IndiraLightfoot

Hehe! One of my party members left the intinerant merchant wagon and declared loudly in her distinctive Scottish dialect: "This will be a great day...", and then one second later the night fell. EDIT: I think I had rested the party just outside the wagon first, though. Kenji's crunchy frogs are a delight!

In honour of my joyful playthrough of Might & Magic X with my ranger Indira as their leader, I hereby change my avatar to something more appropriate.

Humanoid, you're the best. Thank you! The great thing is that your tips are improving my very first party, a party that I picked for "RPG-reasons", whatever exactly that is in a dungeon crawler like this, but anyhow... Although a suboptimal one for min-maxing, your know-how will help this party survive the ride and hopefully enjoy the game a tad more. And I get to keep my tactics as well. Kudos! Great to know that you can return, let's just hope the shuffling of portraits is just as easy. I can't wait to play it again, but now, back to work.

Tell me about it! And I do enjoy my party being wiped out every now and then. Speaking of which, in Act 1, there are a few really tough enemies. You can return to them later, no? It would be a shame if Act 2 locked you out somehow. I mean, there are even one or two master trainers on that peninsula. Early on, I even had to leave certain levels in dungeons be simple because they were too tough for my party, and that's something I've missed in many CRPGs as of late.

Wow, much obliged, Humanoid! And yeah, the block mechanics are pretty apparent, especially highlighted when you met Mamushi. I really love my dwarven defender, so these tips are fantastic. I should have thought of some of them myself. I already use Challenge from Warfare for my blade dancer, but forgot how squishy she was. I have a few questions, though: -I now have two dual-wielders in my party, both decent at dodging. Which should be hitting first, is it really the Ranger with two daggers or the Bladedancer with two swords? -Well, my mage uses some similar spell all the time. It's an area of effect and it lowers their defences, but I think its prim magic, and it's just a novice level one. -So, the best order for me would be: Mage, Ranger, Blademaster and then Defender last? And a basic question: How do I switch the portrait order down at the bottom UI? Some drag and drop + shift-thingie? You've already got a really good grasp of the mechanics. It's almost down to a science, and in a good way! Great to know that Radiant Weapon doesn't work yet. *Cyberwave!*

Great questions, and very important to know. I tried to find some info, but so far I've only found what's in this wiki entry below: Skills can be used outside of combat for a variety of purposes and they grant auxiliary combat bonuses.[1] Non-combat skills are gained separately from combat skills(Abillities, Talents) and they do not use the same resources. Contents [hide] 1 Description 2 Skill Types 3 Known Skills 4 Skill Bonus 5 References [edit] DescriptionNon-combat skills do not use the same resources as combat skills. You don't spend the same stuff for a non-combat skill as you do for combat skills. Some don't use anything at all to use, so you will never find yourself unable to blast an opponent if you get caught sneaking. Combat can be avoided with non-combat skills. There will often be ways to avoid fighting. Examples: standard methods of talking your way out of a fight or sneaking around an encounter, but there will be other ways too. Perhaps you can re-sanctify a desecrated cemetery to prevent any further undead from rising, or maybe figuring out a way across a ruined bridge will always avoid the bandits on this side of the river. Skills can be used in both scripted interactions and conversations, but they will be less common in conversations.[2] [edit] Skill Types Learning Skills - This includes finding out previously unknown information, like the location of a town or a hidden door, or uncovering secret knowledge, like a potion recipe or the true name of a demon, or maybe knowing a good place to gather materials like ore or herbs. Traveling Skills - Skills that improve movement capabilities (such as sneaking around some ruins), or traveling across the world map faster or more safely, or even teleporting directly to destination. And skills like unlock and disarm that remove barriers like locks or traps. Item Skills - The alternatives to looting are the means to make new items, buy them, steal them, or supply NPC with materials or recipes to make them for players. Companion Skills - Non-combat abilities that interact with your companions, giving ways to recruit them, improve their usefulness, and keep them from dying (or even worse, disliking you!).[edit] Known Skills Mechanic – can be used to open locks as wells as find hidden objects and set/disable traps. It determines the power of traps that the character sets.[3] Stealth Survival – determine how long the effects of consumable foods, drinks (including potions), and drugs last.[3] Lore [4] Athletics[5] [edit] Skill BonusEvery class gets a bonus in two skills.[6] Those bonusses to a skill are constant and are on all levels the same value.[7] Class Skill bonus 1st skill 2nd skill Rogue[8]Stealth Mechanic Chanter[9]Stealth Monk[9]Stealth Ranger[10]Stealth Survival

