Also, I'm just uploading a new version now. Expect a day or two for it to go through Apple's review process. It has some bug fixes, GUI updates to include number of attacks and stat button, inventory item highlights, zoom / pan / rotate speed options and should crash less (I think). No game changes as far as I recall.
I can confirm that I just got hit by a Venom Spider at range and received a critical hit. It's stat sheet shows 0% critical for ranged attack
Might be an error on the stat sheet. I don't think the venom spider's ranged attack should have a 0% critical chance. I'll look into it.
I finally made it through a few more maps without crashes, thank god, maybe I was just unlucky. Ice arrow was working again and not causing the UI to lock up completely this time. This is a run down of the spider boss. With knight, archer, mage hunter, elven paladin, duelist and storm seer party. Wasn't too hard but came close to dying, was lucky that the duelist was the target attacked and had gained a level already so it could take a critical hit. I blocked up the passageway and just went to down with everything. Took about 3 or 4 rounds to kill it off. Results might be different if the other spiders attacked all at once and hit. Spamming heals with Storm Seer and using duelist potion and the knight's 2nd ability for defense certainly helped.
Glad you got through that previous level. I'm playing through now on my latest version and I'm not seeing many crashes .. however, I did get a crash on the same spider level you mentioned yesterday. So I'm concerned about that ... I'm going to look into why that level would have a crash when other, earlier levels aren't. If it continues (and is unique to that level), I may just replace that level with a new level or something. Sounds like you used your party to work together intelligently to get through the level. That sounds good ... I want that to be the requirement in this game. Have characters work carefully together, use buffs and abilities to overlap and make up for weaknesses and such. Quick question, did you really not level up with anyone other than the Duelist before the boss level? It's strange because in my current play through, I've already had two of my character upgrade to level 1 and I'm not even at the boss level yet.
Pretty interesting approach, you really got me there I thought it was level-ups that give you additional skills. I like your system. And promptly threw a "plus lots of AP" item on one of my heroes to get more skills Definitely works so far. But yes, with items that clock in at several 10k gold, higher drops than 150 gold would be nice. For rule of thumb, how about 100g * (stage number) ? So on stage 1 you get the basic 100, on stage 10 you get 1000, etc. Again, randomness (of loot, in this case) plays a big role. I got lucky with getting both some nice stuff I kept and some high-level "vendor trash" that sold for several thousand gold each. Without those, I'd be much worse off. I know that might be pretty difficult to implement, but some level-scaling for the loot and a bit less randomness sounds like a good idea to me. Amen to that I thought those were fixed encounters. So I could actually draw things out and make more patrols appear to "farm" XP/kills? Might be worth a shot... As much as I like my mass murder machine, I have to agree with you. Reducing her base damage and the bonus from that +Crit/Dodge skill should do the trick. How about 15% + 1% per hero level? Do you have a baseline what you consider the "standard hero" in terms of overall power? And did you create the heroes with tiers in mind? Or are they all supposed to be more or less equal, just with focus on different areas (e.g. Healing, or AoE damage)?
I didn't pay too much attention to that yet, mostly because I almost cannot read the damage text I saw a few crits pop up, but didn't seem especially plentiful to me. Hint: Check the stat sheet for "Crit Resistance". One lucky drop had a whopping +30% Crit Res, that helps a lot. That only your Duelist got a level-up before the Spider Boss is a bit odd indeed. I also had everyone on level 1 at that stage, and my Assassin at least halfway to level 2. Did you feed all the kills to the Duelist? Also, from what WaveLight explained, skill use gives XP too. I use skills every chance I get, even spamming them to blow AP when I have no target but good AP recovery. Depending on the exact numbers, that could make quite a difference.
@Nullzone Not everyone had gained a level by that stage, I think 4 of 6 or 5 of 6 were leveled. I can see that it's dependent on the actions taken during a fight as my knight is ahead in exp and nearly level 2 while everyone else is lagging behind. That's why you can sort of see all the abilities for your characters and there other boxes of Xs. In theory you could cheese it by getting an AP boosting item early, (which you've already done), which might let you gain access to the ability a lot sooner though without proper AP regen you'll probably not be able to use it more than a limited amount of times.
