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[Kornel Kisielewicz]

Duh, today I had even less time than yesterday, and didn't do much... Tommorow might be simmilar, so I put my hopes on Sunday. Anyway, here's the Day 4 binary:

http://chaosforge.org/files/berserk-day4-bin.zip

Official features:
-- at last the cannon! ("c" fire, "R" reload)
-- sweep skill added ("s") that attacks three squares at once!

Unofficial features
-- modified knife damage to be dependant on strength
-- added another monster
-- increased the speed and hp of mandagoras
-- bugfix in the monster defense system (will be a lot harder now)

I'm most interested in balance issues, the average length of the game, the most common death reason, most annoying things, danger level of the monsters, and the usability of items. If each of you could reply with a post covering all those topics I would be a realy happy man...!

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

Uh, if you downloaded it before this post then please redownload it -- I fixed a bug with the sweep skill.

[Glowie]

Okay here comes. First the things you're most interested in:

-The only balance issue I can think of is the Nightmare/Mandagore critical hits. You just CAN'T survive those. The normal hits are almost unbalanced too, but at least those aren't instant killers.

-The average length of the game is just perfect if you ask me. You can make it long if you are striving for a new record and want to be perfect, or very quick if you're just looking for a bloodshed.

-The most commond reason of death depends on how you play. Either it's a hit by a Nightmare/Mandagore or just because you run out of supplies (=you get surrounded and then they eat your testicles)

-Most annoying things... Are there annoying things? I'm not sure. The only thing that bugs me is those DARN criticals by Ns and Ms.

-Danger level of monsters? Oh my, I'm sure you just CAN'T guess this one. Beasts: easy. Bulls: just perfect. Mandagores: easy when they don't get to hit you (=you hit&run them and hope that there isn't a horde of beasts behind you). Nightmares: the same as Mandagores. And then there are the critical strikes... I'll leave space for your imagination here.

-Usability of items. This differs a lot. I think bombs and cannons are extremely good at slaughtering masses of enemies, which makes them very useful. Fairy dust is of course the most vital part of your inventory hands down. Then knives and the crossbow. I like the crossbow even though it's not a cold blooded killer weapon, I'm not sure how useful it is, but I'm perfectly happy with it. Knives on the other hand aren't that useful. If you ask me, they should do much more damage and you should have more knives (I remember Guts having a long belt o' knives). That would make them a nice finishing weapon.

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Then my own comments.

I found a beautiful bug. When I used the cannon, it asked me the direction. I decided that I don't need it, pressed esc and it went BOOM! Boom means that it crashed.

Sweep isn't 1) accurate enough OR 2) deadly enough. Hitting the monsters without sweep feels more useful than sweeping them. Maybe you should increase either 1 or 2 or both (and probably increase the energy cost too).

Nightmares and Mandagores hit too hard. Did I say that already?

Another small bug, this time with crossbow. I noticed that the bolts don't spread if I target it in front of myself (and the monster is further away in the same place in the X or Y axis as I am). I'm not sure if you can fix this, but this isn't a major problem. I'll draw a small picture:

@X.............M

@=me
X=targeted spot
.=bloody floor
M=a darn Mandagore

While testing the crossbow a bit more, I found that I can hit monsters outside of my sight range, kill them and receive the "You kill the beast!" message, though I didn't see the beast.

And the last minor bug. I can't hit monsters that are in the border line of the screen. I shouldn't be able to walk there, but I think I should be able to hit monsters that are there.


Most of the bugs I found are minor and if you don't have much time, you can ignore them. And remember that these are only my testing results.

Anyway, so far so good. Good luck & Happy birthday! :)

Edit: Oh and I LOVE the cannon effect!

[Fingerzam]

Quoting: Kornel Kisielewicz

-- at last the cannon! ("c" fire, "R" reload)

This is nice, though I would like to know how the damage is spread, cause some monsters seem to be left alive almost always.

Quoting: Kornel Kisielewicz

-- sweep skill added ("s") that attacks three squares at once!

Has proven to be useful, but doesn't seem to be hitting that often.

Quoting: Kornel Kisielewicz

-- modified knife damage to be dependant on strength

Haven't tried knives in this version, so can't say anything about this yet.

Quoting: Kornel Kisielewicz

-- added another monster
-- increased the speed and hp of mandagoras

Both nightmare and mandagore seem very similar with the difference that nightmare is faster and mandagore has more hp. I'm still not sure about how much damage nightmares deal, since most of the time I die when one of these hits me.

Both of these can be killed with hit&retreat tactics, if I'm not mistaken.

EDIT: And I mean this is a good thing, these guys should only hit you if you make a mistake, since they have so ridiculous damage that it can ruin your game any day.

Should probably be noted that both of these kill you instantly on critical hits, regardless of current hp.

Quoting: Kornel Kisielewicz

-- bugfix in the monster defense system (will be a lot harder now)

Beasts can now gang up on you more easily since you can't kill 'em that easily. Haven't decided yet if this is good or bad.

Quoting: Kornel Kisielewicz

I'm most interested in balance issues, the average length of the game, the most common death reason, most annoying things, danger level of the monsters, and the usability of items. If each of you could reply with a post covering all those topics I would be a realy happy man...!

My avarage game is around 150-200 beasts, 20-30 bulldemons and a few mandagores and nightmares if I can get the game going, otherwise I die due to a mandagore or a nightmare.

Most common reason of death, and at the same time the most annoying thing, is either a mandagore or a nightmare hitting me once while I'm on the lower half of my health.

About the items. Why doesn't faitydust restore energy? Could you make it so that you could swing bombs into the middle of a horde of enemies, instead of making them blast on contact?

EDIT: Could the damage of cannon be increased? Had 4 mandagores in my line of fire in a game today, and it only killed two of them, one was only bruised.

EDIT: About the UI, could you show the keys to items next to the name of the item, like "[k] knife 5" and possibly add a list of special attacks below the list of items, if there won't be too many?

That's it for now, I'll post some more stuff tomorrow, now I have to go to sleep.

[Turgor]

Average length for me is between 150-200 beasts as well. It feels pretty nice, fast paced action for 10-15 minutes.

I usually die because i'm out of ammo and the monsters swarm me. I keep those mandagores and nightmares at bay untill i'm out of items, but usually i get swarmed by then anyway. Pain increases quickly and unless you have FD left there's nothing to do but hope you can kill one more beast.

Most frustrating thing for me is missing beasts, especially once the monster generation gets higher (25%+) and my tactics involve absolutely having to hit those bastards. Maybe give em a little bit less defense?
At first i also thought the critical hits by Mandagoras and Nightmares was ridiculous, but it's actually quite good considering you can fight them on your terms, unless you screw up.

Fairydust really should restore energy now too.

The cannon damage could be a bit higher, especially since you can only shoot it 3 times.

Quoting: Glowie

Sweep isn't 1) accurate enough OR 2) deadly enough. Hitting the monsters without sweep feels more useful than sweeping them. Maybe you should increase either 1 or 2 or both (and probably increase the energy cost too).

Probably a good solution. Sweep doesn't feel too inaccurate to me, but definitely not powerful enough.