Three hours more into the game, and the combat gets more exciting now. A perhaps somewhat expected, but still nice surprise! I took 1 point in light magic and tried out that Celestial cloak just for fun, and well, let's say it actually makes a difference. I've also made my ranger just as good at dualwielding daggers as with her bow, if not better, and that means I have basically three melee characters and one mage, and I do feel that I'm getting the balance pretty much right now. For instance, Mamushi, I literally man-handled till he begged for mercy. He hadn't much time for pushing us around, I tell you that. Still now, like level 8, I find that my strong, heavy armour expert, shield-wielding, endurance and vitality-junkie dwarf with a crappy beginner's axe is the one that stands the longest by far. In a few cases, she just stands there against the hardest enemies, while the rest of my party is rather quickly rendered unconscious. I got to improve evade and armour fast for the rest of them. The dwarf, by now immune to poison, outshines the rest. Just wait till she finds a decent axe.

I've been pondering some more over this PE beastmaster ranger and her/his close bond with his/her animal companion. And more and more I'm leaning towards rolling a ranger without such a companion after all (if it's even possible). Why? Well, let's see... Scenario: Indira, the fearless ranger, and her faithful companion Measles the Weasel is lying in wait. The evil warlord Fingerwhack is approaching with his minions, the Reapers of the Innocent. She's just about to shoot an arrow straight in the face of that vile sadist when the following inner dialogue occurs between her and Measles: *Soon I'll let this arrow fly, my friend.* *Scent of a female on this bush here* *Wait, first I have to let go of this arrow, and then we have a difficult fight before us.* *I'm hungry* *Sigh. Not now, we have more important things to do, like slaying those fiends down there on that path.* *My anal glands are itching. I got to scrape my butt against this root...* *I dont' care. Focus now.* *Oh no! I got to go, my whiff-whiff is coming out fast* *Plug that hole or something. That awful smell will get the attention of those wardogs down there in no-time.* *But I have to go, I can't help it* *Before I let go of the arrow now, run!* *Aaahh...* *No. I said "run", not "runs"* BARK, BARK!!! Wardogs come scrambling up the hill. Indira picks up a stinky weasel and bolts through the woods, steaming with fury. There are many twangs disrupted by animal companions this way, so I'd say ranged weapon practise and animal companions don't go well together, nor does combat where this kind of concentration is needed. Give us an animal-free ranger!

Which makes them very lethal indeed, and quite important when a fight breaks out. I wonder what kind of initiative system PoE has. Obviously, if no one detects the rogue, it will do its heavy hit, but perhaps they are super quick in open combat as well and maybe they can re-stealth too.

First off, very exciting update! Heh, for me, it's almost 100% certain that I'll play a ranger. And a rogue will be in my first party as well. While I love the idea of a ranger with an animal companion, having a special bond and all that, I would be very happy if there were another ranger path to take already at level 1 - one where you dismissed your soul animal in your youth, and instead you became a hunter, which almost kills animals too keenly, using ranged weapons perhaps even better than animal-cuddling rangers themselves. Well spotted, Hiro! Like KaineParker, I much prefer the 3rd ed of D&D, well for PnP especially, but for CRPGs too, I reckon. But for a CRPG, many of the mechanics we see in the 4th ed do fit very nicely this kind of CRPG system proposed here for PE. Hopefully, the roles won't be as clearcut, though, but I hope for the same char development diversity as well, then.

