The horror golem's debuffs left me so low that another gold demon made me bite the dust, wasn't even close either, dealt like 150 damage when I had 3 health
It was a good run too, but I tried to grab some gear when my bag was full of useless stuff, the gear was probably useless too, and the poison+minion feast+blood retort nuked half my health, I probably would have died to myself TBH
yeah this run was lucky, the armor could cleanse bleed from me removing anything negative from humbaba and endurance battle revenants, but I got greedy
I wonder how a pugilism+executioner prestige+psiblades would do
I dont know if this is a glitch or just not showing, but the armour i should gain from the executioner prestige class is not registered on the UI, and i cant tell if it is affecting damage from hits or not
Yeah being in a "higher cycle" pretty much rolls 1-cycle # on a few of the enemy's attributes when it spawns, and on the glory you gain when you kill an enemy, and multiplies the attribute / glory by that much
So in the Third Cycle, a rat-man will have x1-3 max life, and you'll gain x1-3 glory when you kill it
trying a strat now of a pyrokinesis or gore cleave (can't decide which) templar of Eresh, because killing my own slouching dead and turning them into cadavers which I kill too, means a lot of anoint, meaning I can destroy enemies quickly, the second to last boss concerns me though
oh yeah, assassin skill would be nasty on a templar, but you would need to find a pierce weapon first, that's the only issue. I also began running power charge for the extra dmg buffs, making a fire+elec+martial build, true templar of hadad.
Just made the goofiest psychonaut build, i had the robe that would remove stasis with magus and an astral weapon, so i keep teleporting like 9 times per move
Love this. Tried to do it this morning but died way before you. I think I needed to invest in Vigor for when I teleported into the center of a bunch of Seshas
This just happened to me, albeit much earlier. I had the astral robe too and thought I was completely invincible. I even had Master Teleport for the healing. Suddenly, I was not invincible lol
I finally beat it! When tanking, I find that once you get enough strength to pass encumbrance than you really don't need to worry about Inflexibility (especially if you find the Ice Helm). The main enemies I lost characters too were the stench drake, poison enemies, and the star brutes. I'm looking forward to the full release!
This is amazing. I love seeing strength guys go all the way. Very much admiring this run. The current version is harder to beat than previous ones, so this is extra glorious
Just getting my feet wet with the game, but I think it's really cool so far. In particular, you really nailed all the flavor text for exploration and the like. Excited to see the full release.
I have finally won with ascetic Qamar after so many tries most of them dying to the final boss due to the inability to burst him down and/or him killing you with 2 hits before you gained enough stacks.
Speaking of stacks this build relies on gaining effects via standstills like focus from the Ascetic class and repulsions from psychokinesis and master repulsion to abuse Qamars ability twice per standstill to deal massive amounts of astral damage to enemies in a 2 tile range, while psychokinesis targets enemies at a much farther 5 tile range increasing the builds dpr and providing an early "long range" damage output. I chose Hadad because of the healing prayer and especially the +5 speed, Humbaba is also a good pick but Hadad is simply better because the focus increases the bleed damage is increased by focus, which is how I lost my last run before this one.
Purple mage head cap provides damage at infinite range targeting any enemy on the map as well as dealing more astral damage since it is a separate astral damage source. Purple blue sash is amazing since it not only deals a lot more damage but it also bypasses the astral and psychic damage resistances, but the strongest item equipped is the robe of the astral wanderer. As you can see from the picture the build completely uses dex (I'll explain why later) and the robe increases both astral damage and psychic damage by 3% per dex, meaning with 37 dex the damage increase is a whopping 111% percent more damage. The weapons are a bit unoptimal since I didn't get the icon of the mysterious order and I chose the robe of the astral wanderer over the icon of the astral wanderer.
Now for the reason why this build chooses mostly dex is simple, you get more turns than your opponent due to your massive speed which means you deal more damage AND most importantly gain more stacks of repulsion and focus to trigger Qamar and increase all of your damage. At some point you will be able to reach 5 bars of effects while destroying an entire boss level and not take any damage all just by standing still.
i suggest taking 1 psychokinesis at the start then put everything else into master repulsion, then for stats put everything into dex for maximum speed, unless you are encumbered then you can add strength.
I just got the best run! One-turn killed the final boss with puglism 12, guard, 5 inflex, and rigid violence, so I could've done a 72 hit combo. With my psychokenesis and master repulsion for extra damage, i killed the boss in only 30-40 hits though. I also have those red gloves for healing, and ice helmet for additional healing per point of inflex.
Thanks, that is super motivating. Backpack hero is a really well designed game that I look at a lot. I love how the themed builds feel like their theme (big weapons, mana connections etc)
Hey, I just wanted to say that the browser version is not such a good experience as the game is on a whole, because of the lack of saving (but this might be a problem on my end). This game focuses on character builds, a major portion of which comes from the three things we can select at the start, and the problem is, we need to unlock them by playing the game.
This would have been fine if we could choose what to unlock next, or if those things stayed unlocked, but everytime the browser reloads, everything resets.
Again, this could be a feature, that unlocks are also temporary, so that you are forced to use different combinations in different sittings, but, every playthrough is very long, takes like 1/2 hrs, and so unlocking many things at once is very difficult. And if you do not get synergic unlocks early on, the gameplay can become mundane...
This is a great game, but these things have prevented me from experimenting with the classes much (like you intend players to do)
Thanks, this is good to know. For most people I think it works. I believe the save data is stored in the cookies, so if those get cleared it resets it. I use Chrome.
Let me know and I can send you a downloadable build. There's a text file you can edit that unlocks everything. Technically, I can export to Mac and Linux but haven't really tested it yet.
Got here in just a few tries, first tried out basic summoning strat, didn't get to the other side, tried pugilism since i love punching, came pretty close just died to the golden demon because of their insane damage. And finally the build that got me there, The Burning Juggernaut. The build mostly consists of burning heart and pyrokinesis with Hadad to just heal an insane amount that the only thing that came close to killing me was the golden demons but they weren't enough either, every other fight was just a really long slugfest where they try to damage me but i just healed back up instantly, added by the fact i was wielding the fire axe that dealt psychic damage when i dealt fire damage with the robe that increased both fire damage and lightning damage based on the weapon size and pants that dealt 50% of lightning damage as fire damage the build does good damage and has insane survivability. But the best part is when i was against the king of colors, the final boss. He was healing all the damage i dealt to him and he was summoning more enemies as i kill them so i decided to use the fully charged third prayer and it just killed him. It did so much damage that the fight was over. Games really fun and you can make so much builds in it. I'm gonna be playing this for a while. 9.7/10
So I don't want to leave things on a sour note here, because the last post I made feels like a very negative post for a game that I honestly love. I still love the game that hasn't changed and if anything I only love it more than when I first discovered it. I'm just going to be posting in the comments a lot less because all of my feedback is going to be going to the discord rather than on here. If anything I'll probably occasionally post builds on here for new players to try out because sometimes this game can get a bit overwhelming with the large number of combinations you can have for a character.
I will restate that this game is probably one of the best games on itch, period. It's a real hidden gem on the site. Currently the dev is really good about taking any feedback you might have for them and they are constantly updating and tweaking the game which means any complaint or criticism you see in my past comments has actually been addressed or explained. The game is phenomenal and I really can't state enough how much fun I've had playing it (or how many hours I've spent playing it). Some games on this site feel rather disposable, something you can pick up play for a couple of hours and then forget. Path of Achra is not that, I'll be driving home or doing something else and I'll think of a build I'd love to run in the game and despite how quick a session might go I have a hard time trying everything out that I want to try just because of the shear volume of different potential builds you can play.
Long story short, if you like a game with rich build variety and tons of options or you like seeing how ridiculous you can get with a character this game is second to none.
Thank you again, Legend! I'm so glad and lucky to have your feedback, and this goes to anyone else of course. This type of game is really hard to tune right without people trying to play it in different ways. It is a comfort to not be alone while navigating the void-labyrinth of game design
It is me I am back again, I've sunk another 12 hours or so into the new build of the game. It's in a few words: a mixed bag. There are some really great things to it, there are some rather bad parts to the changes. So I'll get that all out of the way, I will say that the game is still fun though it doesn't feel as good as it did before the changes but we'll get into that.
The good The way removing level up bonuses and just making them bonuses from increasing stats is great. I wish this had been around from the start, it really makes me want to mix stats, though will really doesn't get enough in any sense of the word I wish will added something else even if it was just minor bonuses to other stats, though admittedly will always provided very little. The bonus to will was that you didn't need to be close to the combat. The fact that I can dip into dex to get my speed above 10 or 20 is really nice, it means that I'm not stuck with a build that either hard invests in speed or actively wants 1 speed, though that's still a thing. I do kind of wish that still gave a small hp bonus maybe half the points you get from purely investing in hp (or further increase the bonus you get from just investing in hp because stats are still always going to be worth more). I love how all of the classes and races provide more (including speed and health which again means you'll more easily be able to reach a speed over 10 if you want that.
The bad Block is better but it's still not great, I did successfully build a block armor build thanks to the bonuses you get from wearing hand armor and using shields though I might suggest that giving the block % a bonus from inflexibility might be useful as well even if it's just a small additive one. Block still struggles because some things add one kind of block and others add other kinds, though the elimination of the defense stat is generally good and I applaud doing so. The
The ugly The simplification of the damage system is...rough. Where as the elimination of level up bonuses makes me want to spread out my stat points the elimination of stat scaling on weapons and powers has done the opposite, it has also notably killed will or builds that use will. Powers don't scale very well and are for the most part to expensive to invest in them as much as you like, you can no longer really afford to spread out your powers as much as you could and are more rewarded for grabbing 2-3 powers and investing only in them. Even more so a pure martial build is the most powerful option you can choose. The mubarizum build is almost untouched except that it has a worse dodge and speed making it so it doesn't get as far into the void, the strength build struggles for damage end game because str doesn't really add much for damage, and will builds are dead. Summon builds are slogs because you can't support your own summons with damage and if something is heavily resistant to what you do you can sit there for minutes waiting for your summons to chip them down. The kinesis powers are terrible for damage without heavy power point investments and if you kill everything on your way to the obelisk you will end up with 23 glory or 28 power points to spread around and you need to make sure you're investing in your heavy damage dealers because putting points in a power is where the damage comes from, not stats. The only stat that makes any amount of difference for damage really is dex and even then at most you're probably going to see a 1.5x increase in what you do. While the changes may make things simpler, I think it is to the detriment of other mechanics.
The mixed I don't know where else to put this because it's neither ugly nor all bad nor all good. The new level up system is a bit of everything. It definitely has problems but it also fixes some problems. Getting a build off the ground is much easier and you aren't as incentivized to kill everything in the room, but the increase of required experience points to level means that while the early game is easier because you level up faster at first, the late game is much more demanding and can turn into a slog, compounding with the other problems. With how damage scaling now works I almost think that the old experience scaling can still work with how starved every build is for power points now that powers are the main source of damage.
