1. Crafting


Tutorial is missing better and more specific explanations and actual examples of various crafting procedures.

The crafting in OS is not only different to what most players experienced with RPGs are accustomed to, but it is also very diverse within itself.

Some things you need to drag onto others, but some things you need to cook on the fireplace first - which you need to set up yourself.

Then again - you have to use a knife to create ingredients in one case, while in the other you need to use mortar and pestle - which you then need to combine with other things using different tools and ways.


What it all comes down to, is the fact that the players really, really need to read the recipes books.
Thats the core and the point of it all.


Therefore, the tutorial area should make sure to really drill this fact to the players. Which would be much better solution then any kind of literal, forced examples or even specific reveling dialogues or journal entries.

Better to do it with something inside the game then to break the fourth wall to do it - logic.


One area of the tutorial dungeon should be re-purposed for this specific purpose. There should be a fireplace, a knife, some empty bottles or other containers for potions, an empty scroll and whatever you need to make actual magic scrolls out of those, etc, etc.

And a few books.

Hunters can and should comment and talk about this in overhead blurbs, saying how they need to get accustomed to this new and strange way of crafting in Cysael.

You can even throw in some self deprecating humor to it, making the Hunters say how they never had to craft anything back home, where only the servants did it for them. Or things just appeared when they pressed a button.

They can complain about this new barbarous manner of crafting Cysaelans have, and moan and bitch about doing things with their own hands, etc,etc.





2. Combat


Apparently the special arrow wielding undead archers are too surprising for some players.

Make a small combat encounter inside the tutorial where several undead archers will just barrage dozens of all kinds of status effects on the Hunters, burning them, freezing them, poisoning them, electrocuting them, petrifying them, etc, etc.

Then make the cave collapse on to their heads and the game over screen starts.

Then have the game execute some terrible malware trojan that will reboot the computer and wipe all partitions. Or force encryption onto all partitions and loose the key.
And call the local police with prerecorded various insults and threats.

...


or,... something similar.

I agree on adding a crafting section to the tutorial as you stated with all the things needed and a book with a few "starter" recipes to show off different methods of crafting and combination.

OK, Hiver, I thought you were serious until I read the second part. You had me worried.

Been seeing some bitching lately, have you?

ynotndalton, that book is right on the ground beside Junius, right after you get out of the tutorial dungeon. Crafting weapons, cooking, all right there. It's the longest crafting book in the game.

Surely that's more in-character than a kitchen or a workshop in a tomb?

How much more hand-holding do you think people need? There will be walkthroughs and tips and handbooks all over the internet within a week of release. Surely Larian can find a better use for the remaining month of dev time than installing more training wheels.

Yes but for new players if your gonna have a tutorial dungeon why not do it in style... you all act like you want to work instead of play.. i mean search forums and guides.. wtf thats ok but to have it in an in game tutorial isn't?.. thats backwards to me.. we shouldn't have to search forums and look for guides man. And to put this in the tutorial is like what... 20 minutes for them.. come on.

Im wanting this game to succeed so they are well funded for the next one they make and for it to succeed you can't make it completely unaccesable to everyone... sad as it may be thats the reason why so many will pass up on it. Ppl like us will still love it but for just a couple small things as suggested in these forums .. what you all call hand holding yadda yadda and the game will succeed far more.. no not causual.. no not catering to the masses... a small crafting section in the tutorial.. i mean we are learning how to move boxes in one whole section.. yet a crafting section is stupid?

FFS, Hiver.

The problem with the Fking undead archers and their arrows is this:

1. Poison and Burning status effects do too much damage on Normal difficulty. It is an excessive amount. It could be toned down. It can and should still be threatening, but maybe not to the point where it one-hit kills or nearly one-hit kills your tankiest characters on the very first turn.

2. Those status effects are not helped by the current double-dipping damage, but that might be fixed in the next patch.

3. Since West Cyseal is supposed to be a starter zone to get used to the combat and things like special arrows, perhaps in those areas, the enemies could have single-target arrows, and gradually move up to the AoE arrows instead of starting out with AoE arrows from the start. Progression of difficulty, what a concept.

Understand?

Dont ripoff my Drive expressions, Stabbey, its not cool.


