mutonizer
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Posts posted by mutonizer
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I'm still a bit confused as to why Perception (Accuracy) is all the sudden perceived to be so much more powerful... it should be on par with Might, especially if the Deflection of enemies has been nerfed across the board (since that would mean most attacks would fall in the positive ACC-DEF range where Might is more powerful than Accuracy). Are people just not testing with Might as well? Or are the heaps of Accuracy-boosting spells and modals tricking people into thinking it's their high Perception that's producing great results instead of just balls-high Accuracy, of which Perception is only a small contributor?
Simple really, 3 things, at least for me:
1) Might is very limited in use: Damage and Healing. Perception is useful for EVERYTHING targeting hostiles, from attacks, special attacks, control, etc.
2) Might grants % based bonus, making it fluctuate in usefulness depending on your weapon base damage. Perception is a flat ACC boost, every point in it moving you away from grazes and closer to Critical hits.
3) Might gain is useless if you don't land at least a hit. ACC is only useless if your ACC > DEF +100, which is probably never gonna happen.
So yea, DPS will get both, but really, they need PER first, then MIGHT, because MIGHT alone can't do ****.
Others will get PER and ignore MIGHT, simple as that. Consider that at level 7, the largest single target heal, Restore Major Endurance from Priests, will heal, with 10 Might, for 102 Endurance. Maxing out Might would make this a 120 heal instead. Things like Holy Radiance will barely gain 3 endurance regen a tick between 10 and 19 Might. There is no situation that I can see that would require it. The only thing I might imagine would be a weak character getting massively gang banged but in this situation, Withdraw is by far better. Overall, even for Priest healers, Might is I think a poor choice and I'd go ACC first, then PER instead of Might as it negates some heavier armor penalties as well as INT for the boosted AoEs.
As a note, any testing against mobs as they are currently is, I think, not really useful because mobs are not balanced for now and actual combat makes things hard to test in isolation. Test between companions/hired recruits.
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Hi Mutt! Thanks for this! I took your notes and smashed 301 with an Orlan perception rogue!
RE Weapon Specialization. I think it is bugged. I took it for my fighter and it didn't show in the talent acknowledgments upon level and was no where to be found on the character sheet.
Weapon specialization or Weapon focus?
Specialization is granted automatically to Fighters at level 5 and indeed as, I wrote, there are no references to it anywhere, nor does it change your listed base damage whatsoever.
Focus seems to work fine for me, and is listed properly though sometimes it's on the same UI line in the character sheet than other talents, making it hard to see. Testing shows that it grants 10ACC as well as far as I could test it.
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Skills and Attributes have no meaning to their name but to be there as words we can use to talk about them. Might doesn't mean Might, Dexterity doesn't mean Dexterity, Intellect doesn't mean intellect, etc. They are just game mechanics which could easily just be called Stat_01, Stat_02 and it would have the same effect.
I really don't see how you'd link one thing with another because of this, unless you go even more abstract.
That said, let's keep this onto Fighter topic only, as a class and it's mechanic.
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Yeah I'm also not a huge fan of per encounter stuff either. I read the post, good analysis ... I haven't tried a leather armor / fast attacking fighter but I would assume that Stilettos would do more damage due to -5 DT.
Rapiers are faster and good base damage. Since my fighters hit/crit constantly and their base damage is boosted due Savage Attack, the -5DT from stilettos only makes them more interesting against specifically high base DT targets, to increase that damage potential. Otherwise, speed won overall for me but it's nitpicking really, difference wasn't that great between the two.
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Personally I'd simply make all per encounter abilities per rest instead, maybe with larger amounts, so that they become tactically interesting resources that you need to manage, rather than just victims of the "button = awesome" syndrome.
Though yea, that's all based on the fact that you need to accept the "per xxx" system on something else than wizards/clerics, which I have issues with, but that's beside the point and I'm not going into a 4E debacle debate again.
