Finished game - thoughts + suggestions (minor spoilers)

[Suiboon]

I played with a mage character never using any weapons with all 4 difficulty settings on. I finished most quests (saving the rest for next playthrough with a fighter character once the expansion comes out).

I found the game to be too easy - especially the end. I guess this is mostly because of 1 spell - invisibility. Ghorrr couldnt even find me as I hammered him with spells. I learned the spell just before Talushorn though, but it was a breeze to get there regardless.

Even if not for the invisibility spell, the magic way is just too easy. Make some enemies resistant to magic or something and nerf invisibility by making enemies partly see you if you attack them. Or some enemies that could see you right away.

Its not totally fair that a mage can also open every lock and disarm every trap there is... maybe make the lock and trap spells only work up to a certain point, so that you'd need the skills to open the hardest locks/disable the hardest traps.

I hate the way trainers work. I've read some threads here where other people complain about them too. It's just lame to spend points on a skill only to find out you could have trained it with coin... and you never know if there's a trainer for a skill or not unless you check the forum.

My suggestions for trainer/book changes:
-Remove trainers altogether
-Keep them, but let them train you to "expert" "master" etc. levels, not skill points. (think Might & Magic)
-Keep them, but let them only teach you the feats for skills (that you could maybe learn from a book too)
-remove them and add books to the game instead (like 3 books / skill, each advance your skill in them no matter when you read them)

If you intend to keep the trainers in the game like they are, at least make some NPC at the beginning of the game tell you about them.

What else?

Well a game speed slider, like some people have suggested, would be good. However the walking speed was not that annoying to me personally.

The forests are a bit annoying when you dont know if theres a path through or not. I understand that for some places this secrecy is good, but not every forest need be so thick.

The lore skill is completely useless as you have the lore spell in divination magic anyway. Remove either the spell or the skill or add another use to lore skill (like knowledge about enemies/npcs).

I read a suggestion about making perception let you see better in the dark - do that.

From what I've understood, there are 2 statistics above others - endurance and perception. Make the other statistics more useful and/or make hit/mana point gains retroactive from adding to the statistics even if you dont do so at the very beginning.

I'm not sure if there's a limit for stats/skills, but I'd implement one (maybe like 30 for a skill and 40 for a stat?)

Overall I enjoyed the game, but it had potential to be much better.

edit: and with these suggestions I'm talking about the NEXT game of course.

edit2: remembered what annoyed me a lot. The error sound you get when you cant sell an item to a certain NPC or such. This and the level up music don't _seem_ to be affected by the sound options. They're way too damn loud.

Also, widescreen support couldn't hurt...

edit3: DAMN editspree continues. This is the last one I promise!
I noticed I stole the name of my thread from another thread unconsciously. Sorry!

[Randomizer]

Its not totally fair that a mage can also open every lock and disarm every trap there is... maybe make the lock and trap spells only work up to a certain point, so that you'd need the skills to open the hardest locks/disable the hardest traps.

Lockmelt doesn't work on the last two difficulty 10 locks in Talushorn.

The lore skill is completely useless as you have the lore spell in divination magic anyway. Remove either the spell or the skill or add another use to lore skill (like knowledge about enemies/npcs).

The lore skill is for those players playing without spells, like the true warrior challenge. You do need to invest a lot to identify the harder items so lore spell is easier.

[nomo]

agree with you on the overpowered mage front.
either make the lock and trap spelss stop working at a certain level of item, like you suggested, or make the skill requirement to cast high level spells higher.

i've always found in RPGs that mages are often overpowered and they overlap with other classes. they can do everything every other character can and in eschalon arent really disadvantaged in any way (can still get good defenses etc)

[Suiboon]

Lockmelt doesn't work on the last two difficulty 10 locks in Talushorn.

That's a little bit too late for it to make any impact on the game apart from the end score due to challenges (like you point out). Which locks are these by the way?

The lore skill is for those players playing without spells, like the true warrior challenge. You do need to invest a lot to identify the harder items so lore spell is easier.

Again the only use for this is to go with the challenges. Or role playing. Anyhow, I think the skill should be made more viable than it is now. It's not a big deal though.

[xolotl]

agree with you on the overpowered mage front.

For my part, I agree that mages are quite powerful, but I personally vote for keeping them that way. :) I really enjoyed playing my mage build, partly because of the feeling that he was so powerful. If the game were multiplayer I might feel differently, but I don't have a problem with some skills being more objectively useful than others, in a singleplayer game.

The lore skill is for those players playing without spells,

Again the only use for this is to go with the challenges. Or role playing.

... like in an RPG? :) FWIW, more than half the characters I've played in Book II have had no magic skill whatsoever, and Lore is often a pretty useful thing to pick up later in the game, when your skill points are a little less needed elsewhere.

I hate the way trainers work. I've read some threads here where other people complain about them too. It's just lame to spend points on a skill only to find out you could have trained it with coin...