I understand whats your problem with archers are very well, it isnt anything that complicated.
- IF the game will get a re-adjustment on how damage works from Poison coulds, burning and poisonous surfaces - your and others complaints about being one-shotted by archers will become moot points. Along with all the complaints about dying in deadly surfaces.

And i would rather give you people a few fights in the tutorial that is already too easy;

- if someone remembered to eat an apple,
- or maybe even those Honey pots you can make yourself just after you step out of the city gates,
- buy a few pieces of equipment,
- kept the characters spread out
- while being able to figure how things work from the first archer encounter,

...rather then see a whole area of the game being deteriorated even further just to make it easier for you and your laziness to play the game even in the easy mode that it currently is.

I would prefer that a besieging force that supposedly steamroled over the whole Legion - is actually atleast somewhat dangerous.

If there should be any fights to ease you people in, they should be in the tutorial, so the rest of us can just skip it.





No, i am serious.
All the bitching non withstanding.

I think there really should be a better presentation of crafting in the tutorial dungeon.
Although - it would have been better if the tutorial was kept outside of the game completely.
But, things being as they are, you can still do a lot with little.

No kitchen or a workshop necessary.

That book next to Junios should be inside the tutorial.

With a few direct examples of different ways to craft something being available.
Surely, one fire and a cooking pot (already in the tutorial) would not be too much? Or a knife and few potatoes, ... right next to two Legionnaires ... - turned into undead! And one of them an archer!

Called Stabbey !! - who drops a few apples as loot !!

- and a last farewell note writing how "those magic apples saved me from all those zombies and their poison clouds and sludge, so surely they will be helpful against anything else residing in this cave?" - that he and a few other Legionnaires went to explore.


...


Under orders of Sergeant Hiver, who sent them there to toughen them up a bit.

Who then went after them into the dungeon to find them when they didnt show up after a week or more.

He would be the tutorial boss at the end, while players would need all those items they crafted to win that fight.

His loot would be all types of weapons in the game - and a journal detailing how disappointed he is with the new "generation", all these grasshoppers they are sending to him to train... in between various laments over "spoiled brats" and "crybabies"... all nicely seasoned with selected curse words and expressions.

- which would be his actual motivation for switching sides and going rogue - evil - source.



- edit -

Just to clarify, i would not like to see crafting mechanics changed into the same stuff as any other game does it. Just explained better earlier on.

I actually prefer Stabbey suggestion; don't significantly tone down the arrows (or perhaps they should be level base; i.e., low level doesn't last long or have smaller area of effect); but anyways I generally agree that west area should be fairly mundane (almost impossible to die) and the player should gradually get introduced to arrows elemental/aoe. If the damage/duration scale by level then simply making them level 1 might be sufficient but I'm not sure the world is large enough to support these changes.
-
Having said this there needs to be some introduction into mixing of elements (the starter zone does a little of this so perhaps that is enough).

Hum. that reminds me; one feature that I think is missing in the tutorial is how to heal. In a lot of games similar to this one you would be able to simply rest but you can't in divinity games. Also while most folks would know to drink a potion some of the other methods of healing in the starter area is perhaps less obvious. I do not remember anything in the tutorial introducing people on how to heal or rest.

In the west area it is actually impossible to die - unless you literally do not think about what you are doing.

Additionally, the story and narrative of the game and its main plot do not support such an extremely easy western area at all.

The game should not be distorted to accommodate those players who think they should not die a single time but instead win every fight without thinking or learning from some failures.
Loosing a fight is not a defeat or a personal smear or dishonor. It is a opportunity to learn, a lesson that should be appreciated and used to improve.


-


Eating food to get various effects should be presented better while not being too direct about it if possible - which my version of a small quest above does to some extent, but ... it may be a bit too...

..


nah, its great. Do it devs!

But still both my char's shouldn't immediatly die when they touch a fire surface... without any time to react.

Stabbey is correct, the elemental arrows are virtually OHKO for any character. This isn't a "oh I could have prepared for that", it's "oh shit I'm dead" because poison arrows deal too much damage in to little a timeframe.

It's easier at higher levels, since Jahan's spells scale appropriately and Rangers get debuff removers, but at low levels it's like seeing the kobold pull out a vorpal longsword with a permanent true strike on it.

