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"I want to be the very best"? Nah, I wanna be a GOD. Let's play Siralim 2! What is this? Siralim 2 is a quaint little indie RPG that mashes Pokemon together with traits from traditional console RPGs, roguelike dungeon crawls. You capture and breed a huge variety of mythical creatures and assemble parties of them to explore random dungeons with turn-based combat against randomly generated opponents. Who made this? These guys!  Not a bad showing for 4 people. Why play this? It looks like an RPG Maker game. It's fun! It's a dungeon crawler, so it can get pretty grindy in some respects, but the game gives you an absolutely amazing set of tools to play with. Most challenges are less about raw grind and more about putting together strategies to work around them. The game's not at all afraid to hand you a bunch of crazy abilities to assemble into an unstoppable combo, nor is it afraid to let you watch when you run into a counter and your unbeatable team falls to pieces. How can I play this? It's available for PC on Steam, which is where I got it, but it's also available for iOS, Android, and PS Vita if you want a mobile experience. Where did the name Siralim 2 come from? gently caress if I know  There was a Siralim 1 at some point but neither game really has what you'd call a story, so you're not missing much skipping straight to 2.Table of Contents Update 1: Hello there! Welcome to the world of Siralim! Update 2: ¡Viva el Rey Mysterio! Update 3: Arachnophobia Update 4: Tunnel Snakes Rule! Update 5: Anger Management Update 6: From Here to Eternity Update 7: On Stranger Tides Update 8: Army of Darkness Update 9: The Pagemaster Update 10: Some Like it Hot Update 11: War Dogs Update 12: Edward Scissorhands Update 13: Cast Away Update 14: What Dreams May Come Update 15: Apocalypse Now Update 16: The Blob Update 17: The Hurt Locker Update 18: Strange Magic Update 19: Fifty Shades of Grey Update 20: Swamp Thing Update 21: Back to the Future Update 22: The Abyss Update 23: Pitch Black Update 24: Gone with the Wind Update 25: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Update 26: A Rock and a Hard Place Update 27: Flight of the Phoenix Update 28: Polar Express Update 29: On the Beach Update 30: Wizards Update 31: Trouble in Paradise Update 32: Beach Party Update 33: Judgment Day Update 34: The Prestige Update 35: The Bodyguard Update 36: Gods of Egypt Update 37: Misery Update 38: Ever After Update 39: Edge of Tomorrow Update 40: Gladiator Update 41: Tremors II: Aftershocks Update 42: Beyond Thunderdome Update 43: Fight Club Update 44: Se7en Update 45: Easy Virtue Update 46: Night of the Living Dead Update 47: The Hangover Update 48: Blade Runner Update 49: Flubber Update 50: Fahrenheit 451 Update 51: Fifty Shades Darker Update 52: Idle Hands Update 53: Crash Update 54: Death Becomes Her Update 55: Unbreakable Update 56: Krampus Update 57: Look Who's Back Update 58: Bern Update 59: Enchanted the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jun 7, 2018 |
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Jul 13, 2017 22:48
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Update 1: Hello there! Welcome to the world of Siralim! We start up the game and are greeted with... this. It doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence, but stick with me here.  We're starting a fresh game. If I had my cleared save on this computer there'd be a New Game Plus available with a few more options. Even without it, though, if you hold down the D key for about 10 seconds...   There's one specific thing I want from New Game Plus that will be very important, as we'll see soon. When they say the storyline is "light"... they're not kidding. Though if you bought and downloaded the game and got this far, you probably don't care.  Siralim 2 doesn't actually follow the Pokemon formula that religiously, but I appreciate how closely it recreates the opening.  So we're going to follow suit.   Well, this is a little different. The game gives you a choice of 5 different classes (note that they correspond more or less 1:1 to the colors from Magic: the Gathering, although the devs have said this was largely coincidental.) The monsters you fight with belong to the same classes as well, which have a few type advantage effects a la Pokemon, but other than determining the monsters you start with your own class doesn't stop you from mixing and matching monster classes as much as you want. Later on there will be unique bonuses we can unlock based on our character class, and much later we can even change class if we need to, but early on all that it really affects is your starting loadout.  For the purposes of this tutorial, I'm just going with Chaos. Say hello to our brand new... thing?  Now then, on to more important matters! You're probably wondering why I, an all-powerful god, seek counsel with a human like you! Truth be told, I have reason to believe that your kingdom, Siralim, may be in immediate danger. You see, a demigod with not-so-good intentions has risen to pwoer in the kingdom of Caedo. He calls himself Misery, and has ambitions to overthrow the ever-prominent Siralim! Now, normally that wouldn't bother me all too much - such is the way of humans, after all - but Misery doesn't plan to stop upon Siralim's demise. As you know, Siralim sits atop a gigantic Nether Orb. With it, a demigod like Misery could abuse this relic to attain full-on godhood! Even in his weakened state, Misery is a force to be reckoned with - and worse yet, as a god, I am unable to intervene in such affairs. That's where you come in, my dear Ash: only a human of your strength can hope to defy Misery, and considering he's killed most other kings and queens... well, we don't have many other options. Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence  Tutorial time! But first, a brief detour.  The New Game Plus option inserts this sort of debug room. Most of these are just trainer-y options if you want a more sandboxy game. A few options change up some of the basic rules and creature progression if you want a more novel experience after playing through the game. We're here for one thing in particular, though.   The default walking speed is agonizingly slow. There are legitimate ways to speed it up but they come way, way too late. The blue thing at the top is a teleporter. Jumping in it sends us into the tutorial proper.  As I said before, Eternity's End is my domain, so this will be the perfect place for me to teach you everything you need to know about creatures, battling, and all kinds of other exciting things! So then, let's get started with the basics. In this world you'll need to collect and summon creatures to fight for you. I've already prepared one such creature for you: the Berserker Fiend. Don't be shy - go up to it and introduce yourself!  You received a Berserker Fiend creature.  Vertaag summons up another teleporter to take us to the next tutorial room.  This one has another creature, but he's a bit less friendly.   We get thrown into a fight against a tutorial enemy. The action menu at left has a few interesting options: Attack/Defend/Cast are exactly what you'd expect from a standard RPG. Provoke attempts to redirect enemy attacks away from other party members and towards the user. It's nice that the game includes a universal tanking mechanic, but it reduces your effective defense and it's not super reliable by itself, so even if you have a beefy monster it's not really worth spending a turn to provoke unless you're very specifically built for it. Extract is basically our Pokeball option, but there are limits on what monsters you're allowed to extract from and this guy is not on the list  Also, it doesn't physically capture a monster, it just gives you an item to create a copy of it later on. Not much to do here, so we punch it in the face. The orange numbers and exclamation point mean we scored a critical hit, but it's still not enough to bring this guy down.  