I get that. I hope I fixed everything except for the lines for Sir Lancelyn and the female prisoner, which I don't think need changing. But that's for Serin to decide.


Well, I would obviously like to see my PR merged, so I'm too biased to cast a vote.

Yeah, it does. It will take time, though...


Try this one. Extremely spoilerly, still relevat for the current version and very, very good.

June is somewhat out of question, so... do we have some release date to aim towards?

Both what chaostrom is saying and what I mentioned in my first bullet point - right now, you are not actually hit that often in combat; most blows just get blocked. When you are hit, you can die in very few attacks. Thus changing the block ratio for weapons might be hard to balance in a way that both makes shields worthwhile but doesn't make using a shield a requirement unless you want to die to everything.

My suggestion for shields decreasing the amount of stamina needed to block attacks is aimed primarily on making heavier shield worth it. I would love to see metal shield and the like be more useful.

Perhaps, but I was thinking of them as a kind of "weapon" for unarmed combat. Thus you can earn several and switch between them as situation demands, but you can only be using one at a time. This both makes unarmed exciting as you can try several different combat styles by simply changing your stance, and allows for situational stances that you want to be using only sometimes. Balancing it would of course be a concern, but armed combat still has artifacts and enchantments, which weight heavily in its favour.

Based on this thread about balancing different playstyles and weapon builds, I would like to talk about a fourth playstyle to balance against the others: unarmed.

Right now, it's rather nice early-game, but quickly overshadowed by enchanted weapons. One way to go with unarmed would be to make the player automatically use a kick attack every time he attacks unarmed. This would make the playstyle rather distinct, giving three attacks per turn with a chance the last attack (kick) will knock back the enemy (forceing them to move next to you again), while balancing it by retaining the lower damage per hit unarmed already has.

Another way, very cool, very flavourful, but very code-heavy, would be to introduce unarmed martial arts, learnable from special NPCs. Ideally, you could learn several martial art stances from different NPCs, each giving specific bonuses when fighting unarmed, but all mutually exclusive, ie. you would need a menu to switch from one stance to another. This is to prevent minor bonuses from several stances to snowball into overpowered unarmed.

Example stance effects:

* Getting automatic kick while fighting unarmed, as described above, could be one stance. You could also get boosted knockback from kicks while in this stance, knocking the monsters many tiles back. (Fighting Warhorse Style)

* Stance allowing you to block weapon strikes unarmed. Very useful indeed. (Indomitable Jade Mountain Style)

* Stance that increases your attack speed and accuracy as you land blows - successfully hitting a monster would grant a short buff, stacking over subsequent hits, thus making you more effective in prolongued fights where you land many blows.

* Defensive stance giving you a bonus chance to dodge any attack, moving you to random empty adjacent square. This would both result in less attacks landed against you and sometimes give you some breathing space by giving you a free move, but could also mess with your positioning by moving you randomly (though you could prevent this by switching the stance off). The dodges should never move you into a lake or known trap, and would be useless with no empty square around you. (Bending Reed in the Wind Style)

* Berserker-like stance that massively boosts your unarmed damage while you're hurt - the more HP you're missing, the more damage you do, maybe giving even more damage boost for missing limbs. This stance is obviously double-edged and situational. (Bloody Hands of Cruentus Style)

Of course, this rework to unarmed would require its own subsystem, so it's easier to propose than actually implement.

BTW, I think gauntlets already add their enchantment to unarmed attacks?

I would very much like for different palystyles to all be relevant and more or less balanced, because it feels good to be able to pick a different playstyle/weapon/equipment each game and not feel underpowered or as if playing a challenge game.

Right now, I think dual wielding and two-handing are quite balanced. Early to mid-game, using two-hander is very powerful, while dual wielding is always powerful. You can sometimes dual wield two-handed weapons by end-game, but this is OK, IMHO.

Sword-and-board definitely needs a buff, simply because you do no damage with your shield, while you can block with you weapons. There are three thoughts on improving shields I had:

* We could increase the gap in block value between shields and all other weapons. This would make shields much more useful, but I'm not sure it's the best way to go - right now, blocking seems very well balanced and getting hit more often without a shield could easily make the game very much harder to play, basically inverting the current problem into making sword-and-board the only best strategy.

* Quoting myself:


In addition, we could make all shields take less stamina per block than any weapon, with heavy shields taking next to 0 stamina. This would be probably my preferred method, because we don't need to rebalance blocking value, while making shields useful. Weapons could carry you through fights by blocking hits, but you would not be able to fight that long, because you would be loosing stamina quickly. With a shield, you would be able to last much longer, loosing only minimal stamina. Thus dual wielding or two-hander builds would be good for very aggresive playstyle, because you have more damage but need to kill things quickly and then regain stamina, while shield builds would be good for defensive builds who can fight for a very long time in one go.

* We could give shields a shield bash attack. This again should be balanced not to transform shields into just another weapon. Maybe the shield bash could be a bit like a kick, doing less damage than most weapons, but having a chance to knock back the enemy? That could be quite useful in many situations.

Also, thinking about different playstyles, I would like to add a fourth playstyle to balance against the others: unarmed. Right now, it's rather nice early-game, but quickly overshadowed by enchanted weapons. One way to go with unarmed would be to make the player automatically use a kick attack every time he attacks unarmed. This would make the playstyle rather distinct, giving three attacks per turn with a chance the last attack (kick) will knock back the enemy (forceing them to move next to you again), while balancing it by retaining the lower damage per hit unarmed already has. BTW, I think gauntlets already add their enchantment to unarmed attacks?

Do blocked attacks cost stamina, like attacking does? If not, it should, because blocking enemy strikes would definitely be taxing.

Which gets me to my point - we could make heavy shields more worth the hassle. Light shields are better because of their accuracy, thus blocking more blows. Heavy shields, on the other hand, could drain less stamina per attack blocked, because of their increased bulk and stability. Thus you could pick to wear a heavy shield and loose only very little stamina from all the blocked attacks.

If you wear a shield at all, that is.

Is that a question whether the doors or ToX were changed to ebony? Not yet, they are still iron.

I have several suggestions for ToX.

Also a question: Is it intentional that doors in ToX are very hard to destroy by kicking? Doors in GC are made of granite (strength 55), while ToX has iron doos (strength 100), thus making it very hard to get into rooms with locked doors by destroying the door, especially early into ToX /or if you haven!t found pickaxe to dig around the door). Is that a design choice? If not, what about changing the door material to eg. ebony?