The overall The game is still fun though I think it could get frustrating. The change to how stats works makes some powers and a lot of weapons not worth taking or using. The builds that were strong are all weaker, some far more than others. Other than the old mubarizum build (invest everything into dex, focus and vitality. Look for the ash sword, the shifting green shield, and or the dualist's claw depending on what damage you want to focus on: slash, bludgeon, or pierce. Look for the pants that make each of those better respectively). The builds I've listed thus far are mostly irrelevant (which I would expect when the game grows and changes). So far as I can tell martial is the most powerful power tree. Str builds are tanks, Dex builds are damage, and will builds don't currently work. I'll post more after I've played more if I have more to say, still enjoying the game even if some of it frustrates me and looking forward to what comes next.
So it's been a few days and I've really been going over builds to see what works and what doesn't. I feel like I'm missing something though cause I still have a hard time getting very far in the void. Still, despite my hardships in the void I feel like I find myself falling into a dominant strategy and it's hard to pull myself out of it. Even more, playing unconventional builds feels not fun. Sometimes getting past the first screen can be a bit of an rng fest even for a solid build but if your build comes online late or is experimental it is like trying to win the lottery.
First the solid builds I've found: Lochra Warrior of Hadad (or Humbaba but ironically Hadad plays better), Kull Mubarizun of Humbaba (like warrior you'd think Hadad, but Humbaba benefits it more), Naqui Zealot of Mehtar (already posted about this one as a solid prayer/summon build), Stran Amir of Ashem/Eresh (a good starter build to get glory flowing as mentioned earlier, Eresh can be fun but you can end up with a domina effect that wipes out all your summons with little effect).
I've gotten to the void with all four of these builds, ironically the melee ones are actually the easier ones to reach the void with and the Mubarizum is the only one I've gotten remotely close to reaching the end of the void with. I have yet to find a will build that doesn't rely at least somewhat on summoning to stay alive. Each of the attribute builds have a weakness to them:
Strength can survive hits but unless you invest heavily in vitality you will die a death of a thousand cuts you also have to be somewhat careful of your encumbrance because you can't afford for it to be too high because you need speed to hope to make it . Speed is key for any melee build and you want to have over 20 at least for melee though over 30 is better. This also limits you on inflexibility but less than you would actually think. Tends to die from the fact that your best defense is armor and armor is mostly worthless late game because most enemies do non physical damage and you won't have enough armor to handle that. Unlike most other builds though, strength builds don't really need to every change out their items and can get by with what they start with if you go warrior.
Dexterity is a massive powerhouse, it starts off somewhat weak and hurts for damage in the early game. It depends heavily on items and rng to get off the ground: dodge starts out weak and is a very rng defense to begin with but is the best defense in the game because it can completely negate an attack and works equally well against everything but AOEs. You need items though to deal appreciable damage and your items are limited, because the best your strength is going to be is 5 if you took humbaba so you need to make sure they're light and have effects you care about. They're major weakness is that AOEs ignore dodge and kill you instantly if you get caught in them in the void and early in the void and aschra your dodges are not very reliable to protect you. They obviously rely on speed the most and you want a speed in the mid 60s by the time you reach the void.
Will builds very but getting them off the ground can either be a nightmare if you get swarmed early game or easy if you're playing the oozomancer. Their main defense is just having as many bodies on the field at the same time between them and their enemies and hoping it's enough, they also suffer if they have the wrong damage type for the job. You need to diversify and have as many different damage types as possible, you cannot focus in just one because not all damage types are built equal and you actually have trash damage for the whole game. Where as a melee character can run up against something that has a 90% damage reduction to their damage and still make it through due to the shear number of attacks they're pumping out, you can't. You put out one attack a round not including your summons and your summons might not be doing the right damage. Ironically Will builds care the least about incumbrance and inflexibility because you're probably going to have a speed of 1 anyway, so you can wear whatever armor you want but not whatever weapon you want because you need to hit and your accuracy is probably trash as well.
Separating these comments out based on what they're about. Next thing I want to mention is defenses, because not all defenses are built equally. We'll start from best to worst:
At the top of the bunch is speed, speed is the best defense. It's also the best offence. Speed won't actually protect you if you do get caught in an attack but it can keep you from getting caught in an attack altogether. If you know the enemy you can dance in and out of its AOEs and you just dance around them in general. You'll have more attacks and better mobility and mobility is king.
Second is dodge, unreliable at the beginning but the best in the end game where it really hurts to die after sinking so much time into a game. It's incredibly reliant on dex to increase. As of now don't bother with powers and abilities that increase dodge dice, so far as I can tell they don't do anything; or at the very least if you check your stats afterwards they don't show them doing anything. This is a consistent problem with a lot of the skills and powers but I'll talk about that later.
Third (and a distant third at that) is armor. Armor is easy to get, and easy to get a lot of. It's consistent early game and will carry you almost all the way to the void depending on what you're playing. It's weakness comes when you're dealing with anything nonphysical and the fact that while you can raise it pretty quickly with powers, you are usually sacrificing precious damage or precious speed to do so because you could be buying that instead. Actual equip able armor itself can be a crap shoot because it can give you a massive armor bonus but usually at the expense of speed which is a better defense over all.
Fourth is HP, though it's probably tied in usefulness for Armor. It'll keep you alive though for a lot of builds it can be the difference between dying in one hit or dying in two. You only need to worry about this if you're a strength character. Other characters just need to worry about healing DoT damage that they receive for the most part or the odd AOE they get caught in in the early game.
Fifth is resistances, you'd think they'd be higher but if you play a skeleton you know otherwise. These can help a lot with Armor and HP but you should not rely on the as they only go up to 75 and it'll be nearly impossible to cover all your bases. Physical, Poison, Blood, Fire, and Lightning are the ones you'll most want to cover though as they're the easiest ones to get caught with and have the DoTs you need to watch out for.
At the bottom at a very, very, very distant sixth is block and defense. They're tied because they're the same defense and because of this they're both broken. The only character that can pull this off is a mubarizun pugilist and that isn't a very good build to begin with. The weakness of this is that it relies on two stats to work: Dex and Str. You need to have a high dex for your defense because without defense you won't block, then you need a good strength for block so that you can actually block. Mixed builds don't currently work very well and a high dex will give you a good dodge and a good speed anyway. On top of this, on paper block is better than armor but in play it's basically the same. The difference is that when you block you don't receive chip damage and you don't get the DoT that can go with it. On the other hand it doesn't work on AoEs so that's a wash anyway. Skills and powers that increase block work but because of how inconsistent this defense is and how hard it is to build for it, it's not worth it.
The final thing I want to bring up is the trees because not all trees are built equally either. Some of them are very powerful and very reliable and others really need some help. We'll go from left to right with them starting with Martial.
Martial is a very solid power to pull from, it's basically required if you're running a melee build or really anything but a pure will build. Unfortunately due to the nature of the game, Vitality and Focus are really the only two things that are worth taking from it; though those two abilities alone justify taking the power. Focus makes you faster and you attack more often on top of that though the attacks themselves don't deal much damage, both things you want if you're going into melee; you also supposedly get more hit dice though if that is true it doesn't show up on your character sheet. Vitality is the best end of combat heal in the game and the best armor ability in the game. The others are situational and not as good as you think. Pugilist feels like it needs just more power and possibly a decrease in the cost, its weakness comes from the fact that weapon effects can be powerful beyond the damage they can do. Guard relies on you getting hit and the damage you deal in response though a good damage type just isn't high enough to justify keying off of armor and block, especially with a character that probably doesn't have much health or strength to begin with. Alacrity is good but it relies on an rng based defense for a character that would probably be better off just attacking more rather than rolling the dice on dodge, I don't think the dodge bonus actually works though because the numbers don't increase and even when I take it a lot I don't see a difference.
Fire, it has the most powers out of any of the trees and so many of them are summoning powers. Ironically fire is probably one of the worst powers you can take if you are a summoner in my experience as a lot of what it does has friendly fire problems and even with high fire resistance you'll be frying your own minions pretty quick.
-Pyromancy is a trap, only will characters will want it but it will kill your minions.
-Burning heart is a rather disappointing heal though I suppose it could work for a dex build if there wasn't already a better element for a dex build. The real strength of this power comes when you get immolation.
-Inflame is a great way for a will character to increase their accuracy, something will characters desperately need. The ifrits are nice but suffer from the same problem summoning with fire does
-Immolation can be good on a strength build though it only really shines when you have burning heart and can apply a lot of scorch really fast. Combine the two and you can see some truly terrifying damage numbers come out.
-Shamshar feels bad. It's a worse version of skera in a number of ways. You're basically stuck playing a dex build with this and even then it's going to be a sword and shield murabizun which isn't the best option there. I honestly think this would function better if it gave you bonuses if your encumbrance was higher on account of the fact that the best blunt and slash weapons are all usually heavy enough to put you close to the limit on this tried running a fire lightning mubarizun and it was a nightmare to get running and was worthless against the beetles that show up early in the game and once again the bonus hit dice didn't show up in the character sheet. To expensive and weaker than a similar option.
-Flame cultists are really cool for that deal fire in a line nonsense they have when any summoning happens but once again you'll kill all of your summons doing that. Can make for a decently fun summoner early game but gets hard stopped by anything with a lick of fire resistance. The damage they pump out and the damage the fire lines do is paltry for the price though, there are better summoning options.
Lightning is a star player in the powers, it's the go to if you are playing a dex character and that's it but what it does it does well. Sadly it really only does one thing well which is Skera.
-Electrokinesis is a trap, any character that's going to want to use it is a will character and will have summons for defense. This will kill your summons pretty fast actually.
-Electromancy is a summoning ability and the ability to pray enemies to death, could be a fun way to run a zealot but you run into the problem if you run out of prayers and everything isn't dead because your summons probably will be.
-Power Charge suffers from being a low damage increase, there are better ways to pump your damage. Might function well on a dex speed character that can really pump up their charge level but Skera exists and it's really powerful.
-Skera the premier ability of the lightning Tree. An incredible pick, expensive but worth it. The damage increase is sizable the speed increase is always nice. If you're playing a dex build there is really no reason not to take this. You should in fact be trying to get this by the green tower if you can.
(will post the rest at a later date, I have stuff to say about all the elements but life is coming up)
Thank you for these comments -- it really helps reading them. You've nailed a lot of the nagging balance problems I've been dealing with and that other players have brought up, especially those who read the mechanics and try to break the game in the Void, which is where some cracks begin to show, lol. I think a final version will officially have the game balanced around beating the Obelisk, or that was the plan, with the Void as a bonus. But as long as the Void exists, it becomes the standard challenge, which means the game has to be balanced around those very late builds, which definitely changes things. It narrows the potential builds for sure. I'll definitely add a preliminary victory screen for beating the Obelisk, and keep thinking about this.