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disclaimer:
All the information below was collected during BB301 in an enclosed environment and tests were conducted between characters only using all weapons and armor available in the beta. Monster balance is therefore irrelevant.Due to some lack of details on some mechanics as well as poorly detailed tool-tips, I probably got a couple things wrong as well. This is also just me testing **** with the tools we have available (and simple modding to make it easier to recruit adventurers). I also could only do level 1 to 7 reliably, but should be a good start.
I ran tests with all classes to get a good feel for them before judging each class individually, and I plan on trying to do more class specific reviews under similar conditions as time allows, with barbarian being next most likely.
RACES
- Human: not very relevant for the fighter, maybe for DPS ones.
- Aumaua: Coastal is very good, Island somewhat
- Dwarf: Mountain dwarf is very good though it depends on specific factors, Boreal is irrelevant
- Elf: Pale Elf is also very specific in it's use, Wood elf is decent for some specs, mainly ranged
- Orlan: Hearth Orlan is very nice as it helps the fighter hit and crit hit (though it doesn't work currently?), Wild Orlan is decent for the defense bonus but somewhat situation dependent. 100% team of Hearth Orlan, once their talent works, will probably be something crazy.
- Godlike: Fire, Moon and Nature seem to be decent here, Death not so much
ATTRIBUTES
- MIG is irrelevant for a tanky figther, nice for a DPS fighter.
- CON is somewhat decent, depends on the role but even a tanky fighter shouldn't really need to max this out.
- DEX is interesting but again, depends on your role. Mostly irrelevant for tanky, great for DPS.
- PER is god due to it being linked to Accuracy. This needs to be maxed out on everything and everyone.
- INT is good for tanky mainly due to DEF bonus. The Fighter defensive aura doesn't justify high INT on DPS fighters though.
- RES is pretty much useless, apart from duration bonus. Even then, you do things to be used in a pinch, not long term, so I'd ignore it as well unless you go full control fast DPS fighter, then I'd max this instead of DEX to get long duration KDs.
All in all:
- Tanky fighter: Max out PER and INT, 10 in the rest.
- DPS fighter: Max out PER, DEX, then boost up MIG a bit by taking some points from RES and CON to keep your overall resists decent. Do not dump anything or your defenses will tank, leaving you very exposed to spells and effects. RES instead of DEX for your KD freak fast hitter.
CORE ABILITIES
Level 1:- (level 1) Knockdown : This is why you need high ACC on a fighter from PER. On a graze, it's half duration. On a hit, full duration and on a crit, +50% duration. Very situational and for a tanky fighter, more often than not you'll be in animation frames and unable to react properly. Great however on a DPS fighter, especially with fast weapons. As a note, 19RES will max this out to 7.3 seconds, meaning it's still decent on a graze and game over on a crit.
- (level 1) Defender: This should always be on if tanky, especially once boosted, as it allows for 3 engagements, grants boost to DEF, and boosts your engagement range. No reason whatsoever to turn this off, ever. For DPS fighters, it can be nice in a pinch if focused, though personally I'd just switch weapon set to weapon/shield.
- (level 2) Vigorous Defense: Very good 10-15 seconds defensive buff. It doesn't take any animation frame BUT it'll trigger upon your next starting frame so can be tricky to use in a pinch.
- (level 3) Unbending: Very lackluster and bugs out most of the time when used. Maybe double the ratio? Needs to be fixed to get a fair assessment but the value seems low for now.
- (level 4) Armored Grace: Supposed to give you bonus DT, but the whole DT calculation is a bit obscure for now so not sure. It does however apparently reduces your armor speed penalty by 16%, which is quite nice if it works (really not sure here) as it would allow your DPS fighters to switch from Padded to Scale armor without problem.
- (level 5) Weapon Specialization: While interesting in theory, lack of any reliable details on this, no listing on character sheet and no change in listed base damage, make it nearly impossible to test properly.
- (level 6) Confident Aim: This is really good on all fighters but especially on DPS Fighters and it works on KD hit checks as well. This also makes DPS fighters very viable and reliable.
