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Since we're talking about the game internals, it's time for a double update! I like seeing what makes a video game tick. In this extra update, I want to show you a highlight of some of the assets that make the game what it is. Those of you who have done media editing/3D modeling/game development should be familiar with what you'll see here. We'll start with...  (all images below shrunk from their original sizes) We'll start by taking a look at a screenshot from the game:  There's a lot going on here! The foreground is an overlay with cards on it, a glow effect, a number, and banners. There's also a 3D area that our avatar and monsters can run around in. You've got sun rays, a sun, and a sky! Let's take a look at the sky. Very briefly, a Skybox is a way of creating backgrounds to make a video game level appear larger than it is; you enclose the level in a cube, a sphere, or a hemisphere that you then apply a texture to. Hand of Fate has two sets of textures for skyboxes, with the two main ones represented below. I stitched them together to show you how they can be laid out.   Appropriately dramatic, isn't it? The fifth image in the first skybox is an alternate version of the first, just to have a sun effect. There are also more images to these skyboxes, including a top cloud cover, and some images that have sun textures. These were just the ones that are easiest to stitch left-to-right. If you think about it, two sky textures is quite enough. We fight indoors way more than we fight outdoors. Speaking of fighting, how about a look at our enemies?  The humble ratman, reduced to a wireframe or sculpted toothpaste. But what kind of stuff goes on it?  A texture, of course. Above you can recognize a skeleton, ratman, lizardman, and bandit; those are the Suits we keep fighting against. Mind you, there aren't just four textures per enemy. There are many variations of skeletons and lizardmen, for example, and speaking of our ratman, I could find three main variations his skin.  The game internally refers to the three ratmen textures above as mangy, scarred, and plague, and you can see that enemies actually have at least three texture maps:
 The color is on the left, normal map on the right, metallic map in the center. The textures have also been resized, but are proportionally correct—the metallic map is half the length and width, as not all textures are the same size. The transparency is not a mistake, either; the textures files are really like that. There are a few other miscellaneous textures that stood out to me, such as little critters:  Sprite sheets for fire animations:  And all the different markers to show you an attack is coming. These must be colored by the engine.  Unblockable on left, blockable on right.  Unblockable, blockable, and a warning cone for offscreen attacks.  A reflect marker, which appears over your own head. And finally, the tokens we get at the end of a session. Both of them have a normal map, but only the latter has a metallic map that I could see. Maybe the former uses a generic metallic map I don't know about.  There are way more textures than I'm showing off, but you get the idea. I want to move on and show off a bit about... The cards I think it's fair to say that the most prominent, memorable visual elements in the game are all the cards that get played and encountered during a session. They all have a distinctive style, a kind of tarot deck of their own. Did you know how the game engine constructs them? It's pretty cool! First, the game loads a 3D object and gives it a card texture. Each texture has a front, back, and an unused area. There are twelve designs.  From left to right, top to bottom:
The game can then overlay one of various other textures. For instance, you have borders:  Centered elements like the icons for fates:  Or in the case of encounters, the entire encounter with its border is the overlay:  The game also adds text towards the bottom of the card. It uses the Behrens Schrift font, saved as a texture. Keeping elements separate like this makes it a little faster to create new cards, and a grayscale design can save on storage space if you take advantage of the low color. One thing to note is that the game uses PNG images for all its textures. It's not an awful idea: PNG is a lossless format with wide support that has an alpha channel and a bit of compression. What's not immediately obvious is that many (if not all) of the textures did have some other compression applied before being converted to PNG. Remember the Encounter card examples posted above? If you zoom in, you'll notice some interesting visual artifacts:  The left side of this image shows what happens if you zoom in on one of the card overlays. There is some antialiasing, and it looks clean-ish, but you can also see faint splotches of color. On the right I enhanced the image levels to show you the color blocks. There was definitely compression pre-applied. It's neither bad nor good... it just is. Interestingly, I haven't found the icons used to create the "X of Suit" cards such as 2 of Dust, 4 of Scales, etc. Either there's something special about those icons, or maybe the cards are using the Suit Curse icons with a special mask applied.  The card art was created by Jesse Gillespie, who also goes by gladlad. He worked with Defiant Development on both Hand of Fate 1 and 2, and created more art for the Hand of Fate: Ordeals board game. I reached out to him on Discord while doing this LP. He seemed pretty happy to have people interested in his work!  You can read a bit more about his role, and the drawing process, in an interview he gave (archive link here).You can find more of his work here. When thinking about the game's art style, I don't want to forget its beginnings. Have a look at this Kickstarter page with early screenshots. Though some of the assets look the same, it progressed quite a lot! To finish off the art section, the coolest image you might never see... The placeholder. 