DEX will continue to be a problem as long as the Speed bonus works the way it does, with so much being accumulated. I think this can only be solved with a rework of the bonus, a rework of Speed entirely, or just adding more powers that give Speed based on other attributes, particularly WIL. If Speed was something you could only raise by investing in certain powers (with a variety) it might be a better situation. I don't really like having to balance powerful enemies around players who potentially have 60 speed
The "pure WIL damage" archetype needs some love -- it's suffering from the fact that it was by far the strongest in very early builds, so I've been subconsciously regulating it more than, for example, DEX
In terms of mechanics in general, I'm extremely dissatisfied with how difficult it is to see stuff like a bonus to Hit "dice" -- it's been in the back of my mind that I might remake these systems to be simpler and more intuitive. This applies to defense / block as well. For example, if dice "sides" were fixed, bonuses would be easier to see. The current system gives more character to equipment by fluctuating sides with different stat scalings but in practice it's not really satisfyingly visible to the player
Anyway I very much appreciate your comments and will eagerly read them. Also be warned, yesterday's update messes with some of this stuff
Well looks like my review of each of the elements is going to be on hold for awhile considering how things have changed. On the changes having played this for about 6 hours so far today, I can say they are somewhat exciting. I finally was able to bring a non summoner will build to the void thanks to changes and the dex build has become...different. I think this will add more diversity of builds from what I've seen.
The change to focus actually encourages you to have at least 2 points in every stat and it makes the humbaba mubarizun build deal insane damage when you stack it. Ironically it's probably not all that good for str two hander builds. Dual wielding is dead thanks to this, it used to rule dex builds but this also means that you are not as item bound with finding a claw, and a rinoir and makes spears actually usable weapons. It also made the whip, usually a frustratingly useless nothing weapon into one that's worth using. On the other hand a dex mubarizun really only wants to stand and fight when they need to heal in combat with blood rage, otherwise they should be constantly on the move. You can't just tab and forget with the build now, it's a very active and engaging playstyle. The changes actually incentivize you to just focus martial though, as the massive damage bonus from skera is no longer a thing, though I do enjoy that skera and shamshar are no longer weight locked I do think they are less useful overall.
I think you'll enjoy knowing that life/blood is now a very solid build thanks to the introduction of vinakenisis and the changes to piercing vines now doing blood damage instead of piercing. I think it fits thematically just as well as life/death. A Naqui Ascetic of Mehtar is an incredibly solid build that has an answer for most things, they can summon for the early game to get off the ground. They have solid area damage, and with Piercing vine they have very good damage with bleed but can fall back on the ever reliable blunt damage. With access to Mehtar they can reliably heal themselves as well. I'm glad to finally see something mesh with blood because along with the psychic and astral power pools, I think that blood needs a lot of love as they are all fairly weak. Related a similar build exists for life/ice with obedient ice and cryomancy, though this one is far more passive and focuses mostly on just catching enemies in your damaging area.
A suggestion that I thought of that might incentivize mixed stat builds. It was something when I saw how focus works with it's passing attacks. Consider giving different weapons and powers a primary and a secondary damage stat. Perhaps for axes for example, str has 2x damage multiplier and dex has a normal 1x multiplier. This way you get more from investing in str but the few points you do put in dex actually make a very big difference as well. A character that has a 12 and a 1 in dex would hypothetically get 24 damage out of the axe but if they invested 2 points into dex they would end up with 72 because the dex acts as a multiplier. Something to consider is all.
*Edit: Recently got time to test out the infinite scorch build, it's not really overpowered at all. Scorch only goes off on game turn which for some builds can be a rather long time, on top of that any enemy that can have upwards of 10 instances of scorch applied to them has more to worry about than the scorch in the first place. Any attack that could apply enough instances of scorch to be worrying would be an attack that either kills any monster in one hit, or kills it in two hits. Keep in mind, that to apply ten instances of scorch with pyromancy you would have to do 1000 damage, and the scorches themselves would only do 300 damage in total. Could be powerful with immolation but again if you're doing 1000 damage in fire, the next hit doing 2000 or 3000 or even 4000 isn't all that important, you can only make an enemy so dead and there are easier ways to do 2k or more damage by the time you reach the void. Best way to do so would be through hadad's blessing so far as I can tell.
Also the changes to focus really hurt str based melee builds specifically (though once again it's great for dex based ones). Rampage would help but rampage is too MAD or multi attribute dependent and costs too much to be useful. When you're nearing the void, anything that is going to trigger rampage has to have gone through your armor which means it's dealing over 200 damage more than likely. At best if you do an even spread between str and will (which would be suboptimal in almost every other aspect) you would have to sink 5 skill levels into rampage to not lose health on it on average and around 200 damage is pretty average for what you run into near the obelisk. This would in an average run leave you with enough points to buy one focus to increase the speed damage of rampage, which would admittedly do over 1000 damage in retaliation but the real question is for how long and the major difficulty would be simply getting to the point where it actually became powerful enough to matter. I've tried running any build that could make it work and I usually die before I get past the green tower. Playing the most efficient character possible you will see positive returns at around level 10 or so, when getting hit returns 33 hp. The build is unfortunately a hot mess up to that point and just reaching that point requires a good amount of luck, the kind of luck I didn't find in 10 runs with the appropriate class. I would honestly suggest either knocking points off the cost or lowering the divisor. Even if the build was to reach late game its HP would be low because instead of getting to a certain strength bench mark you'd have to evenly spread between str and will to make this work, which requires insane rng when it comes to items, enemies, and level lay out. A more balanced build would take 4 rampage, 5 vitality, and 1 focus but that would be a bandaid and the vitality would struggle to keep up with the eventual attrition from rampage just not keeping up even with a perfect balance.
As someone said earlier - this game is truely a hidden gem! I'm really suprised, since I last checked out what's new on the internet you've managed to actually make 2 patches already ha ha! I wanted to suggest adding blood element, but it seems you've already implemented it into the game!
Despite sinking long long hours into the game, I do not feel competent enough to make suggestions in terms of mechanics, I've managed to beat the first final boss only 2 times so far and I haven't checked the current version yet. I'm simply probably not most efficient in build-making, I was playing around with different things and making some more serious optimalization for my favourite classes and the game itself is quite rng in its enemy encounters (which is a fun factor, in my opinion the randomness and the mystery of what's to come is a great replayablity factor, but also makes beating it harder :P).
From what I've experienced so far, there seem to be 4 gameplay archetypes in the game:
-barbarian gameplay, where you focus on melee attacks and str, using skills to either increase those or provide some form of regeneration/healing, working preferably with strong weapons and martial skill tree / on hit effects - if you manage to drop this head item, giving you healing for encumbrance level and stacking multiple layers of armor, you are nearly indestructible until you hit strong bosses
-mage gameplay, where you have a big range of abilities to choose from scaling with willpower, hopefully some kind of range 6 staff to proc said effects, maybe Haddad religion for more effects
-summoner gameplay, where you can stand in once place summoning huge numbers of minions doing the main work for you - I somehow feel like the game is subtely directing player to do so, as there are many skills allowing you to summon minions / to buff those, there are races perfect for this type of gameplay - namely nomad Stran and plant people Arba, classes like Druid or Amir and multiple religions like Mehtar or Eresh - in my case, this gameplay lost a lot of its power at the lategame, also, if you bump into the beast monster healing himself and gaining stats for each killed enemy, you are in trouble :P
-rogue gameplay - honestly something only Mubarizun class is currently doing, allowing you to stack enough dexterity to hit with great power by steping near the enemy, using the fact you have x number of your own turns, in time of one enemy turn - in my opinion this gameplay is the most fascinating one, because it's less hm... automatical in what it does and requires this hypnotizing rhytmic movement from the player - play it is a real blast - at least a few patches ago, there weren't many synergies you can use here with skills, electric Skera skill giving you even more speed and bonus damage on slashing you do as a class ability was probably the most resonable one, though you could in theory do some combinations with martial skills or shamsar, 2 patches ago I've felt the power only from Skera - the build was also dependant on rng, if you are able to get items doing some sort of damage on slash damage from your class ability - this build is really fun, though to be honest it's really squishy and you need to get close, therefore ranged bosses or monsters giving you damage over time seem to counter it easily. I would like to emphasize once more, that at least for myself, this gameplay is a pure joy!
You've mentioned yesterday, that you would like to work more on some mixed attribute building. On 2 patch old version, I've also tried to do some atribute mixing builds, like for example str+dex warrior, acting like a barbarian archetype but with extra turns while lacking armor, or mage+summoner builds as Ascetic class, where you would bid your time to stack power while your minions are fighting. I've also checked out some dex+wil combinations, trying to do some on-move damage with different types of dropping gloves. Dex+wil seemed lacking in comparison to mono-attribute, because you can't really get skills procing damage from the skill tree and you were really looking for those glove drops, mage-summoner wasn't personally to interesting in gameplay for me, while I think different combinations of warriors with str+dex, though tricky were the most fun to play as, as you retained some of this sweet rhytmic control of rogue archetype, while doing some serious damage by hitting the enemy.
In my opinion, from what I've seen, the problem with mixed builds is that almost all abilities are based on wil or alternatively they do give flat bonuses based only on level of this particular ability. I'm aware that the base stat as wil is used as a way to balance things out, to avoid str/dex getting out of hand with their basic gameplay + even more additional buffs you can get from the skill tree. I would consider adding/changing some skills in the skill tree to have either str or dex as a base for the formula (possibly in a limited way or with far less efficient formula than if the player were to simply use wil, but still adding the possiblity), because currently only summoners and mages have variety in what to pick after gaining more glory to spend on said skills, while warriors and rogues do not have a real way to engage with those (there is a martial tree perfect for that, but not much besides that).
Personally, I like summoner playstyle the least - not because it's not fun to have hordes of minions fighting for you, but because in practice you often hide your character to let the minions do the fighting, and you simply lack field of vision to see those fights. :P If you do it that way, you simply skip turns waiting for the fight you do not see to resolve. If there was a way to actually see those big fights easier, I believe the playstyle would be far more appealing, at least for myself. I do love your game man, in my eyes it's the game of the year, because it's really innovative, replayble and fun. I really can't wait to see the game on steam, because it really deserves more recognition! I plan to buy steam copy myself and I'll force all my friends to do the same - if they are not interested, I'll shove it down their throats as a gift ha ha :P (honestly, some people just refuse to play games with more simplistic graphical side, I on the other hand love those). Thanks for your work - I hope my rambling here is somehow useful as a feedback!
PS. I was focused on commenting the gameplay itself, so I totally forgot to say a few words about the atmosphere of the game! I love it to my guts - the music is amazing and I sometimes listen to it when I'm busy with some work without even playing the game. The music together with religions to pick from, and this general desolate atmosphere of the game give you those proto-civilization vibes, like if you were playing something sumerian/neolithic/byblical with this mythical the big flood atmosphere / ancient postapocalypse. :P It also have those Conan vibes, however one would describe those (there is some similar essence in Achra to it, can't pinpoint exactly what the essence is). Very cool and refreshing, from the usual old chestnut fantasy or more or generic sci-fi.
PS2. I have no idea, how hard or time consuming adding a feature like that to the game would be, but I think having some kind of memory of your past adventurers would be great. Would you consider adding this sort of ladderboard/hall of glory for previously played characters depending on how far they have managed to go?
Thank you! I really appreciate this write up and it is extremely helpful for me.