ToN just had a very interesting update, where they describe that they're having an even closer collaboration with Obsidian right now, using their dialogue tree systems (but adapted) and their sisometric background graphics! Here's their recent discussion on invos and loot, and perhaps they will take a page or two from Obsidian here as well, so this below may contain clues about PE's inventory and loot. InventoryAdam here to fill you all in on a couple other facets of Torment’s design. In the Q&A forum, Alex asked an excellent question that we're now at a design stage where we can answer (as always, keep in mind that all design decisions are subject to change and your own feedback until we ship the game). When talking about inventory, it's probably easier to start with a common foundation and tell you what we're changing from there. So here's an inventory you're all familiar with: Now even though that's an inventory interface up there, note that we're just talking about the elements of the inventory. The interface layout itself has yet to be designed. So PST's inventory had the following: 1. Equipped slots around the character (8-10 of them) 2. Quick slots for items you need right away 3. Ammunition slots 4. Weapon slots so you can switch between a few different weapons easily 5. A pack with slots for up to 20 different items 6. A weight limit (based on Strength) that determined how much you could carry First, the Equipped Slots. Torment will have slots for the things you'd expect, plus a few more: Armor, Helmet, Gloves, Boots, Cloak, Rings, Belt, etc. PLUS Alteration Slots and up to three Untethered Slots. Alteration Slots are for things like tattoos, piercings, implants, etc. Like the tattoos in PST, party members will be able to purchase alterations, and the Last Castoff can even collect special ones that reflect your choices in the game. Whether some of these alterations are permanent is still TBD. Untethered Slots are for equippable items that don't need to be held or carried—for example, a stone that floats around the wearer's head or a prehensile tail that grafts to her body. Most characters will have at least one Untethered Slot, but some (particularly those who train in the Concentration Skill) will be capable of handling two or even three such items. Quick Slots are for cyphers and other items that you want easy access to. Outside of a Crisis, these slots are just for convenience, and you can swap things in and out of them without penalty. During a Crisis, you can use items in your Quick Slots quickly, but moving something from your pack into a Quick Slot will cost extra time. Additionally, some special items or abilities may give you another Quick Slot to use. Weapon Slots in Torment will use the concept of weapon sets. You can designate up to four weapon sets and can switch between them easily. You can, of course, change what's in each weapon set at any time, but doing so during a Crisis will take valuable time. Our weapon sets are representative; you're not physically moving weapons from your bag into your hand, rather you're defining four different—possibly overlapping—configurations of your weapons. For example, let’s say that you’ve picked up an Energy Buckler that you want to use as your main shield. Normally, you'd equip the shield and melee weapon, but when a situation called for your Stingcharge (a one-handed ranged weapon), you'd either have to (a) switch to a weapon set without the shield, (b) use another (lesser) shield for the Stingcharge's weapon set, or © waste Crisis time moving the Energy Buckler into the same set as the Stingcharge. With representative Weapon Sets, you can define Weapon Set 1 to be your Disruption Blade and Energy Buckler, and you can still use the Energy Buckler in Weapon Set 2 (defined as Stingcharge plus Buckler). So you don't lose time and you don't have to carry around multiple shields. Finally (and to answer Alex's question at last), we come to the Pack. Will it have ample space or will it be limited? Your pack will be limited by encumbrance only—not by the number of items. The pack will look a lot like PST: a large number of slots where item icons will be displayed. The major difference is that when those slots are filled up, you’ll automatically get another "page" of inventory slots. You can even manually add pages to your party members’ inventory and use those new pages as an organizational tool, if you like. But you'll never be required to make pages—we want to make your inventory a useful tool, not a chore. "But if quantity's not a limitation," you say, "that means my glaive can carry, like, a hundred ultra-light synthsteel breastplates?! That's ridiculous." You're absolutely right, but note that inventory's limitation is not "weight" but "encumbrance," which we're using as a measure of unwieldiness. Encumbrance in Torment mostly means weight, but some items will have a higher or lower encumbrance measure because of their size (or, to be more precise, their