He can't really accomplish much, though, and another punch puts him down for the count.  We don't quite level up from the encounter. Also, note that your character has their own level independent of the monsters. Character level doesn't affect all that much, but it does gate some aspects of progression.  We also gain a bunch of random resources. There really isn't money in this game, per se; different services cost different resources, and when we eventually find merchants they charge their prices in all resources simultaneously. Except Power. Power (and power balance) is a little bit different, but I'll get into that later.  A chest appears after we beat the monster. You eagerly pry open the treasure chest. It contained a Sword!  Why don't you equip that sword to your Berseker Fiend? Go on, I'll wait! (To equip an artifact, press Q to open the menu, then select Creatures, then select Equip Artifact, then select the Sword you just received.) Yeah, UI is not the game's strong suit.  We equip the Sword. Like Vertaag says, it's not very interesting, but at level 1 that's almost a 50% increase in our fiend's attack. Artifacts will make or break your builds.   The teleporter takes us to the last part of the tutorial, with another chest for the taking. It contained a Gem of Aftermath!  Now then, please equip that Spell Gem to your Berserker Fiend!  Vulnerable is a debuff status that increases damage taken by 50%, so getting that combined with multiple attacks sounds like a pretty cool spell for Berserker Friend.  Let's try out our new toy.  Between the sword and the debuff from Aftermath, a crit at one-third strength is doing almost double the damage of a full power crit from the previous fight. The second hit from Aftermath finishes him off, leveling up Ash and Berserker Friend. (You can see the broken shield icon noting that the Shade has Vulnerable. The burning angry face on Berserker Friend's status box indicates that he has the Berserk status buff--this is an innate feature of Berserker Fiends. Berserk also increases damage taken by 50%, but it increases damage dealt by 50% as well so it's got some benefit.)  Use the teleporter one last time. It will take you back to your kingdom, Siralim. Meet with your most trusted companions and tell them everything you've learned about Misery. When the time is right, I will show you how to breach Misery's castle and destroy him. But for now, you must seek out new creatures to bolster your army and hone your skills. Good luck, Ash. (You returned to your home kingdom of Siralim. Upon arriving, you hurriedly discussed the looming situation with your most trusted wards, Damaos and Hebron.) ...wards? Are these, like, our adoptees or are the writers just not sure what that word means?   Damaos: So it seems that this 'Misery' character wishes to destroy our kingdom and use our power to ascend to godhood. This does not bode well for us, King Ash. We must prepare for battle immediately! Hebron: Indeed. King Ash, you did not earn your royal title for any small reason; you are the most powerful mage in all the land. And better yet, you are touched by the gods! As far as we can recall, you are the only human capable of communicating with these deities. If anyone has a chance to stop this so-called demigod, it is you. Damaos: And yet, I fear that our noble king may have some work to do before he can hope to take on such an assumedly powerful adversary.  Cores are... kind of like pre-filled Pokeballs? They're what you get from Extracting enemies. Like he says, you plug them into the Summoning Brazier here in your base and it pops out a new monster.  As chaos mages, we get a Flailing Manti Core to start with. Each creature has a unique innate ability. We've seen the Berserker Fiend get perma-Berserk status, and our new Flailing Manticore will have a hefty stat boost. This is one of the biggest strengths of Siralim: every single of the 500-600 creatures in the game has its own unique ability and they generally range in power from "really drat good" to "holy gently caress are you kidding me." As you might expect from starter creatures, these are both on the lower end of the scale.    We walk down several goddamn screens to reach our summoning brazier. This is why I went straight to NG+ for the movement speed boost. At least the starry background that fades in is neat?  Summoning from a core costs a decent chunk of our starting resources. This is going to be the main use for our brimstone and crystal for a while; we don't even have a use for the other resources yet.  We score an in-game achievement just for completing steps in the extended tutorial. This sets the pace for the rest of the game: there are shittons of achievements getting unlocked continuously which will shower us in Exalted Emblems, yet another currency that we can't spend yet.  Damaos: Speaking of which, Katarina, the kingdom librarian, has requested that you meet with her at your earliest convenience. You shouldn't keep her waiting; you know she can have a nasty temper at times. Despite the mention of Katarina's temper, she--along with all the other castle residents--doesn't really get a personality.  The library isn't as far as the brazier, but it's still spread out further than it really needs to be. At least we don't have much reason to go back to the library very often. Katarina: Thank you for visiting with me, King Ash! You should return to Damaos and see if he has anything else to teach you. Oh! But before you go, take these Spell Gems. You'll find them useful on your journey, especially after you acquire new creatures.  This is the other major effect of your starting class: Katarina gives you 5 random spells of your chosen class to start you out, exactly enough to fill out the slots on your two starter creatures. Monsters are restricted to spells of their own class under most circumstances, so this is a big power boost for monsters of the same class early on, but other classes will catch up as spell inventory fills out. Speaking of randomness, note that every single copy of a spell can roll random properties. You can get all kinds of crazy stuff this way: spells that cast themselves automatically at the start of battle, spells that cast when you attack, spells that cast multiple times, and so on. Auto-casted spells don't cost any mana either, so even physically oriented monsters can potentially get a lot of mileage out of their spell slots if you get lucky--especially since other random traits can change a spell's casting stat from Intelligence to something else, and some spells do so by default.  The bookshelves function as in-game help, although some things only get recorded as you see them. Thankfully you don't actually have to trek back to the library for this stuff, because it's also available in your menu. (There's a weird visual glitch where the first bookshelf you check out will pop up its title on the map, which lasts until you leave the map. Oh well?)  Further east past the library is the tavern. It's full of useless assholes who have nothing relevant to do.  