Descent into Darkness

This is the place for discussing development of mainline campaigns, reporting bugs in them and providing overall feedback.

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Stedevil
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Joined: November 29th, 2005, 7:21 am

Post by Stedevil »

Just started playing it in BfW 1.3.9
Angry Andersen wrote: - I think the campaign is slightly too easy on hard mode
Agreed, the very start is difficult, but pretty soon you level up your ghosts to lvl2-3 and just steam roll over the opposition. Maybe the solution would be to not allow ghost until much later in the campaign? The ghost line just blows all other undead units away in combat effectiveness, survivability as well as value in recalling.
- Killing Malin's sister the first time you meet her has no effect, i.e. she still turns up later on when you fight Darken. Maybe she should have more forces, so that the player really has to run instead of crushing both her and the orcs.
Indeed killing both leaders on "return to pathryn" is way too easy (but again, thgis might be a "ghosts too early" issue), And most importantly, there should be some turn limit or at the very least have the game end after both leaders are killed. Right now you can just sit and collect money as long as you like after everything on the map is dead.
- The lvl3 ghoul needs reworking: The resistances and graphics are incompatible with the changes to lvl1&2. The lvl2 version should require more than 40 exp to get to lvl3.
Yes, they do get very powerful at lvl 3 so maybe 40xp is too low. Then again, they take loads of damage at lvl1 & 2 and die sooo easily.
- Assassinating the Troll leader in the scenario where Malin becomes a lich is much too easy (I sent 3 lvl2 or lvl3 ghosts) up there and finished very early.
Again, everything is just sooo much harder if you dont have loads of ghost-line high level units to throw at the enemy.
- lvl2 versions of bats and walking corpses would be great, as these units are not worth recalling for 20gp most of the time!
Indeed, especially in combination with the power of the lvl 2-3 ghost line...

Also, that reminds me, when looking at the description of walking corpses from eg mounted and trolls in the recall screen they have the standard values. In the game however, they have different stats more in line with their origin.
- Malin could get some traits, it seems slightly odd that he is actually weaker than other dark adepts of same level which he is leading...
Yupp, eg leadership or plague would be a nice perk to show that he is special.
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chino2468
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Post by chino2468 »

Really good suggestions, I was kind of surprised too that Malin was actually weaker than the rest. And I totally agree with the troll leader (way too easy with ranged attacks) or with the first sister scenario (I killed everyone =P)


But seriously, it's impossible to lose after 2-3 of the Foolish Heroes, I mean, I have a throng of lvl 3 units and it's pointless, if only the lich would decide to launch a world domination campaign, or try to repent and die, or maybe a super huge paladin/white mage army showed up?

Cheers
Stedevil
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Post by Stedevil »

Ah yeah, I just remebered that I didnt mention previously that the Dark Adept line doesnt have Profile entries in BoW 1.3.9
Stedevil
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Post by Stedevil »

Replayed the campaign again, except this time I never recruited any ghosts until the 6th mission (escaping across the river) where you actually get 1 ghost for free at start.

Evaluation:
* Mission 3-5 worked just fine with lots of bats and later skeletons.
* To kill your sister in mission 6 is almost impossible with lowly lvl 1 ghosts (and if you spend enough gold on units to over run the enemy likely you'll lose out bigtime in the longrun struggling for gold)

So far so good.
However:
* Mission 7 is just super great in getting lvl1 ghosts to lvl 2-3. Had 5 lvl3 and 3-4 lvl after that first mission and made sure to push the lvl2s to 3 chasing after the wizards in the second part. So the rest of the campaign was still a joke, eg easily slaying Sister, Volk & Paladins all at once (but still having to manually carry that book back home in yet an unlimited turns map). First fool I also squished in mere 5 turns, which is how long it took 4 1AMLA lvl3 ghosts to reach him, slaying his puny soldiers on the way.


So, IMO how to fix balancing in this campaign:

* No ghosts before at least map 6, in fact, just give the player 1-2 ghosts on 6 and 1-2 Shadows on 7 and NO ghost recruit at all until mission 9. This should effectively prevent the steam rolling across all opposition.

* No "open end" missions with no turn limits where you can just stand still collecting money after killing all opponents.

* Improve the walking dead line
Either simply add the option (from mission 3 onwards) to purchase soulless and/OR make it have a lvl 2 unit.


