April: Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown

[Atlantico]

OK I have Starwind set up and ready to go!

What the ...

[rusty_shackleford]

OK I have Starwind set up and ready to go!

What the ...

There's no time limit on badges, ya know.
Still accepting badge ideas for it too.

[wndrbr]

How can I use a class ability outside of combat? Want to revive a fallen comrade using healer's recovery ability, but there is no button for that.

[WhiteShark]

How can I use a class ability outside of combat? Want to revive a fallen comrade using healer's recovery ability, but there is no button for that.

You can't.

[wndrbr]

I'm running a balanced party (a human knight, two dwarven warriors, a human bard, a human ranger, an elf healer and an elf wizard), playing on Hard. Just finished the Desert area, it sucked balls - enemies now can easily one-shot even my tankiest dude clad in plate armor, while it takes me two or three to kill just one of them. I've been told that it's an anomaly and the difficulty goes back to being reasonable again, we'll see.

Ranger kinda sucks, wish I would've replaced him with a second wizard. I didn't know that the game has no concept of range, and thus no bows/crossbows/other ranged weapons, and didn't want to start over.

I've read some of the earlier posts in this thread, and dunno about the knight/warrior balancing. My guys are at level 20 now, and I don't really see the difference in damage output between them, because the damage spread is wildly huge - sometimes they hit for like 20, sometimes for 200. Meanwhile the encumbrance issue is very noticeable - you only get 1 point per 10 STR, and I just can't see how my warriors can reach the same level of encumbrance as my knight, unless I buy all of them girdles of carrying.

[wndrbr]

Are there any magic items worth a buy? How many crystals can you accumulate during a playthrough? Is it some super limited currency that you can only get from magic towers, or there will be a way to grind mobs for it?

[wndrbr]

The sample size is small, but it's interesting that nearly all of us picked 'Hard'. I tend to pick one minus the hardest option available when given the choice of multiple difficulties because the hardest is usually overtuned for people who already played, and normal too easy.

I picked hard because i've read Jarlfrank's review on steam, and he said the game is easy.

[Acrux]

Ranger kinda sucks, wish I would've replaced him with a second wizard. I didn't know that the game has no concept of range, and thus no bows/crossbows/other ranged weapons, and didn't want to start over.

Ranger is pretty unanimously considred the worst class. The sequel does add ranged weapons, and it had a balance update a few weeks ago that was supposed to have improved the ranger (among other things). I haven't played it, though.

[Anon]

I'm running a balanced party (a human knight, two dwarven warriors, a human bard, a human ranger, an elf healer and an elf wizard), playing on Hard. Just finished the Desert area, it sucked balls - enemies now can easily one-shot even my tankiest dude clad in plate armor, while it takes me two or three to kill just one of them. I've been told that it's an anomaly and the difficulty goes back to being reasonable again, we'll see.

I ran into this exactly same issue. You can do like I did and suffer through each enemy and go back to the healing house in start of the desert to restart. Or

► Show Spoiler

there's a boat that you can find earlier that can cross deep water. You can use this boat to access other regions that have easier enemies.

Ranger kinda sucks, wish I would've replaced him with a second wizard. I didn't know that the game has no concept of range, and thus no bows/crossbows/other ranged weapons, and didn't want to start over.

I've read some of the earlier posts in this thread, and dunno about the knight/warrior balancing. My guys are at level 20 now, and I don't really see the difference in damage output between them, because the damage spread is wildly huge - sometimes they hit for like 20, sometimes for 200. Meanwhile the encumbrance issue is very noticeable - you only get 1 point per 10 STR, and I just can't see how my warriors can reach the same level of encumbrance as my knight, unless I buy all of them girdles of carrying.

I liked ranger especially in midgame (until lvl 30) because they can do decent damage both with melee and magic, therefore always being useful in fights. It's later on that they become useless due to doing less damage than all pure martial class while not being able to provide nearly enough support as bard and healer do.

I agree with your take knight/warrior duality. In my game the knight was the MVP until the end, I liked being able to always give it the tankiest armor, and it never really got behind my warrior in damage output. I find warrior's special (stun) way more useful though. Edit: now I remember warrior's special attack isn't stun, but strike. Strike is also very good because guaranteed crits are always good obviously, though I think stun gives more mileage in fights. Knight's special attack sucks though.

Btw the game is easy enough in hard mode that you can win with an unoptimized party. I had 2 ranger-like classes in my party (1 ranger and 1 battlesmith) and could win.

[WhiteShark]

Are there any magic items worth a buy? How many crystals can you accumulate during a playthrough? Is it some super limited currency that you can only get from magic towers, or there will be a way to grind mobs for it?

I didn't buy any on my run but some of them are probably worth it. Mobs don't respawn as far as I know so the total supply of crystals is fairly limited. I'd probably save for one of the really strong items like the Hero's Sword.

