SKALD: Against the Black Priory

[Rand]

Are all Ultima fans like this? I liked UU, but never played the others.

No. I loved them as a kid. And I'm here with objectively correct opinions.

[Mondain]

Are all Ultima fans like this? I liked UU, but never played the others.

No. I loved them as a kid. And I'm here with objectively correct opinions.

Aren't you a rabid atheist?

[Rand]

Are all Ultima fans like this? I liked UU, but never played the others.

No. I loved them as a kid. And I'm here with objectively correct opinions.

Aren't you a rabid atheist?

I just find belief in religion extremely silly.
And the things the "true believers" say with a straight face very cringe.

Imagine how you feel if a Mormon or Scientologist or Hindu came up to you and started telling you how great all the batshit crazy things they believe are, and how they're clearly correct because of (insert utter nonsense).
But I feel that way about YOUR religion as well. Whichever it is.

[Boontaker]

No. I loved them as a kid. And I'm here with objectively correct opinions.

Aren't you a rabid atheist?

I just find belief in religion extremely silly.
And the things the "true believers" say with a straight face very cringe.

Imagine if a Mormon or Scientologist or Hindu came up to you and started telling you how great all the batshit crazy things they believe are, and how they're clearly correct because of (insert utter nonsense).
But I feel that way about YOUR religion as well.

I find your lack of "It's the ****" disturbing.

[Rand]

I find your lack of "It's the ****" disturbing.

Oh, It's DEFINITELY the ****.

[Brother Chad]

Game's actually pretty good so far.

[rusty_shackleford]

bouncing sprites = **** game

[1998]

Haven't really read it, for obvious reasons, but this conclusion sure is ********.

Brilliantly unsettling blend of genres
- PC Gamer

[Rand]

I downloaded it and checked it out.
The "Deluxe" version that includes the second install called the "reinforcement pack" not only adds extra portraits and an extra magic item vendor, it also enables at least two character background options (not classes) not available without it.
One give a 10% XP boost, the other increases valuables found by about 50%. Not sure if it's just gold x1.5 or it actually adds extra items, such as two potions turning to three.

The start of the game is annoying. It begins in media res as a sort of mini tutorial, but then cuts to a flashback that is essentially an even more basic tutorial.

Setting difficulty outside of the game before starting a new game does nothing, especially custom difficulty, as you will be prompted to select one of the four presets during new game setup.
If you remember, you can then go in and adjust the custom difficulty once the game starts.
The standard difficulties all play silly bugger with the rolls, allowing multiple rolls and taking the best one, or adjusting rolls XCOM style so as no prevent multiple bad rolls happening all in a row.
It also allows you to give the same benefit to the enemies if you choose. It's all silly, in my opinion. I turned all the roll adjustments off.

[Acrux]

Have you pressed TAB yet?

[Xenich]

I never understood the "cheat code" upsell.

[Rand]

Have you pressed TAB yet?

Yup.
Weird.
then I re-bound it to open inventory.

[Finarfin]

Got myself the game along with Felvidek and Hellbreach:Vegas. Heard good things about them and Hellbreach was surprisingly fun (Like COD Zombies)
Edit: Felvidek is very nice so far, Hellbreach too, had to refund Skald because it gave me a headache. Solid game though, from the little time I played it.

[Rand]

Classes are not well balanced, neither are the feat points available.
Battlemagos, for example, suffers from not enough points AND the lack of armor/shield feats at all.
I tried to make it work, but it doesn't do well, being a ****** caster and a shittier fighter.

Classes have from about 110 to 150 or so feat points to fill, but you only get 64 to 68 points, leaving huge gaps in some, and a lack of diversity in others.
Battlemagos is the worst here. If you spend points making the melee/bow not completely ****, you will make the spellcasting weak, and vice-versa.

No thought was given to matching the feat points by level 20 with the amount available for a class to use. It uses the same formula for all classes (7 or 11 at level 1, plus three per level up), but the feat trees are all over the place in terms of size.

[Irenaeus]

Unbalanced classes? My interest is piqued.

[Acrux]

Battlemagos, for example, suffers from not enough points AND the lack of armor/shield feats at all.

I remember a post at one point that magic classes were one of the last things added. From what I've read, all casters are better for buffs and field control than damage. I saw somewhere that increasing attack magic feats, at least for some classes, increases the maximum damage possible but not the base. So people were complaining that their mages were still doing 1 magic damage despite putting several points into it.

There's supposed to be a new patch tomorrow, but it will mostly be major bug and typo fixes.