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Nov 23, 2021 16:29
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Wait what the gently caress Cursed Treasure has a chance of getting rid of all your Blessings?? Then what's the loving point of that card? The alternate version is not worth it as is; curses are stupidly dangerous in this game. And there's even a fail chance? I thought the idea was that you get easy Gain cards in exchange for a few curses, but that effect makes it totally useless. The trick to mages is to stand still and reflect their energy balls back at them. You need to prioritize countering them or you're likely to eat damage. once you counter even one, you'll have some breathing room to beat down on them or the other enemies. But this is all easier said than done. That curse and artifact loss is the reason I eventually removed Embertown Hero from my deck despite it being an otherwise easy encounter. It was just too dangerous. If I do find him in endless, I take a gamble with my artifact, though...yeah. Wife's Fury is usually fine, though I have fought the King of Dust on it before and oof. Huge Hammer is good if you use something like War Cry, then use its ability and then follow it up with an attack. You need to use its ability way more or it's just too slow. Unfortunately the ring you had kind of put a damper on that plan. Desperate Measures honestly just sucks. Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Nov 23, 2021 |
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Nov 23, 2021 19:27
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I noticed you unlocked Hag's wraps again, what does that do? My guesses are either that it increases the chance of you seeing it or it allows it to show up in your starting equipment. Or it could do nothing I suppose.
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Nov 24, 2021 00:58
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Well done on the Golems, always nice to get a multi-encounter chain out of the way!
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Nov 24, 2021 02:16
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Oh wait, I just figured it out. Having two Hag's wraps means you can put both into your equipment deck, which can increase the chances of you encountering it. I completely forgot the deck building side of this game when I posted that. That said I'm a little fuzzy on how much equipment the Dealer adds to the deck each time you start.
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Nov 24, 2021 05:32
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Tombot posted:Oh wait, I just figured it out. Having two Hag's wraps means you can put both into your equipment deck, which can increase the chances of you encountering it. I completely forgot the deck building side of this game when I posted that. That said I'm a little fuzzy on how much equipment the Dealer adds to the deck each time you start. I think the extra Hag's Wraps was a bug. You saw it unlock a second time like I did, but I haven't ever seen a second one in the equipment deck because I would definitely like a greater chance of encountering it some times. All named equipment (everything not sword, mace, axe) is only found once in the deck. If it unlocked something else, well... I don't know. Maybe they just made two encounters that could give you the Hag's Wraps and forgot about it? The actual amount of equipment or encounters that you can bring to story dungeons is variable, and the game never really explains what factors into it. You would just figure out as you run through the game multiple times. If you're in tutorial mode, the game limits your deck as you don't have enough cards. If you're out of tutorial mode, the deck sizes depend on the dungeon you're in, and some fates force you to bring more cards in. For example... the Jack of Dust is our second story dungeon. At the beginning I could only put 12 cards in either of equipment or encounter decks, but at this point in the game I have to fit in 30. Some fates raise that to 32. I don't think the Dealer ever adds equipment himself, but he will add extra encounters based on which story dungeon you're in. Seraphic Neoman posted:Wait what the gently caress Cursed Treasure has a chance of getting rid of all your Blessings?? Then what's the loving point of that card? The alternate version is not worth it as is; curses are stupidly dangerous in this game. And there's even a fail chance? It's definitely lovely when you run into it. I think it's meant to synergise with cards like Secret Society, which isn't even unlocked yet, or the equipment that gets unlocked if you get the token, but there are so few situations in which having curses is a good idea that I haven't found a good way to show it off.
