Hey guys, I'm building the patrol levels so would welcome ideas. Right now I've made 5. Can you guys help me brain storm ideas? They should be unique battle scenarios that tell a quick story and are interesting. Those that I can do, I'll put in as patrol levels. So far I have: - Troll Hunt: Help a dwarf party kill 2 River trolls in their lair. - Rescue: You encounter a lone survivor of a dwarf patrol fighting against a horde of enemies. You jump in to save him before he too is killed. - Wyvern Hunt: Work alongside a large group of Dwarf Dragon Hunters to slay an Elder Wyvern with more dwarfs arriving in later turns as allies. - Ambush: Fight alongside a dwarf patrol as you are ambused from all sides by enemies. - Battle: Come across a battle between ramen and a giant scorpion. Free to jump in or wait for the 2 sides to weaken themselves. I'm thinking of the following: 1 - Help fortify a position: Hold out against a large tide of enemies that will continually enter the battle. You will have some dwarf allies and well defended position to help. 2 - Rescue some captured prisoners: You come across an enemy camp that has some bound prisoners. Attack them and as you attack, the prisoners will also try to escape. These will be unarmored and unarmed dwarf warriors fighting with their fists. 3 - Hold out until allies arrive: Fight a large name force while dwarf allies gradually arrive during later turns. Eventually the allies will allow you to swing the battle in your favour but it will be tough at first. 4 - Activate ancient traps / defences: The player comes ancient towers that start to shoot at them and perhaps release poison gas. Basically none of the usual bad guys but instead the player faces stationary defences. Perhaps even some automatons or something. Anyway, loads of little ideas and they can range from hard to easy. Just need more ideas as I create these levels.
Thanks for the details on Morale! You can take that text as it is and put it in a helpfile, is pretty much explains everything needed to get a basic understanding. With details / advanced information like specific tactical examples or effective skill combos I'd wait until they turn up naturally, and add gradually as players start to talk about things and information and questions tend to come up over time.
Patrol Brainstorming - Trap stage Idea for another trap stage. Here, the traps are an enivorenmental hazard that the player needs to navigate around, You don't have to actively fight the traps, like against the towers in your example. They just serve as extra obstacles and tactical challenge. The goal is to reach/fight an enemy unit that has bunkered up behind the traps. Maybe even within a small fortification, like a small derelict fort that once guarded an important intersection of underground Warven road. Possible additions, a bit more detailed: 1) An enemy spellcaster and/or enemy siege engineers create new traps over the course of turns. 2) Enemy scouts/shocktroops are hidden within the trap field. When you get to close, they will jump an ambush on you. Plausible source for enemy reinforcements appearing in small groups of 2-3. 3) Enemy sappers break through a wall after X turns, opening up another part of the stage and also acting as reinforcements. Adding a story element: The old fort from above could even be expanded to a separate storyline. Navigating the Dwarven caverns and strongholds is a challenge in itself; not to mention finding the way. Finding the route and approaching the fort could easily fill a day with 5 stages. Taking over the fort itself would make for a good "boss" battle or two. Then the fort could serve as "story hub": 1) Unlocking new Patrol levels that explore and cartograph the surrounding areas, resulting in encounters with monsters living there. 2) Guarding a caravan with materials to rebuild the fortifications. 3) Protect the workers from a nightly ambush by infiltrators/sappers. 4) Counter-sapping: The Ratmen are trying to poison the fortress well. Dig your own tunnels to find the Ratmen sappers before they break through. Defeat them, then cleanse and seal the area.