As for suggestion to the walking dead line

Code: Select all

New
Att: 6-2 | 5-3 | 7-3
HP:  18 |  28 |  38
XP:  16 |  40 | 100

Current
Att: 6-2 | 7-3
HP:  18 |  28
XP:  24 | 100
Possibly they should get some kind of regeneration too (feeding of the enemy?) either drain or something liek the "healthy" trait (+2HP also when moving)
alexak
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Post by alexak »

I have downloaded the 1.3.9+svn version od Wesnoth and started Descent into Darkness. Unfortunately I got stuck in "The Peaceful Valley". When I capture all the villages and kill all the goblins, nothing hapens. Then the turns run out and I lose.

EDIT: In the most recent svn version the scenario works fine again.

I have liked the story and the two scenarios, by the way. Good work. Also, the Ed and Shaun dialogue made my day. :D
Last edited by alexak on November 12th, 2007, 6:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Nova
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Post by Nova »

I would suggest that bats be disallowed from breaking the fragile ice. For them to get stuck in the mud and drown, they'd have to be actively divebombing the surface.

Funny image, however, I suppose.
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Nova
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Post by Nova »

Is the only way to end the campaign to lose?

If so, I'd advise doing something other than simply increasing the enemy gold each round. The add-on "Dark Forecast" does some nice things with terrain alteration. Perhaps you could implement something like that at the beginning of each "mission," so it's not quite so repetitive.

Besides, at normal difficulty with a few Nightgaunts and cave permi-darkness, I can steamroll enemy heroes for a looong time, regardless of their gold.

I wanted to see luckless Mal eventually decide that his forces were adequate, and launch a massive attack against the main orc forces. Perhaps, just when he's about to win, some White mages show up and blow his army to bits.

He crawls off to lament the fact that no one understood him, then dies... again. The White mages give him no second thought. The orcs go on terrorizing villages.

Eh? Eh?

One way or the other, the ending (as far as I can tell so far) is a let down.


Fun campaign, in all, though.
"Never underestimate the power of the fish rush." "I don't think nagas are fish." "Fish Rush!"
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thespaceinvader
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Post by thespaceinvader »

I have to say i like the ending as it is. It shows the way that Mallin's life was wrecked to the extent that he just sits in his cave for ever and ever waging attacks against the orcs and being assaulted by heroes. How the road to hell can be paved by good intentions...
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Jozrael
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Post by Jozrael »

Oh. My. God. How many times do I have to beat forever and ever amen. Does it ever end?
Jozrael
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Post by Jozrael »

It doesn't, does it. This is a really unsatisfying end to the campaign :l.
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turin
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Post by turin »

Jozrael wrote:It doesn't, does it. This is a really unsatisfying end to the campaign :l.
It's the kind of ending you either love or hate. I personally love it. It's brilliant. The only change I might make would be to have the difficulty slowly increase so that eventually you can't win.


And you really shouldn't be surprised that it loops eternally... after all, it's called "Forever and Ever, Amen".
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Stedevil
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Post by Stedevil »

turin wrote:And you really shouldn't be surprised that it loops eternally... after all, it's called "Forever and Ever, Amen".
I think that it will loop should be made even more clear. And I agree on that it should be progressively harder, MUCH harder. At least for me the end is quite unrewarding because it just repeats in combination with it's not even challenging. ZZZZzzzz
Sly
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Post by Sly »

turin wrote:
Jozrael wrote:It doesn't, does it. This is a really unsatisfying end to the campaign :l.
It's the kind of ending you either love or hate. I personally love it. It's brilliant. The only change I might make would be to have the difficulty slowly increase so that eventually you can't win.
I totaly agree, I love this ending loop :twisted:
shadowsnipes
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Post by shadowsnipes »

Stedevil wrote: I think that it will loop should be made even more clear. And I agree on that it should be progressively harder, MUCH harder. At least for me the end is quite unrewarding because it just repeats in combination with it's not even challenging. ZZZZzzzz
I agree as the only way I could lose to finish the campaign was to not recall or recruit anyone and send Malin all by himself against the whole army. Kinda lame.

I believe the basic idea for the ending is a good one, however.
Josh
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ending

Post by Josh »

I agree that the ending is brilliant. It took me a few times through to realize that it wasn't going to end - I thought that after I'd beaten a party of humans, a party of elves, a party of orcs/trolls, and a party of dwarves that I would move onto a new board (those were my first four heros, I don't know if the opponent race is randomly generated or not). When I got another party of elves I realized what was going on. Maybe a hint that it's going to continue forever would help one get it earlier, but we all got it without one.

I think it's actually very sad and fits the storyline - he never gets to inflict the crushing blow on his enemies, never gets to go home, and spends the rest of existence being attacked over and over and over.
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