old hand
Joined: Dec 2020
|
I really dislike the game and regret paying for beta. The whole experience takes so long, its like they thought "how do we waste as much of the player's time as possible?" I am pretty curious as to what you disliked about it, because I consider it better than Kingmaker in almost every way. I struggle to think of anything that would be considered 'wasting your time' in comparison. --- Quick rundowns on a few companions for those who don't mind mild gameplay spoilers, in the order of when they can potentially join your party. May add more over time. This is all assuming everyone remains single-classed. Seelah:Sword and board tank Paladin that can dish out good damage. Her primary weakness is that her armor weighs her down a lot, drastically slowing her movement which may make her unable to intercept threats to your back line from your party's side or rear. However, she later gets the ability to get an animal companion that she can later mount, removing her movement weakness. It also essentially combines the animal companion's HP with hers, and the animal companion may end up with higher AC than she does (and single target enemy attacks directed at Seelah will be redirected towards the animal companion first). Any attacks Seelah makes will have the animal companion joining in with their attacks too, resulting in potentially high amounts of burst damage. However, any status effect that messes with the animal companion will end up negatively affecting Seelah as well - a trip will knock Seelah off and render her prone, and anything that paralyzes the mount means Seelah also isn't moving unless she dismounts and fights on foot.
If you don't want Seelah to build towards mounted combat, you can have her get divine weapon bonds instead, which directly enhance her weapon attacks.
As a character, she's surprisingly not really a holier than thou Paladin. She leans more into the good alignment rather than her lawful side. Her character arc is mostly about her friendship with childhood friends, and struggling to retain her trust in her friends even if they do something questionable. It's way more interesting than it sounds. Cameilla:A very aytpical Shaman/Druid that specializes in rapiers. She can be built in a wide variety of ways. Because of her class, she can be a pretty great buffer/debuffer and healer, and gains access to hexes just like Ember (though Ember's hexes are generally stronger and she gets access to a higher tier of them later). Because of her high DEX bonus, ability to use bucklers, and access to a few spells and class features that can boost her AC further and grant herself damage reduction/damage enemies for hitting her, she can double as a tank. I have heard that if you build her in a very specific way even within her single class, her AC total can surpass Seelah's. And she can enchant her rapier with bonus elemental damage, which can allow her to inflict respectable melee damage to boot.
Her backstory is, uhhh, quite a trip. Let's just say she is NOT like any druid you've ever met, a real Druid or Shaman would likely question why she is even one to begin with. It would be best for me not to describe anything about her at all... Lann and Wenduag: (Both paired together because you can only keep one of them. You can have both in the party at various points of the game, but an early game decision will force you to commit to one.) As stated earlier, both characters are mutually exclusive. Good aligned MCs will most likely stick with Lann, while evil-aligned MCs will most likely have Wenduag joining, but it sounds like it is possible for good aligned MCs to have Wenduag and vice-versa. Whichever one you end up with is tied to a tutorial phase choice that marks your first steps towards the angel or demon mythic paths. Both party members start off as your primary archer for most of the game, though Arueshalae will also cover the archer role if you end up choosing not to take either of them.
Lann is a Zen Archer monk. As such, he is surprisingly tanky, generally matching or surpassing even Seelah in HP, and his AC late game can get high enough to double as a true tank himself (generally blocking off attacks against your back line). He gets easy access to feats that remove the risk of taking attacks of opportunity from enemies attacking him in melee, and he can even perform opportunity attacks with a bow against enemies in melee range as well. His monk powers include a personal Barskin and a Dimension Door, so he can warp up to enemy spellcasters and archers to blast them in point-blank range with his bow shots and opportunity attacks, and then turn around and get full attacks against enemies from behind. Super unique concept for a cRPG archer.
I haven't had the opportunity to really play with Wenduag, but she is a plain Fighter archer. You can get her early enough in the game to easily direct her focus towards other weapons and multiclass her, while Lann already starts off with a much more rigid focus in comparison due to his heavy DEX/CON/WIS stat spread. I have heard that shifting Wenduag's focus to throwing axes turns her into potentially the highest damaging party member in the game.
Lann and Wenduag are mongrelmen, and they have a very different outlook on what that actually means. The mongrelmen believe that they are descendants of the First Crusade that were warped by the worldwound. They have an incredibly short lifespan and are generally deformed as a result (like Lann appears to have the features of a goat, while Wenduag has the features of a spider). Lann believes that their suspected heritage means that the mongrelmen should be duty-bound to fight against the demons, while Wenduag appears to believe that the people were just blessed (or cursed) with incredible power and should use it as they see fit in their short lives without being bound to tradition. Ember:Her role is very unique from most other cRPG mages. She gets a wide variety of healing and utility spells and abilities, and gets fire spells like Scorching Ray and Burning Arc for her offense due to her background/class features. There is actually a ring you get later in the game that adds bonus fire damage die for each hit from a fire spell that seems to be tailored for her use.
She is capable of respectable crowd control through her Slumber hex, which I've noted is able to affect everything except for swarms. Her slumber hex allows her to attempt to put any enemy within range to sleep, one attempt per enemy per day. With it, she can potentially shut down a spellcaster or archer in the enemy back line, stop a minotaur from charging to your back line, knock out an enemy on the front lines so all of your melee can get a free opportunity attack on them, and so on. She can also get other hexes, the most useful IMO being Evil Eye (which works even if the enemy saves, a successful saving throw just reduces duration to 1 round) and Protective Luck (which essentially imposes disadvantage on everything that makes attack rolls against the target), and her Cackle ability extends the duration of all hexes by one turn each time it is used.
Her story is pretty interesting. The marketing for the game so far gives off the impression that Ember is a child-like elf who never really developed mentally and has a naïve view of the world despite the horrors inflicted upon her and her family. That couldn't be further from the truth. It quickly becomes obvious that this girl is way smarter and knows A LOT more than she lets on, to the point where one of the evil aligned party members who is generally fearless tries to warn you that there's something OFF about her and that it makes her very nervous. This is even more apparent if your main character is an atheist, which unlocks several unique dialogue options when talking to Ember that amounts to questioning the purpose of the gods - which is ironic, as your character can make a religion check to figure out that the crow that follows her around is possibly a familiar of a very obscure lesser known god. Even in the late stage of the game that the beta ends at, no one yet knows exactly what her deal is, and figuring that out is possibly one of the biggest mysteries in the game right now.
Last edited by Saito Hikari; 13/06/21 09:15 AM.
|