The sole exception is the table in the upper left, which is full of marginally useful assholes. The multicolored dwarf clowns allow you to play little minigames to earn extra resources, one for each of the four main currencies (brimstone, crystal, granite, and essence.) They're mostly variations on "stop the moving bar at the right spot" and they change up the (generally quite fast) speed enough to be a little tricky. It's still reasonably easy to grind out a bit of a resource, but you're usually better off just hitting the dungeon. Speaking of which, that basically concludes the tour of the realm for now--there are a few other points of interest but we'll come to them when it's time. For now there's not much to do except dive into the game proper. But before I do, I'm going to be putting our character up for a vote. The big choice here is our starting class:  We've already seen the gist of Chaos Mages. Their skills tend to emphasize randomness, debuffs, physical attacks, and high risk/high reward attacks. Their starting creatures are unexciting but effective:  The Berserker Fiend is a solid friend with really good attack and speed and just enough defense that it doesn't get instagibbed to a light breeze, although you still really don't want it to be taking hits. The Flailing Manticore is mediocre statwise in comparison, but its ability makes it really durable and lets you double dip on your attack stat. He's a decent attacker with enough survivability to mop up after all the big guns go off. Death Mages tend to be more style than substance; they sound badass but aren't quite as useful as you'd hope. They feature a lot of sacrifice-for-benefit effects, on-kill/on-death effects, and occasional summons and resurrection effects (which synergize well with their sacrifice and death effects.) Overall I'm not super enamored of them, but their starting creatures are insanely good:  The Rapturous Ghoul gets to add 65% of its speed to its physical damage, not unlike an offensively oriented version of the manticore's special. With its high natural attack and speed this makes it a brutally effective killstick. The Abyssal Spectre is a fairly modest support caster whose physical attacks reduce the enemy's primary stats to whatever its lowest stat is. That makes it a hard counter for a lot of stat boosting creatures as well as just generally handy for taking a dangerous but frail or a harmless but sturdy enemy into a harmless and frail enemy. Life Mages, unsurprisingly, are all about healing and defense. You already know what their kit looks like: healing, buffing, defense, resurrection, some dispels. The best defense is generally a good offense, but you absolutely will run into some battles (particularly bosses) where alpha striking just isn't enough, and that's where these guys shine.  The Dusk Crusader is slow but otherwise well-rounded, i.e. mediocre, but its ability gives it a massive defense boost whenever it lands an attack. And it's not just cumulative, it's compounding, so give them a couple turns and their defense gets just plain silly. They're not much use for regular fights but they're indispensible boss-killers. The Valkyrie Scout is speedy and otherwise well-rounded, i.e. still mediocre, but whenever another party member is attacked the valkyrie will automatically counterattack it. The valkyrie's counter is at 1/3 strength and the valkyrie doesn't hit hard to begin with, but early on it's a great way to generate extra attacks. Nature Mages are well-rounded and just sort of generically really good and strong. They get lots of passive stat buffs, which just translates into being really buff and awesome overall. You could make an argument that other mages have more combo potential, buuuut just having really beefy stats allows for some great combos all on its own. Their starting monsters are not super impressive, though:  The Sand Giant is a slow tough bruiser. His special ability is innate regeneration that scales up the lower is health gets, so he can soak hits and attacks well enough to bat cleanup. Competent, but not great. The Vicious Wolpertinger is a fragile speedster that fires off random Sorcery spells every single time it attacks or gets attacked. That sounds really cool, but there are a lot of oddball niche spells on the Sorcery list so it's not reliably useful unless you've got some combo pieces that just want lots of spells firing.(Fun fact: Wolpertingers are actually a real thing, by which I mean they are a fake thing that people made up, but a long time ago. Basically the German predecessor to the noble jackalope.)  Sorcery Mages are your typically tricksy blue mage types, with poo poo tons of bonuses for spellcasters and not a whole lot else. That can make the early game a bit rocky (especially since their starting spells are likely to be weird and useless) but once they get going they can be terrifying. Their starter monsters don't really help matters, either:  The Coast Watcher is a slow, frail mixed attacker. Normally that translates into a lot of awfulness, but they somewhat make up for it with sheer power thanks to their ability: both physical and magical damage gets boosted by the size of their Intelligence advantage over the target. With some Int boosts their physicals hit like a truck and their spells hit like a truck with a nuke strapped to it, assuming they live long enough to get a turn. The Deranged Gorgon is a support creature with a stat spread similar to the Coast Watcher, but a little bit more speed and defense. Her ability gives her physical attacks a 50% chance to inflict Stun, which has a 50% chance of wearing off at the start of an enemy turn. So basically it's got a 1 in 4 chance to skip an enemy turn when it attacks, not terribly impressive.So... what's it going to be? Pick a name and class for our aspiring mage king/queen.
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Jul 13, 2017 22:49
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Let's get weird! King Mysterio the Sorcery Mage!
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Jul 13, 2017 23:14
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Seconding the above.
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Jul 14, 2017 02:01
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Death Mages also pick up my favorite quality of life ability - they can extract the cores of all monsters on the field simultaneously rather than one by one. I'll withhold on naming, but I'll agree with Sorcery
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Jul 14, 2017 02:02
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I picked this up during the last steam sale, and then switched to playing it on my phone. Great game to play on the bus. I, too, support the reign of King Mysterio the Sorcery Mage.
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Jul 14, 2017 03:03
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Oh man, it was just a few days ago I was thinking about Let's Playing this game! It's a great one that I've sunk 107 hours into. Looks like King Mysterio the Sorcery Mage has it, which is great because it's my favorite mage type anyway. <3 Portals and equipping spellgems of any type. Man, the combo potentials in this game are ridiculous! Ya'll gonna love it.
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Jul 14, 2017 03:21
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King Treebeard the Nature mage oh well
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Jul 14, 2017 04:03
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Jeanne d'Arkness, the Life Mage who has pretensions of being a saintly knight and who actually likes tanking!
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Jul 14, 2017 05:59
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eLmaGus and sorcery magic I'm pretty excited for this LP. This game is everything I wanted dragon quest monsters to be.