Got another detail question about the combat/stat mechanics: The displayed value for To-Hit, Dodge, Crit Chance caps at 100%. Is anything above 100 lost? Or are values >100 still applied against for e.g. To-Hit penalties? Example: I have 100% total To-Hit chance. Enemy is in cover, reducing my to-hit by 50 percent points to 50% . Now, I have 120% total to-hit chance (even if my char sheet only shows 100%) , e.g. due to some item with high to-hit bonus. . Again, to-hit chance is reduced by 50 percent points. In this case, is it also 100-50=50, or 120-50=70? Depending on the answer, overstocking could be useful - or not.
I'm having an issue in combat where I'm pinned by something and I kill everything around the pinned target but I'm still stuck pinned with no enemy nearby. Pinned should be removed once the enemy causing it or adjacent to the pinned target is killed since it;s no longer there to hold it down. Ice Arrow for the Archer is not working correctly. It does damage but does not apply the stun. Target was able to move freely and also attack. Also as a side note, what's the purpose of Cursed Equipment? Seems very useless and you can't even sell it for money, wasting an item reward. Also what I found with the cloak thing in the first character slot and where it duplicates itself to other slots or rather it's the first character's cloak slot being used for the other 5 characters. Character sheets still doing funny things with equipped items as if they're sitting in the slots but not actually applying the bonuses while looking at the stats screen while in the shop.
So my view on combat is that everything essentially happens simultaneously. So when a character starts a turn pinned in melee, he or she is fully pre-occupied by the enemy infront of him and isn't able to move / fight freely that turn. If those enemies are killed by others during that turn, the original character would remain pinned for that turn. That's my though anyway ... but I understand that it's probably not a view held by most people. How is pinning handled in Warhammer Quest? I honestly don't recall if you can get unpinned by killing the enemy in the same turn. Strange ... I'll take a look. It really does nothing right now. I put it in there partially because I'm sadistic and I like the idea of someone fighting an epic battle only to be rewarded by a cursed item. It mirrors real life because ... you know, real life sucks some times. I was also thinking of adding an enchantress that could remove curses from items for a price. So sometimes it wouldn't be that bad to find an awesome item that was cursed. That's the blue woman on the camp site screen. I may remove cursed items though ... or remove it and re-add them via an update once I get the enchantress vendor up and running. I'm not sure about this ... I think these issues are all fixed in the next version. I've equipped cloaks and other items on my version and I'm not seeing any unusual behaviour so hopefully the version will have this all fixed.
Pinning: Been a good while since I played WHQ, so I had to look it up. I found the boardgame rulebook here: http://users.telenet.be/WHQ_TheHouse/Docs/WHQ%20-%20Rule%20Book%20v0.01.pdf Pinning for Heroes is on page 17, for Monsters on p.19. The main difference is that Heroes can escape from being pinned with a successful roll, while Monsters don't have that option. This forum thread discusses some rules oddities, and raises some good questions: http://bwarhammerquest.runboard.com/t89862 Both approaches make sense: 1) Unpin when all enemies are dead: Noone is there to hold you in check, back into the fray! 2) Unpin at end of round: Even with the monster(s) that held you in place gone, you need a moment to get your bearings, find the next enemy and the best path to it, etc. At first, I was surprised a bit too, that I did not unpin immediately. But after a few times, I just decided to roll with it. The downside of option 2 (unpin at round end) is that it makes Teleport even stronger: the two (I think) Heroes with Teleport can just jump out of being pinned, if they have a skill use and AP left. For that alone I'd go with option 1, unpin immediately.
