The Other RIng Question

[Acanthus]

I've been wondering. Long term, is this item a placeholder?

I ask because it's clearly the most efficient and powerful item in the game. Moreover, I don't really like it because of how powerful it is. Once I have it on one good character, it tends to trivialize everything because of the powerful combination of +15 all stats, max level demon summon (I always farm pristine from lightspawn for it), and huge shielding.

Overall, it leads me to losing interest in my campaign at the end because it doesn't feel like I've overcome anything by way of planning or preparing. I just built the required plot device. I could try not building it, of course, but 20 of a high tier mat to keep up with the creeping difficulty isn't the same as 35-75 for one equipment. I will wind up trying to do it eventually if I can figure out ways to gear up better. Overall, I love this game though. I'm going to continue playing it. And I'm aware the game is highly mod-able, so if at full release it stays like that, I'll wind doing that to get my endgame fix.

[dergefata]

It's *probably* not a placeholder. Possibly the biggest change at the strategic layer between Thea 1 and Thea 2 is that in Thea 2, you don't have a village that you're required to keep safe. So you can choose to play Thea 2 in a nomadic style. Given the game was made with that large difference right there, front and center, it's probably not going to change.

So, if you take away The Other Ring, what do you have to offer a nomadic playstyle to make it even a tiny bit comparable to one with a village set down? Villages are enormously valuable. Expecting someone to just enjoy the game without one makes as little sense as telling you just not to use an Other Ring ^_^

It probably could use a little bit of a nerf. I think if it boosted only the three primary stats, and gave shielding but no additional health (other than what you get from the +15 stats), it would be very powerful without being gamebreaking. But I don't think it should go away. If for no other reason, it should stay in the game so that people having a hard time with the game have an easymode available so they don't get frustrated and quit.

Try this, perhaps; it made a big difference in my last game. Try playing with a self-imposed limit of one summon per source per game turn. You don't want a huge end-of-turn event like the dragon cave to show up and you've used all your summons for the turn, do you? If you limit the availability of the summon, suddenly those 10-14 card challenges get really tough again.

[Acanthus]

I play the nomadic lifestyle using Stribog actually. Once you can take on 7 skull challenges, you can go from lightbringers spawn to lightbringers spawn to collect pure stone, pristine matter, enchanted bones, and grand gems quite easily (the latter 2 come from wraith drops primarily). With the research additions, you're also swimming in research points from all the fighting also, not to mention the extremely high levels of all your people. The main downside to the nomadic lifestyle, I find, is the inability to keep materials easily and difficulty keeping morale up because of the spottiness of finding food on some islands.

Rather than the Other Ring, I'd rather have split up accessory slots again (with normal accessories actually giving decent bonuses) and have cosmic seed maybe have different equipment skills based on what you put it in and be in place of a secondary essence. At least done that way, the game doesn't just stop being a challenge as soon as I get 20 pristine matter.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by Acanthus:

I play the nomadic lifestyle using Stribog actually.

Sure, I hear you on all of that. I have no doubt that you're not having a hard time. But you don't have this as a nomad, do you: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1647528025

What's the draw to giving up something like that? A factory for churning out immense amounts of 4th and 5th tier stuff, plus wide food variety (the other node not visible there is a vegetable).

[Acanthus]

Of course not. You don't really need to gather as strongly when you're nomadic though (you get plenty through events). The important thing is crafting speed if you're going to cook mats/craft weaponry. Although I still keep an average of 2 gatherers for food and a couple of hunters because they're useful. With earth essence jewelery, you can keep your numbers up. Even if I did have a material factory like that, it wouldn't mean anything once I have my party outfitted. Besides all that, if one really wanted to, one can always place a village down later. Nothing stops you from switching playstyles.

Btw, finding a set of clustered nodes that good in the ice island is rare for me. Are you playing on abundant?

[Acanthus]

I went back to an old save and found an event worth doing to show you why gathering at high rates in a town is unnecessary.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1647561022

Notice I took no damage btw.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by Acanthus:

Btw, finding a set of clustered nodes that good in the ice island is rare for me. Are you playing on abundant?

No, rare. I find I have the most fun at a custom difficulty; max settings except start is 1 warrior+child, carry is 400, gather limit is false. The triple diamond was courtesy of terrain features which, when gathered often (always?) yield a biome-appropriate 3rd tier resource. Well, that and the 9-hex diameter village area.

That's a good event, yeah. But it doesn't make up for the enormous benefits of a village, for my taste. Also, if you *do* have a village, I think you should get more events than if you only have gathering groups, since there are village-only events. Granted, none of them nearly so good as finding the dragon cave, or the stuck troll, or that sort of thing =)

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by dergefata:

It's *probably* not a placeholder. Possibly the biggest change at the strategic layer between Thea 1 and Thea 2 is that in Thea 2, you don't have a village that you're required to keep safe. So you can choose to play Thea 2 in a nomadic style. Given the game was made with that large difference right there, front and center, it's probably not going to change.

So, if you take away The Other Ring, what do you have to offer a nomadic playstyle to make it even a tiny bit comparable to one with a village set down? Villages are enormously valuable. Expecting someone to just enjoy the game without one makes as little sense as telling you just not to use an Other Ring ^_^

It probably could use a little bit of a nerf. I think if it boosted only the three primary stats, and gave shielding but no additional health (other than what you get from the +15 stats), it would be very powerful without being gamebreaking. But I don't think it should go away. If for no other reason, it should stay in the game so that people having a hard time with the game have an easymode available so they don't get frustrated and quit.