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Nov 24, 2021 10:18
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I suppose sometimes we just have cards in the deck so we can unlock it's token. This game seems to have a habit of making you do stuff you wouldn't want to do otherwise for the sake of more power later on, it's rather clever in that regard.
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Nov 24, 2021 21:38
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It is pretty cool. The overarching push and pull between rush and reward is definitely there. We've seen plenty of cards by now, and there are some that are definitely low risk and somewhat useful where others are higher risk but fantastic. You've also got the same situation with card unlocking. Not everything works. I'm still not too happy with the Nomad fate. But it is true that what you get out of it is pretty good, so there's that trade-off.
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Nov 25, 2021 22:57
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I'm just starting to wonder how much of the token unlocks we've seen and how much of a chore it would be to 100% this game.
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Nov 25, 2021 23:07
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Next update will be delayed due to family visits. Have a good weekend, everybody! Hope your food was good, and if you were a retail worker, I hope you survived. I should resume after the weekend. In the meantime, what's everyone's favorite encounter so far? Carbon dioxide posted:I'm just starting to wonder how much of the token unlocks we've seen and how much of a chore it would be to 100% this game. I can say that the DLC will be completed for sure. I'm well on the way to finishing the fates, though some will be post-game. So gently caress it; this is now a 100% LP.
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Nov 26, 2021 23:24
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Carbon dioxide posted:I'm just starting to wonder how much of the token unlocks we've seen and how much of a chore it would be to 100% this game. I played this game for just shy of 40 hours and I have yet to 100% it. I also have no real desire to. It's a massive PITA. That said, I guess if you're more of a fan of roguelikes than I am, you'll prob get more out of it. TBH HoF2 is much worse to 100% and I think that game made me burn out on the series as a whole. Anaxite posted:So gently caress it; this is now a 100% LP. Bro don't hold yourself to this. I paid for the DLC expansion and even I went "eeeeeggghhhhhhhhhhh" halfway through.
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Nov 27, 2021 00:23
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 Part 13 - Queen of Scales (YouTube) This is where the deaths start happening, practice or not. Descent into the Underworld's last fight is what did it for me, as that Lich's ranged attack is no joke when combined with lava golems and hellbeasts. If I were to try the fight again, I would likely kill the Lich first, no matter how difficult. Frost Fang was an extremely fortunate weapon to get early, even better than Feathered Ice here; I would stack the deck in a heartbeat to get that kind of crowd control. What are also no joke are Wrath of the Old Gods (I think I get the name wrong once) and Guardian Angel. Instant kills on one enemy in the battlefield can turn the tide of the battle, especially if there's a single monster on the map. And then being allowed to re-try a chance draw is extremely beneficial. You saw! See, some blessing benefits border on ridiculous, and I'm glad the Demon Trader Encounter didn't get rid of the really good ones. Just bear in mind that while Wrath of the Old Gods may seem broken, there are a few fights where it won't work. Merchant Guard showed its utility. Fighting more fights than you need to is a bit of a pain, but a single enemy card is easily dispatched, and the better gold prices may help you get food more easily. Food and gold were both needed to deal with some Encounters, and Lost in the Swamp can use either (but you can get one version without a kind old man). Charity/Demon Trader/Blood Auction We've seen the first Charity, and we're getting a glimpse of the third in the Demon Trader and Blood Auction line of quests. These three sets of cards are unique in that each of them has six versions that unlock progressively better equipment, at a steeper cost every time. Completing the sixth encounter nets you an Achievement for each set. I'm going to try to get all of these. Mage/Skeleton King/Dragon items We also got a glimpse of at least one of each of these equipment sets. The devs must have considered these the closest to true equipment sets in the game, since wearing all of one's items at once also nets you an Achievement. The Queen of Scales It is said that if you destroy a queen's totem, its spell will be broken and any surrounding lizards will be damaged. It is not known whether anyone has successfully achieved this. The Queen of Scales has two main attacks: a fireball and a stream of fire. The fire breath will only damage her minions if the fire totem is defeated, so it's not a bad idea to get rid of the totem. Then you can take advantage of friendly fire and use that fire breath against her minions if you want. But in my case, I came into the fight ridiculously over prepared. I had: a weapon lizardmen are weak to, an artefact that hits everyone with lightning, a shield that reduces their cooldowns, a blessing that will just off an enemy at the beginning of the fight, and even more blessings that didn't get used. Even without my ridiculous setup, the Queen isn't really that threatening by herself. In fact, that's a little theme in the Court:
Two kings to go! Anaxite fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jan 4, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2021 16:24
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I was kinda hoping the lava golems would have exploded when you zapped them with the freeze ray (via thermal shock), but I suppose that would have made things too easy.