I absolutely have planned a "Graveyard" or tomb or something where you can see a wall of previous runs. I think you're right that maybe they should be past a certain Glory to be "remembered" (could get clogged with abandoned runs / level 1 deaths)
Your class breakdown is spot on. I share your interest in the Mubarizun's on-step type gameplay and I think there's a lot of room for more abilities like this, that create little movement puzzles (like "when you swap positions with an ally" for example). The idea of a melee DEX fighter is really something I'm trying to force into the game, next update hopefully will encourage it further.
I actually have already gotten somewhat far with mixed-stat builds but you are correct, there isn't enough scaling that encourages splitting your points. In theory, more abilities that scale by multiplying one stat with another encourage getting both (damage scaling on STR * WIL, for example) -- I'm going to try this in the next update -- reworking the scaling of some abilities, remaking most of the Martial powers, and adding some new ones. I really want to increase the build diversity and it's become my main priority (and biggest challenge) as of late
I'm really happy you've been enjoying the game, and am very much grateful for the feedback. Would love to hear your thoughts as new stuff is added. The best way to yell at me is in discord, but I also quite enjoy what this comment section has become, lol
If anybody is looking for a fun minion build try out Naqui Zealot Mehtar. Go into poison and grab oozemancy. You can get a pretty sizeable army the further you get in the game as you summon oozes when you pray, early game that'll be three, late game that will be 28. You will also end up with a sizeable contingent of phantasms. The weakness to this is that most things that you need something that does fire, ice, or lightning as most things that are strong against astral and psychic damage are also strong against poison; especially around the time you reach the red tower. Grabbing a bunch of different elements is needed to cover your bases. This build also works with just praying enemies to death with all the offensive prayers you get.
A real hidden gem on itch and honestly possibly one of the best games available to play on the site. I've sunk dozens of hours into this already. I feel like I've gotten to the end (or at least what feels an intentional impossible wall) a number of times. I do have a few comments
After you finish the first map of areas and move onto the star map is it supposed to be such a massive spike in power for the enemies? I usually get killed on the first screen by demons that just pound me into dust no matter my build.
The fact that you can't change equipment in combat feels like you can end up in an inescapable trap, especially for elemental characters. After the first map, the demons you run into can have 100% damage resistance and if you can't switch equipment to change up damage types you're SOL.
Minion builds I've found really seem to struggle in this game. I've played a bunch of them but the minions die incredibly quickly and depending on the map they'll all get clogged up in rooms especially if ranged minions manage to be in front.
Most healing abilities feel like a joke, outside of the odd item that heals you #*will when you pray which can feel pretty powerful. Useful early game but late game cannot keep up with even the occasional chip damage from enemies.
The game heavily rewards single stat builds but so many things rely on will in the build that if you aren't playing a build that dumps a lot into it then most trees aren't worth dipping into.
I know this is a very early build (this applies to all criticisms of course) and a very good one at that, but I wish there was something to spend my glory on after I've unlocked everything. A glory shop would be nice, though that's a whole other thing and really just a suggestion.
Sorry if this is a bit much, don't get disheartened. I'm going to have my eye on this game and the moment it hits steam (or you finish it) I'll be buying it.
Thank you, and really glad you've enjoyed it. This is the kind of feedback that helps me a lot - it is received with gratitude.
In regards to character builds, I agree with all the things you've mentioned, and they've been bothering me as well. A couple build archetypes I'm immediately trying to make work are:
mixed attributes - not just all in one stat. Make this rewarding and unique. Being able to think of your hero as a "strength willpower guy" offers a ton of flavor but it's not heavily enough rewarded. I think this has to be addressed in some of the powers and also the glory-up rewards (which are probably the biggest culprit here for encouraging a stat-dump). In the short term it may be enough to include some things that scale off of STR * DEX etc
mass minions that fight --- currently, the only mass minion builds that really work are based on sacrificing them in some way, such as with Eresh and the fire / death priests. Minions as ammo. It would be nice to have a big fighting army and a LOT of players seem to want this. The game is still missing a lot of the minion power ups that I had intended to add, so stay tuned for that. I've accepted that an important option is to be able to play an autobattler where you get to watch your army fight lol
Thank you for your comments on the other stuff. Healing and the balance of it is in a constant state of flux. Equipment swapping is something I'd like to revisit - it is forbidden to prevent abuse of certain items that I haven't even made yet
The Void area with the demons was never really supposed to be beaten, although some people have, which has forced me to add more content to it, and now it's sort of the "true ending" but it has far less enemy diversity or thoughtful construction than the previous land of Achra. Hopefully, in time, it will get there
As for glory, I'll just have to add more things to unlock!
I would agree that the glory up mechanic discourages you from raising other stats. Funnily enough though the minion build I've had the most success with is usually one I run when I'm starting over the glory grind on a new computer with a Stran Amir Ashem.
Start with life and grab Piercing vines, they do incredible damage and scale incredibly well while also punishing anything moving into melee. Grab life cultists afterwards as soon as possible as they're some of the best summons for both damage and healing and are in fact the best mid battle healing power you can buy.
Next move into death and grab necromancy to get another front line fighter to go with your tugar, move back into life and grab invigoration to give your minions some survivability. Then grab the last power you're going to buy: nekrokinesis for a bit of extra damage (grab earlier if you haven't been able to get something that will deal more consistent damage off of will). After this all skill levels go into invigoration to make your summons as tanky as possible.
As for stat points, everything goes into will, wear whatever armor gives you the most benefits, don't worry about weight, you'll ideally be fighting within range of piercing vines and a high speed would actually get in the way of that.
I've entered maps and had every monster die before I got a chance to do anything as my minions spawn in and wipe everything. This usually takes me through to the second map and gets me a bunch of unlocks really quickly. Not my favorite build, it can drag if you run into a group with healers and god help you if you can't avoid a golgoranth till you get strong enough, they'll roll your entire team and then one shot you.
I'm simply glad to hear, in a flavor sense, that "life and death" minions is such a solid strategy.
I'm kind of playing catch up with summons as there was very little for them to begin with (a lot planned), but players seemed to immediately gravitate towards them. So I hope to design some more powers that make strategies like this more dynamic.
For example, there should be a death summon that gets stat boosted whenever an ally dies. Maybe a Skeleton Golganth...
I love this so far. This is really like Rift Wizard, and honestly with more dev time, it'll probably be better. Rift wizard has a huge infuriating problem of locking you into specific builds if you want to beat the game, so please, I know it's hard but don't fall into the same trap.
Thank you! It is super hard, for sure. Really benefiting from everyone who plays and gives ideas - there are many, many ways for the game patterns to get trapped by mechanics, and the goal is definitely for a maximum diversity of strategies. Making that possible is an interesting discussion --- in a hero customization game, how do you make a ton of things work, and not feel locked in, while keeping that meaningful by having a relative amount of things that don't work? The feeling of being locked in, separate from the actuality, is probably the key, in some way
One of the keys could possibly be letting players know what's coming up next, back when Rift Wizard was in EA you had the ability to see what the next portals led to, allowing you to plan your build out. Then when they took that out, you basically just had to guess, and almost always get fucked over with what you were planning to build. Path of Achra has this to an extent (ability to see further is what I mean) thankfully, so at least I feel like I have a say in what I'm going for instead of just seeing ??? for gear and stuff.
I feel the main chokepoint when it comes to strategizing how to beat the game where you have control over the abilities you choose is the fact that there are some guaranteed encounters you will deal later on. You will always fight the final boss of the first world, you will always encounter death knights near the end of it, after the first world you will get random and strong elemental enemies which can easily kill you if you happen to have a build weak to their elements. Therefore, if you are sure you will meet those enemies, you need to prepare your build to deal with them, and the pool of build combinations which are able to deal with all of those becomes more and more limited.
I don't really see a good way to deal with this problem, because the alternative is the lack of structure and big chaotic randomness, when you never know what is to come at the end, which does not lock you into certain builds, but also requires a lot of sheer luck to actually beat the game or possibly this one universal build, which is simply more resistant to the randomness around and it's consistent in itself enough to be the one and most optimal.
Like Grassblazer mentioned, knowing what's to come next allows for planning, but honestly in the lategame, regardless of the enemies you are going to face, the build has already been decided. Theoretically, if you were to know enemies you will meet on the whole first world, on each branching choice and if those were more randomly placed, the problem of being locked in a build would be solved, because each run would require you to tinker on particular build to beat it due to the whole context and force the player to be elastic for each game - this however would require each person to do this big-brain planning instead of simply having fun.
Enjoyed the game. Two requests if it is not too much and one bug.
The bug is that after selecting some spells, like 2 or 3, later on even if we have the points for other spells, they are very dark, and I think the select button is greyed out but I can still click on it. So it is only visual.
The two requests are, can you by any chance allow for a lighter background? If this would be too much effort for you to change all textures, can you allow us to change the screen tint? I must be the only dungeon crawler player that uses light backgrounds, the dark ones really tire my eyes (I wish dcss webtiles allowed this as well...)
Last request, maybe easier to do, can you also build a mac version? Maybe its not too important since I see that the browser actually kinda seemed to save my progress (I don't know how). At least when I refreshed it still had progress.
1. This may have to do with being limited to 2 elements -- the other elements get darkened. This is actually a bug -- you shouldn't be able to buy those darkened traits. Will fix, and thank you!
2. I can for sure do this, I see your point
3. The mac version sets off some virus warnings and you have to quarantine it or something to run it -- I didn't want to deal with comments about that. I'll happily send you a mac export if you want though
Love this game! The progression is great, and I love the exitement of getting the perfect items to complete a build. Ulfsire, you are a wizard of the gaming industry. I have been playing for WEEKS.
Excellent game! Loving it! Feels really good to play. I like the allies you get, it's always fun to have team mates. The only thing I noticed was that the background (non-play-area) is black, but there's also black "non-play" areas within the bounds of the map, which feels a bit strange. But all together I'm quite impressed. Keep up the great work! I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this title!
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got that strat you were talking about ulfsire.
I dealt 48066 damage to red tower boss
The horror golem's debuffs left me so low that another gold demon made me bite the dust, wasn't even close either, dealt like 150 damage when I had 3 health
god damn I'm sorry to see it. I was rooting for this blood build
It was a good run too, but I tried to grab some gear when my bag was full of useless stuff, the gear was probably useless too, and the poison+minion feast+blood retort nuked half my health, I probably would have died to myself TBH
What happens when you die to self damage?
yeah this run was lucky, the armor could cleanse bleed from me removing anything negative from humbaba and endurance battle revenants, but I got greedy
I wonder how a pugilism+executioner prestige+psiblades would do
I dont know if this is a glitch or just not showing, but the armour i should gain from the executioner prestige class is not registered on the UI, and i cant tell if it is affecting damage from hits or not
thank you for confirming that this is the prestige class I need and not champion
definite bug, will fix
wait does higher cycles mean you can get abilities quicker but enemies are considerably stronger?