- (level 7) Guardian Stance: The aura is VERY short and you pretty much need to be in base to base contact for it to work with 10 INT. "Could" be worth it for an INT spec tanky fighter if another melee aggros something, or as a DPS fighter to help out your main tank. Aura size really limits it's use however and the penalty to ACC doesn't help either. With the chaos that is combat right now, it's useless but once/if combat sort itself out a bit, might become more very interesting tactically.
EXTRA TALENTS
- Bonus KD: 2 KDs per Encounter is usually fine, but later on, who knows. For a more stable build however, Weapon specs far outpace this one.
- Wary Defender: +10DEF/REF/FOR/WILL when Defender's active? Yes please. 100% Must have for any tanky fighter. Too few talents for DPS fighters to grab this.
- Rapid Recovery: "Feels" like a 15-25% increased speed for Endurance regen granted by Constant Recovery. Not worth it. Maybe instead keep the rate but double the amount?
- Weapon focus: Truly godlike. This is a flat +10ACC to weapons in the spec list. Choose carefully and grab soon as you can. My only beef with it is how each list is treated. I feel that this should be lists of logical weapon type, such as Sword focus, Ranged focus, Blunt focus, Piercing focus or something like that. Would make more sense to me, instead of having my Estoc focus fighter, also be focused on Wands and **** like that.
- Hold the Line: With Defender, that's a bit overdoing it so I'd recommend just ignoring it. Could Interesting for a DPS fighter however, especially Reach two (Pike/Staff), sadly, again, too few talents and there are better things to get.
- Defensive Talents: +10 to a specific type of Defense. Can be nice to up a defense that is low due to a dump stat, but otherwise, not really worth it when there are other goodies around and so few talent points.
- Savage Attack: This makes the DPS fighter a true beast and one of the few DPS able to just go into melee and stay there no matter what because of their base high ACC, DEF and Endurance. Combined with Confident Aim past level 5 and a weapon spec, things get a bit crazy.
- Cautious Attack: Totally and utterly useless on a fighter since it's part of the same Modal group as Defender (and Savage Attack, etc) so one will cancel the other. DPS fighters have Defender anyway, so again, useless. Only way to make this useful is to remove it from Defenders Modal group.
- Envenomed Strike: Useless. 3 per rest and damage, even if raw and weapon independent, is sub par (3 ticks of 14 damage at level 4 and doesn't seem to increase with level). Maybe add some kind of long duration heavy snare effect on it to justify the 3 per rest limitation and the investment?
- Fast Runner: Tested a couple races but this doesn't seem to do anything noticeable and didn't see any button to trigger it. Personally I'd convert this into a per rest ability, granting a big speed boost, but we'll see once it's working/fixed.
Overall, Fighter is a good class as it is now, one of the only class that "feels" right, capable of dealing damage reliably while staying in the thick of it, or tanking also very reliably and being very low maintenance. Not a group player and very little group synergy, however his own high ACC, high DEF and high END make him perfect as a very stable party member to build your tactics around.
Because of his front line/melee role, there are no true dump stats for the Fighter I feel, since doing so would really lower one or more of your defenses and leave you exposed to nasty spells or on hit triggered effects. From what I tested, this is the best class regarding balanced Attribute distribution, though RES is of little value in and of itself, only coming into play for KD duration (gain is marginal) and WILL defense. CON is not really being needed either. That said, a fast attacking DPS fighter with maxed out RES and ACC will make crit KDs 10 seconds long, which means -10DEF/REF for 10 seconds on enemies, which means more crits for everyone.The core abilities are decent though mostly oriented toward a heavy tank fighter type and on their own, leave very little options during character progression. Admittedly this prevents "screwing up", but also means you just don't have any real choices and they all end up the exact same pretty much.
