What we're working on today...

[BasiliskWrangler]

Today we've been working in new combat abilities in Book II. These are automatic feats based on your skill level in the following categories:

Swords: Gains "Masterful Riposte" : A guaranteed strike, and then perfect parrying of all enemy attacks in the following round. Parried enemies suffer riposte damage equivalent to Sword's base damage.

Cleaving: Gains "Great Cleave" - strikes primary target and adjacent targets.

Bludgeoning: Gains "Devastating Blow" - Maximum weapon damage x2, and permanently reducing enemy Armor Rating by 50%

Piercing: Gains "Double Strike" - delivering two separate attacks in one attack round.

Bows: Gains "Intense Focus", a guaranteed precision attack on a vital spot delivering 3x damage

Thrown: Gains"Overwhelming Volley", up to eight weapons thrown at once, showering the target and adjacent tiles.

Unarmed Combat: Gains "Fury Strike", a powerful fist blow delivering 4x damage to one target.

[AK_Marty]

This sounds really cool. A chance to take out a Taurax/Raptor class enemy in ONE WHACK!! Details like this make the waiting that much more agonising.

Keep up the great work BW!

[Aldbeski]

i think this is a very nice idea and i can't wait to try it out when the game is released

[MaximB]

Sounds great !
I can't believe that you forgot to mention it in our interview

[Dragonlady]

This sounds really cool. A chance to take out a Taurax/Raptor class enemy in ONE WHACK!! Details like this make the waiting that much more agonising.

Keep up the great work BW!

I agree but am keeping in mind that enemy just might have the same skill and I will go down for the count..


..and no, I don't think I'm putting ideas in BW's head. I'm sure he thought of it already.

[BasiliskWrangler]

I can't believe that you forgot to mention it in our interview

Sorry- it wasn't that I forgot....it's just it was still in the planning stages. I didn't want to mention it before I had the chance to play it myself and see it work. If it didn't work, I didn't want to have to go back and say "sorry- we changed our minds".

I can tell you this: having a highly skilled Piercing Weapons character strike with a dagger, then slash back across the other direction for a second strike in the same round is veeeery cool and satisfying!

[mushpuppy]

BW you keep coming up with cool ideas. I'd like to see some quicker ways to travel. Horses or something. And more dungeons! A random cave generator might be useful.

Of course I have no idea how to create such a thing. (Big sigh.)

[BasiliskWrangler]

Updated first post- additional changes made to Skill Feats after a day of coding and testing...

[CrazyBernie]

Thrown: Chance for "Overwhelming Volley", up to eight weapons thrown at once, showering the target and adjacent tiles.

Let's see this with some Demon Oil III...

[AK_Marty]

Updated first post- additional changes made to Skill Feats after a day of coding and testing...

At what level of skill do these Feats take effect?

[BasiliskWrangler]

Feats begin once you hit skill level 10. At level 10, you can use a Feat about once every 100 rounds. This waiting period drops with every skill level you add. During the course of the game it is not too hard to get 2 or even 3 weapons skills as high as Level 10, ensuring that you have access to a few different Skill Feats.

Once a skill feat is "ready", you can just store it until you want to use it. Once you use it, the round counter is reset and you have to wait to use it again. This way you can store up several different Feats for major fights.

[CrazyBernie]

The "storing" up method is an interesting take on the "Feat" system.

Feats begin once you hit skill level 10. At level 10, you can use a Feat about once every 100 rounds.

Are those combat rounds (as in every 100 strikes), or just 100 turns? You might consider throwing in a 1% chance of a "free" feat activation... even if it's a "lesser version" of the feat. I know that with 1% dodge, seeing a successful dodge was exciting. Scoring a successful feat activation on a 1% chance would be BA.

[MyGameCompany]

Feats begin once you hit skill level 10. At level 10, you can use a Feat about once every 100 rounds.

Wait a minute, I thought the feats were automatic. I thought "automatic" meant that it would happen randomly rather than me choosing to use it. For example, you strike at an enemy, and there's a certain percent chance such a feat is possible. If you make the roll, it happens. The higher your skill, the greater the chance of a feat happening.

If that's not how it works and I have to choose to use it, then what's "automatic" about it? (Don't mean to sound rude, just trying to understand)

[BasiliskWrangler]

Feats begin once you hit skill level 10. At level 10, you can use a Feat about once every 100 rounds.

Wait a minute, I thought the feats were automatic. I thought "automatic" meant that it would happen randomly rather than me choosing to use it. For example, you strike at an enemy, and there's a certain percent chance such a feat is possible. If you make the roll, it happens. The higher your skill, the greater the chance of a feat happening.

If that's not how it works and I have to choose to use it, then what's "automatic" about it? (Don't mean to sound rude, just trying to understand)

The first build of this new system, on Monday, had automatic Feats that were based on a chance of occurrence. It worked well enough, but it lacked strategy because you could not choose to use the Feat when you needed it. There is no greater frustration than to have a "Critical Pummel" used on a lesser creature when a large boss is moving in behind it, and then you don't know if you'll see another feat in 3 rounds or 80 rounds. Also, our original setting of 5% at level 10 (1 in 20 strikes) was way too high and would have cause a sort of "inflation" in terms of enemy Hit Points to maintain game balance.

So yesterday we changed this to give you a notification when the feat was ready to use, then when you want it, you hold down the left-shift while attacking. The feat occurs, and begins the count down until the next available usage. Right now at level 10 with the current settings, this is once every 80 rounds. The wait between feats then drops by about 3 rounds per skill point after that (expect these numbers to change as we continue to balance).

It feels pretty balanced, but more testing is needed. As always, don't be surprised if it undergoes more changes.

Are those combat rounds (as in every 100 strikes), or just 100 turns?

Sorry- I tend to mix up the term round and turn. That would be 100 turns, which really isn't any different than 100 player rounds. And also, I just lowered it to once every 80 turns @ level 10.

[CrazyBernie]

In essence, it's an ability that requires a build-up of stamina to use... with the difference being that each feat has it's own stamina "bar."