It sounds like there's a lot of QoL issues, too. You can't buy stacks of items like arrows, arrows are hard to come by for ranged classes, hidden characters literally blend in with the background on grass . Plus things like all attacks are just in the cardinal directions.

[Rand]

Battlemagos, for example, suffers from not enough points AND the lack of armor/shield feats at all.

I remember a post at one point that magic classes were one of the last things added. From what I've read, all casters are better for buffs and field control than damage. I saw somewhere that increasing attack magic feats, at least for some classes, increases the maximum damage possible but not the base. So people were complaining that their mages were still doing 1 magic damage despite putting several points into it.

There's supposed to be a new patch tomorrow, but it will mostly be major bug and typo fixes.

It sounds like there's a lot of QoL issues, too. You can't buy stacks of items like arrows, arrows are hard to come by for ranged classes, hidden characters literally blend in with the background on grass . Plus things like all attacks are just in the cardinal directions.

Magical Aptitude is the name of the stat.
According to the tooltips, it's a 1 point damage bonus per point.

[Rand]

Plus things like all attacks are just in the cardinal directions.

Melee attacks are just in the cardinal directions. Ranged attacks can be at any point in sight within range.
This is true for both mundane and magic attacks. They are either adjacent (may be a line or cone), area, or targeted at range (may produce an area effect at range).

[Acrux]

According to the tooltips, it's a 1 point damage bonus per point.

Sorry, I wasn't clear with what I meant there. Apparently, only the ceiling increases; the formula displayed is incorrect.

[Rand]

Assholes!
It's very unlikely you'll get more than 4 or 5 points in it the whole game, and that's WITH magic equipment.
It increases randomness, and statistically now gives only a one or two point average increase when enemy health can be often over 50 and even over 100 not uncommonly.
Meanwhile, weapons regularly get bonuses which apply both to the hit roll AND damage result...

[Acrux]

Ha ha ha - the patch he released today apparently broke all saves. They are rolling it back now.

[Rigwort]

It's a shame, I usually go for pure wizard, but the way Battlemagos was described it made me think of a Bright Wizard. I was excited at the prospect, but it's been very disappointing. Magic feels like I'm tickling the enemies. That being said, it is nice to play a game where melee is satisfying. The mechanic where you move into a dead enemy's space after killing them and the fact that cleave is more of an extra attack rather than continuing to damage surrounding enemies gives some strategy to which guy to kill first. I'm enjoying it overall though.

[Acrux]

@Rand - FYI apparently in the release notes for the deprecated patch this is one of the items:

"Made it so that spell aptitude increases both the min and max value of the damage / healing output."

Also: MISC: Removed a few unnecessary uses of the “C-word”

=== Version 1.0.4a-c ===

FEATURES: The life-length of combat pop-ups can be adjusted under Settings -> Gameplay -> Combat Pop-Up Length [Needs Testing]
FEATURES: Whether to give XP to downed characters after combat is now a setting in Settings -> Difficulty -> “XP For Downed Characters”. It is now set to “Enabled” for all difficulties except High.
FEATURES: The recipes listed under and ingredients “Use in” entry are now hyperlinked.
FEATURES: When selecting new spells, you can see all the spells in the relevant school. The spells that are currently locked are marked with a gray padlock.
FEATURES: Feats that increases the tier of a spell school now lists all spell available to that school

MISC: Added some error checking to achievement setting
MISC: Fixed about 150 typos
MISC: Slightly improved mouse interactions with multi-tile prop hitboxes.
MISC: Made it so that spell aptitude increases both the min and max value of the damage / healing output.
MISC: Further worked on improving performance and limiting FPS-drops
MISC: Versioning no longer says pre-launch
MISC: Made the breath-holding puzzle under the lighthouse easier by adding 1 turn to the breath holding duration
MISC: Increased the Vitality provided by heal effects.
MISC: I made the ground tiled darker to improve readability and reduce bleeding.
MISC: Removed a few unnecessary uses of the “C-word”

BUG: Pressing the button ‘2’ while naming saves caused the dialogue window to close.
BUG: The Steam Cloud file was visible in the save folder
BUG: Dropping items on tiles like open doors or on tiles with hidden script triggers did not cause the “bag” icon to show.
BUG: Hospitallers could not use heavy armor
BUG: Some players had the game start fine and then made a save and quit. Upon starting again the game would hang after the logo reveal – before the menus loaded in.
BUG: Ilya in Firgol had “Hound” set as her race.
BUG: The issue with the two guards in the cellar under Oleg’s house should not be less pronounced
BUG: Some props (like trapdoors) were missing labels (names)
BUG: Tried again to fix item weight bug
BUG: Circle of mental restoration stunned targets
BUG: There was a formatting issue in the credits menu with the Raw Fury names (the tabulation was too big)
BUG: Selecting a new character with a potential level up while in the Feat screen did not trigger the level up pop-up
BUG: Certain equipable items (jewelry) would be tagged as stackable and equipping them would cause the entire stack to be equipped. These stacks should now be split up upon loading as non-equippable item can be tagged as stackable.
BUG: In some very narrow cases, if Iago was somehow knocked out in the Father fight, he would occasionally NOT spawn in the sea-cave after leaving the party.
BUG: Fixed a bug where the crafting station in the brewery in Firgol was boxed in.

