Finished the game, couple comments/suggestion to book 2

[jape]

Alchemy:
- components tend to eat too much room in inventory. Might be a good idea to add containers in inventory (ie: bag for alchemy components)
- player should be able to replace item enchantment with more powerful one (if weapon has +1 dmg enchantment, +2 and +3 enchantment should replace it)
- add more imbue recipes (magical damage, ability to imbue certain spells to items, etc..)
- Might be a good idea to change alchemy so that you need to find a recipe for potion/imbue/oil before you can create that item. And ofcourse add alchemy recipe book in game which lists all found recipes. So instead of finding Alchemy Cookbook XYZ which lists bunch of recipes, you would find recipe that teaches you single potion recipe (for example: mana potion). Current system is kinda glitched because if you (the player) remember formula for potion, you (the ingame character) doesnt need to know it.

Automap:
- Automap is pretty awesome (cartography+mapping), but it could use ability to add notes on automap (maybe tie adding of map notes to some cartography skill level)
- allow viewing of maps for different area (ie: if youre in rotwood, you could view map of salted coast if you wanted to)
- add world map mode to cartography system (ie: game draws world map as you travel)

Inventory & Items:
- Add autostack
- When identifying items, game should remember items that are already identified once.
- Add new equipment slot: back. Thats because hassling with shield is plain annoying (for example: cant switch to ranged weapon if you have shield equipped). Make it so that character automatically places shield to his/her back when ranged weapon is equipped. And when shield+weapon is equipped, bow goes to back slot.
- Make it possible to drop torches (atleast i didnt find a way to get rid of them except using them until they go poof)
- Add keyring (..to save inventory space)

Magic:
- elemental magic is underpowered (read: plain crap). Way too much sleeping, sucky spell damage, spells dont scale (skill+attributes+new spells).
- theres too few spell quickslots. Add shift and control modifier to 1...0 buttons to increase number of quickslots to 30 (or just add graphical quickbar with plenty of slots in game UI)
- EDIT: currently somatic requirement for casting spells is completely pointless and only creates bit of annoyance (constant hassling with shield/weapon/gaunts to be able to cast spell) because theres no penalty for inventory manipulation. Either remove somatic requirement from spell system, or make it so that equipping items count as a turn (if you manipulate your inventory while in combat, monsters kick your ass while youre doing it)

Monsters:
- Add more monster variety (game was severly lacking spellcaster mobs)

Bugs:
- If you click some item in inventory, so its not on your character or in the invventory (ie: following the mouse), it disappears if you quicksave the game. This is present in v1.04 (windows)

Other stuff:
- Add factions in game. Do favours for faction A and faction A becomes your friend (with rewards/quests and stuff) and faction B becomes your enemy.
- Add guilds in game (join fighters guild to get some unique skills/abilities for example, get unique quests, get reduced prices for equipment in the guild, and so on...)

[Daemian Lucifer]

Alchemy:
- components tend to eat too much room in inventory. Might be a good idea to add containers in inventory (ie: bag for alchemy components)

Or(since you already presented with a NWN idea),make your inventory extend to a few pages.Personally,I have my grudge against huge inventories in all the cRPGs,but I see why they are such a good way for making money.

- player should be able to replace item enchantment with more powerful one (if weapon has +1 dmg enchantment, +2 and +3 enchantment should replace it)

That would be bad.Really bad.Although,there could be a way to remove the enchantment from the weapon and then add another one,but this should be either expensive(a special character does it for some money),or really resource consuming.

- add more imbue recipes (magical damage, ability to imbue certain spells to items, etc..)
- Might be a good idea to change alchemy so that you need to find a recipe for potion/imbue/oil before you can create that item. And ofcourse add alchemy recipe book in game which lists all found recipes. So instead of finding Alchemy Cookbook XYZ which lists bunch of recipes, you would find recipe that teaches you single potion recipe (for example: mana potion). Current system is kinda glitched because if you (the player) remember formula for potion, you (the ingame character) doesnt need to know it.

This I support completelly.

Automap:
- Automap is pretty awesome (cartography+mapping), but it could use ability to add notes on automap (maybe tie adding of map notes to some cartography skill level)
- allow viewing of maps for different area (ie: if youre in rotwood, you could view map of salted coast if you wanted to)
- add world map mode to cartography system (ie: game draws world map as you travel)

Nice ideas.Although scribbling your own notes should be independent from cartography.