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Nov 29, 2021 17:38
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Tombot posted:I was kinda hoping the lava golems would have exploded when you zapped them with the freeze ray (via thermal shock), but I suppose that would have made things too easy. It would actually make fighting the drat things somewhat interesting. God what a mean as gently caress encounter. Is that what always comes up for the final underworld floor? I think I cheesed mine with an artifact cause I don't remember having a tough time with it. The worst part is we have no gain cards from any of that. And yeah, Wrath of the Old Gods is worth it just so you never need to deal with the minotaur ever again.
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Nov 29, 2021 20:08
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Tombot posted:I was kinda hoping the lava golems would have exploded when you zapped them with the freeze ray (via thermal shock), but I suppose that would have made things too easy. Seraphic Neoman posted:It would actually make fighting the drat things somewhat interesting. Ice and Lava Golems seems like a missed opportunity. I don't even think there's a type weakness! And yes, the Underworld encounters are always the same. You can always count on dealing with the Lich and Lava Golems at the last one, so if you know what you're doing and you have extra equipment, you can get your build sorted early enough. ...or just walk on by.
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Nov 29, 2021 21:02
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I think this is about the point where I gave up due to repeatedly dying against the boss fight, though I could be mistaking it for the King of Scales. Definitely was something in the upper echelons of Lizardmen. Glad to see she was no threat.
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Nov 30, 2021 01:48
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Jossar posted:I think this is about the point where I gave up due to repeatedly dying against the boss fight, though I could be mistaking it for the King of Scales. Definitely was something in the upper echelons of Lizardmen. Glad to see she was no threat. It's almost certainly KoS. The dungeon curse there is one of the three reasons I fear the Pain cards so much. It's one of the "Glorified Game Over" curses.
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Nov 30, 2021 06:27
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Jossar posted:I think this is about the point where I gave up due to repeatedly dying against the boss fight, though I could be mistaking it for the King of Scales. Definitely was something in the upper echelons of Lizardmen. Glad to see she was no threat. The lizardmen are always going to be annoying, they're definitely designed to be. If it was the King you had issues with, that's about where I ended when I first gave the game a real shot. That dungeon requires a lot of work.