This is one area that I just consistently don't understand people's complaints on. Sure, if you do some research, you can totally optimize your character's skills with trainers+books, saving your hard-earned levelling points for the higher-level stats. I even, on a whim, played through a character where I decided to train/learn absolutely everything before hitting level 2, which was kind of fun. But that one runthrough, and one other (playing as a Ranger, where I knew I wanted to train up in Foraging quickly) was the only time I've bothered optimizing for trainers. For all my other chars, I've just played the game and utilized trainers where convenient. (I suppose nowadays I do wait until Kuudad to get Cartography, but my first char started out with 1 point in there, and I don't regret it.) I guess it boils down to the same thing as with mage nerfing - it's a single player game, so it doesn't bother me at all that one character might be objectively more powerful than the next. There are plenty of skill points available just by levelling to make a powerful character.

The forests are a bit annoying when you dont know if theres a path through or not. I understand that for some places this secrecy is good, but not every forest need be so thick.

I did find the forests a little frustrating in that regard, in Book II, actually. All those tantalizing open patches you can see at the edge of the screen!

I'm not sure if there's a limit for stats/skills, but I'd implement one (maybe like 30 for a skill and 40 for a stat?)

It'd certainly be useful to have at least some kind of notification of when a skill stops providing you added benefits, though the limit (for skills at least) would have to be variable, depending on the skill.

Anyway, good suggestions, despite my disagreement at a few of 'em.

[Randomizer]

Lockmelt doesn't work on the last two difficulty 10 locks in Talushorn.

That's a little bit too late for it to make any impact on the game apart from the end score due to challenges (like you point out). Which locks are these by the way?

The Advanced key on the taurax to get from level 3 to level 4 and the Gold key on General Ghorr to reach the Crux room.

[sjc03]

I agree with the trainers are not right and could be improved generally.

There needs to be more and given random skills to train in.
They should be limited to a much smaller number of skill point increases and each skill level should only be granted at a certain experiance level apart from the first rank.
The trainers themselves could be at random locations helping to keep interest in further play throughs by having to find them.. perhaps as part of a quest to gain a skill.
Magic is a poor system of only two schools, there does need to be more schools and a spliting of spells or renaming for better revalance to the school.
Some spells need to be on a once a day basis shuch as draw water and make food. This would help stop the exploit of making money when you have forage by selling and also of embuing with alchemy.. I know you do not have to do it but the grind to pay trainers and get equipment should not be from these exploits but on quests and general play of conquests.
Hopefully the next game may go some way to do this as I expect ongoing development on Book2 will cease.

I like the free nature of the game and Jack of all trades ability but role play as a given type is limited with overpower of some skills against others, the small number of quests although generally good should be increased and seeding areas which have been cleaned up should occur with new NPC, monsters and quests happening.

[SpottedShroom]

I agree that mages are overpowered in Book II, but to be fair they were the hardest class in Book I so it's kind of understandable. The duration of Invisibility being reduced is a good improvement, but it's easy to get to the point where you recover mana fast enough to keep it up all the time anyway. My suggestions for balancing mages would be:

• Remove Invisibility as a spell. Why not give the alchemists some stuff that only they can do?
• Make Lockmelt and Trapkill level 3 spells
• Cap MP regen rate, although at higher than the Book I rate. Maybe around 1-2 points/turn?
• Remove or tone down damage spells that aren't subject to resistance. Having the most damaging spells also be irresistible is too good.

I also agree with stat imbalance. There's very little reason to pump anything except Endurance and Perception, and maybe Strength for carrying capacity. Especially with stat boost items Intelligence and Wisdom don't need to be very high to learn spells. I'm not sure the best solution for that problem, though. Maybe remove the tie between Endurance and Perception and HP/MP regen rate? Then you'd have to boost Medicine/Meditation instead.

[severian]

I loved attention to detail in both EI and EII, also the interface, playability, graphics and sound were superb.
it reminded me of an oldschool PC rpg - Magus 2nd Edition. that was a real gem.

and...I have a dream!
a dream of remakes of Dwarf Fortress and ADOM, with original game mechanics and complexity and all other stuff basilisk style.

have you ever thought about making, let`s say - Dwarf Fortress DeLuxe in cooperation with it`s crew?
for me it would be a game of a century ;>

[Bob the Thief]

I agree that the magic powers are a little to much. I was playing a Rogue character. As the game progressed I tended to use spells more than any "rogue" skills. With the level I had and a magic hat or two, the strength of my magic was the most effective offensive weapon (fireballed Gen. Knorr). Other than arrows, the most numerous object I carried was Mana Potions.

Yes I could have done a challenge that made me use only rogue skills or something, but that's not my point. My character ended up being a mage that had a few rogue skills. Lockmelt or Disarm trap spells are more efficient than disarm traps or pick lock rogue skills.

[SpottedShroom]

I agree that rogue isn't really a viable build by itself. You either have to be a melee rogue, ranged combat rogue, or spellcaster rogue. The same is true for the other classes as well. It would be nice for rogues to have something that they're better at that other classes, but we'll have to wait for Book III and see what BW's priorities are.