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Jul 14, 2017 06:24
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Ash and CHAOS
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Jul 14, 2017 06:30
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I bought this game in the steam sale and have sunk way too many hours into it since, it's weirdly addictive. The way the game gives you all the tools - and really, encourages you - to turn your team into meatgrinders of death is pretty awesome. I'm sure I'm playing at scrub tier though, so it'll be fun to see if I can learn something from the LP.
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Jul 14, 2017 11:47
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I'm on the King Mysterio the Sorcery Mage train as well.
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Jul 14, 2017 14:17
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Update 2: ¡Viva el Rey Mysterio! Looks like the crowd has spoken. Long live King Mysterio the Sorcery Mage! .png) First thing to notice is that Sorcery mages get some sweet magenta robes. Lookin pretty swank. .png) Each class gets a different spell in the tutorial, naturally. Sorcery gets us Spell Strike, which... sucks pretty hard, honestly. The split stat dependency means it's terrible for your typical spellcaster, and while it might sound good as a source of spell damage for high attack monsters, even if you have a really high attack score 50% of it isn't going to amount to much. You don't have to take my word for it, though: .png) .png) My Coast Watcher managed to level up on the first tutorial fight (experience gains are slightly randomized.) Despite being level 2 and basically being the ideal case for Spell Strike--high Intelligence, even higher Attack now that he has a sword equipped, and a special trait that boosts damage even more--the watcher does substantially less damage than Berserker Friend did with Aftermath. There are a few niche uses for it, but yeah, it's pretty bad. At least it looks vaguely cool, with a bunch of swooshing fire and ice and stuff? .png) .png) After the tutorial we get our sidekick. For comparison's sake, here's what the Coast Watcher looked like at level 1. They're both pretty slow and squishy, but at least they can hit respectably. And now, the big roll of the dice: what's our starting cache of spell gems look like? .png) Pretty nice! I think we can work with this. Ward is a status effect that has blocks hostile spells 30% of the time. It's handy, but not necessarily a great use of a turn, so having a built-in cast trigger is great. Defend is not the most useful trigger but it's still a nice perk. .png) Sleep works similarly to Stun. It's less likely to wear off on its own (20% chance per turn) but most forms of damage will automatically dispell it. If you sleep an enemy right before its turn you've got a reasonably reliable chance of skipping it and then hopefully you can pile on before its turn comes around again. .png) Mind Explosion is probably our most reliable damage spell right now, which is... pretty sad. It's kind of weak and costs a ton of mana and it's got two conflicting stat dependencies, neither of which is beneficial to casters with high Intelligence (which is what we have.) On the plus side, the Coast Watcher should be able to get some mileage out of this--anything with high Intelligence should take a decent hit from the spell, anything with low Intelligence will get fragged by his Baffle ability. It also has a cast-on-death trigger, which is good because he's squishy as hell. .png) Steel Storm is a fantastic spell, but again, not super high priority for traditional blaster casters. Especially since this one rolled even more extra stat dependencies! At least the ridiculous mana cost isn't a concern since we can't even cast it on purpose, and we don't have to pay for autocast triggers. .png) Frost Armor is another nice spell. Shell completely negates the damage from the next incoming attack or spell, and this gives a lasting defense boost on top of that. It has a new random modifier we haven't seen yet: it costs health instead of mana. For an inexpensive spell this is usually a pretty good deal, since health tends to be a lot easier to come by than mana. .png) The librarian also serves one other very important function. .png) That's better. .png) Curse you, character limit  There are monsters with way more than 16 characters in their species name, this is just lazy.That done, we allocate our new spell gems: .png) Four-Eyed Willie gets most of the offensive spells, Snakes On A Brain takes the buffs. She also gets Steel Storm; she can take a hit a little better, and has slightly higher attack/speed. .png) We head off to the teleportation shrine to tackle our first dungeon level. What's this about "power balance", though? .png) Higher Power balance increases your chance to find more treasure, and also increases the amount of Power you gain from battle. After you defeat enemies in battle, you'll gain a small amount of Power Balance. You can have up to 200% Power Balance at any given time. Oh.  Power Balance basically serves as a sort of win streak mechanic. You get better rewards for winning a lot of battles without losing or taking a break (as noticed above, it costs a small chunk to travel to and from the dungeon.) It's also consumed by a few other special functions. .png) We arrive in the starter dungeon, The Barrens. .png) Examining the rock piles nearby yields a few random resources. We also see a new watcher friend approaching! .png) Goodbye watcher friend. .png) Not all scenery objects do anything, but you can still interact with them to get them out of the way. It's oddly satisfying. In the middle of a cactus-demolishing rampage I spot two random goodies. .png) The bags are crafting materials. These can be used later on to slot new bonuses and abilities on our equipment. 5 materials a pop sounds like a lot, but by the time we really need to worry about maxing out our equipment we'll have plenty. .png) We come across another feature of interest. .png) Wait what .png) Mirage or no, how do you mistake that for a pond?! .png) After softening him up we manage to extract a core, but not before he nearly drops our gorgon in one hit. Four-Eyed Willie has a level advantage and dispatches him pretty easily. .png) Unfortunately, you have nothing that they're interested in buying from you. Perhaps there are resources nearby that they might be interested in. Some interactable objects have tiny mini-tasks to carry out. .png) "Nearby" turned out to be very literal in this case: you can still see the tip of the tent under the dialog box. .png) One traveler asks if you have anything that could be used to start a fire. You offer the wood you found earlier, and the traveler gratefully accepts your offer. The nomads usually just have a small amount of a basic resource and that's it, but sometimes you can get something a little bit extra. Breeding is the main method of unlocking new monsters in this game past the early stages. At this point we don't even have access to the breeding facility though, let alone either of the creatures listed. Breeding recipes aren't necessary--you can breed blindly in the hopes of discovering something good (or just look at a wiki  )--but I'm probably going to stick to what I find in-game for the foreseeable future. .png) Speaking of which, we find this too. (Incidentally, we're continuing to grab achievements--and Exalted Emblems--for interacting with the mirages and tents and other map objects. The achievement spam really is that crazy.) .png) This inscription contains ancient text that not even Siralim's greatest scholars could hope to translate. It also depicts two creatures and the offspring they'll produce if they breed. You quickly write down the combination to use later on. More monsters we haven't