Hey folks!
It’s two weeks until 1.0 release, and we’re still playtesting and fixing reported issues. For today, we decided to do a round table for how the team actually plays the game.
I think that an interesting takeaway from this is that even the members of our team play the game differently, and everyone enjoys the game in a slightly different way for a slightly different thing.
Robert (programmer)
I like playing on Hard+ mode and experimenting with different Blessings and Curses. Since I've played the game quite a lot, I know how skills and enemies work so it's fun for me to change things up and do challenge runs. I usually take a balanced party: one warrior (Safir), one ranger (Merewen) and one mystic (Morgan Tud). Safir is unique since his passive allows him to make an automatic attack when using a defensive skill, which lets me turn him into a proper tank and still deal good damage. I like Morgan Tud because he's the only mystic to start with an active armor restore skill. Merewen is awesome because her passive lets her reset cooldowns on a kill, and that gives her crazy action economy potential with the right upgrades. My favorite skill on a warrior is Shield Block (-50% damage taken), since that's a simple and powerful way to extend your survivability. Safir already starts with it (hence why I love him!), so I usually either take Rage (a stacking damage bonus per attack done, there's a defensive version which also reduces damage taken) or something like Stunning Blow or Bash or anything similar that can hard-disable an enemy for a turn. Crowd control is a life saver on Hard! On a ranger, I love getting my hands on Quick Draw, which lets you shoot twice (or even thrice). There's an accuracy penalty, but once you get around that, you're dealing insane damage per round! For a mystic, I lean on Haephestian Salts (armor restoration) a lot. For the second skill, I usually prefer getting Exploding Brimstone, which is a grenade-type skill that destroys cover and deals damage in an area. It's great for opening up a shot for my ranger.
Mia (designer)
I usually play on Normal, officially the reason is that I'm trying to balance the baseline difficulty. Safir, Rana, and Rumayla is my go-to team composition. Safir takes all utility and defensive skills to proc his passive, Rana goes for full buff mode, and Rumayla is my damage dealer with damage over time effects: poisons, bleeding, fire… everything. I like being able to pass a round with AP remaining just to see the enemies die on their own round. I often aim to get Warcry to increase the power of my mystics abilities, and any DoT ability on Rumayla, with preference on Noxious Fumes as a base ability.
Will (artist)
I like to play on Hard mode, cause I have a gamers ego. The hero combination I really love is Salim and Rana, the warrior is less important. I take those two because of the super high single target damage that Salim can apply. The most important part of this build for me is upgrading Salim's bow to get better range so I can maintain the Measuring passive ability!
AleLuja (artist)
I am always playing on Normal mode because I enjoy it the most. Hard mode doesn't tolerate mistakes:) My favorite characters are definitely rangers, I love them all, and it's always a hard decision which one to pick, so it mostly depends. Usually I take one warrior, one ranger and Rumayla. For the skills, I love getting Partner Up, Archer's Vigil, and Fend Off, then I can partner up with a warrior, get closer to enemies, provoke them to attack me, and shoot all of the moving characters and bastards who are attacking my warrior.
Kaz (artist)
I prefer Hard+ mode (and its Doomed World). My usual warband consists of Tariq, Rana and Alain which is a party I find most suitable for eliminating threats before they can make their move against me. My playstyle relies on heavy damage and crowd control, so the preferred skills for me are those which replenish AP (like Haste), allow for extra damage (Commanding Shot and Volley) and allow for me to manipulate the enemy positioning in order to group them up (Carving Cleave and Bash). I find Rana's Hallow ability to be very versatile, allowing me to choose between extra AP (Flash Hallow) or evasion (Dense Hallow) to compliment Alain's passive later on. And, of course, to make the most out of my damage output, I carry Merlin's Core because of its passive ability.
sanduk (artist)
I love to switch between Normal and Easy. It depends on what mood I am in. I love Easy mode where you don't have to think much and just have fun, learn about all the skills, make reckless decisions and just play the game. Normal is where I want a challenge and have to re-think my tactics and it feels rewarding. I never managed to beat the game in Hard mode. Every run I take different heroes, I really don't have a favorite, I love to combine everyone. It is mostly fun to see which hero combination will die the fastest, and the other way around. Since I'm using different heroes every time I use different skills, but I choose some skills more often that can bring me success, and those would be Bash and Cleave for warriors, Decoy and Take Aim for rangers, and for mystics Noxious Fumes and Restorative Salts.
MarkoZ (programmer)
I usually play on Hard+ mode with Curses because I like the extra challenge it brings. I really like playing with Safir and Merewen and any mystic hero that seems most fun at the time. Safir and Merewen are great for hitting enemies multiple times, and it's always very satisfying to see plenty of hits for only a few action points. Safir's passive works great with skills that restore and/or don't spend any AP, and Merewen's cooldown reduction passive together with reaction shots can set up unexpectedly strong turns.
MarkoP (programmer)
I’ve been mostly playing Normal mode due to being constantly distracted with fixing issues and having to run through the entire game to make sure later stages of the game aren’t busted, and higher difficulties would have made that process slower. Because of this, I don’t have a favored warband composition, so I play with random units every time (and am happy we added a button for that), tho I do aim for rounded compositions (one of each class). I do have heroes that I like how they work: Zahras passive is very nice and strong, especially coupled with Isabel, Safir using utility/defensive skills for damage is also fun, Salim with Measured passive and abusing Merlin’s Teleport spell to never lose it, Alain and his Decoy are also very useful, as is Rana starting with Hallow. The skills I found fun are Specialty Arrow upgraded into Bodkin Arrow to fully bypass armor, Partner Up and Sword Sworn are similar and very strong that allow for extra actions or damage, Martyrdom for the extra action economy, Volatile Mixture for nerfing enemy actions, Lunge and Cleave for pure damage, etc.
What’s your playstyle?
Which heroes and skills do you usually take or have had the most success with?
Share your success (or failure!) stories with us, and consider joining our Discord server if you want to provide direct feedback or discuss stuff with us. The game is only two weeks away from its 1.0 release, so there are just a few more opportunities for improving the game for that occasion, and we love hearing your feedback!
MarkoP