[SpellSword]

Are there any magic items worth a buy? How many crystals can you accumulate during a playthrough? Is it some super limited currency that you can only get from magic towers, or there will be a way to grind mobs for it?

I think the Cloak of Displacement is worth it.

[ArcaneLurker]

You all bought the game, right?

[Xenich]

I chose "normal" because I believed this tooltip:


And by the time I realized it was too easy, I was unwilling to start over.
I would now recommend hard as the best level to play, but am still unhappy with the doubled prices at that level.

Yeah, same... I should have went with my first instinct due to the fact that most games these days, the difficulty is shifted from what it used to be in the past.

[Kalarion]

Are there any magic items worth a buy? How many crystals can you accumulate during a playthrough? Is it some super limited currency that you can only get from magic towers, or there will be a way to grind mobs for it?

Cloaks of Displacement were covered. The Ultimate Ring of Protection is good too. Girdle of Carrying is nice if you have hybrids. I wouldn't bother with the Hero's Sword, you get one as a quest reward and later on the Grand Flails of Slaying (available for gold at Master Smith number 4, I believe) are probably the best weapons in the game for melee.

Some of the other items are useful for optional late-game fights like the dragons.

Knight v Warrior isn't really an issue unless you're playing on Insane. But going on pure damage output capability and survivability, the Warrior wins out. Warriors get more HP scaling from Toughness and the highest damage scaling coefficient. Remember that Armor is one of the worst stats in the game, so the ability to wear heavy plate is useful mainly for bonuses, not damage mitigation. With that in mind, the Warrior's extra HP is very helpful.

Rangers are terrible, and I didn't have much use for Battlesmith in my first playthrough. I took a Sage and an extra Warrior to replace them for the Adventurer's Guild run, it was worth it. But like others have said, you can win the game no problem with a Ranger in the party.

[Anon]

Endgame spoilers:

► Show Spoiler

Covering all resistances is an issue mainly against the black dragon that does all types of damage against all party members. For that fight I found being able to use onyx plate armor (I guess this is the one that gives a lot of resistances) in my knight very helpful, while for other classes it gets trickier.

[wndrbr]

Found all three magic gems, cleared a tower with a crazy wizard who stole the crown, acquired door unsealer. Now the main wizard guy asks me to investigate the tower's basement, but there's a beholder who wipes the floor with my party. Is it really time to fight him, or there's some kind of catch and I should be doing something else?

[WhiteShark]

Found all three magic gems, cleared a tower with a crazy wizard who stole the crown, acquired door unsealer. Now the main wizard guy asks me to investigate the tower's basement, but there's a beholder who wipes the floor with my party. Is it really time to fight him, or there's some kind of catch and I should be doing something else?

If there's parts of the map you haven't explored you could do that for experience, but otherwise, yeah, you're on the right track. Maybe you can flee or walk around the beholder?

[Rand]

there's a beholder who wipes the floor with my party. Is it really time to fight him, or there's some kind of catch and I should be doing something else?

There's no catch. Those are top tier non-boss enemies.
Come back when you're strong enough to win at least one fight with one.
(There aren't very many of them in the game, either.)

[Anon]

Found all three magic gems, cleared a tower with a crazy wizard who stole the crown, acquired door unsealer. Now the main wizard guy asks me to investigate the tower's basement, but there's a beholder who wipes the floor with my party. Is it really time to fight him, or there's some kind of catch and I should be doing something else?

If he's truly wiping the floor, then you haven't explored enough and your party is underleveled, then you should go to other places, do other quests then return.

Though it could be just that you aren't meeting the resistances beholder checks against. In that case, you should try to cover your whole party with resistances against beholder attacks.

[wndrbr]

Yeah I still had anti-lightning stuff equipped on my dudes after finishing the Ivory tower, and it looks like the beholder uses fire attacks.

[Watser]

Alright I think I did everything - even the doom dungeon. The final encounter was a massive anticlimax after having gone up against the black dragon.

[rusty_shackleford]

Alright I think I did everything - even the doom dungeon. The final encounter was a massive anticlimax after having gone up against the black dragon.

You must have missed a bunch, way below @WhiteShark's score

[Watser]

Alright I think I did everything - even the doom dungeon. The final encounter was a massive anticlimax after having gone up against the black dragon.

You must have missed a bunch, way below @WhiteShark's score

From what I can see, 3 monsters and 200k experience.
If there are any hidden megabosses I missed them.

[Anon]

You took 2k more turns to complete, perhaps that's it, though apparently XP matters way more

Maybe you forgot to destroy the mirrors in the ogre forts that give 100k xp each?

[Watser]

You took 2k more turns to complete, perhaps that's it

Maybe you forgot to destroy the mirrors in the ogre forts that give 100k xp each?

I autistically walked on every square possible to make sure my maps were nice and neat. God damn mountain tiles ruining it.

Only broke the obligatory mirror.

[wndrbr]