seen or heard of yet. .png) There are other strange objects lying around in the desert. These look important, but we can't do anything with them just yet. .png) We find another new friend. You can really see the value of the manticore's defense boost ability--his effective defense winds up being ridiculously high while still having enough attack and speed to be a threat. .png) We manage to grab his core and defeat him, but it's pretty touch and go. Thankfully, there are no real repercussions for dying in battle as long as you win as your whole party automatically regains all HP/MP after combat, even from dead. They don't even miss out on XP gains--now that SnakesOnABrain has leveled up, these level 1 enemies are a lot less threatening. .png) That doesn't make them harmless, though. These guys can be pretty deadly if you run into one before you get your sidekick leveled--they've got high attack and speed with some decent bulk behind it, plus a nasty special ability that inflicts passive damage at the start of each of your turns. When you've got a level advantage they're not a big deal, but this is prooobably about the only time in the game you can count on being higher level than your opponents. They're the fastest and most dangerous attacker we've found, so I make sure to grab a core even if it means taking a few extra turns' chip damage. .png) Exploring the desert further we find... a manhole cover? .png) Investigating further we find a sigil (maybe it was underneath the manhole cover?) Sigils are special randomized challenge battles we can fight for loot, but you can't even challenge them before level 20 so we'll be holding on to this one for a while. .png) More friends! .png) I accidentally dispatch the gorgon in one hit, so I don't get a chance to extract its core. You'll generally want plenty of spare cores for breeding purposes, but all the same I'm not going to cry many tears over missing a shot at another gorgon. .png) After much exploration, we finally find our first treasure chest. .png) .png) These two artifacts are actually guaranteed drops. The staff sucks, but it's still better than nothing, so I shuffle the sword from the tutorial over to SnakesOnABrain and give Willie the staff. The Death Shield is intriguing: it reduces all damage from death-class monsters by a huge amount, so this would for example reduce the damage from those pit worms to a tickle. It does absolutely nothing else to stop the other 80% of monsters you encounter from killing you, though, so it's pretty situational. .png) Not every mirage is a monster masquerading as a pond. Occasionally they turn out to be treasure. .png) Mediocre treasure, but hey, at this point in the game you can use all the resources you get. .png) At some point we find this blue slab. It's got the same construction symbol as the crafting materials from earlier. .png) And indeed it too is a crafting material. It's a bit fancier and rarer than the basic stat boosting materials... which means that it's likely going to be a long, long time before we find a full set of these, and we'll have better enchantments to use when we do. .png) These guys are definitely on my shopping list. Willie is level 3 and packs a whallop, so I stick to magic in the hopes it will soften him up without killing him. .png) I'm fighting against a timer here--if I let the crusader have enough turns his defense will eventually reach a point that he'll be unbeatable. Thankfully I successfully extract on the first try, allowing Willie to effortless dispatch him. .png) In another chest we find something new and interesting. Pandemonium Tokens have various random, but usually beneficial, effects. .png) Normally I'd save them, but in the interest of demonstrating: The token flickers with various shades of purple and pink. Each passing moments makes you feel more invigorated, yet a little dizzy all the same. Before long, the token turns to dust and blows away. .png) Oh look. It's another resource we can't use or spend yet, and we can't even save this one for later. Oh well. .png) Another monster! Kill it! .png) I said KILL IT, dammit This guy randomly shows up in dungeons and gives you a pop quiz. You may have caught that Vertaag named Eternity's End as his realm during the intro; Torun, similarly, is another god that we'll meet by and by. .png) Answering the dwarf's quiz correctly drops a chunk of resources. A pretty poor reward for having to interact with a creepy dwarf clown imo. .png) With that, we've basically picked the level clean. Thankfully the menu includes a built-in automap so you can see where you've been. Heading back to the level's teleportation shrine will let us choose to return back home or head deeper, but we've definitely got some things to attend to back at base. Note that the little yellow pyramids are marked on the automap, making it pretty obvious that they eventually get used for something. .png) Our scouts last saw the creature several realms deeper than where you just came from. Be careful out there, King Mysterio. (You've received a quest to defeat a story boss. Story bosses are unique in that they usually require you to do something special in order to defeat them. For more information, use the 'Inspect' command and target the boss while you're in battle!) Damaos gives us some unsettling news and sets us our first boss goal. He says "several levels", but the boss actually occupies level 3--we're not going to get far without fighting it. .png) .png) First things first, though--I beeline down to the summoning brazier and pop out a couple of new recruits. .png) I'm a little short on crystal, so I can't quite afford to summon a third. Which means it's time to visit the rear end in a top hat dwarfs. .png) The crystal minigame is pretty straightforward. Like he said, the black bar moves back and forth rapidly and you need to hit the button when it's over the yellow stripe. Every time you hit it the yellow stripe moves and you can hit it again and again as many times as you can until you run out of time or use up all your misses. The timing is pretty forgiving, so it's one of the easiest minigames to turn a profit at, but at 25 crystal a pop it's going to be slow going unless you're really good. (Remember that it costs 100 crystal just to play, so I only "won" 75 here. Granted, I usually do a bit better than that.) .png) I play another time to give myself a little buffer and head back to get my manticore. Sorry Sand Giant, maybe another time (probably not.) .png) A brief look at our whole party (I'm not sure where the manticore is hiding.) You've probably noticed the symbols in the corner of the status boxes by now, which correspond to the different classes of magic. Not only do monster classes limit spell choices (none of our new summons can use the sorcery spells we started with), there's also a Pokemon-style type advantage system of sorts: .png) Most of the time, it's not terribly important. The defense stat covers defense against both physical and magical attacks, and it's additive, so if you're hitting something with high defense you're not going to do much damage whether or not you're using a "super effective" type and if you're hitting something with low defense you can do plenty of damage without needing a type advantage. So, while you might think it would make sense to equip that Death Shield we found on the Chaos-class manticore to cover his weakness, his defense is high enough that he can handle himself. Instead I'm putting it on the gorgon and handing the sword off to our new pit worm for maximum carnage. If I really cared to I could go back to the gambling dorfs and grind out enough for another summon, but for a Sand Giant I'm not even going to bother. This part of the game is still essentially an extended tutorial, so I'm already loaded for bear compared to the stuff we're going to be up against in the next level.