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Nov 30, 2021 19:09
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It's been a while but I remember the final boss being the only real roadblock for me, aside from esoteric card requirements I still haven't met (looking at you "need x blessings" cards)
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Nov 30, 2021 20:52
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 Part 14 - King of Plague (YouTube) This dungeon expects that your muscle memory will do you in. Fighting without countering is hard when you have things like the Mages' homing attacks coming at you, ratmen leaping at you, or a Lich coming back to burn your face off. If you don't fight the urge to counter, you'll starve yourself to death. The curse interacted badly with the Skeleton King sword, as countering is all but essential to build up the combo and start stealing life. And that global speed/damage boost? 10+ damage taken per hit when I'm wearing heavy armor is scary, so imagine if the adventurer were starving! Stranger in the Shadows ended the way it did because I had Holy Touch and forgot about it. That blessing will cause the vampire's blood sucking attempt to fail, giving you a chance at either a grab bag of gold or a curse. Or you could just leave, but where's the fun in that? Fun Fact: In a test recording I forgot to equip the White Minotaur mace before stepping on the Collector card, stopped, and facepalmed when I lost out on the 75 gold. The Collector card had also covered up the Call for the Priest store, so I'll never know if my outcome could've been better… I also want to leave a little note about blessings. I passed up some blessings in the Priest's shop, but if you have so much gold it's burning a hole in your pocket, you may not want to copy me. At this point in the game the deck contains a non-insignificant number of "Gain x resource per blessing" cards, they have occasional interactions, and of course you have Self Righteous to help you dish more damage. A blessing in your inventory is also removed from future pulls; if at first you don't get the one you wanted, it might appear in later shops or encounters. You can also apply this advice to equipment if you're really holding out for something. Bear in mind the equipment pool is greater overall. The King of Plague Only the most savage and cunning of the ratmen rise to kinghood among their rank. The King of Plague has three attacks. The first, a leap attack, will damage you if you stay underneath him. The second releases three shadow clones around you that close in on you; just touching them hurts, so you need to dodge either away or through them. The third attack is a three-part unblockable combo that lunges towards you on the third part; he'll perform the third attack between the other two based on how you're attacking him. I've seen advice that suggests staying close to him to prevent him from doing the shadow attack more often, and if the Time Distortion curse were active, that would be good advice. The strategy would be similar to the King of Skulls. Buying off the curse lets you treat the encounter as a slightly more deadly ratman fight. Don't worry, we'll see the King of Plague again later. Anaxite fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Jan 4, 2022 |
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Dec 2, 2021 17:09
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Youtube is saying the video is private.
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Dec 2, 2021 17:19
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Tombot posted:Youtube is saying the video is private. Whoops, I knew I forgot something. Fixed.
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Dec 2, 2021 17:38
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The adventurer is also up to the following unfortunate events:
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Dec 2, 2021 18:25
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I was super surprised you got rid of time distortion. I actually kinda like that curse.
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Dec 2, 2021 21:47
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I don't think visiting the oracle is really worth it outside of the token (Which I think is a thing you get when you visit her), knowing what curses or buffs you are going to get next probably won't help you all that much.
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Dec 2, 2021 22:09
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Dec 2, 2021 23:01
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Seraphic Neoman posted:I was super surprised you got rid of time distortion. I actually kinda like that curse. To be honest, I have the bad habit of running into things, and I'm already bad enough at dodging the King of Plague's shadow attack without him going even faster. It felt a little easier on me if everything slowed down, even with reduced damage. Tombot posted:I don't think visiting the oracle is really worth it outside of the token (Which I think is a thing you get when you visit her), knowing what curses or buffs you are going to get next probably won't help you all that much. I haven't found a use for the Oracle. I suppose it could let you plan your route or equipment a bit better if you knew the next curses were going to be particularly nasty, but you'd need to have the right combination of cards to see where you were going.
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Dec 3, 2021 00:07
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A lot of interesting reactions to incidental things in this one, wasn't aware of quite how much the game was checking for things like armor weight and specific blessings.
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Dec 4, 2021 10:44
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It does a lot of that but honestly it's mostly a waste because you'll realistically equip maybe 30% of these things. For instance I never used arrowcutter or time heals
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Dec 4, 2021 11:00
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King of plague as the endboss for a dungeon does look balanced with time distortion in mind.
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Dec 4, 2021 13:59
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Jossar posted:A lot of interesting reactions to incidental things in this one, wasn't aware of quite how much the game was checking for things like armor weight and specific blessings. They do it in the sequel, too. I had a reaction on one card, 'Checkpoint' in Endless Mode, to something I'd done in a completely different card roughly several hours of play earlier (trade an item to some gnomes on the card 'Gnomish Exchange'). It's beautiful, and I love their attention to detail.