I haven't beaten cycle of humility yet (courtesy of psyconaut and 2 gold demons) so I don't know what the wording of increased glory gain meant
Yeah being in a "higher cycle" pretty much rolls 1-cycle # on a few of the enemy's attributes when it spawns, and on the glory you gain when you kill an enemy, and multiplies the attribute / glory by that much
So in the Third Cycle, a rat-man will have x1-3 max life, and you'll gain x1-3 glory when you kill it
Imagine dying to psyconaught teleporting you into multiple gold demons
trying a strat now of a pyrokinesis or gore cleave (can't decide which) templar of Eresh, because killing my own slouching dead and turning them into cadavers which I kill too, means a lot of anoint, meaning I can destroy enemies quickly, the second to last boss concerns me though
combine this burning of my allies with an azarus, and I can get insane hit value, and very high dodge and accuracy
this is an awesome idea. I just saw another player doing this with the Assassin power and anoint, and was hitting for 100k damage or something
oh yeah, assassin skill would be nasty on a templar, but you would need to find a pierce weapon first, that's the only issue. I also began running power charge for the extra dmg buffs, making a fire+elec+martial build, true templar of hadad.
Just made the goofiest psychonaut build, i had the robe that would remove stasis with magus and an astral weapon, so i keep teleporting like 9 times per move
did end up dead though
Love this. Tried to do it this morning but died way before you. I think I needed to invest in Vigor for when I teleported into the center of a bunch of Seshas
or longlegs
This just happened to me, albeit much earlier. I had the astral robe too and thought I was completely invincible. I even had Master Teleport for the healing. Suddenly, I was not invincible lol
I finally beat it! When tanking, I find that once you get enough strength to pass encumbrance than you really don't need to worry about Inflexibility (especially if you find the Ice Helm). The main enemies I lost characters too were the stench drake, poison enemies, and the star brutes. I'm looking forward to the full release!
This is amazing. I love seeing strength guys go all the way. Very much admiring this run. The current version is harder to beat than previous ones, so this is extra glorious
the taurus leggings with shamshar too, very nice
Just started it but i'm loving the powers, mostly blight, can't wait for the release
Thank you! Got some new stuff coming for death...
Just getting my feet wet with the game, but I think it's really cool so far. In particular, you really nailed all the flavor text for exploration and the like. Excited to see the full release.
Thank you! I'm really glad you like those aspects
Just wanted to tell you, the new UI looks very cool!
Also, what is the meaning of 'matching'? Dexerity says '+5 damage if matching your main hand weapon', what does it mean?
Thanks! It means if it's the same damage type as whatever you main hand attack is -- blunt if it's bare fist, or the damage type of the weapon
Thanks!
Just wanted to say this is excellent. Have wishlisted on Steam.
Thank you, very motivating
Can't stop playing this. Will wishlist on steam!
Thank you <3
I have finally won with ascetic Qamar after so many tries most of them dying to the final boss due to the inability to burst him down and/or him killing you with 2 hits before you gained enough stacks.
Speaking of stacks this build relies on gaining effects via standstills like focus from the Ascetic class and repulsions from psychokinesis and master repulsion to abuse Qamars ability twice per standstill to deal massive amounts of astral damage to enemies in a 2 tile range, while psychokinesis targets enemies at a much farther 5 tile range increasing the builds dpr and providing an early "long range" damage output. I chose Hadad because of the healing prayer and especially the +5 speed, Humbaba is also a good pick but Hadad is simply better because the focus increases the bleed damage is increased by focus, which is how I lost my last run before this one.
Purple mage head cap provides damage at infinite range targeting any enemy on the map as well as dealing more astral damage since it is a separate astral damage source. Purple blue sash is amazing since it not only deals a lot more damage but it also bypasses the astral and psychic damage resistances, but the strongest item equipped is the robe of the astral wanderer. As you can see from the picture the build completely uses dex (I'll explain why later) and the robe increases both astral damage and psychic damage by 3% per dex, meaning with 37 dex the damage increase is a whopping 111% percent more damage. The weapons are a bit unoptimal since I didn't get the icon of the mysterious order and I chose the robe of the astral wanderer over the icon of the astral wanderer.
Now for the reason why this build chooses mostly dex is simple, you get more turns than your opponent due to your massive speed which means you deal more damage AND most importantly gain more stacks of repulsion and focus to trigger Qamar and increase all of your damage. At some point you will be able to reach 5 bars of effects while destroying an entire boss level and not take any damage all just by standing still.
Cool run! I don't think I've ever been able to even get Qamar Ascetic into the void, so props to you for winning with it!
thanks, now I'm just wondering what went wrong in your run that made your ascetic Qamar unable to get into the void?
I think I'm just not going for the correct combination/order of upgrades, crippling me at the start :`)
i suggest taking 1 psychokinesis at the start then put everything else into master repulsion, then for stats put everything into dex for maximum speed, unless you are encumbered then you can add strength.
Thanks!
I just got the best run! One-turn killed the final boss with puglism 12, guard, 5 inflex, and rigid violence, so I could've done a 72 hit combo. With my psychokenesis and master repulsion for extra damage, i killed the boss in only 30-40 hits though. I also have those red gloves for healing, and ice helmet for additional healing per point of inflex.
Hahaha, that's amazing. I didn't even think of combining Dorok's 3rd prayer with pugilism
Thanks! Amazing game by the way. I think this has been the most fun I've had playing an itch.io game since backpack hero!
Thanks, that is super motivating. Backpack hero is a really well designed game that I look at a lot. I love how the themed builds feel like their theme (big weapons, mana connections etc)
Hey, I just wanted to say that the browser version is not such a good experience as the game is on a whole, because of the lack of saving (but this might be a problem on my end). This game focuses on character builds, a major portion of which comes from the three things we can select at the start, and the problem is, we need to unlock them by playing the game.
This would have been fine if we could choose what to unlock next, or if those things stayed unlocked, but everytime the browser reloads, everything resets.
Again, this could be a feature, that unlocks are also temporary, so that you are forced to use different combinations in different sittings, but, every playthrough is very long, takes like 1/2 hrs, and so unlocking many things at once is very difficult. And if you do not get synergic unlocks early on, the gameplay can become mundane...
This is a great game, but these things have prevented me from experimenting with the classes much (like you intend players to do)
Thanks, this is good to know. For most people I think it works. I believe the save data is stored in the cookies, so if those get cleared it resets it. I use Chrome.
Let me know and I can send you a downloadable build. There's a text file you can edit that unlocks everything. Technically, I can export to Mac and Linux but haven't really tested it yet.
Thanks again for giving it a try
I am also using Chrome, and itch.io cookies are allowed, and third party cookies are being blocked automatically, do I need to allow them?
Also, I think getting everything unlocked like that would be cheating, so I will keep trying on my own once this save thing starts working. Thanks!
Sounds good. The only extension I have is adblock, if that helps
here's the end game stats
Got here in just a few tries, first tried out basic summoning strat, didn't get to the other side, tried pugilism since i love punching, came pretty close just died to the golden demon because of their insane damage. And finally the build that got me there, The Burning Juggernaut. The build mostly consists of burning heart and pyrokinesis with Hadad to just heal an insane amount that the only thing that came close to killing me was the golden demons but they weren't enough either, every other fight was just a really long slugfest where they try to damage me but i just healed back up instantly, added by the fact i was wielding the fire axe that dealt psychic damage when i dealt fire damage with the robe that increased both fire damage and lightning damage based on the weapon size and pants that dealt 50% of lightning damage as fire damage the build does good damage and has insane survivability. But the best part is when i was against the king of colors, the final boss. He was healing all the damage i dealt to him and he was summoning more enemies as i kill them so i decided to use the fully charged third prayer and it just killed him. It did so much damage that the fight was over. Games really fun and you can make so much builds in it. I'm gonna be playing this for a while. 9.7/10
Nice, this build looks really fun. Glad you enjoyed it and hope to add more possibilities in the future
this is probably a me problem but my game is going to slowly :`(
Well, on a brighter note, my fifth run!
Nice!
Is it running slowly? I'm curious what kind of hardware it runs slowly on. The laptop I use is pretty old and slow.
Admiring your psychic build :)
not running slowly, but I have puglism 7, pyromancy 6, psychokenesis 1, psychic blade, and some other thigns so there are a lot of interactions.
So I don't want to leave things on a sour note here, because the last post I made feels like a very negative post for a game that I honestly love. I still love the game that hasn't changed and if anything I only love it more than when I first discovered it. I'm just going to be posting in the comments a lot less because all of my feedback is going to be going to the discord rather than on here. If anything I'll probably occasionally post builds on here for new players to try out because sometimes this game can get a bit overwhelming with the large number of combinations you can have for a character.
I will restate that this game is probably one of the best games on itch, period. It's a real hidden gem on the site. Currently the dev is really good about taking any feedback you might have for them and they are constantly updating and tweaking the game which means any complaint or criticism you see in my past comments has actually been addressed or explained. The game is phenomenal and I really can't state enough how much fun I've had playing it (or how many hours I've spent playing it). Some games on this site feel rather disposable, something you can pick up play for a couple of hours and then forget. Path of Achra is not that, I'll be driving home or doing something else and I'll think of a build I'd love to run in the game and despite how quick a session might go I have a hard time trying everything out that I want to try just because of the shear volume of different potential builds you can play.
Long story short, if you like a game with rich build variety and tons of options or you like seeing how ridiculous you can get with a character this game is second to none.
Thank you again, Legend! I'm so glad and lucky to have your feedback, and this goes to anyone else of course. This type of game is really hard to tune right without people trying to play it in different ways. It is a comfort to not be alone while navigating the void-labyrinth of game design
It is me I am back again, I've sunk another 12 hours or so into the new build of the game. It's in a few words: a mixed bag. There are some really great things to it, there are some rather bad parts to the changes. So I'll get that all out of the way, I will say that the game is still fun though it doesn't feel as good as it did before the changes but we'll get into that.
The good
The way removing level up bonuses and just making them bonuses from increasing stats is great. I wish this had been around from the start, it really makes me want to mix stats, though will really doesn't get enough in any sense of the word I wish will added something else even if it was just minor bonuses to other stats, though admittedly will always provided very little. The bonus to will was that you didn't need to be close to the combat. The fact that I can dip into dex to get my speed above 10 or 20 is really nice, it means that I'm not stuck with a build that either hard invests in speed or actively wants 1 speed, though that's still a thing. I do kind of wish that still gave a small hp bonus maybe half the points you get from purely investing in hp (or further increase the bonus you get from just investing in hp because stats are still always going to be worth more). I love how all of the classes and races provide more (including speed and health which again means you'll more easily be able to reach a speed over 10 if you want that.