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Jul 14, 2017 21:30
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Can we pick names for the non-starter monsters? Because I think we should call our wormfriend Graboid.
VolticSurge fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Jul 14, 2017 |
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Jul 14, 2017 22:00
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AweStriker posted:I'm on the King Mysterio the Sorcery Mage train as well. Same. It's SA, what else would we pick but the weird, tricky, illusion Magikarp?
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Jul 14, 2017 22:20
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Wait, you can rename your creatures? This changes everything. Time to go name all my monsters after superheroes! For the record, I found Sand Giant a little useful in the earlier game - since I also picked sorcery, my starting monsters were the squishy ones, so having someone bulky and with a passive heal was useful. But that's probably mainly because it took a weirdly long time before I saw any wild Dusk Crusaders. Sand Giant is a decent second pick, but he was outclassed and replaced pretty quickly, I don't think I'd even defeated the first boss before I tossed him to the stables.
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Jul 14, 2017 22:26
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Yeah, at the start of my main game I had a sand giant for a brief while. They're definitely usable, and someday he may even get a chance to shine--one of the great things about this game is that it has enough depth that even mediocre things can be made useful (there is a spell that does absolutely nothing and you can build teams that will insta-win fights way out of their depth with it.) But between a crusader, a manticore, and all of the other tanky monsters that tend to show up early on I should be covered. Feel free to suggest names! I already have names for the new members but I'm not too proud to replace them if better ones come up.
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Jul 14, 2017 22:50
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Hmmm, then... Name a speedy monster Yamato and a tanky one Taichi.
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Jul 14, 2017 22:55
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This game has spell and ability combos that make YuGiOh say "that's a bit much, isn't it?" It's wonderful. For example, the valkyrie's weak counterattack when someone else it hit? Pair it with a good spell that procs on attack and a provoker who can take the blows, and you can devastate an enemy team. And they only go up from there.
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Jul 14, 2017 23:23
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Bruceski posted:This game has spell and ability combos that make YuGiOh say "that's a bit much, isn't it?" It's wonderful. For example, the valkyrie's weak counterattack when someone else it hit? Pair it with a good spell that procs on attack and a provoker who can take the blows, and you can devastate an enemy team. And they only go up from there. It was even worse before an earlier patch, wherein there was no upper limit on the number of actions a unit could take on a single unit's turn, leading to literally infinite attack cycles.
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Jul 14, 2017 23:49
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Is it just me, or does the Coast Watcher look suspiciously similar to the Suezo monsters from Monster Rancher?
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Jul 15, 2017 04:37
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Blackunknown posted:Is it just me, or does the Coast Watcher look suspiciously similar to the Suezo monsters from Monster Rancher? It's just a DnD Beholder with the serial numbers filed off. There's even a buyable skin that's basically 'haha yeah it's a Beholder'. I don't know about Monster Rancher, but I'd guess that's probably based on the same idea. Even if not, 'big eye monster' isn't really that unique a concept. But with the 'Watcher' name, the Siralim monster is definitely a DnD reference.
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Jul 15, 2017 18:48
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Jul 15, 2017 21:35
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jon joe posted:It was even worse before an earlier patch, wherein there was no upper limit on the number of actions a unit could take on a single unit's turn, leading to literally infinite attack cycles. I did this to the final boss by accident. See, there's a chaos spell that procs on attack and makes the entire team attack once each. In the final boss battle, I ended up combining that with a buff that makes every hit happen twice, and another buff that gives splash damage to attacks, which the game handles by having the buffed monster attack every enemy once. These all stack. The final boss didn't even get a single turn.
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Jul 15, 2017 22:26
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I had the enemy near infinite themselves yesterday. The enemy team was just two valkyires and I confused one. It hit own team mate and the team mate hit back. They attacked each back and forth until one died. It was like a three stooges act.
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Jul 16, 2017 02:24
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Hey SWS how do you feel about people talking about their own games and stupid combos? Hm, actually that might just wait til you start abusing creature traits. 
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Jul 16, 2017 02:33
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Really, I can't overstate how fun it is to break this game over one's knee.
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Jul 16, 2017 02:51
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Synthbuttrange posted:Hey SWS how do you feel about people talking about their own games and stupid combos? I'd appreciate it if people avoided getting too far ahead with things that haven't been seen yet, but feel free to talk about experiences with the stuff that does show up (e.g. valkyrie loops are fair game since valkyrie scouts have already been mentioned.)
