Hello all. Currently very excited for the update to hit live after testing some stuff in Testlive single player, so I thought I’d put some of what I like and dislike here. Currently have only tested in the Exiled Lands map.
Attributes are great. The simplicity of having 1 point per level is very nice and now that attributes are only from levels and not gear its much easier to manage build making. The fact we get 60 points out of 120 possible is also great as it means we have a lot more options to make builds than before. One of my main playstyles on live is mostly just a gatherer/builder which meant most of the time my damage was really bad. With the new system I can put 20 points into Expertise and still have enough points to make an effective combat build which is great. Also as a player I feel much more powerful in combat and the attributes and gear options now make for a much better feel.
Corrupted Attributes are also pretty cool. The Strength and Vitality final perk are fun to play around with in combat and definitely make you feel like a battle ready sorcerer. TBH though I probably won’t play around with corrupted attributes too much as the tradeoff of corrupted is actually quite a big one. I haven’t tested all builds but the low stamina is one of the reasons I find myself not liking it so far, as you can barely use attacks depending on your weapon and stamina. Though maybe there are some stamina increasing sets out there that can help out that I just haven’t seen yet.
Sorcery is pretty cool. I definitely think its well done in the effects and the implementation into the world/crafting and stuff. I personally don’t see myself using sorcery all that much for the staff spells because of the affects on your health and stamina but I can see myself using it occasionally for some things like the mass harvest spell or the bat demon glider, as its really good at gaining height quickly. Some spells just do seem fairly useless though, such as the magma wall. Other than that I can’t wait to see more spells and sorcery related stuff come into the game.
Sorcery Crafting: So a second point here specifically about the crafting related sorcery things. The transporter is great, definitely will be using that frequently I can already tell. The current dislike though is the demon summons. I thought the demon summons were cool and the demon follower itself is actually pretty effective and it levels fast. Though the one issue I have is they seem to be temporary just like the undead followers which is pretty lame. I was testing out the War party perk and had a demon and a Cimmerian berserker following me and as we were fighting a boss the demon summon halfway through stops fighting and at that point was no longer my follower and it just started meandering around the area. Then it became hostile and started fighting my thrall. I wouldn’t mind a higher cost to summon one as long as it was permanent. This one seemed to only last like less than 24 hours, but for some reason one of them I summoned before it was still in my service.
The Events. So far the events are really cool and I think they make a great addition to the game. One thing I have noticed though is it seems the events are completely static in both location and in the type of event in each location. I understand why the location itself can’t really change, since its limited to places where players cannot build so that it doesn’t interfere with player bases, but I would like to see variation in the type of event that gets summoned at each location. Also the loot would be nice to have improved. I went into single player and speed ran some events, about 20 in total, to see what stuff you could get and was a bit disappointed as there wasn’t much in terms of loot at all. Only one event I thought was really worthwhile as some of the mobs dropped Schematic Fragments, which on Exiled Lands are good because they can have Siptah exclusive recipes on them.
The new armor, weapon, food and elixir bonuses are great. The new options create a lot more opportunities for builds with stuff like follower damage increase and weapon damage increase, etc. Along with the illusion system we aren’t restricted to armors that look cool anymore either :P. Definitely a good change here, though one thing I have noticed (which is likely intentional) is since attribute bonuses are gone, human followers also get nerfed a bit there since vitality is no longer an option, and only a flat health bonus is, it’ll be tougher to get more hp on thralls outside of their leveling and perks.
Speaking of thralls and followers, I have found that the nerf isn’t really that bad at all. The damage they can do is still pretty good in PvE, but their health definitely has taken a hit so you do have to watch out for them more. If you run Authority though healing the thralls is quite easy and the extra healing perk also affects their food which is nice, so even regular Gruel can heal them at about 9 points/sec which is good enough on top of the other perks. The ability to have 2 beefy thrall followers as well is really good, oftentimes one issue with followers is with just one they can get locked down hard sometimes and not be able to attack but with a second one they can cover for each other (as well as you can). Even with no Authority at all they seem to be okay as long as the player helps.
BUGS
I surprisingly haven’t run into too many bugs right now, but one thing I have run into is a few crashes. All of the crashes have either happened when I was doing Sorcery or when there was an event going on, so might have something to do with effects.
- Live Event in Sepermeru caused my game to crash when the lightshow was going on
- The Sorcery spell to detect resources seems to cause a lot of lag whenever a new resource pops up and my game stutters with each one.
- Overlapping the detect resources and the reveal corruption causes huge performance loss and one time my game crashed.
Overall I’m loving this update, a solid 8/10 for me so far and I can’t wait until it hits live.