Cursed Items, Ruins Patrol repeatable stage The Enchantress sounds good, I like that idea. Happily sadistic game master solidarity aside , my vote goes to remove cursed items until you can make her available. Ruins Patrol: I really like that one, too. Makes more sense than replaying "story" stages, and fits the overall feeling of a besieged Dwarven Keep pretty well. And can easily be expanded upon whenever you feel like doing so. You already have stages of different length. Maybe offering 3 different difficulty levels for patrols could work: - Easy/Short: "Short Foray". The Dwarves ask you to check an area for increased monster activity. - Medium 1: "Patrol Duty". Patrol the surrounding corridors, and keep an eye out for monster incursions. -> Enemy patrols/groups warping in. - Medium 2: "Guard Duty": Monsters have breached the Dwarven Halls. Hold out until reinforcements arrive. -> "Survive X rounds" type stage. - Long/Hard 1: "Deep Strike". The survivors of an earlier patrol report sightings of a large specimen of X (aka a Boss) roaming a lower level of the Halls. Strike hard and fast, this will lead you deep into enemy territory. -> This could be 2 stages back to back, without healing or store in between. - Long/Hard 2: "Hold the Line": You come upon another Dwarven patrol, already stuck in close combat with a horde of so-and-so. Join the fray and forces, and keep the monsters at bay until reinforcements arrive. -> Allies! Just in case it's not obvious
Suggestion: Named Stages on Introduction Screen Currently, the screen introducing each stage with a short - and so far quite good - flavour text always says "Introduction" in the headline. (see screenshot) As you cannot see the Stage name or number anywhere, it would be a nice addition to show a Stage name there - adding more flavour, and giving an easy way to refer to stages. Other than that, I am at the stage with the Shaman and his pet. I'll try to post all my equipment tomorrow, to have it documented. I have extra time, I'll try to add character stats as well. @WaveLight: Can I get that data from the savefile or the database? Copy/paste would be much easier than typing it all out by hand I could make screenshots, but then I'd need maybe 2 dozen. Hhmm, I could drop them on an external image site. Any good suggestions for that? I can remember only Imgur at the moment; are they any good?
Is there any sort of base or stronghold we come back to between dungeons? It would be cool to have a place to outfit and decorate with trophies that could provide some sort of bonus.
There kind of is ... it's just a camp site that has some dwarfs, a female wizard (who currently doesn't do much but I do have plans for her in the future) and a few guards looking nervously out into the entrance of the main dungeon. Adding trophies is a really cool idea. Wouldn't be too hard either ... basically as you clear each quest, I could just add some sort of trophies or something that appears in this screen. It would give it some more atmosphere / flavour and help with immersion. I'll take that as a note but probably something to add in future updates after release.
Forgot to answer your question ... I don't think there's any easy way to save your statline. At least one I know of. Don't worry about ... just describe what type of character team you have and let me know how you find this battle.
The Hydra and Shaman were pretty easy. 7 turns, got hit only a few times, no death on second try. On first try, one hero died on round 1 to a hard critical hit, 20hp only get you so far... My mistake, I overextended by rushing forward immediately. Second try, I hung back a bit and waited a turn or two with advancing to the first corridor barrier. After the battle, my Assassin was level 4. Archer and Shadowwitch are 3. Duelist, Ranger and Stormseer still at 2. My Shadowwitch also got 2(!) extra attacks from levelup to 3, making her a lot more dangerous in the damage department. The Archer got a whopping +20% Dodge. Levelup screenshot attached. What I did to kill the Hydra pretty fast: - My Ranger started with Poison Shots on Hydra, Shaman, and later Hydra again. Followed by the Ravens once she was in close range. Had her heal a unit twice or so. - Archer fired off the Arrow Rain a few times, and softened up targets for... - Stormseer: She was falling behind in levels, so I geared her out with a +attacks and a +24AP item. She kept firing away constantly, and took out whatever the others prepared for her, feeding her kills to get more XP. The 50 damage skill is very nice, nuked the Shaman on turn 2 or 3 . Starting shortly before only the Hydra was left, she threw out her HP regen spell twice, because... - My Shadow Witch was done keeping the Hydra occupied and debuffed with Blindness. Now, she started to pump the others up with Blood Frenzy for 3 extra attacks per round. The 3-10 damage per round you take as tradeoff are nicely compensated by the Stormseer's HP Regen on top of what I have innately. Conclusion: Teamwork and synergy really rock. Mission accomplished! Extra note on the Stormseer: Her Wind Spirit is quite a powerful party buff, with +40% to-hit and Dodge each, and +3 moves for all heroes. I cast that on turn 1, to weather the initial return fire without so much as batting an eye or breaking a fingernail. Nice extra effect was that the +3 move allowed my Duelist to reach her target - a regular Goblin - and take him out on turn 1. I'd suggest to lower that to 30% each, or maybe even 20/25% + 1%/level.
Remember I am not testing the app. Would it be possible to show the modified crit % in a different color to indicate it has been modified?? Maybe one color for a positive change and another for negative?? (If possible of course)..