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Jul 16, 2017 03:19
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Update 3: Arachnophobia I've got a soft spot for Tremors. But then, who doesn't? .jpg) That done, it's time to head back. This time we wind up... someplace else. There are about a dozen or so themed realms you can randomly get sent to other than the Barrens. From what I can tell this one seems to be guaranteed to show up as your second dungeon level, which is unfortunate. See, each realm is ruled over by a different god you can interact with, hence the message about whispers. Each god has their own personality, and this one is, uh, special. And we start out right next to her altar (I think the game does this on purpose), so we might as well get this over with. .jpg) But there's no fun in any of this without a bit of teasing first. Therefore, I bid you farewell. Congratulations, Thylacine, you made a spider level where the spiders weren't the creepy part. .jpg) Interacting with the altar again brings up a new menu. We get a hint as to what we can finally do with those Exalted Emblems--but she still just says no if we ask, so it'll be a while yet. The other two options are just flavor text, and since Regalis's flavor is gross, I'm just going to spare you. .jpg) On to the level itself. There are small caches of eggs around, which yield random resources like the piles of rocks in the Barrens. .jpg) The bigger packs of eggs tend to have enemies inside them. .jpg) This launches you into a themed fight against various arachnid enemies. .jpg) This introduces one of the game's more frustrating mechanics: while the lower levels are a free extracting bonanza: most enemy variations require you to breed a copy before you're allowed to extract cores. We're not missing out on all that much here, though, and we have an advantage on both numbers and levels so they go down pretty easily. .jpg) You gained 50 favor with Regalis, Goddess of Poison. There's a sort of reputation system with each god. There aren't really a lot of choices to be made, though, it's pretty much just of collecting map encounters and similarly grindy activities. It's one of the worst parts of the grind, but it won't really become an issue until much later. At this point you can just explore the dungeons and collect stuff and enjoy the perks you get from it. .jpg) You gained 50 favor with Regalis, Goddess of Poison. The little baby spiders just increase our rep with Regalis. We don't even have to fight anything for it, which makes the 50 favor from the egg fight look like a rip off. .jpg) There are web-covered skulls scattered around the level. They're similar to the egg caches that dispense resources, except these only give essence and it comes in larger chunks. A lot of realms have specific resources they favor this way. .jpg) Moving on, we run into a random encounter with a new monster. The orange monkey guy is an Autumn Aspect, and he's pretty annoying. See the little icon with the glowing silhouette that both enemies have? That's the Grace buff, which the Autumn Aspect automatically grants to his whole side, and it gives them a 30% chance to dodge. There's a second part to the Autumn Aspect's ability, which gives him a second independent 30% chance to dodge. This guy sucks because the dodge is reliable enough to be really annoying but not nearly reliable enough for you to plan around. You can gather up some other dodge-centric monsters and try to stack dodge, but base dodge chance is determined by Speed and these guys just aren't fast enough to pull it off. .jpg) Still, monsters is monsters. Never know when you might need one of these for breeding. Yoink! .jpg) We find some more types of crafting materials. These slot resistance to certain monster classes, just like the Death Shield we found last level. .jpg) You gained 25 favor with Regalis, Goddess of Poison. Sometimes the eggs skip the fight and just give you a smaller amount of favor. Most realms dispense favor in bigger chunks, but there are lots of eggs and spiders so it still adds up pretty well. .jpg) Soon afterwards we run into one of Siralim's more iconic monsters, the Stronghold. It's got a more different glowing silhouette on it: this indicates it has the Taunt buff, which makes the provoke command 100% efficient at redirecting attacks. .jpg) Like the Autumn Aspect, though, Strongholds have another feature beyond the perma-buff: they automatically provoke every turn, regardless of what action they do. Or don't do. See the stars that have popped up? He got stunned by the gorgon in the process of extracting his core, and still gets to provoke. With sky-high HP and defense, they can get really obnoxious if you give them a chance. Their weakness, of course, is that they don't start combat in the provoke stance--they need to actually get a turn before it triggers. If you kill everything else before their turn rolls around, their auto-provoke isn't going to do them much good. Still, they're a very reliable tank early on, and if you can hook them up with some effects that trigger on provoke they can do some cool stuff. .jpg) There's another special object scattered around the map. .jpg) An angry-looking pack of creatures pop out of the coccoon and attack! If you haven't noticed, this tends to be a fairly common outcome for map objects. At least we've found another new friend, the Iron Golem. .jpg) The golem is a fairly generic tank type. They do have one very unique feature, but we'll get into that later. For now, this guy doesn't do anything special. We definitely want his core, though. Our Gorgon procs Steel Storm while trying to soften the golem up. It does all of 4 damage to each target--defense protects against spell damage just as much as physical damage. .jpg) A few uninteresting fights later, we find our first spell gem  Snowstorm is a legitimately awesome spell, but we don't have anything that can use it--the only Nature creature we've summoned is the Sand Giant, and he doesn't have the MP for it..jpg) Nabbed a valkyrie. On their own they're more interesting than good, but you can do some fun things with them. .jpg) It turns out to be a treasure chest. But why was it moving? Not every coccoon leads to a pack of monsters. Like the mirages in the Barrens, sometimes they're just treasure chests. .jpg) The treasure chest is actually a Mimic! Unlike the mirages in the Barrens, the treasure chests aren't just treasure chests--as you could probably guess from the obvious foreshadowing. Mimics are unique creatures and can't actually be acquired. They have very high stats and start battle with 5 buffs chosen at random, which is an interesting way of making them seem very cool and scary. It's still 5v1, though. From left to right, his buffs are: Critical, Grace, Ward, Multicast, and Berserk. I've already mentioned Grace, Ward, and Berserk. Critical doubles the chance of scoring critical hits. Multicast makes every spell cast go off twice. It's pretty rad, but at this stage I don't think enemies carry any spells. There are definitely nastier buffs that the mimic could roll, so the fight goes off pretty smoothly. .jpg) When they "die" they turn into an actual treasure chest, and it's usually a pretty good one. This breeding formula isn't terribly useful right now. .jpg) This staff, on the other hand... well, nah, it's still not terribly useful. But it's an improvement on the lovely one we got in the starter level. .jpg) There's a third possible outcome from the coccoons, too, but the reward is pretty trivial--like the nomads, they usually just cough up a single small resource. All things considered I'd rather get a mimic. .jpg) Even though I said the type advantage wasn't that big of a deal, it still makes for some impressive numbers sometimes. This would still have gibbed the poor enemy watcher regardless, though. .jpg) Ran into the Riddle Dwarf again. This time he asked a question we actually know the answer to organically. .jpg) We find another blue obelisk with a random breeding combination. Yes, there are over 1000 of these. Most monsters have multiple possible breeding formulas. .jpg) Another egg cluster with more random .jpg) The favor bonus from clearing them out pushes us over a threshold. This means it's time to go seek her altar out. .jpg) .jpg) ugh I know she's just a lovely Lolth knockoff, and I actually dig the idea of having a deity embodying poison who is positively teeming with life, there's an interesting duality there and a lot of material to work with. But when you write a "Goddess of Poison is" and have her be dripping with female sexuality (in a very literal and disturbing way) it creates all kinds of unfortunate implications. Particularly when there isn't really anything to balance it out--there's no deity of love or beauty or anything, all