Incidentally, if you sneak up the first set of stairs, and can take out the level 5 mage in the first round - which is doable for most starting presets - then the normal scripted event doesn't trigger, and you get to fight with a couple of level 9 cultists instead of the useless undead summons. Much more interesting fight. Very hard at that level, but again. Doable.

And there's no starstone, which would have been careless and bad. The end of tomb conversation is no longer coherent, but nothing story-related really breaks.

No arrows, though.

Or we act like experimentation and research is part of play for us.



Having it in the game in a way that makes no sense with the game story, at the expense of immersion, very much isn't OK.

Scratch the third-party stuff - you're right, that's irrelevant., you think there'll be a game manual with the full release? Maybe put turotial info that's clunky as hell to *show* into that? I know, nobody reads those...



That's very amusing. I'd like to see how you got that number, if it was more than "I want it."



I agree about making it accessible to everyone. We just have different viewpoints on "accessible" and "everyone".

The tutorial is already too much hand holding and not enough action for me, but a starting levelup and a cool 4400 gold in candles alone is too much advantage to skip.

If I was coming at this fresh, and had to click through more popups about cooking and alchemy, - and what you guys are asking for would *not* be short and breezy to read or create - I'd be looking for something more interesting to play, me.

Tutorial should not give any XP so that it remains a bloody tutorial. Which should have been moved outside of the game in the first place.


thats a bug.



No, thats a bug.




It really isnt.

It is you who has all the possible advantages, several different kinds of equipment and items to defend against poison and other effects - if you would only look and study the city and do the first few most obvious small sub quests in it - instead of just running out of the city into a bloody besieging undead force that rolled over a WHOLE LEGION - and then start crying when you get your ass handed back to you.

Instead of taking that opportunity to realize what is happening and make sure to do things correctly.

All of the content prior to entering Cyseal was designed to act as tutorial content. The new dungeon was only added to expand on the amount of tutorial content available. This is one of the reasons (in the bug thread) I've been so adamant about fixing the new bug with the orc battle on the beach in front of the Cyseal gate, rather than assuming all players will move to the exact proper spot you apparently expect them to stand at.

I can't see the whole pre-Cyseal section of the game to be worth no XP. Sure, it would have been nice to have had an optional tutorial with zero rewards outside of the entire region, but that didn't happen and it's not likely to happen now. Instead, we must balance around what we have.

People will have to resort to guides to learn the crafting system.. simple as that... or you could add a nice crafting section in the tutorial dungeon man... with a little cooking... little crafting and some combining of basic things.. hows that hand holding and immersion breaking... we move boxes in the tutorial... throw em on traps... etc etc.. umm this is silly hand holding to me... not a crafting section.

I found it far more interesting to just experiment myself with stuff seeing what game has to offer than doing tutorial.

It's a nice fresh thing after having my hand held in most nowadays games I've played.

The experimentation will still be there... just a basic area with some starter recipes showing the possibilities of crafting would be nice.. then you still have all the experamentation of finding the combinations and so forth.. but just knowing how it works from the get go would be awesome for a new player... instead of resorting to guides and such

It shouldnt be done in a hand holding manner, thats for sure.

I think its most important to make sure the players understand the necessity of reading crafting recipes. And to somehow make sure they understand that different items are crafted by different means and ways.

Thats what confusing the most. It certainly confused me.
Because usually in most RPGs (all that i ever played) - you have a specific menu for crafting, into which you put ingredients and then click a button to make an item.


Here in Original Sin, players will get that there are recipes. But im not sure it is immediately clear that you actually have to read them to figure out the proper procedures for different crafting items.

It may become clear after reading a few of those.

Personally i never had any need to craft anything because the overabundance of items and loot.
So i never bothered reading all the recipes.
And there is no way to intuitively figure out different procedures and combinations for all different items. I think.


So. In order of importance:

1. Read those recipe books!

2. Crafting different items require different combinations and procedures.

Thats what im getting at.. not in a hand holding manner but just pointed into the right direction... explain the "system".. not make it easier but explain it. Honestly i think too much time in tutorial is spent on box moving lol and not enough time on combat and crafting.

I can't work out how to do this - so it might be an idea to put it in the tutorial.

One of my characters has 29 potions of healing. I would like to pass them out evenly between my characters. How do i do this? I've tried dragging them and I have tried sending them but in both cases all of the potions are passed to the receiving character.

