A list of observations throughout the game

[Saito Hikari]

So I've decided to set up a thread listing all the observations I've made in my turn-based playthrough so far, if only to get some documentation on things that might end up being really important for bugfixing or strategic reasons later on. I'm going to split this into three categories: skill/class related, specific encounters in the base game, and expansions.

 

My current party consists of the following, on Normal difficulty as well.

- Watcher: Ascendant Cipher
- Eder: Fighter/Rogue

- Xoti: Priest

- Aloth: Wizard

- Custom: Paladin/Fighter (may reroll Paladin/Monk later, because I've never tried Monk)

 

Skill/Class:

 

- Ascendant starts off with 2 turns of Ascension at level 1 with 10-19 Intellect (technically 3 turns, but one of those turns is unusable as it includes the turn you ascend in the first place). The moment I bumped it up to 20 Intellect, I got +1 turn added. As soon as I reached level 10 as a single class Ascendant, I got +1 turn added. I speculate that at level 20, a single class Ascendant with 20 Intellect will probably spend 5-6 turns Ascended.

 

- Be very, very wary when killing enemies that had just cast a damage over time effect on the field and/or your party. This causes those effects to be re-converted back to RTwP mechanics. I killed a wizard that had cast Chill Fog on some of my party members, and my party members then ended up taking 3 turns worth of Chill Fog damage at once with no way to react to it.

 

- Withdraw is obnoxious. It should not last 3-4+ turns. I've had pirates use it towards the end of a fight, and I have to skip a ridiculous amount of turns to get the enemy target to come back so I can actually end the fight. Not only that, 3-4 turns is way too long for a party member to be using it too. For the time being in TB, it's something that's only really going to be used by enemies to absolutely ridiculous effect.

 

- Disintergrate is absurd. 250-500+ damage over 4 turns is insane (unsure if the turn amount increasing with intellect in TB is intentional). From what I've observed, it ticks at the time the Cipher casts the spell, and at the beginning of the enemy's turn. So if the Cipher moves before the enemy and gets to cast it on them before they get to move, it ticks twice in the same turn.

 

- Amplified Wave behaves slightly differently in TB. In RTwP, if the Amplified Wave target moves out of range of the Cipher's spellcasting radius, the Cipher has to follow them before resuming the cast. In TB, this behavior is skipped, meaning that if the target moves out of range after the Cipher has already begun casting, it will go off wherever the target goes without requiring the Cipher to be in range. This makes the spell extremely absurd when cast on a Rogue which can basically just Escape into a group of enemies regardless of wherever they are, so long as they have enough Guile to spend moving around.

 

- Storm of Holy Fire says it only lasts one round, though it actually casts twice (once while casting, and once again at the start of the caster's next turn). Cipher Ectopsychic Echo behaves the same way, meaning it actually does way more damage than the tooltip suggests.

 

- Eld Nary's Curse (the Tornado bounce spell) for Chanter bounces quite a lot if you take the upgrade. Long enough that it continues bouncing even as other characters take their turns. Potential risk of something breaking if it kills an enemy mid-turn, though I need a situation where I can test this...

 

 

Encounters:

 

- I've noted that many encounters that involve waves of enemies showing up later in the fight in RTwP mode may have all of the enemies show up at once in TB mode. That is because while combat may be turn-based, the rest of the world operates under real time rules, so additional enemies like the skeletons at Poko Kohara will arrive quickly. The two exceptions to this I've noted thus far were the swamp ambush outside of the Fampyr Crypt island near Nekataka, and the Rotghast swarm in the Old City - possibly because additional enemies might be triggered by the death of specific enemies rather than arriving based on time passed.

 

- The Imp bounty at Neketaka frequently bugs out by having the nearby guards aggro to the party for no apparent reason. Even something as simple as Eder attacking one of the enemies may cause them to aggro. I cannot find any consistent trigger for this, but I did finally manage to get through a fight without aggroing the guards after four attempts.

 

- The Fampyr Crypt on the island near Nekataka has enemies aggro to the party in a rather odd way. In RTwP, fights in the area are split between the enemies in the outer hallways and another fight in the central room. In TB, somehow all enemies in the entire area end up aggroing to your party the moment you start any combat there, so the enemies in the central room will come out to join the fight. This turned into one of the hardest fights I've run into thus far.

 

- Battles involving stationary enemies are a joke. They spend half their turns doing nothing. The mushrooms guarding the Frostseeker bow are especially notable. This has also resulted in Maura's Writhing Tentacles being rather ineffective, when they made for amazing walls in RTwP.

 

- As expected considering the first note of this section, the mass skeleton fight in the Hanging Sepulchers had one group of skeletons appear at once, rather than over time like in RTwP. After the initial group is defeated, another group joins immediately afterwards. Rather interesting design, actually, and it should probably be left as is.

 

 

Expansions: (haven't started any yet, will update when I do)

Edited February 5, 2019 by Saito Hikari

[SChin]

Hey Saito!

 

Thank you for the amazing and thorough feedback!  I put it all into a report for the team to go over and consider   Please do feel free to continue this as you play more so I can add it to the report for the team.  I hope you've been enjoying the new Turn-Based Mode.

 

Thanks again for all the help!

[Saito Hikari]

Indeed. I'm finally getting to the late game spells, and some of the interactions I've found weren't what I expected. In fact, some probably don't even seem intended, particularly Storm of Holy Fire.

 

EDIT: Nevermind, it casts twice no matter which turn Xoti casts it in.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Saito Hikari

[Saito Hikari]

So if you take the Eld Nary's Curse upgrade for Chanter (for the tornado bounce spell), the spell takes such a long time to act out that the game allows other characters to take their turns while the tornado is still bouncing around. (My Chanter's turn ends at around the 4th or 5th bounce, and it currently bounces up to 14 times.)

 

While I haven't seen this occur yet, I wonder if things will break very badly if an enemy takes their turn only to end up being killed by the spell mid-turn.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Saito Hikari