Patrol Brainstorming - How to get ideas fleshed out? If you like any idea(s) we bring, most likely they'll need fleshing out with story, background, enemies, and tactics for them. And you need to build it all. To save you time and effort on the non-developer part: Why not make it a player event? Ask people to send in more detailed ideas. Be it a stage design, story elements, or the complete setup and armament for an enemy patrol squad. Ideally, ideas could serve as building blocks that can be re-used: E.g. a fully designed patrol squad can be used three times, to make a swarm of 3 squads. For things that stand out, some fun recognition could be: - Get to name a rare or unique monster - Decide which race/class and allegiance (Dwarves, Ratmen, Goblins, etc.) a rare or unique monster is - Select the name for a stage - Name a major world element; like a Dwarven Stronghold, a Demon Champion, a legendary relic, or an ancient place of power and pilgrimage. - Name in the credits The Ravenmark:Mercenary guys did this with good success: They rewarded players who contributed good things for the game and/or the player community. For example the winners of a tournament, and the people who organised it; People who wrote really good world-building background, etc. They got to name units or characters, or received a personal banner that the unit's flagbearer flew during PvP battle ingame.
With the Patrol stages, it is no longer that imperative that all your heroes survive a story stage, which is good. Downed by a nasty crit on turn 1? I no longer restart the stage right away, but try if I can finish it anyways. If a hero falls behind, or if I need more power, I can just play a Patrol or two. Another idea for the Patrols: I'd organise them in hubs/tiers, so people can at least pick from which set of maps the stage is chosen. When I'm level 10, I don't want to fight Patrols that were geared for level ones. As you wrote that for example Goblins Patrol stages only become available once you encountered them in the story, that would be a good division for the first two tiers: - First Foray: The first Patrol stages, against Ratkin and their allies. - Deeper Tunnels: Day/Chapter 2 Patrols, against Goblins.
Strategy notes for the all-Mage & Stonepriest party: They play very different from my initial all-girl party. That one is really geared for direct combat. Skills are just the icing on the cake for the girls, and are mainly there to turn them into even greater murder machines with direct combat buffs. - You suck at hitting stuff. - If you hit, you suck even more at doing any actual damage. I've seen 1hp damage rolls frequently. - In the light of the above, at first don't bother buying items that increase your attacks, to-hit, etc. Your main source of damage is spells. - Instead, make getting +AP and +AP-Regen items a priority: They give access to more spells early on, and allow you to cast more, too. - The Firemage is the exception. Still no good to-hit, but he has some oomph behind his attacks. Make liberal use of his first skill. If you get +attacks items, he should be the first to get one. And the more the merrier, don't spread them out; drop them all on him instead. - Also, give +AP items to the Firemage first. His 3rd spell Fireball is a great crowdcleaner. - After that, you have some choices. My personal favorite for +AP after the Firemage is currently the Shadowwitch, to get the Skeleton Summon. I guess this will change soon, though, when I get enough +AP items to make other heroes' higher spells attainable. - Next on the list is stuff that increases your survival chances: +Dodge, +HP/Regen, +Crit-Immune, Damage Reduction. - Crit-Immune is especially important. You are squishy like a slug, one good crit can kill you outright in the early stages. - The Stonepriest is slow (no surprise with the shortie legs ), try to get him +move equipment asap. - Don't bother keeping items that do not benefit you. +2% Crit & 2 Ranged Damage? No thanks, I'm not hitting anything anyways. Sell those things, and spend the gold on items that serve you better.
Yeah, that's basically what I'm trying to do on this thread. Get some input because trying to think of 30 varied scenarios is going to be tough. In terms of rewards, I'd be happy to give credits and heck naming rights and so forth. I was thinking that would be something that I could do more formally for the latter half of the story once the game launches and hopefully has developed a community following. By the way, I'm up toe 7 patrol levels. I just created one where players come across a Ratmen camp and attack it with random dwarf allies appearing in later turns.
A trap stage is great. I think I can do that by just adding lots of explosive collectable items on the map and then just making them invisible. That way, players would be cautious about moving as they may end their turn on an explosive tile. It would be a bit like playing a battle on a minesweeper map. The idea of a fortified position assault is good too. The great thing there is that it can swing both ways ... one where the player is the attacker and the other where a horde of enemies is attacking the player while he / she has occupied an abandoned fort or something.
What's the condition for a character to go berserk? I was happily plowing through enemies and just seem to be going berserk here and there for no apparent reason, which unfortunately eats all my AP and renders that character useless for anything other than normal attacks.