The Extra talents are what they are but overall, you just don't have enough points to goof around and you end up going for the sure things: Weapon spec + Savage Attack for DPS, Wary Defender + Weapon spec for tanky. Due to Savage attack ranged limitation, there is also no real viable ranged fighter builds, the lack of class based damage bonus meaning you'll barely scratch DTs or attack once in a lifetime.
Leather armor on DPS tanks seems to be the most stable DT if you want to keep a good attack ratio but even with something heavier they can do the job. Weapon wise, dual rapier or dual stilettos were the best for fast melee, rapiers winning usually, while for 2hd, anything's good since you'll hit/crit often and therefore overwhelm DT completely, but Estoc really just destroys any opponent more reliably.
For tanking, I could not find any Exceptional Large Shield, so went with Exceptional Medium instead. DEF is all you want here. Hatchet bonus to DEF doesn't seem to work for now, which puts Rapier, for me, at the first place for tanks due to it's very fast attack speed. Once Hatchet works however, it'll do the trick. Anything else is just too slow sadly, making your tank fighter unable to react properly, constantly locked into animation recovery. Armor wise, anything Heavy really.
As a closing note, my run-through with 1 tanky fighter, 1 cleric, 2 fast hitters DPS fighters and 2 slow hitters DPS fighters was one of my easier, most stable, low maintenance and fastest runs yet, with the cleric mostly idling around doing nothing all the way though and fights over in seconds.Feel free to comment using your own tests, point our errors and engage in fighter specific discussion in this thread so that we can centralize some of the feedback on this class.
Cheerios.
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I have no problem with understanding DT. It's the difference between attacking an armored and unarmored target. Deflection though, I find confusing. But I do see Sens critique. With the current system it is much easier to simply use weapons with extremely high damage thresholds against any kind of target. Why muck around with Low DT speed weapons when you have to switch them around during every engagement?
High damage, low damage, doesn't really matter. What matters is: can you hit and critical hit. If you can, then start thinking about weapons, if you can't, delete and start another character.
My dual rapier wielding fighters are destroying everything on sight at incredible pace. So are my Great Sword wielding Rogues. Barbarians however, can't do ****, no matter the weapon you give them.
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I'd say it's a combination of the hit system, DT and Crit Multiplier being applied before DT, which exacerbates the problems with hit mechanic.
The fact that grazes and critical hit are not just flat % make the whole thing a bit bonkers to me and if you can't hit/crit hit reliably, you're useless overall as DPS while if you can hit/crit reliably, it makes you crazy powerful.
Since Fighters have high base ACC and a talent to convert grazes into hits, and Rogues also have high base ACC and a talent convert hits into crits, you can see how things go when comparing with other classes who not only don't have these talents, but overall lower ACC anyway.
And the more you level up the worse it gets, fighter and rogue becoming incredible killing machines, while others barely able to land any hit on anything, constantly grazing.
Personally I'd put critical hit as a flat % removed from ACC vs DEF calculations (ie: if you roll 90% or above on the d100, you crit) but still affected by some talents (ie the Rogue talent would make it so 80% rolls or above would crit or something). That would make the system more stable overall in my opinion.
After that, I'd put crit multipliers applied on the damage left over once you factored in the DT and remove DR completely as a mechanic. That would result in lower critical hits overall on heavy armored targets, and still decent crits on low armor targets. Other damage multipliers would still be applied before though of course (such as Might, Savage Attack talent, etc).
As for graze, I'd get rid of it completely and instead put a critical miss chance (ie: if you roll 5% or below, or something), which could do like double your recovery time or something.
For ACC vs DEF calculation, you'd then go 1d100+ACC vs 1d100+DEF and if attacker roll overcomes defender roll, then you score a normal hit and go on to calculate damage. Of course that would result in a lot more misses, but I don't mind personally, that just means you can block/evade properly. Endurance can then be lowered to prevent inflation, making hits matter.