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Dec 5, 2021 01:05
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It's definitely an understated part of the replayability. We like to talk about the Dealer's voices, the dungeon layouts, or unlocks to work towards, but the little touches add that little bit of extra novelty we like. Update coming in a bit.
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Dec 5, 2021 17:06
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 Part 15 - King of Scales (YouTube) I went back to showing some of the fights so you can appreciate just how hard things have gotten! Bandits or mages? No problem. Game decides to throw a King and Queen at us? Uhh… yeah no that's pretty hard. This is us being tested. Hard. Of the 12 Court dungeons, I think the last one best exemplifies risk vs. reward. There is no good way (that I know of) to stop the ticking time bomb that is the Skin Rash curse, and you're already up against starvation; if you hope to get a windfall, or enough resources to survive, you can't really avoid difficult encounters like the Lizard Dome, or the Crucible, even if they might mean your death. You must focus on your goal and do whatever it takes to win. If you have a chance to remove one of the two dungeon curses, removing Skin Rash is by far the best one to remove. You can live far longer without weapon abilities than without board movement. The King of Scales He has lived since before humans came to this place, mighty and lonely and dangerous beyond measure. This creature has battle things that slithered from the Outer Darkness, from the hells themselves. The King's main threat is not from his attacks. No, it's that as long as he is alive, his minions cannot be killed. The protective aura he projects commands you to focus your attention on him, while his minions keep trying to close in on you. Truly, this is a King. All his attacks are unblockable. He can do an overhead sword strike which tracks you, a kind of shoulder check, and he can put down his shield to have it shoot spikes at you. That last attack creates an opening for you to attack him, if you somehow came into the fight without a shield to stun him with. Anaxite fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Jan 4, 2022 |
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Dec 5, 2021 17:35
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Jesus what the gently caress were those encounters. Queen of Dust + King of Plagues? loving 5 Lava Golems??? Skin Rash is one of my three "Glorified Game Over" curses. OP got "lucky" and "only" lost a shitton of max health. You can easily get a bunch of curses and your progress will snowball. I took it out with Nymphs of the Sweetwoods back before it was patched and I'm not even remotely sorry. Actually in some ways it's kind of the anti-Nymphs of the Sweetwoods.
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Dec 5, 2021 22:23
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Wow, that was utterly brutal!
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Dec 5, 2021 23:43
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Seraphic Neoman posted:Jesus what the gently caress were those encounters. Queen of Dust + King of Plagues? loving 5 Lava Golems??? What sucks is that ever since, the King of Plague just keeps. Showing. Up. He likes to add himself to so many goddamn encounters even when I'm messing around. And yeah, I know it's just the RNG but it sucks; you can start to see exactly why, even though I had an easy time with the King of Plague the first time around, he's such an annoyance. Unless you've been lucky enough to beat the Kraken in your current run!  I have to note that many people could have more deaths than I did. There's some LP magic going on here... but not much. It is entirely possible to get to the King of Scales repeatedly if you've got enough practice in, but practice means fighting against multiple Court monsters, which at this point I've been doing. The game is possible. Brutal, but possible. And speaking of possible, we're not going to jump into the last dungeon quite yet. I've got some bonus videos to show off with a few unlocks first.
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Dec 6, 2021 00:15
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I think that whole "Skin disease" curse works as a direct counter to the Nomad fate, any health you gain from moving around is countered by all of the curses etc you would get. Edit: wait a minute, you don't get the King of scale's shield as a reward for all of that? I thought that would be obvious.
Tombot fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Dec 6, 2021 |
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Dec 6, 2021 01:08
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Tombot posted:I think that whole "Skin disease" curse works as a direct counter to the Nomad fate, any health you gain from moving around is countered by all of the curses etc you would get. Edit: wait a minute, you don't get the King of scale's shield as a reward for all of that? I thought that would be obvious. Nope. We instead get one of the best weapons in the game though.