There is a slider for moving money when bartering. Is their a slider for moving items between characters?

Yes, tom, there is a key assigned for this. Just check game options - controls to see what it is by default and change it to some other key if you want.


As for the tutorial area, i would also suggest that it doesnt give any xp or loot.
Since if it does it becomes almost mandatory for most players since they will feel they are missing out. Even if the amounts are minimal and loot hardly worth the bother.

Or there could be an option to go inside and skip it, being teleported to the exit with all xp and loot.

Best case scenario would be to make a separate tutorial outside of the game and turn that dungeon into something a bit more interesting.

Disagree with tutorial not giving loot and xp but agree with your idea of being able to skip it and gain xp from it.

Just thinking out loud there. Those would be the different possible options.
What the devs will decide to do with it is up to them.

Ya i feel ya but would def like to see more enemies in tutorial dungeon.. even if they are low level animal type enemies.

Might sound daft but I am still unable to get split items even after someone kindly directed me to the command in the option panel.

The tutorial really needs to include this.

You need to press and hold that key (you can change it to some other too if you want, ofc) with one hand - and then click+hold the items you want to split with the mouse pointer and drag them to the new position or on top of another character portrait.

Would be nicer if the "split" key, or mouse pointer wouldnt need to be held down but just pressed or clicked once... or if there was a split button in the inventory that works similar as the identify or repair buttons in the trading window.

Shift (default) doesn't need to be held down the whole time, just before dropping.

Well, thats a bit hard to notice since you do have to press it and hold while taking the items with the mouse and moving them over.

i ususally like to craft in games. but in this game i have crafted for about 15 minutes. during my last playthrough i sold everything and didnt even craft a simple heal potion. its too much stuff, to complicated, with unknown results or recipes and - most important - too much text to read.

its ok to read the book first, but im missing this "crafting menu" ... im overhelmed and at the end i just dont know what i actually can craft and what is does.

"too much text to read" gets not only zero sympathy from me but much worse ideas as reaction. Speaking personally of course.

I would urge Larian devs to invent and introduce even more textual features and put them in the game.
Even if it means delaying it for many months more.

In fact, i think it would be best to remove combat as it is and replace it with lavish textual descriptions of every thought, move, spell or skill effect the players perform or experience - and then those of enemies - turn by turn.

i think crafting is fine as it is now, the game tracks recipe books you find, and it is not too difficult to figure some new recipes out. Combining some herbs or mushrooms with empty flasks is intuitive and works fine, so you get potions early and without a big effort (also there are enough potions in the game anyway), combining potions isn't hard to figure out also. If you try to combine stuff, something happens or not, not a problem. Good to have a knife, axe, dagger and hammer with you, and of course a mortar and pestle. Later you have a lot more tools, either crafted or found (needle and thread, for example).
I like that there isn't a crafting station (besides from anvil, furnace and mobile kitchen), so that you can craft potions while exploring. But it would be nice to have NPCs (for example a blacksmith, or the doctor, besides from books, who can teach you a few recipes or show you combinations).

i think the books are fine, and also how it is done. does not explain everything, you have to figure it out by yourself, this is what those games always did.

in the tutorial, it is missing, yes, but not everyone is investing in crafting at character creation, so why add stuff people can't do whitout spending points? (lockpicking does work with 0 points, at least in the tutorial). there could be a fireplace or a small, destroyed lab with some potion flasks and herbs, but people would only care if they want to.

The point of tutorial is to teach people about what options there are and how to play the game, right?
Not to force them to anything.

I still think a tutorial should not be inside the game but, since this one already is, atleast it could show everything that is in the game in an appropriate way - without any big hand holding.

I already wrote that for crafting, the most important thing to show to the completely new players is the importance of reading recipe book - and the fact that there is no easy crafting "station" to use, which everyone are accustomed to and will be expecting, unless the tutorial clarifies that is actually not in the game.

A fireplace fit for cooking or a small destroyed lab would be good additions, just to show how diverse crafting is - not to hand hold the players.


1. make them understand reading crafting books is the key to crafting (overhead text blurbs from source hunters would be a great way to emphasize this)
2. provide opportunity to actually do some crafting to see how diverse it is - and how important it is to get the correct recipe from the crafting books.

Thats all.

I would love to have a better mini boss though XD!!