density). For example, an ultra-light synthsteel breastplate might not weigh much, but it would have a significant encumbrance because it's so unwieldy. Conversely, a bar of gold weighs quite a lot, but because it's such a small object, its encumbrance would be less than a larger object of the same weight. In other words, encumbrance measures both the weight and the size (or unwieldiness) of items to determine the limit of what you can carry. In theory, this means most characters still will not need more than one page of items, unless they’re carrying a lot of stuff. (That’s my segue into discussing loot.) LootInventory and Loot are interdependent, and one of our primary goals across both systems is to ensure that your decisions about what you will and will not carry are interesting ones. Specifically, the average player should be able to carry all the stuff she needs and still loot a single area without having to worry about her carry limit (though you might still run afoul of the cypher limit, which is a topic for another discussion). The carry limit will matter when you need to decide what to sell and what to keep. It may also matter if you're hoarding things, but in Torment, you won't be carting 100 mundane short swords back and forth just to make a few extra shins (verisimilitude is important, but we're not sure it's that important). Loot should always be interesting and usable. There are a few kinds of loot you can find, in order from least to most special, they are: 1. Mundane Items: Anything Ninth Worlders can easily make or find (anything from swords and lockpicks to glowglobes, synth armor, and sprayflesh (the Ninth World equivalent of a healing potion)). 2. Oddities: Pieces of the numenera that are strange, but rarely useful: a silver ball that perpetually drips perfume, a synth mug that keeps whatever you put in it warm, or a button that, when pressed, sends you back exactly 1 second in the past. 3. Cyphers: One-shot, highly useful pieces of the numenera (you'll find a lot of these). 4. Artifacts: Like cyphers, but they can be reused and can often be cobbled together with other things to make new devices. These also include the components and power sources used in the crafting system. Loot drops—whether from a dead NPC, a locked chest, or something else entirely—will be pseudo-randomly generated (though not purely random, and major, unique items will almost always be intentionally placed). Each of the above loot types has a weighted chance of appearing in a given drop based on a few things: how far you are in the game; what type of loot drop it is (more on that in a second); whether the drop is Poor, Average, or Rich; and other customizations from the area designer. The result will be balanced loot drops that feel right for the area or NPCs that dropped them, while keeping new playthroughs interesting with new or different items each time. There are also two different types of loot drops. Unlike most fantasy settings, Numenera's magic items (oddities, cyphers, and artifacts) aren't usually lying around in a treasure trove. They might be, but Numenera is about discovery, and often the player is actually scavenging and cobbling these things together himself. In Torment, we abstract that with two kinds of drops: Ninth World Loot Drops and Scavenged Loot Drops. Ninth World Loot Drops are the stuff that's just lying around for the player to pick up. It might be from an NPC's pack, locked in a chest, or bought from a merchant. The key criteria here is that someone in the Ninth World must have left it there. Scavenged Drops, on the other hand, are loot directly from the prior worlds, untouched by any Ninth Worlder. They might be parts you find in an old machine, or items scavenged from a pile of rubble that's millennia old. You won't find short swords and steel greaves in a scavenged drop. You'll always find the good stuff. But the good stuff isn't just sitting there waiting for you to use it. An explorer wouldn't find a gravity-nullifying suspensor belt just lying around in an old machine. Rather he'd grab an electromagnetic thingamabob that, when hooked to another doohicky, somehow nullifies gravity. Then he'd attach that to a piece of metal or leather—something that can serve as a belt—and voila: suspensor belt. The way we handle that in Tormentis to make scavenging a Difficult Task (specifically, an Intellect-based task for which certain Lore skills apply). It's not a very difficult task—basic scavenging tasks will succeed 75% of the time, and a character who's trained in Lore, or who uses a little Effort, will succeed at basic scavenging tasks pretty much all the time. But there will be those rare, difficult scavenging tasks that require specialization, or a lot of Effort, and the player can decide (after seeing the item in the looting interface) whether it's worth the risk or not. The resulting whole will be choices that matter, as well as the sense of mystery and discovery that make Numenera special.