the other female deities are chaste Athena-esque protector types. That, and this is like sub-Austin Powers tier naughty wordplay. .jpg) New items can now be purchased with Exalted Emblems at this god's altar. You can now use Alteration: Arachnid Nest at the teleportation shrine. At least we get a decent bundle of rewards for putting up with Regalis. "Alteration spells" let us spend a bit of extra power balance to select which dungeon realm to visit, which is useful for grinding rep with a specific god or collecting resources common to a certain area (Arachnid Nest doesn't have much except the essence skulls and a few extra mimics, but some of the other realms can be really valuable.) .jpg) That's not how irony works and that is a really tortured attempt at double entendre We won't be able to see it until we get back to base, but the Spitting Arachnalisk is a really good monster and we don't even have to pay the summoning fee on it. If we want more of them, we can now spend Exalted Emblems at the altar to get additional arachnalisk cores. As we reach new levels of favor there will be more items we can purchase. .jpg) Lastly, let's check out those deity points! The dialog said we got 5, but we have a few extra--you get them from leveling up, although you still can't actually spend them until you advance a favor level with at least one deity. Deity points can be invested in a variety of passive bonuses, and they're split into 3 categories: .jpg) "Character" bonuses are largely economy bonuses. They increase rewards and decrease costs, although most of them are for systems we don't even have access to yet. .jpg) "Creature" bonuses are straight up attribute bonuses for our creatures. Most of them are fairly straightforward, but note the "Spell Slots" option--it's expensive at a whopping 25 points, but definitely worth it. .jpg) "Perks" are the meat of the game's class system, and encompass a variety of bonuses themed to your chosen class. We're Sorcery mages, so we get lots and lots of spellcasting bonuses. Battle Mage: 0.5% chance per rank to cast a random spell on landing a hit (max 12.5%) Echo: 0.5% chance per rank to repeat a spell after casting it (max 12.5%) Embodiment: 0.5% chance per rank to transform a creature into a Lesser Avatar at the start of battle, with access to every spell from their class (max 1.5%--not a typo) Mania: Increases damage dealt with spells by 1% of Power Balance per rank (max 25%, which translates into +50% damage at 200% power balance) Parallel Dimensions: Increases the frequency of miniboss portals in dungeons Replication: 1% chance per rank that a debuff against 1 enemy will affect all enemies (max 3%) Spell Mastery:  Your creatures can equip Spell Gems from any class, but these spells cost 50% more Mana.Wild Magic: Your creatures all start battle with a random extra spell of their class, which they cast for free. Good stuff. Tends to be really expensive, though. For now I'm going to sprinkle a couple points in stat bonuses, my next few batches of deity points are probably headed for some economic bonuses, and then I'll probably be saving up for a few of the big ticket sorcery perks. .jpg) That's actually pretty much it for the floor. Next time, I'll deal with some roster management back at base and tackle the first boss. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Jul 16, 2017 |
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Jul 16, 2017 04:16
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Her I understand. But her statue is also seeping venom from its ah... pedipalps.
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Jul 16, 2017 04:23
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Part of your update appears to be out of order regarding the screenshots and commentary. Also, I always save and buy Parallel Dimensions first thing as a sorcery mage; it's a huge boost to artifact and spell gem generation, granting 2 mini-boss chests per realm guaranteed. Way better than any default economy option, I think, and one of the two reasons to be a sorcery mage. Emmideer fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Jul 16, 2017 |
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Jul 16, 2017 04:23
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I went with a life mage my first run. Life mage abilities loving suck. I'm doing new run inspired by this LP. This time I'm a nature mage, these abilities are amazing. If you play this game I highly recommend not playing life mage.
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Jul 16, 2017 05:33
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Shwqa posted:I went with a life mage my first run. Life mage abilities loving suck. I'm doing new run inspired by this LP. This time I'm a nature mage, these abilities are amazing. If you play this game I highly recommend not playing life mage. My first run was nature mage and let me tell you, 50% extra stats is amazing for early game. Second run was Chaos Mage which was my fastest win ever at just under 7 hours because of the previously mentioned infinite attacks pre-patch. Even worse than life mage is death mage, I think. Almost all their abilities deal with temp summons which aren't very good unless you're playing on nostalgia mode. At least life mages can speed through zones quickly with Guiding Light and, although their abilities can be painfully useless early game, they offer immense combo potential later. All and all, I rank mage power levels as such: Sorcery > Chaos > Life > Nature > Death
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Jul 16, 2017 05:42
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I took Death Mage and there's a few things going for it. One is that extracts target the whole enemy team, and extracting granting resources. Also permanently killing an enemy.
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Jul 16, 2017 05:49
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I just picked up this game and I had a few questions. Is there any gods worth grinding favor for? And are the early game artifacts worth holding on to, or will they always be outclassed by later ones?
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Jul 16, 2017 22:12
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Randalor posted:I just picked up this game and I had a few questions. Is there any gods worth grinding favor for? And are the early game artifacts worth holding on to, or will they always be outclassed by later ones? It's not really grinding, but I highly recommend running through levels until you hit the desert shown off in the tutorial again, then getting the goddess to rank 1. Her first gift monster is just about the best for the purpose of beating the game.
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Jul 16, 2017 22:21
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Randalor posted:I just picked up this game and I had a few questions. Is there any gods worth grinding favor for? And are the early game artifacts worth holding on to, or will they always be outclassed by later ones? Once you get the crafters unlocked you'll be able to fix up any artifacts that aren't up to snuff. You'll have to pay some resources, but later on you'll find artifacts with a bunch of random irrelevant junk that you'll have to pay to fix anyhow. The big thing to look out for early on is type (in the long run a sword is always going to be better for a non-caster than a staff) and, a little further in, special traits (technically these are fixable but it's obscenely expensive.)
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Jul 17, 2017 00:49
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jon joe posted:It's not really grinding, but I highly recommend running through levels until you hit the desert shown off in the tutorial again, then getting the goddess to rank 1. Her first gift monster is just about the best for the purpose of beating the game.  What on earth is special about the Apis Defender? That's the right god/critter, right, the one that absorbs attacks pointed at other critters but takes extra damage for it? It's "just" a fairly okay tank? edit: like, why does it have more bullshit combos than other early options Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Jul 17, 2017 |
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Jul 17, 2017 06:38
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GreyjoyBastard posted:
It's not about the bullshit combos it can perform so much as the team it lets you run; otherwise highly fragile alpha strikers who are more or less guaranteed a turn because, with the exception of 1 boss, enemy monsters very rarely cast spells.
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Jul 17, 2017 06:46
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