Of course some people don't like damage spike and would rather constantly get hit or hitting. Personally I don't mind and this allows for weak but very defensive characters (focusing on defenses and not getting hit at all but it hurts when hit) and pure damage soak like barbarians (ignoring defenses but got so much Endurance blot they can safely ignore hits for a time). With the current mechanics, my fighters are incredibly durable because nobody can do anything but graze on them, and barbarians get two shotted.
Never gonna happen, but there you go
Edit:
As a note, I'd also replace the linear dice rolls with curve rolls. As in, something like 5d20 instead of 1d100. Linear rolls just exacerbate randomness instead of character development, while I find curve rolls push everything to a more stable medium range, making character development more of a factor overall.
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It's not stat imbalance, it's just how ACC works in regards to class progression.It's really very simple. I made a high Might / Con two-handed paladin and barbarian. Both were crap in combat.
I made a high dex fighter with crap strength who was great in combat. The stat value imbalance seems out of kilter.
From my testing, no matter how you spec, any class with Low of Avergage base class ACC will be sub-par in damage dealing compared to one that is High.
Fighter and Rogue are the killing machines for now due to this and their own abilities to convert graze to hit and hits to critical, Rangers close on their tails but very limited and weak overall due to their pet link though the "tag team" ACC bonus is nice.
Rest cannot even compete.
Monks don't have access to a Fist weapon spec so they fall far, far, behind, especially considering you don't have damage type versatility.
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Yeah well ACC-DEF = 31 is going to lead to a lot of crits, and a lot of benefit from the Might bonus too. I *think* that is a 38% chance to Crit, which is pretty High. The Hearth Orlan thing probably makes it 48%, which is like w0w imba ?
Doesn't seem to be implemented yet though.
MIG, DEX, PER seems to be the go to for melee/ranged DPS just now, with ACC being THE king as usual because if affects everything.
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Speaking as a weaksauce player, am I to directly take that a MIGHT + CON guy would be a bad tank?
Not..bad. Just wasted space overall.
That said, the differences are not that big anyway, just don't dump stat is all, that can really screw up your defenses.
Tanky fighter is really one of the best attribute balanced so far I think.
And while rogues destroy everything, melee DPS fighters are more...stable overall and they kick some serious **** too.
As a note, I'm testing a 1 fighter 1 cleric rest rogue party to check things out. Weeeeee bit crazy
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Since crit multipliers are applied before DT calculations, without DR, critical hit would totally destroy you. Add to that the fact that most light armor wearers have also **** for DEF, they'll get crit more often, meaning close to instant death constantly. DR again mitigates this somewhat.
Now, why they apply the crit multipliers before factoring in DT? No idea but my rogue's enjoying nearly one shotting everything on sight.
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Hmm, it's simple really...
Sex > Race > Sub Race > Culture > Class > Stats > Abilities > Voice > Name..done.
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Which translated to:
"you're all nothing but children and cannot decide for yourselves nor assume responsibilities for yours actions, so we'll take everything away from you and you'll do exactly what we say"
A concept in game design I find quite insulting, but ah well, sometimes you got to just suck it up right?
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There should be feats or traits for light melee and ranged weapons to ignore DT but not DR. A skillful fighter looks for openings in the armor to bring the pain or stabs/shoots the unprotected neck.
That's critical hits, which usually light melee and ranged weapon users can do more often (rogues, rangers, etc) due to higher ACC (and talents and whatnot). Critical hits, due to their high damage nature, make DT less of a factor, and instead make DR more important.
Not saying it's perfect or anything, just that it's the way it is
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Just a note,
Summed it up here for other spells effects concerns as well (including but not limited to, the same Chill Fog issue)
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Why is culture chosen before the attributes during character creation? Seeing as culture affects attributes, I think it'd be better the other way around.
You mean after
And yea, makes no sense to me either. Every character I go to the culture tab, choose, then come back to the attribute tab.