It's a fine line, though. I mean, I'm pretty tired of meeting main baddies in the game, and then you get to take a stab or two at them, and they dodge away via scripting, and then it just keeps on going. All the RPG-possibilities are lost, and it usually just becomes frustrating and annoying. like Nah, nah, nah, nah, naaaah! Irenicus in BG2 I actually pretty much sucked in this regard. Ideally, I'd like to see the impossible being possible sometimes, so downing an all too powerful NPC too early should be possible, but not just for some big xp or loot boost. That D'rizzt fellow in BG1 was very bad in this way.

I almost feel dirty now, having earlier admitted I have two elves in my starting party. Even worse, my very avatar name is from my usual go-to char that breaks open new games, and it's always an elf or an half-elf, just out of tradition and habit. I haven't a thing for elves within RPGs at all, though. And I read just a few Elfquest back in the day. I thought Dragonlance had far too many of them, and dark elves I'm pretty tired of. I hope you'll show some leniency and let me bear this flaw like a scar. Btw, I really think orcs are cool, but I do like dwarves even better.

Keyrock: That sounds solid, and a party with two orcs and two dwarves is supercool!

Heh, that was just me jumping the gun and almost just reading the thread title hastily. I've read your post thoroughly, as it derserves, and I'd like to see that kind of powerful enemies on occasion if it fits with the story, and especially considering future encounters during the campaign.

For classic CRPgs, I usually dislike boss-fight staggering, if that's what you call it. In ARPgs, that's fine, but in party-based strategic games it all feels weird when the boss suddenly gets rezzed and multiplied by four, all the while having evil gnomes stab at you. The finale of NWN2 OC, I'm looking at you.

Well first.... That dudes charts are factual, and you can't deny it. Will some of the projects he is currently counting as "failures to deliver" pan out? Yes. But I think anyone who believes the majority of kickstarted games that had successful campaigns will be delivered and will be quality products is... well... kidding themselves and should stop drinking the kool aid. The vast majority of video game kickstarters will never pan out, or will turn out to be bad games. That is just the cold hard reality, it is how the real world works. I personally back VERY few kickstarters and it is always from people who either have a bang on campaign that shows progress already being made or developers I already trust. Way too many people back when it is nothing but a speech from some guy who hasn't made a decent game in 10 years (or ever) while they flash concept art on the screen. Personally I backed Wasteland 2 for very little and I wish I could have that money back because all evidence is showing that game is going to turn out pretty par. Long story short Kickstarter will never produce a Mass Effect or a GTA or any other large budget game. When you back you need to be ready to accept the fact that the game might suck, and that it may never be delivered in the first place. Because those are the two most likely results of a successful video game kickstarter. You are a sensible guy! I've maybe taken a chance on a few too many (like a dozen) and bought some others as a slacker backer or a regular customer. My record so far: -Legends of Dawn: a dud -Expedition: Conquistador: quite nice -Shadowrun Returns: decent, but short -Project Giana: very neat -Battle World Kronos: old-school, but fun -Consortium: entertaining, like an interactive Star Trek-episode -Divinity: Original Sin: seems very promising, it's in early alpha right now The point is, KS is not a shop, it's a place where you support strangers with money and hope for the best.

I want to see that as a spell in PE! Particle FX-guys at Obsidian, get to work!

Very elegantly put! I'd love to have try it too. I reckon, this option of hidden experience should be in as a toggle in a mode or something, just because I'm curious how it all plays out.

I understand, I hope to return to my own inner flow zone soon too, but in my case, I may try my hand at modding once again, coz there you get to create in so many ways, so if one thing feels a bit off one day, you just switch to some other creative activity. At its best, it's neverending bliss, really.

I've played a couple of hours more, with a bow ranger and a mage with a crossbow as a backup, and I think I can say that it also depends on what kind of bows and crossbows you find. Without spoiling too much, I have ranged weapons that corrode the enemies armour and ability to hit my party heavily. Add to that a stunning percentage, and you get a picture of magical ranged weapons being of quite some use even in close quarters.

That'll be why you urinate sticklebricks. Ouch! That's unbearable pain right there. Luckily I live up in the north, where glycol has washed my urethra smooth like an alien's head. Btw, I hated those toys when I was a child. It was like playing with colourful carding combs.

Oh, you mean plain old sexism, where the female gender in our society typically gets the short end of the stick, and just comes across as some giggling mass of flesh and fat moulded into over-sized boobies, eyes like saucers and a pouting baboon-ass mouth, bereaved of all intelligence and agency? Why didn't you say so? Then we are in agreement!

Prometheus: Yeah, ZornWO made a post about it on page 1 and gave us a link that said that the earlier calendar was inaccurate. Hence, me speculating why it was inaccurate. Perhaps the AI version is better because it is scientifically better, which fits this new age of discovery?

I can tell you what I have not been drinking since 1989: water.