that many items is just staggering, bordering impossible.

In my own group, the three of us rarely lose more than 5 items in any given run, and we've played through each scenario (except gold rush) multiple times. The only time we've ever lost more than a single item in a single fight was against the demons in the fire caves, burning herbs.

Every enemy that has an acid attack should be focus on immediately, kill it first. The most dangerous is the acid jelly, which is so darn slow you should be able to kill it before it even gets a single turn. I rarely even encounter the Festering Blobs.

The final boss for the main scenario can apply acid but its not every turn, nor even every other turn. Acid also doesnt dissolve items instantly. The very idea that youre losing 15 items or more to the final boss means something is crazy off. The boss should not even be ALIVE long enough for the acid to proc that many times, unless something has gone terribly wrong in the scenario before you reached the boss.

[Varenx]

You never mentioned what difficulty or which scenario you were playing on, but if you're losing that many items in a single game, much less to a single encounter, you really do need to rethink how you prepare for said encounters and especially how you fight those battles. Focusing down enemies who can destroy gear, resetting them, rushing your own party, slowing them down...

For one thing, you should never, ever, be left using a single weapon and selling everything else. That's a mistake that can be forgiven exactly once - although even then it's pretty poor judgement since certain weapons are more fitting for certain encounters - but no more than that.

There are very, very few situations where you must fight enemies that can destroy equipped gear, and the game expects you to learn how to deal with it. It's not bad game design, it's just you being poorly prepared or not having the foresight or the strategic thinking to figure out what you're going to do when you might get hit by acid. And before you say that yes, of course you do prepare for every fight, the fact this topic even exists proves the opposite.

Stop blaming the game for being exactly what it was set out to be and learn to manage your resources properly and to think ahead what kind of threats you are going to face.

[Malibloo]

Originally posted by FireGryph:

Im sorry to say, but this feels more like an issue with your own playstyle than it is with the game. The very idea of losing 30+ items in 2 playthroughs is a HUGE red flag that you're doing something wrong. The amount of unluckiness required to lose that many items is just staggering, bordering impossible.

To me it sounds like you barely even played the game. The boss alone can easily get you to lose 15+ items in a single battle. It was the first campaign, easiest difficulty, did lots of exploring. Things like not knowing that things like festering blobs can mess you up, and their opening moves always being acid, and every other move also being acid can easily force you to lose several items. Then every now and then there's an ambush, or they invite themselves in in a fight where try to sneak. Or at another point you simply think you can kill them quick enough. The very moment your weapon breaks, you're easily going to lose 2 more items just because of the turns lost to equip another weapon, if you had one extra in the first place (I didn't in my first playthrough and had to go fisticuffs, losing a bunch of equipment and dying). And this is somehow to be avoided by buying all the panax in the world? Not remotely enough out there.
There's plenty of ways to encounter enemies that can mess you up like that, and apparently I got real unlucky.
But that's just it, you know? Some players get through the game without even knowing that either chomp or acid exists (until the final boss anyway), and then you have no preparations against it.

Originally posted by Varenx:

For one thing, you should never, ever, be left using a single weapon and selling everything else. That's a mistake that can be forgiven exactly once - although even then it's pretty poor judgement since certain weapons are more fitting for certain encounters - but no more than that.

This game literally tells you none of this, or even hints at it. Neither do battles go on long enough to suffice a weapon swap. Complete drivel.

My first run there was no save scumming. None whatsoever. What's being replied here several times is that I should have prepared to something I didn't know was coming. I prepared in a way that I thought was the best possible without any foregoing knowledge.
If that's me playing the game wrong, then I'm not sure how anyone here envisions playing this game for the first time and actually have enough fun to bother with a second run.

These parts makes this a bad game. Period. No discussion possible. You can't make ♥♥♥♥ mechanics and just tell your players "The game is hard, deal with it.". No, the game isn't hard, it's simply extremely unfair, and doesn't remotely prepare you like an actual game should.
Games are about challenges, puzzles, difficult situations to figure out and overcome. This game threw too many situations at me where the solution was either next to impossible or entirely impossible to figure out until you suddenly get lucky. I did not.

Nothing worse in strategic games where there's a positive feedback loop in losing.

[Varenx]

Originally posted by Malibloo:

Nothing worse in strategic games where there's a positive feedback loop in losing.

This, this right here is your problem. You misunderstand what this game is. It's not a strategy game. It's a tabletop rogue-like (or rather, rogue-lite) RPG. Yes, the game doesn't tell you everything up front. Read the wiki if you want to learn everything about it, everything you come across in game is available online.

The way it works is, you play over and over again and LEARN what things do, what threats are there. Then you lose. And then you try again, armed with the knowledge and foresight because while there's some variance, knowing what monsters can do what is what let's you prepare ahead of time.

I understand if it's not your kind of game, there are rogue-lites that I don't enjoy myself, but don't think it's the games fault. Plenty of people get through the game just fine after they failed a few runs. They understand the opening message it shows up front to tell you won't win every single round.