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[Description of the issue]
When closing the Ogre area, you see his mace (and only the mace, no ogre) just hanging in there.[DETAILED list of steps to reproduce the issue AND what to look for]
Get close to the Ogre without triggering him[Expected behaviour]
Mace should not just be hanging in the air[Note]
I think I can "guess" why you did this: Preventing players from pre-igniting the Ogre with long range weapons before you could have your nice little dialog trigger. This is bull**** for this encounter, but also a very bad mentality to have overall as you design more and more of such encounters.
Just keep the Ogre spawned and flag it as Neutral then allow player himself to make the choice instead of forcing the dialog on him via artificial limitations (crazy small FOW distance and spawning it only on dialog trigger).
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[Description of the issue]
A lot of spells currently have overwhelmingly explosive or "shiny" visual effects. Taken individually, they are already quite massive but taken together in combat, they obscure everything (and, since this is a bug report, completely bog down your computer, see picture below)
[DETAILED list of steps to reproduce the issue AND what to look for]Use any combination of spells/auras. The entire screen soon becomes a chaotic mess of "things" of all colors.
[Expected behaviour]Spell effects should be subtle when they need to be (auras, chanter effects, etc) and very, very brief when they are explosives (fireball, etc)
[Notes]
When this happened, not only I could not see ANYTHING, but my framerate dropped to 3FPS and this lasted for the entire duration of the spell (which was quite long, as a note).
This is typically what should never happen and a good example of a spell effect that should be 1) explosive for a second and 2) very subtle afterwards.
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I'm a fan of bleedthru. DT is already powerful enough against low damage weapons.
Try as you might, you're not gonna hurt someone in full plate armor with your toothpick, unless you land a precise perfect hit in the joints/eyes/etc (ie: a critical hit). That's what I'd like to see is all.
Low damage weapons are usually there because of faster/shorter animations and they become really, really good against some weakly protected enemies but I think they shouldn't do anything, unless via critical hits, against big slow heavy armors.
A mechanic that wasn't discussed in this regard was "post DT penetration damage multiplier". Might over complicate things further, but it's an option. Can only go hand in hand with full DT absorption though of course.
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Don't understand then what you mean by "flat" DR...
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hmm, isn't flat DR just DT? Or do you mean vertically across all damage type?
Personally think DT should be split from damage type and be a fixed value across the board, while DR be the one value affected by damage type, therefore impacting more high bursts than small hits.
Afterall, a weak hit from crushing weapon against a plate armor wouldn't do much anyway, just like a weak piercing or slashing hit. However, a massive hit from crushing weapon will really screw over plate, while a massive slashing or piercing hit would be much less painful.
note: I mean when keeping the game logic, not real life stuff.
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Couldn't agree more. Inventory is there to make the game work and not to be the game itself.
That's a matter of opinion. Decisions about inventory in a meaningful system is awesome I think.
Also, you forgot Cataclysm:DDA style: Each item has Weight + Volume.
- Weight is for your carrying capacity (strength wise)
- Volume is for your containers (pockets, backpack, sash, etc)
Other than that, too many core mechanics to change at this point to change the core of the inventory system so don't quite see the point, other than just have one massive party inventory, accessible any time, with proper sorting tabs and be done with it.
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Thanks for the info. Will the backer NPC UI (whatever it ends up being) be a toggle? For me personally, having certain characters look different purely based on who designed them (ie being backer NPCs) is one of the most immersion breaking things that could be done and a VERY dangerous path to tread with a Kickstarter game. It crosses the line from giving backers nice rewards to compromising the integrity of the game world IMO.
I agree totally, but they have 150+ backers who pledged 1000$ and above, meaning custom NPCs designed and named by them. In the pledge however was no mention of having them being "special" in any way, or have any pledgers name recognition or anything like that so all in all, they're pretty free to do whatever they want as long as they put the 150+ NPCs in the game.
Just expect your cities and taverns to be very crowded with named NPCs that probably won't have **** to say to you
How did you break Beta 301?
in Backer Beta Discussion
Posted · Edited by mutonizer
That's because you're doing your math wrong, most likely forgetting variables.