Invisible traps? That's just sadistic... Maybe try with visible traps first, see how players like that? Currently no hero as a spell "detect traps", unless I missed it. "More formal" community event after launch sounds good to me, too.
Basically, once you fail a morale test at the start of your turn ... you either panic or go berserk. Each character type has a unique chance of going berserk versus panicking. Fighters tend to go berserk while wizards and archers tend to panic more often. You need to keep an eye on each unit's courage value. This is the light blue circle indicator on the HUD. Basically, the courage is modified as follows: Negatives to Courage: - Unit is hurt - Unit sees a friend get killed - Enemies arrive at the start of the turn Positives to Courage: - Unit is healed. - Unit sees an enemy get killed - Friends / allies arrive at the start of the turn Morale tests are taken only at the start of the turn and only if a unit is adjacent to an enemy unit. Basically, even if you're scared by what's going on ... it really only affects you when you have an enemy breathing down your neck. When taking a morale test, the system also takes into account how intimidating the enemy are in base contact and how brave your friends are that are in base contact. So if you're facing a bunch of scary monsters alone then you're more likely to panic that turn. If you're shoulder-to-shoulder with allies ... you're much less likely to fail a morale test.
Three cheers, we just hit page 100! Either this is a bug, or the Sigil skill description is not correct: The Pyromancer's Sigil spell says in the description "a unit that passes over it immediately stops movement and takes damage" . Currently, the Sigil only triggers when you end your move on the Sigil. Like the Stonepriest's first spell Lavatrap. How exactly should "passes over it" work? Does the move stop ON the Sigil, or one field PAST the Sigil, after you moved over it? I assumed the latter, and wanted to try abusing Sigil & Lavatrap combo : Drop a Sigil and surround it with Lavatraps to ensure that the enemy who passes it ends up on a Lavatrap for extra damage.
Ah ... good catch. This is a mistake in the item description. There was a time briefly where units would pick up collectables and trigger traps when they moved over them and not just when the ended their turn on them. However, it caused bugs if the unit was killed by the collectable / trap during its move. Also, since you don't have control of how a unit makes its move but only its final position ... I could not find a way to let players move intelligently in a way that would allow them to avoid traps that they didn't want to trigger. So I went with just trigger collectables and traps when you end your move on them instead.
Just a quick update ... I'm up to 9 patrol levels in my version. I have added the following: - Hold the Line: You help fortify a dwarves fortified position against a massive goblin / ogre attack. The attackers have to cross a narrow bridge riddled with traps while you have defended positions and a stockpile of potions to help you (as well as a couple of dwarf allies). - Prisoner Rescue: You attack a goblin camp that contains a prison full of captured dwarves and ramen. If you can get open the prison door (using a level on the level), then the dwarf prisoners will help you in the fight. The Ratmen prisoners are enemies of both the goblins and the player's faction so will have to be dealt with. Prisoners are unarmed so have weaker stats and no visible weapons.
I am dying to play this thing it's almost painful reading thru this thread and hoping and wanting. When when when?
Yep ... the beta is completely open so just send me your apple ID and you can be playing it tomorrow.
Regarding timeline for submission / completion ... I had originally thought early June was safe but with some bugs popping up and the addition of patrol levels to the mix has pushed that back. On the plus side, the game will launch with probably around 30 random patrol levels that were never in the original scope (9 done so far) and the major bugs seem to have been dealt with. I'm travelling a fair bit this month and that may slow things down or it may not. Not really sure ... sometimes travelling can give me more time as I am just alone in a hotel room and no family and other things getting in the way. I think June will likely be used up to polish the game and finish the patrol levels. So perhaps July? I probably ought to stop giving estimates of completion since I seem to really bad at it.
Hey guys ... can I get some feedback on new names? I need to decide on a name before I update the entry in the website and such, which are hopelessly outdated. - Demonrise - Lair of the Dragon - Demonblade - Lair of the Dragon - The Demon's Awakening Any thoughts?
Some other names: - Demon's Rise: Lair of the Shadow Dragon - Demon's Call I really need input on the name ... please let me know your thoughts and throw out any suggestions you have.