[Tweed]

Is it **** or not?

[Acrux]

Is it **** or not?

Mostly not, but a little

[Brother Chad]

Is it **** or not?

Depends on your tolerance for boring combat and tedious mechanics.

Otherwise it's better than most.

[Rigwort]

Is it **** or not?

Crafting is unnecessary, though the food and rest mechanic is great. I don't know if it actually made me make any hard decisions yet. Exploration doesn't really exist. The opening is done terribly. The combat is good, though perhaps a bit easy on normal, again melee > magic in both strength and experience. Companions don't get in the way or interact much, and there are mercenaries for hire instead. The classes are... strange? I've had my non-combat priest tank some hits that would demolish a ranger (warrior-class). Quests are fine, the good ones have you do some combat, but the quests don't feel too puzzling. I like the visuals, but I like muh pixels.

It's okay. It goes down easy but I'm not sure about the nutrition.

[1998]

He set up an experimental branch on Steam now. Is it that buggy? Seems odd to do so a week after release.

[Acrux]

I think he's being cautious because his last patch caused major problems with saves.

[Rand]

@Rand - FYI apparently in the release notes for the deprecated patch this is one of the items:

"Made it so that spell aptitude increases both the min and max value of the damage / healing output."

Also: MISC: Removed a few unnecessary uses of the “C-word”

=== Version 1.0.4a-c ===

FEATURES: The life-length of combat pop-ups can be adjusted under Settings -> Gameplay -> Combat Pop-Up Length [Needs Testing]
FEATURES: Whether to give XP to downed characters after combat is now a setting in Settings -> Difficulty -> “XP For Downed Characters”. It is now set to “Enabled” for all difficulties except High.
FEATURES: The recipes listed under and ingredients “Use in” entry are now hyperlinked.
FEATURES: When selecting new spells, you can see all the spells in the relevant school. The spells that are currently locked are marked with a gray padlock.
FEATURES: Feats that increases the tier of a spell school now lists all spell available to that school

MISC: Added some error checking to achievement setting
MISC: Fixed about 150 typos
MISC: Slightly improved mouse interactions with multi-tile prop hitboxes.
MISC: Made it so that spell aptitude increases both the min and max value of the damage / healing output.
MISC: Further worked on improving performance and limiting FPS-drops
MISC: Versioning no longer says pre-launch
MISC: Made the breath-holding puzzle under the lighthouse easier by adding 1 turn to the breath holding duration
MISC: Increased the Vitality provided by heal effects.
MISC: I made the ground tiled darker to improve readability and reduce bleeding.
MISC: Removed a few unnecessary uses of the “C-word”

BUG: Pressing the button ‘2’ while naming saves caused the dialogue window to close.
BUG: The Steam Cloud file was visible in the save folder
BUG: Dropping items on tiles like open doors or on tiles with hidden script triggers did not cause the “bag” icon to show.
BUG: Hospitallers could not use heavy armor
BUG: Some players had the game start fine and then made a save and quit. Upon starting again the game would hang after the logo reveal – before the menus loaded in.
BUG: Ilya in Firgol had “Hound” set as her race.
BUG: The issue with the two guards in the cellar under Oleg’s house should not be less pronounced
BUG: Some props (like trapdoors) were missing labels (names)
BUG: Tried again to fix item weight bug
BUG: Circle of mental restoration stunned targets
BUG: There was a formatting issue in the credits menu with the Raw Fury names (the tabulation was too big)
BUG: Selecting a new character with a potential level up while in the Feat screen did not trigger the level up pop-up
BUG: Certain equipable items (jewelry) would be tagged as stackable and equipping them would cause the entire stack to be equipped. These stacks should now be split up upon loading as non-equippable item can be tagged as stackable.
BUG: In some very narrow cases, if Iago was somehow knocked out in the Father fight, he would occasionally NOT spawn in the sea-cave after leaving the party.
BUG: Fixed a bug where the crafting station in the brewery in Firgol was boxed in.

What a ****.