The bad
Block is better but it's still not great, I did successfully build a block armor build thanks to the bonuses you get from wearing hand armor and using shields though I might suggest that giving the block % a bonus from inflexibility might be useful as well even if it's just a small additive one. Block still struggles because some things add one kind of block and others add other kinds, though the elimination of the defense stat is generally good and I applaud doing so. The
The ugly
The simplification of the damage system is...rough. Where as the elimination of level up bonuses makes me want to spread out my stat points the elimination of stat scaling on weapons and powers has done the opposite, it has also notably killed will or builds that use will. Powers don't scale very well and are for the most part to expensive to invest in them as much as you like, you can no longer really afford to spread out your powers as much as you could and are more rewarded for grabbing 2-3 powers and investing only in them. Even more so a pure martial build is the most powerful option you can choose. The mubarizum build is almost untouched except that it has a worse dodge and speed making it so it doesn't get as far into the void, the strength build struggles for damage end game because str doesn't really add much for damage, and will builds are dead. Summon builds are slogs because you can't support your own summons with damage and if something is heavily resistant to what you do you can sit there for minutes waiting for your summons to chip them down. The kinesis powers are terrible for damage without heavy power point investments and if you kill everything on your way to the obelisk you will end up with 23 glory or 28 power points to spread around and you need to make sure you're investing in your heavy damage dealers because putting points in a power is where the damage comes from, not stats. The only stat that makes any amount of difference for damage really is dex and even then at most you're probably going to see a 1.5x increase in what you do. While the changes may make things simpler, I think it is to the detriment of other mechanics.
The mixed
I don't know where else to put this because it's neither ugly nor all bad nor all good. The new level up system is a bit of everything. It definitely has problems but it also fixes some problems. Getting a build off the ground is much easier and you aren't as incentivized to kill everything in the room, but the increase of required experience points to level means that while the early game is easier because you level up faster at first, the late game is much more demanding and can turn into a slog, compounding with the other problems. With how damage scaling now works I almost think that the old experience scaling can still work with how starved every build is for power points now that powers are the main source of damage.
The overall
The game is still fun though I think it could get frustrating. The change to how stats works makes some powers and a lot of weapons not worth taking or using. The builds that were strong are all weaker, some far more than others. Other than the old mubarizum build (invest everything into dex, focus and vitality. Look for the ash sword, the shifting green shield, and or the dualist's claw depending on what damage you want to focus on: slash, bludgeon, or pierce. Look for the pants that make each of those better respectively). The builds I've listed thus far are mostly irrelevant (which I would expect when the game grows and changes). So far as I can tell martial is the most powerful power tree. Str builds are tanks, Dex builds are damage, and will builds don't currently work. I'll post more after I've played more if I have more to say, still enjoying the game even if some of it frustrates me and looking forward to what comes next.
Thanks for all the attention, friend. The update you're talking about was done in a bit of haste, and won't last long, I assure you :)
So it's been a few days and I've really been going over builds to see what works and what doesn't. I feel like I'm missing something though cause I still have a hard time getting very far in the void. Still, despite my hardships in the void I feel like I find myself falling into a dominant strategy and it's hard to pull myself out of it. Even more, playing unconventional builds feels not fun. Sometimes getting past the first screen can be a bit of an rng fest even for a solid build but if your build comes online late or is experimental it is like trying to win the lottery.
First the solid builds I've found: Lochra Warrior of Hadad (or Humbaba but ironically Hadad plays better), Kull Mubarizun of Humbaba (like warrior you'd think Hadad, but Humbaba benefits it more), Naqui Zealot of Mehtar (already posted about this one as a solid prayer/summon build), Stran Amir of Ashem/Eresh (a good starter build to get glory flowing as mentioned earlier, Eresh can be fun but you can end up with a domina effect that wipes out all your summons with little effect).
I've gotten to the void with all four of these builds, ironically the melee ones are actually the easier ones to reach the void with and the Mubarizum is the only one I've gotten remotely close to reaching the end of the void with. I have yet to find a will build that doesn't rely at least somewhat on summoning to stay alive. Each of the attribute builds have a weakness to them:
Strength can survive hits but unless you invest heavily in vitality you will die a death of a thousand cuts you also have to be somewhat careful of your encumbrance because you can't afford for it to be too high because you need speed to hope to make it . Speed is key for any melee build and you want to have over 20 at least for melee though over 30 is better. This also limits you on inflexibility but less than you would actually think. Tends to die from the fact that your best defense is armor and armor is mostly worthless late game because most enemies do non physical damage and you won't have enough armor to handle that. Unlike most other builds though, strength builds don't really need to every change out their items and can get by with what they start with if you go warrior.
Dexterity is a massive powerhouse, it starts off somewhat weak and hurts for damage in the early game. It depends heavily on items and rng to get off the ground: dodge starts out weak and is a very rng defense to begin with but is the best defense in the game because it can completely negate an attack and works equally well against everything but AOEs. You need items though to deal appreciable damage and your items are limited, because the best your strength is going to be is 5 if you took humbaba so you need to make sure they're light and have effects you care about. They're major weakness is that AOEs ignore dodge and kill you instantly if you get caught in them in the void and early in the void and aschra your dodges are not very reliable to protect you. They obviously rely on speed the most and you want a speed in the mid 60s by the time you reach the void.
Will builds very but getting them off the ground can either be a nightmare if you get swarmed early game or easy if you're playing the oozomancer. Their main defense is just having as many bodies on the field at the same time between them and their enemies and hoping it's enough, they also suffer if they have the wrong damage type for the job. You need to diversify and have as many different damage types as possible, you cannot focus in just one because not all damage types are built equal and you actually have trash damage for the whole game. Where as a melee character can run up against something that has a 90% damage reduction to their damage and still make it through due to the shear number of attacks they're pumping out, you can't. You put out one attack a round not including your summons and your summons might not be doing the right damage. Ironically Will builds care the least about incumbrance and inflexibility because you're probably going to have a speed of 1 anyway, so you can wear whatever armor you want but not whatever weapon you want because you need to hit and your accuracy is probably trash as well.
Separating these comments out based on what they're about. Next thing I want to mention is defenses, because not all defenses are built equally. We'll start from best to worst:
At the top of the bunch is speed, speed is the best defense. It's also the best offence. Speed won't actually protect you if you do get caught in an attack but it can keep you from getting caught in an attack altogether. If you know the enemy you can dance in and out of its AOEs and you just dance around them in general. You'll have more attacks and better mobility and mobility is king.
Second is dodge, unreliable at the beginning but the best in the end game where it really hurts to die after sinking so much time into a game. It's incredibly reliant on dex to increase. As of now don't bother with powers and abilities that increase dodge dice, so far as I can tell they don't do anything; or at the very least if you check your stats afterwards they don't show them doing anything. This is a consistent problem with a lot of the skills and powers but I'll talk about that later.
Third (and a distant third at that) is armor. Armor is easy to get, and easy to get a lot of. It's consistent early game and will carry you almost all the way to the void depending on what you're playing. It's weakness comes when you're dealing with anything nonphysical and the fact that while you can raise it pretty quickly with powers, you are usually sacrificing precious damage or precious speed to do so because you could be buying that instead. Actual equip able armor itself can be a crap shoot because it can give you a massive armor bonus but usually at the expense of speed which is a better defense over all.
Fourth is HP, though it's probably tied in usefulness for Armor. It'll keep you alive though for a lot of builds it can be the difference between dying in one hit or dying in two. You only need to worry about this if you're a strength character. Other characters just need to worry about healing DoT damage that they receive for the most part or the odd AOE they get caught in in the early game.
Fifth is resistances, you'd think they'd be higher but if you play a skeleton you know otherwise. These can help a lot with Armor and HP but you should not rely on the as they only go up to 75 and it'll be nearly impossible to cover all your bases. Physical, Poison, Blood, Fire, and Lightning are the ones you'll most want to cover though as they're the easiest ones to get caught with and have the DoTs you need to watch out for.
At the bottom at a very, very, very distant sixth is block and defense. They're tied because they're the same defense and because of this they're both broken. The only character that can pull this off is a mubarizun pugilist and that isn't a very good build to begin with. The weakness of this is that it relies on two stats to work: Dex and Str. You need to have a high dex for your defense because without defense you won't block, then you need a good strength for block so that you can actually block. Mixed builds don't currently work very well and a high dex will give you a good dodge and a good speed anyway. On top of this, on paper block is better than armor but in play it's basically the same. The difference is that when you block you don't receive chip damage and you don't get the DoT that can go with it. On the other hand it doesn't work on AoEs so that's a wash anyway. Skills and powers that increase block work but because of how inconsistent this defense is and how hard it is to build for it, it's not worth it.
The final thing I want to bring up is the trees because not all trees are built equally either. Some of them are very powerful and very reliable and others really need some help. We'll go from left to right with them starting with Martial.
Martial is a very solid power to pull from, it's basically required if you're running a melee build or really anything but a pure will build. Unfortunately due to the nature of the game, Vitality and Focus are really the only two things that are worth taking from it; though those two abilities alone justify taking the power. Focus makes you faster and you attack more often on top of that though the attacks themselves don't deal much damage, both things you want if you're going into melee; you also supposedly get more hit dice though if that is true it doesn't show up on your character sheet. Vitality is the best end of combat heal in the game and the best armor ability in the game. The others are situational and not as good as you think. Pugilist feels like it needs just more power and possibly a decrease in the cost, its weakness comes from the fact that weapon effects can be powerful beyond the damage they can do. Guard relies on you getting hit and the damage you deal in response though a good damage type just isn't high enough to justify keying off of armor and block, especially with a character that probably doesn't have much health or strength to begin with. Alacrity is good but it relies on an rng based defense for a character that would probably be better off just attacking more rather than rolling the dice on dodge, I don't think the dodge bonus actually works though because the numbers don't increase and even when I take it a lot I don't see a difference.
Fire, it has the most powers out of any of the trees and so many of them are summoning powers. Ironically fire is probably one of the worst powers you can take if you are a summoner in my experience as a lot of what it does has friendly fire problems and even with high fire resistance you'll be frying your own minions pretty quick.
-Pyromancy is a trap, only will characters will want it but it will kill your minions.
-Burning heart is a rather disappointing heal though I suppose it could work for a dex build if there wasn't already a better element for a dex build. The real strength of this power comes when you get immolation.
-Inflame is a great way for a will character to increase their accuracy, something will characters desperately need. The ifrits are nice but suffer from the same problem summoning with fire does
-Immolation can be good on a strength build though it only really shines when you have burning heart and can apply a lot of scorch really fast. Combine the two and you can see some truly terrifying damage numbers come out.
-Shamshar feels bad. It's a worse version of skera in a number of ways. You're basically stuck playing a dex build with this and even then it's going to be a sword and shield murabizun which isn't the best option there. I honestly think this would function better if it gave you bonuses if your encumbrance was higher on account of the fact that the best blunt and slash weapons are all usually heavy enough to put you close to the limit on this tried running a fire lightning mubarizun and it was a nightmare to get running and was worthless against the beetles that show up early in the game and once again the bonus hit dice didn't show up in the character sheet. To expensive and weaker than a similar option.
-Flame cultists are really cool for that deal fire in a line nonsense they have when any summoning happens but once again you'll kill all of your summons doing that. Can make for a decently fun summoner early game but gets hard stopped by anything with a lick of fire resistance. The damage they pump out and the damage the fire lines do is paltry for the price though, there are better summoning options.
Lightning is a star player in the powers, it's the go to if you are playing a dex character and that's it but what it does it does well. Sadly it really only does one thing well which is Skera.
-Electrokinesis is a trap, any character that's going to want to use it is a will character and will have summons for defense. This will kill your summons pretty fast actually.