Try this, perhaps; it made a big difference in my last game. Try playing with a self-imposed limit of one summon per source per game turn. You don't want a huge end-of-turn event like the dragon cave to show up and you've used all your summons for the turn, do you? If you limit the availability of the summon, suddenly those 10-14 card challenges get really tough again.

Wait, are you telling me I shouldn't be carrying this thing across the land, and dropping it into a volcano to destroy it?

I could have sworn that was what it was for.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate:

Wait, are you telling me I shouldn't be carrying this thing across the land, and dropping it into a volcano to destroy it?

I could have sworn that was what it was for.

Do you have hairy feet, or pointy ears? If not, then you may not have the strength for such a task, in the end...

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by dergefata:

No, rare. I find I have the most fun at a custom difficulty; max settings except start is 1 warrior+child, carry is 400, gather limit is false. The triple diamond was courtesy of terrain features which, when gathered often (always?) yield a biome-appropriate 3rd tier resource. Well, that and the 9-hex diameter village area.

That's a good event, yeah. But it doesn't make up for the enormous benefits of a village, for my taste. Also, if you *do* have a village, I think you should get more events than if you only have gathering groups, since there are village-only events. Granted, none of them nearly so good as finding the dragon cave, or the stuck troll, or that sort of thing =)

I have similar settings. I also have normal instead of rare ruins and 200 carry bonus. For the record, when you're doing nomadic lifestyle, events are triggered by movement and turn end, so when your group gets big, you split up and get more chances of events. Works especially well if you're staying in reinforce range. With the village, you only get the chance at turn end. I have something like 20 people in that save because my people keep breeding, so that's relatively easy for me to do. If I'd gotten any more cosmic seeds (I only got 2 total because I'd spent my time exploring mostly), I would have had them go to completely separate locations. Also, since I wasn't particularly bound to an area, I also had a lot of higher tier races such as undead (breed a failed witch wraith with any to start the process of getting undead), orcs, and goblins. I was going to go for elves next before I lost interest.

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate:

Wait, are you telling me I shouldn't be carrying this thing across the land, and dropping it into a volcano to destroy it?

I could have sworn that was what it was for.

Nah, it's there for me to rule them all.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by Acanthus:

For the record, when you're doing nomadic lifestyle, events are triggered by movement and turn end, so when your group gets big, you split up and get more chances of events. Works especially well if you're staying in reinforce range. With the village, you only get the chance at turn end.

Ah, that's why we've been talking past each other. No, absolutely the play style you're describing is not one anyone would use.

When you have a village, you don't turtle up in it. You still have all the expeditions you'd normally have, but you've got a defended place to keep your stuff. When you're hurt, you can meander on back and heal up faster. You can drop off all that low-tier stuff, knowign you can fuse it into useful stuff later. When you have a village, you have every advantage of a nomad playthrough, except The Other Ring. So you get the movement events, and you get the village events. And your gather radius is huge, so you don't need two tiny camps burning 1 wood each per turn to get your food variety; you have one village, burning 1 wood per turn, and you're getting +16 or more gather bonus from buildings, and bonus movement when you leave, and bonus healing, and bonus RP, and faster research when you come back to town with the things you've found. You just don't have that amazingly OP ring letting one group waltz through everything.

The tradeoff is not "nomad or immobile", it's "One Ring or village". That's why the ring needs not to be a placeholder - there would be literally no benefit to the nomad play style - and thus no benefit to the greatest change worked into the game - if you had to give up your village for nothing.

[Acanthus]

There's a serious downside to the village in that it's stuck in the island you put it in, and if you want to venture far away, you have to go back there. I'd say the time wasted is equivalent to the time wasted by not having the bonuses from the buildings, but my preference is against it. As for using 2 camps, you don't necessarily do that. You go to places where a lot of enemies spawn, you have the utility group gather and craft, then you have the second group clear nearby. Both groups are moving, so you get events. You CAN have the clear group gather also, if you happen to have points to reach something, but it's not necessarily the priority. The events give you mats to make up some inefficiency.

Also, you do get the Other Ring when you have a village; it's just delayed until you progress the main quest adequately.

[dergefata]

Originally posted by Acanthus:

Also, you do get the Other Ring when you have a village; it's just delayed until you progress the main quest adequately.

Well, it's the trade-off, again. An Other Ring, or a second village? If you've got a nice place roughly opposite the first village, then your expeditions can go clockwise or anticlockwise around the map, stopping at one village, then the other. The world map is fairly small; if you've got a couple wide-roaming expeditions out and about in nice boats, they probably can hit up two islands, knock over a bunch of monster lairs, and about the time they're getting full up on loot, they come back around to another village.

Drop off all those resources, spend a few turns fusing and crafting, and they're ready to take off again, food stores replenished and new and better gear equipped.

[wms]

I'm all for compensating somewhat the nomadic playstyle for not having a town.
But current implementation of The Other Ring is the wrong way.

By having a town, you get increased material gathering, a place to store materials and building bonuses. You DON'T get an overpowered demi-god that can faceroll everything in game.

If I want just to win the game, why should I build a town? I'm invincible with 2 Other rings.

[wms]

Beside, just because the nomadic style have more disadvantages, doesn't mean we need to compensate it to make all play styles equal in difficulty.