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Dec 6, 2021 02:57
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Part 16 - Fate roundup #1 Apprentice (YouTube) Explorer's Gift (YouTube) Hoarder's Desire (YouTube) Monk (YouTube) In these bonus videos, I showcase some of the modifiers the game allows us to play with that we didn't get to clear in story dungeons. I'll go over their encounters and give you a brief look at their rewards. I'm starting with four easier ones: Apprentice Apprentice is easy mode. Playing this Fate adds extra Gain cards to your deck, makes you stronger, makes enemies weaker, and locks a couple of achievements (but not many—I only found one so far, but someone will probably correct me). The Apprentice encounters are all about teaching you how to play the game better by making you focus on one single mechanic in an easy setting. Finishing the final token encounter gives you two cards: Battle Practice and Nymphs of the Sweetwoods. Battle Practice is a very useful deck card, as it makes you fight a small amount of any monster unlocked so far in exchange for a single Gain card; it's practically a freebie. Nymphs of the Sweetwoods only appears in the Apprentice Fate, resets your avatar status to exactly as he was when the run started (equipment, curses, blessings, health, and food), and gives you the Sweetwood Blessing aka a Gain card every five steps. If you're just trying to play a chill session through the game, just use this. Everything unlocks quickly. Explorer's Gift I showed off Explorer's Gift during an Endless Mode video. It's all about exploring every nook and cranny of a map, it adds food Gain cards to the deck, and revisiting spaces costs no food. The inability to wear heavy armor seems like a downside, but it also means events which depend on your armor class will be easy. I would call this Fate a pseudo-easy mode; it's not necessarily easier, but if you know what you're doing, it's hard to kill you. The Lost Island encounters attached to this Fate are a balance of gathering resources, chance events, and fighting. The requirements are not very steep, though you may find yourself doing the second encounter quite a few times to get a good result. It might be worth doing it in an earlier dungeon where few things affect your chance pulls. You're rewarded with a generic Lost Island card, letting you pay some gold and food for a series of chance events which can lead to many gain cards, and with a ring which grants food for revealing all encounters on a map. Hoarder's Desire I showed off Hoarder's Desire in an Endless Mode video. It's about managing equipment, loss, and Goblins. You start off weak and low in health, and need to accumulate equipment to be strong. The Treasure Trove encounters attached to this Fate force you to wear the Fate's helm, then give up all your non-default equipment in exchange for a token. This is a huge inconvenience in the middle of a run, as it resets your stats to the default. All three encounters are identical. You're rewarded with a generic Treasure Trove card, which has the same mechanics but lets you pick one of four pieces of random equipment, and the Fate's helm, which is only really good with goblins and the aforementioned encounter. I'm not a huge fan of this Fate. It seems a bit underdeveloped, and I don't find its equipment of significant use. Monk Monk is all about Undead as your only Gold source. Its helmet gives you health when you gain a blessing. The Holy Quest encounters attached to this Fate are a mixture of combat and chance, forcing you to fight against increasingly difficult combinations of the Court of Skulls, and also find a tomb where said monsters are. However, you need to have defeated the relevant Court member in the story before you can actually finish the Fate properly. By the way, the last fight can be brutal: the Jack, Queen, and King of Skulls together in a trapped chamber can be pretty tough (I died twice). The last fight used the King's explosive buddies against the others to great success. Finishing the final encounter rewards you with the Monk helm and its corresponding health gain, and a generic Holy Quest encounter. This encounter is a chance event that can lead to Pain, monsters, Gain, or a piece of the Skeleton King's equipment. I don't like the Monk helm that much myself, but the encounter could be useful if you like your chances. Anaxite fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Jan 4, 2022 |
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Dec 8, 2021 17:40
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 16:08 |
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I think you have the wrong subtitle track for the Apprentice video. Nymphs of the Sweetwoods used to be the ultimate reward in one of the card quest chains. This card was important because it resets everything and gives you a powerful blessing. It says something about this game's curse system that this trade-off was always worth it. Explorer's Gift is basically the best. Cool mechanic, cool encounter chain, great rewards. Nothing to dislike. Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 18:22
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