-Electromancy is a summoning ability and the ability to pray enemies to death, could be a fun way to run a zealot but you run into the problem if you run out of prayers and everything isn't dead because your summons probably will be.
-Power Charge suffers from being a low damage increase, there are better ways to pump your damage. Might function well on a dex speed character that can really pump up their charge level but Skera exists and it's really powerful.
-Skera the premier ability of the lightning Tree. An incredible pick, expensive but worth it. The damage increase is sizable the speed increase is always nice. If you're playing a dex build there is really no reason not to take this. You should in fact be trying to get this by the green tower if you can.
(will post the rest at a later date, I have stuff to say about all the elements but life is coming up)
Thank you for these comments -- it really helps reading them. You've nailed a lot of the nagging balance problems I've been dealing with and that other players have brought up, especially those who read the mechanics and try to break the game in the Void, which is where some cracks begin to show, lol. I think a final version will officially have the game balanced around beating the Obelisk, or that was the plan, with the Void as a bonus. But as long as the Void exists, it becomes the standard challenge, which means the game has to be balanced around those very late builds, which definitely changes things. It narrows the potential builds for sure. I'll definitely add a preliminary victory screen for beating the Obelisk, and keep thinking about this.
DEX will continue to be a problem as long as the Speed bonus works the way it does, with so much being accumulated. I think this can only be solved with a rework of the bonus, a rework of Speed entirely, or just adding more powers that give Speed based on other attributes, particularly WIL. If Speed was something you could only raise by investing in certain powers (with a variety) it might be a better situation. I don't really like having to balance powerful enemies around players who potentially have 60 speed
The "pure WIL damage" archetype needs some love -- it's suffering from the fact that it was by far the strongest in very early builds, so I've been subconsciously regulating it more than, for example, DEX
In terms of mechanics in general, I'm extremely dissatisfied with how difficult it is to see stuff like a bonus to Hit "dice" -- it's been in the back of my mind that I might remake these systems to be simpler and more intuitive. This applies to defense / block as well. For example, if dice "sides" were fixed, bonuses would be easier to see. The current system gives more character to equipment by fluctuating sides with different stat scalings but in practice it's not really satisfyingly visible to the player
Anyway I very much appreciate your comments and will eagerly read them. Also be warned, yesterday's update messes with some of this stuff
Well looks like my review of each of the elements is going to be on hold for awhile considering how things have changed. On the changes having played this for about 6 hours so far today, I can say they are somewhat exciting. I finally was able to bring a non summoner will build to the void thanks to changes and the dex build has become...different. I think this will add more diversity of builds from what I've seen.
The change to focus actually encourages you to have at least 2 points in every stat and it makes the humbaba mubarizun build deal insane damage when you stack it. Ironically it's probably not all that good for str two hander builds. Dual wielding is dead thanks to this, it used to rule dex builds but this also means that you are not as item bound with finding a claw, and a rinoir and makes spears actually usable weapons. It also made the whip, usually a frustratingly useless nothing weapon into one that's worth using. On the other hand a dex mubarizun really only wants to stand and fight when they need to heal in combat with blood rage, otherwise they should be constantly on the move. You can't just tab and forget with the build now, it's a very active and engaging playstyle. The changes actually incentivize you to just focus martial though, as the massive damage bonus from skera is no longer a thing, though I do enjoy that skera and shamshar are no longer weight locked I do think they are less useful overall.
I think you'll enjoy knowing that life/blood is now a very solid build thanks to the introduction of vinakenisis and the changes to piercing vines now doing blood damage instead of piercing. I think it fits thematically just as well as life/death. A Naqui Ascetic of Mehtar is an incredibly solid build that has an answer for most things, they can summon for the early game to get off the ground. They have solid area damage, and with Piercing vine they have very good damage with bleed but can fall back on the ever reliable blunt damage. With access to Mehtar they can reliably heal themselves as well. I'm glad to finally see something mesh with blood because along with the psychic and astral power pools, I think that blood needs a lot of love as they are all fairly weak. Related a similar build exists for life/ice with obedient ice and cryomancy, though this one is far more passive and focuses mostly on just catching enemies in your damaging area.
A suggestion that I thought of that might incentivize mixed stat builds. It was something when I saw how focus works with it's passing attacks. Consider giving different weapons and powers a primary and a secondary damage stat. Perhaps for axes for example, str has 2x damage multiplier and dex has a normal 1x multiplier. This way you get more from investing in str but the few points you do put in dex actually make a very big difference as well. A character that has a 12 and a 1 in dex would hypothetically get 24 damage out of the axe but if they invested 2 points into dex they would end up with 72 because the dex acts as a multiplier. Something to consider is all.
*Edit: Recently got time to test out the infinite scorch build, it's not really overpowered at all. Scorch only goes off on game turn which for some builds can be a rather long time, on top of that any enemy that can have upwards of 10 instances of scorch applied to them has more to worry about than the scorch in the first place. Any attack that could apply enough instances of scorch to be worrying would be an attack that either kills any monster in one hit, or kills it in two hits. Keep in mind, that to apply ten instances of scorch with pyromancy you would have to do 1000 damage, and the scorches themselves would only do 300 damage in total. Could be powerful with immolation but again if you're doing 1000 damage in fire, the next hit doing 2000 or 3000 or even 4000 isn't all that important, you can only make an enemy so dead and there are easier ways to do 2k or more damage by the time you reach the void. Best way to do so would be through hadad's blessing so far as I can tell.
Also the changes to focus really hurt str based melee builds specifically (though once again it's great for dex based ones). Rampage would help but rampage is too MAD or multi attribute dependent and costs too much to be useful. When you're nearing the void, anything that is going to trigger rampage has to have gone through your armor which means it's dealing over 200 damage more than likely. At best if you do an even spread between str and will (which would be suboptimal in almost every other aspect) you would have to sink 5 skill levels into rampage to not lose health on it on average and around 200 damage is pretty average for what you run into near the obelisk. This would in an average run leave you with enough points to buy one focus to increase the speed damage of rampage, which would admittedly do over 1000 damage in retaliation but the real question is for how long and the major difficulty would be simply getting to the point where it actually became powerful enough to matter. I've tried running any build that could make it work and I usually die before I get past the green tower. Playing the most efficient character possible you will see positive returns at around level 10 or so, when getting hit returns 33 hp. The build is unfortunately a hot mess up to that point and just reaching that point requires a good amount of luck, the kind of luck I didn't find in 10 runs with the appropriate class. I would honestly suggest either knocking points off the cost or lowering the divisor. Even if the build was to reach late game its HP would be low because instead of getting to a certain strength bench mark you'd have to evenly spread between str and will to make this work, which requires insane rng when it comes to items, enemies, and level lay out. A more balanced build would take 4 rampage, 5 vitality, and 1 focus but that would be a bandaid and the vitality would struggle to keep up with the eventual attrition from rampage just not keeping up even with a perfect balance.
As someone said earlier - this game is truely a hidden gem! I'm really suprised, since I last checked out what's new on the internet you've managed to actually make 2 patches already ha ha! I wanted to suggest adding blood element, but it seems you've already implemented it into the game!
Despite sinking long long hours into the game, I do not feel competent enough to make suggestions in terms of mechanics, I've managed to beat the first final boss only 2 times so far and I haven't checked the current version yet. I'm simply probably not most efficient in build-making, I was playing around with different things and making some more serious optimalization for my favourite classes and the game itself is quite rng in its enemy encounters (which is a fun factor, in my opinion the randomness and the mystery of what's to come is a great replayablity factor, but also makes beating it harder :P).
From what I've experienced so far, there seem to be 4 gameplay archetypes in the game:
-barbarian gameplay, where you focus on melee attacks and str, using skills to either increase those or provide some form of regeneration/healing, working preferably with strong weapons and martial skill tree / on hit effects - if you manage to drop this head item, giving you healing for encumbrance level and stacking multiple layers of armor, you are nearly indestructible until you hit strong bosses
-mage gameplay, where you have a big range of abilities to choose from scaling with willpower, hopefully some kind of range 6 staff to proc said effects, maybe Haddad religion for more effects
-summoner gameplay, where you can stand in once place summoning huge numbers of minions doing the main work for you - I somehow feel like the game is subtely directing player to do so, as there are many skills allowing you to summon minions / to buff those, there are races perfect for this type of gameplay - namely nomad Stran and plant people Arba, classes like Druid or Amir and multiple religions like Mehtar or Eresh - in my case, this gameplay lost a lot of its power at the lategame, also, if you bump into the beast monster healing himself and gaining stats for each killed enemy, you are in trouble :P
-rogue gameplay - honestly something only Mubarizun class is currently doing, allowing you to stack enough dexterity to hit with great power by steping near the enemy, using the fact you have x number of your own turns, in time of one enemy turn - in my opinion this gameplay is the most fascinating one, because it's less hm... automatical in what it does and requires this hypnotizing rhytmic movement from the player - play it is a real blast - at least a few patches ago, there weren't many synergies you can use here with skills, electric Skera skill giving you even more speed and bonus damage on slashing you do as a class ability was probably the most resonable one, though you could in theory do some combinations with martial skills or shamsar, 2 patches ago I've felt the power only from Skera - the build was also dependant on rng, if you are able to get items doing some sort of damage on slash damage from your class ability - this build is really fun, though to be honest it's really squishy and you need to get close, therefore ranged bosses or monsters giving you damage over time seem to counter it easily. I would like to emphasize once more, that at least for myself, this gameplay is a pure joy!
You've mentioned yesterday, that you would like to work more on some mixed attribute building. On 2 patch old version, I've also tried to do some atribute mixing builds, like for example str+dex warrior, acting like a barbarian archetype but with extra turns while lacking armor, or mage+summoner builds as Ascetic class, where you would bid your time to stack power while your minions are fighting. I've also checked out some dex+wil combinations, trying to do some on-move damage with different types of dropping gloves. Dex+wil seemed lacking in comparison to mono-attribute, because you can't really get skills procing damage from the skill tree and you were really looking for those glove drops, mage-summoner wasn't personally to interesting in gameplay for me, while I think different combinations of warriors with str+dex, though tricky were the most fun to play as, as you retained some of this sweet rhytmic control of rogue archetype, while doing some serious damage by hitting the enemy.
In my opinion, from what I've seen, the problem with mixed builds is that almost all abilities are based on wil or alternatively they do give flat bonuses based only on level of this particular ability. I'm aware that the base stat as wil is used as a way to balance things out, to avoid str/dex getting out of hand with their basic gameplay + even more additional buffs you can get from the skill tree. I would consider adding/changing some skills in the skill tree to have either str or dex as a base for the formula (possibly in a limited way or with far less efficient formula than if the player were to simply use wil, but still adding the possiblity), because currently only summoners and mages have variety in what to pick after gaining more glory to spend on said skills, while warriors and rogues do not have a real way to engage with those (there is a martial tree perfect for that, but not much besides that).
Personally, I like summoner playstyle the least - not because it's not fun to have hordes of minions fighting for you, but because in practice you often hide your character to let the minions do the fighting, and you simply lack field of vision to see those fights. :P If you do it that way, you simply skip turns waiting for the fight you do not see to resolve. If there was a way to actually see those big fights easier, I believe the playstyle would be far more appealing, at least for myself.