Edit: Also, if no discussion is possible then you opened a pointless thread. If you think it's a bad game just leave. Don't act all entitled because solely you were too ignorant or too stubborn to understand the genre and instead stated 'it must change'. There are plenty of other genres that don't require you to accept losing as part of playing the game.

[FireGryph]

Originally posted by Malibloo:

To me it sounds like you barely even played the game. The boss alone can easily get you to lose 15+ items in a single battle. It was the first campaign, easiest difficulty, did lots of exploring. Things like not knowing that things like festering blobs can mess you up, and their opening moves always being acid, and every other move also being acid can easily force you to lose several items. Then every now and then there's an ambush, or they invite themselves in in a fight where try to sneak. Or at another point you simply think you can kill them quick enough. The very moment your weapon breaks, you're easily going to lose 2 more items just because of the turns lost to equip another weapon, if you had one extra in the first place (I didn't in my first playthrough and had to go fisticuffs, losing a bunch of equipment and dying). And this is somehow to be avoided by buying all the panax in the world? Not remotely enough out there.
There's plenty of ways to encounter enemies that can mess you up like that, and apparently I got real unlucky.
But that's just it, you know? Some players get through the game without even knowing that either chomp or acid exists (until the final boss anyway), and then you have no preparations against it.

Im sorry, but what? My profile isnt private, unlike some people. Ive got over 200 hours in the game and completed all scenarios on medium diff simply because the hard diff isn't my cup of tea. Ive been through the starting stages of getting into this game. I know what its like not knowing what Im doing. Ive lost items to acid or crushing, Ive lost games after hours of play.

But I learned. Thats the point of a rogue-lite. Each time you play, you get a bit further. You learn enemies, tactics, traits, methods. You unlock things in the lore store. You get better, until you win. There is no full tutorial or walkthrough. You arent getting your hand held. You learn as you go and sometimes you fail. Sometimes RNG will mess you up, too.
It really sounds like this game isnt for you, and maybe you should block games with the 'rogue-like' or 'rogue-lite' tags on them, too.

[Malibloo]

Originally posted by Varenx:

Edit: Also, if no discussion is possible then you opened a pointless thread. If you think it's a bad game just leave. Don't act all entitled because solely you were too ignorant or too stubborn to understand the genre and instead stated 'it must change'. There are plenty of other genres that don't require you to accept losing as part of playing the game.

Did you even read anything I wrote? It's a complaint. It's literally those two moves that ruin the entire game. It doesn't fit the gameplay prerogative. There's no countless loot to have as replacement. There's no way to re-equip anything but weapons during a fight. It's a lazy addition to add artificial difficulty that can entirely ruin your run. It's bad game design.
This game would be infinitely better without these two moves. It's simple as that. It needs to change for this game to be better. I can't even fathom what the developers were thinking when adding this. This is a complaint. There's no discussion about that part possible.

This IS a strategy game, it's bloody turn based for crying out loud; no clue how you think it's not, and I'd hardly call it a rogue-like or rogue-lite, because it's simply an RPG. The runs are way way too long for it to even compare it to that. It ticks a minimal amount of boxes. Games don't turn to rogue-likes or rogue-lites just because the developer decided to make it unfairly hard. It's just bad design.

Originally posted by FireGryph:

Im sorry, but what? My profile isnt private, unlike some people. Ive got over 200 hours in the game and completed all scenarios on medium diff simply because the hard diff isn't my cup of tea. Ive been through the starting stages of getting into this game. I know what its like not knowing what Im doing. Ive lost items to acid or crushing, Ive lost games after hours of play.

The heck does profiles being private have to do with anything? I have plenty reason to keep things private.
I merely said you sounded like you barely played the game due to your statements of how unlucky I must've been when this happened to me multiple times, I never made a claim of the sort, harassive much?

Again, this game is not rogue-like or -lite. Sure, it has "random" generation. Which any game with a modicum of replayability has nowadays. There's no permadeath. It almost seems like everyone thinks that once a game has no saving system it's immediately a rogue-like-lite. Not even mentioning this game easily allows for save scumming. Then there's the progressive unlocks which are totally not rogue-like-lite.
So if you want to look like an idiot, by all means keep calling it a rogue-like or rogue-lite. It just shows how little you understand of how games (or game genres) actually work.

So to make it clear, I shall again reiterate my statement.
Acid and chomp (moves that delete equipment) do not fit the gameplay prerogative or style, and ruin the game. You can try to avoid them, you can try preparing for them, but they will eventually mess you up, and if you're unlucky, ruin your entire game without being able to do anything about it.
They're game enders. That makes them intrinsically bad game design.
Why? Games are about giving players challenges, and giving them the possibility to overcome them. These two awful moves are not challenges, but walls that one has to run into face-first and hope it's thin enough to get through.
That's it. Stop trying to defend this part of the game just because you had a good time and weren't screwed over. I enjoyed the good parts of this as well, until this happened.