Inventory & Items:
- Add autostack
- When identifying items, game should remember items that are already identified once.
- Add new equipment slot: back. Thats because hassling with shield is plain annoying (for example: cant switch to ranged weapon if you have shield equipped). Make it so that character automatically places shield to his/her back when ranged weapon is equipped. And when shield+weapon is equipped, bow goes to back slot.
- Make it possible to drop torches (atleast i didnt find a way to get rid of them except using them until they go poof)
- Add keyring (..to save inventory space)

I agree with these as well.Although,you can put torches back into empty torchholders,but thats not really a solution.

Magic:
- elemental magic is underpowered (read: plain crap). Way too much sleeping, sucky spell damage, spells dont scale (skill+attributes+new spells).

Soo not true!Predator sight,chameleon,enkindeled weapon,invisibility,air shield and teleport are all elemental magic,and are all awesome.Plus,if you raise your percepteion enough,you dont have to sleep ever.I didnt sleep even once the whole game while playing with my mage.

DD spells,however,are underpowered.Maybe making them more effective with your level or inteligence would do the trick.

- theres too few spell quickslots. Add shift and control modifier to 1...0 buttons to increase number of quickslots to 30 (or just add graphical quickbar with plenty of slots in game UI)
- EDIT: currently somatic requirement for casting spells is completely pointless and only creates bit of annoyance (constant hassling with shield/weapon/gaunts to be able to cast spell) because theres no penalty for inventory manipulation. Either remove somatic requirement from spell system, or make it so that equipping items count as a turn (if you manipulate your inventory while in combat, monsters kick your ass while youre doing it)

Agreed.Although,Id prefer if it was inventory manipulation that would take some time than for the spells to be cast without a problem.

Monsters:
- Add more monster variety (game was severly lacking spellcaster mobs)

Indeed.Although,if the mages at shadowmirk used spells when you provoked them.

[jape]

DD spells,however,are underpowered.Maybe making them more effective with your level or inteligence would do the trick.

I was talking about elemental damage spells only. (sure, OP was badly worded.)

I first played the game as a mage, but got so annoying that i restarted as healer/fighter. Much more enjoyable game (though bit too easy)

[JonRay]

hi all - agreed with most of the stuff mentioned - but also like to bring up

Inventory & Items: Perhaps creating a simple - "Train Station" Locker facilities at new towns/places where you pay for monthly rental and get a key - to securely stash stuff - thats where keeping a count of the days could really start to actually mean something -

Alchemy: I think one of the disappointing aspects of Alchemy was that it didn't make economical or practical sense to produce the things - plus when you did find ingredients out in the wild there was just the one of them - What you really needed is the random chance to find at least a few more to make it worthwhile - if you know what i mean

Random Encounters - like signs that people or creatures exist out there - like grain/produce wagons, a passing caravan, journeying adventurers, military and creature patrols, heck postal riders or just plain travellers passing through
now they could react in different ways to the character - attacking, fleeing, ignoring, being friendly, hostile, neutral, warning, or they could provide information/trade or services -

another thought of what was missing for me was -
NPCs, Pets/Creatures or the ability to Summon or magically create creatures - that could journey or fight with the character

Also if a player murders or goes on a killing spree of townsfolk and it is seen or noticed - then there must be some system you could place, in where news starts to circulate to other towns or people - character is refused entry into towns, "wanted dead or alive" posters and military patrols/local sheriffs/bounty hunters start looking for the character -
As they say - "for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction" (usually @ about 3am coming through the front and back door with shotguns)

anyhow just a couple of thoughts

[jape]

Couple things i forgot from original post:

- Better explanation of status effects (example: how does certain diseases affect your character). Could just add tooltip on status effects, or add UI component that explains these things. For example, could add journal tab for status effects. When you get diseased, journal entry is added which explains its effects.
- clean up the UI (for example: spellbook seems kinda ugly and functionality is not that great. Replace it with new spellbook with nicer graphics, spell icons, spell descriptions, and better functionality for readying spells (quickbar))
- add new types of traps (traps that stun, bear traps that immobilize your character, teleport traps, polymorph traps, and so on...)

[frogbeard]

clean up the UI (for example: spellbook seems kinda ugly and functionality is not that great. Replace it with new spellbook with nicer graphics, spell icons, spell descriptions, and better functionality for readying spells (quickbar))

Agreed...I am loving the game, but the spellbook needs work. At a minimum, there should be a way to see what hotkeys are currently assigned to what spells without cycling through them. (Everytime I learn a new spell I have to go through all my hot keys to find one that is free or a spell I don't use much anymore.) A quickbar would be ideal!