I do love your game man, in my eyes it's the game of the year, because it's really innovative, replayble and fun. I really can't wait to see the game on steam, because it really deserves more recognition! I plan to buy steam copy myself and I'll force all my friends to do the same - if they are not interested, I'll shove it down their throats as a gift ha ha :P (honestly, some people just refuse to play games with more simplistic graphical side, I on the other hand love those). Thanks for your work - I hope my rambling here is somehow useful as a feedback!
PS. I was focused on commenting the gameplay itself, so I totally forgot to say a few words about the atmosphere of the game! I love it to my guts - the music is amazing and I sometimes listen to it when I'm busy with some work without even playing the game. The music together with religions to pick from, and this general desolate atmosphere of the game give you those proto-civilization vibes, like if you were playing something sumerian/neolithic/byblical with this mythical the big flood atmosphere / ancient postapocalypse. :P It also have those Conan vibes, however one would describe those (there is some similar essence in Achra to it, can't pinpoint exactly what the essence is). Very cool and refreshing, from the usual old chestnut fantasy or more or generic sci-fi.
PS2. I have no idea, how hard or time consuming adding a feature like that to the game would be, but I think having some kind of memory of your past adventurers would be great. Would you consider adding this sort of ladderboard/hall of glory for previously played characters depending on how far they have managed to go?
Thank you! I really appreciate this write up and it is extremely helpful for me.
I absolutely have planned a "Graveyard" or tomb or something where you can see a wall of previous runs. I think you're right that maybe they should be past a certain Glory to be "remembered" (could get clogged with abandoned runs / level 1 deaths)
Your class breakdown is spot on. I share your interest in the Mubarizun's on-step type gameplay and I think there's a lot of room for more abilities like this, that create little movement puzzles (like "when you swap positions with an ally" for example). The idea of a melee DEX fighter is really something I'm trying to force into the game, next update hopefully will encourage it further.
I actually have already gotten somewhat far with mixed-stat builds but you are correct, there isn't enough scaling that encourages splitting your points. In theory, more abilities that scale by multiplying one stat with another encourage getting both (damage scaling on STR * WIL, for example) -- I'm going to try this in the next update -- reworking the scaling of some abilities, remaking most of the Martial powers, and adding some new ones. I really want to increase the build diversity and it's become my main priority (and biggest challenge) as of late
I'm really happy you've been enjoying the game, and am very much grateful for the feedback. Would love to hear your thoughts as new stuff is added. The best way to yell at me is in discord, but I also quite enjoy what this comment section has become, lol
If anybody is looking for a fun minion build try out Naqui Zealot Mehtar. Go into poison and grab oozemancy. You can get a pretty sizeable army the further you get in the game as you summon oozes when you pray, early game that'll be three, late game that will be 28. You will also end up with a sizeable contingent of phantasms. The weakness to this is that most things that you need something that does fire, ice, or lightning as most things that are strong against astral and psychic damage are also strong against poison; especially around the time you reach the red tower. Grabbing a bunch of different elements is needed to cover your bases. This build also works with just praying enemies to death with all the offensive prayers you get.
I've had a longstanding desire to add a "Dream Ooze" and this has inflamed it
A real hidden gem on itch and honestly possibly one of the best games available to play on the site. I've sunk dozens of hours into this already. I feel like I've gotten to the end (or at least what feels an intentional impossible wall) a number of times. I do have a few comments
After you finish the first map of areas and move onto the star map is it supposed to be such a massive spike in power for the enemies? I usually get killed on the first screen by demons that just pound me into dust no matter my build.
The fact that you can't change equipment in combat feels like you can end up in an inescapable trap, especially for elemental characters. After the first map, the demons you run into can have 100% damage resistance and if you can't switch equipment to change up damage types you're SOL.
Minion builds I've found really seem to struggle in this game. I've played a bunch of them but the minions die incredibly quickly and depending on the map they'll all get clogged up in rooms especially if ranged minions manage to be in front.
Most healing abilities feel like a joke, outside of the odd item that heals you #*will when you pray which can feel pretty powerful. Useful early game but late game cannot keep up with even the occasional chip damage from enemies.
The game heavily rewards single stat builds but so many things rely on will in the build that if you aren't playing a build that dumps a lot into it then most trees aren't worth dipping into.
I know this is a very early build (this applies to all criticisms of course) and a very good one at that, but I wish there was something to spend my glory on after I've unlocked everything. A glory shop would be nice, though that's a whole other thing and really just a suggestion.
Sorry if this is a bit much, don't get disheartened. I'm going to have my eye on this game and the moment it hits steam (or you finish it) I'll be buying it.
Thank you, and really glad you've enjoyed it. This is the kind of feedback that helps me a lot - it is received with gratitude.
In regards to character builds, I agree with all the things you've mentioned, and they've been bothering me as well. A couple build archetypes I'm immediately trying to make work are:
Thank you for your comments on the other stuff. Healing and the balance of it is in a constant state of flux. Equipment swapping is something I'd like to revisit - it is forbidden to prevent abuse of certain items that I haven't even made yet
The Void area with the demons was never really supposed to be beaten, although some people have, which has forced me to add more content to it, and now it's sort of the "true ending" but it has far less enemy diversity or thoughtful construction than the previous land of Achra. Hopefully, in time, it will get there
As for glory, I'll just have to add more things to unlock!
I would agree that the glory up mechanic discourages you from raising other stats. Funnily enough though the minion build I've had the most success with is usually one I run when I'm starting over the glory grind on a new computer with a Stran Amir Ashem.
Start with life and grab Piercing vines, they do incredible damage and scale incredibly well while also punishing anything moving into melee. Grab life cultists afterwards as soon as possible as they're some of the best summons for both damage and healing and are in fact the best mid battle healing power you can buy.
Next move into death and grab necromancy to get another front line fighter to go with your tugar, move back into life and grab invigoration to give your minions some survivability. Then grab the last power you're going to buy: nekrokinesis for a bit of extra damage (grab earlier if you haven't been able to get something that will deal more consistent damage off of will). After this all skill levels go into invigoration to make your summons as tanky as possible.
As for stat points, everything goes into will, wear whatever armor gives you the most benefits, don't worry about weight, you'll ideally be fighting within range of piercing vines and a high speed would actually get in the way of that.
I've entered maps and had every monster die before I got a chance to do anything as my minions spawn in and wipe everything. This usually takes me through to the second map and gets me a bunch of unlocks really quickly. Not my favorite build, it can drag if you run into a group with healers and god help you if you can't avoid a golgoranth till you get strong enough, they'll roll your entire team and then one shot you.
I'm simply glad to hear, in a flavor sense, that "life and death" minions is such a solid strategy.
I'm kind of playing catch up with summons as there was very little for them to begin with (a lot planned), but players seemed to immediately gravitate towards them. So I hope to design some more powers that make strategies like this more dynamic.
For example, there should be a death summon that gets stat boosted whenever an ally dies. Maybe a Skeleton Golganth...
I love this so far. This is really like Rift Wizard, and honestly with more dev time, it'll probably be better. Rift wizard has a huge infuriating problem of locking you into specific builds if you want to beat the game, so please, I know it's hard but don't fall into the same trap.
Thank you! It is super hard, for sure. Really benefiting from everyone who plays and gives ideas - there are many, many ways for the game patterns to get trapped by mechanics, and the goal is definitely for a maximum diversity of strategies. Making that possible is an interesting discussion --- in a hero customization game, how do you make a ton of things work, and not feel locked in, while keeping that meaningful by having a relative amount of things that don't work? The feeling of being locked in, separate from the actuality, is probably the key, in some way
One of the keys could possibly be letting players know what's coming up next, back when Rift Wizard was in EA you had the ability to see what the next portals led to, allowing you to plan your build out. Then when they took that out, you basically just had to guess, and almost always get fucked over with what you were planning to build. Path of Achra has this to an extent (ability to see further is what I mean) thankfully, so at least I feel like I have a say in what I'm going for instead of just seeing ??? for gear and stuff.
I feel the main chokepoint when it comes to strategizing how to beat the game where you have control over the abilities you choose is the fact that there are some guaranteed encounters you will deal later on. You will always fight the final boss of the first world, you will always encounter death knights near the end of it, after the first world you will get random and strong elemental enemies which can easily kill you if you happen to have a build weak to their elements. Therefore, if you are sure you will meet those enemies, you need to prepare your build to deal with them, and the pool of build combinations which are able to deal with all of those becomes more and more limited.
I don't really see a good way to deal with this problem, because the alternative is the lack of structure and big chaotic randomness, when you never know what is to come at the end, which does not lock you into certain builds, but also requires a lot of sheer luck to actually beat the game or possibly this one universal build, which is simply more resistant to the randomness around and it's consistent in itself enough to be the one and most optimal.
Like Grassblazer mentioned, knowing what's to come next allows for planning, but honestly in the lategame, regardless of the enemies you are going to face, the build has already been decided. Theoretically, if you were to know enemies you will meet on the whole first world, on each branching choice and if those were more randomly placed, the problem of being locked in a build would be solved, because each run would require you to tinker on particular build to beat it due to the whole context and force the player to be elastic for each game - this however would require each person to do this big-brain planning instead of simply having fun.
Enjoyed the game. Two requests if it is not too much and one bug.
The bug is that after selecting some spells, like 2 or 3, later on even if we have the points for other spells, they are very dark, and I think the select button is greyed out but I can still click on it. So it is only visual.
The two requests are, can you by any chance allow for a lighter background? If this would be too much effort for you to change all textures, can you allow us to change the screen tint? I must be the only dungeon crawler player that uses light backgrounds, the dark ones really tire my eyes (I wish dcss webtiles allowed this as well...)
Last request, maybe easier to do, can you also build a mac version? Maybe its not too important since I see that the browser actually kinda seemed to save my progress (I don't know how). At least when I refreshed it still had progress.
1. This may have to do with being limited to 2 elements -- the other elements get darkened. This is actually a bug -- you shouldn't be able to buy those darkened traits. Will fix, and thank you!
2. I can for sure do this, I see your point
3. The mac version sets off some virus warnings and you have to quarantine it or something to run it -- I didn't want to deal with comments about that. I'll happily send you a mac export if you want though
Update -- wanted to thank you for this comment, it's encouraged me to implement background color options, which are feeling nicer on my eyes as well
Love this game! The progression is great, and I love the exitement of getting the perfect items to complete a build. Ulfsire, you are a wizard of the gaming industry. I have been playing for WEEKS.
Thank you, friend. This is very motivating!
Here is a chunk of footage of this lovely little gem.
Thank you. Am hard at work binding a key to "select target in range" lol
Excellent game! Loving it! Feels really good to play. I like the allies you get, it's always fun to have team mates. The only thing I noticed was that the background (non-play-area) is black, but there's also black "non-play" areas within the bounds of the map, which feels a bit strange. But all together I'm quite impressed. Keep up the great work! I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this title!
Thank you, and noted