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KickStarter AntharioN

mindx2

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Codex 2012 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire RPG Wokedex Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Update:

#48
Post Release Update - 8/19
Posted by Orphic Software
backer3x-fbbbec7e19daae492d7b513a00a5d0674169435def65236032450d29174a84c5.png
For backers only

Hey guys, in the month following the game's release we've managed to stay busy patching, porting, doing press and finishing up backer rewards. Though we got virtually zero coverage in the press, we've managed to gain some traction on youtube with a lot of people doing let's plays, first impressions and reviews including a recent LP by one of our own backers. The biggest thing anyone can do at the moment to help ensure the game's long term success is just to drop by Steam and leave us a brief review if you enjoyed the game.

We've decided to cancel the iPad version. We ported it but it quickly became clear that it's nowhere near as fun or charming as the original pc version. It feels like more of a novelty item or a piece of swag than a full blown stand alone game. Even as struggling indie devs, the short term financial gain is not worth the long term cost of releasing something mediocre that we ourselves don't fully believe in.

The final two digital rewards, the bestiary and the guide, have just been sent out and the physical rewards should be out to everybody within a month, possibly even much sooner. Because we have to provide a master copy of the game, we wanted to wait until the majority of major patching was finished (which it now is) before starting on the physical stuff.

The game has evolved considerably since its release a little over a month ago and we feel really great about its current level of polish. Here's the official patch notes history since release:

Version 1.1.9:

- You can now mouse over signs in towns from any distance.

- The combat tutorial now mentions that hitting 'v' will toggle combat visibility mode.

- Selectively added more and better loot to a number of dungeons scattered across the world.

- The weight of your shield swap slot is now counted as carry weight.

- Lag experienced when walking in the Silver Spoon Inn at night while on the Medium and Low graphics settings has been reduced.

- Magic items are now slightly cheaper.

- You can now enter the prison, whereas before its stairs leading down were non-clickable.

- Fixed a bug where holding down the mouse while pressing ESC would allow you to keep on walking despite having the main menu open.

- Fixed a locked chest in Valingrad which also required a non-existent key.

- A bug involving trying to persuade Pippen after a failed persuasion attempt was fixed.

- Clicking while moused over a distant friendly NPC will now move you towards it.

- Fixed a bug in Luna's basement that would occasionally cause the wrong combat music to play.

- Chickens and sheep now have small dialog scripts.

Version 1.1.8:

- We've added a new shield swap inventory slot.

- You can now use hotkeys to close the alchemy and sleep interface panels.

- You can now use enter for "confirm", "yes" or "okay" while in the stacking, buy/sell confirmation, travel confirmation, sleep confirmation and drop confirmation interfaces.

- Magic items base drop rate has been increased 25% from 1.00% to 1.25%

- Intelligence now contributes 2 points per level to SP rather than the previous 1.5. The effect should be subtle but noticeable.

Version 1.1.7:

- Fixed a bug that could cause the game to intermittently crash upon opening a book.

- Fixed a minor issue that would cause your party's HP and SP to restore a tad too quickly upon sleeping in your own bed.

- Fixed an issue that would cause your party to suddenly speed up while walking, often occurring after just having loaded.

- Fixed an issue with the "Founders of Antharion" book not displaying its last page.

- Fixed a couple of minor grammatical issues.

- Added an icon in the bottom right of the screen indicating when your party is in Combat Visibility mode (toggled with 'v'). And certain larger trees now become semi-transparent while in this mode.

Version 1.1.6:

- Fixed an issue where if you deleted your "file_header.dat", file your saves would become inaccessible.

- Corrected a couple offset pathfinding waypoints.

- Allows characters in combat with melee weapons to click on non-adjacent enemies in order to move towards them.

- Fixed a bug where right-clicking to attack a non-hostile npc would sometimes prevent that npc from reverting back to non-hostile status at a later time.

- Life tap now only works in combat to avoid an infinite mana exploit.

- Fixed a bug where right-clicking to attack a non-hostile npc who was part of a quest involving other npcs would sometimes result in the other quest related npcs becoming hostile as well, despite being positioned far away.

- Fixed a pickpocketing RNG bug.

- Blocked off several entrances that allowed you to access parts of the main quest line out of order resulting in potential dialog issues.

Version 1.1.5:

- Ingredients and food are now clearly labeled.

- You can now choose between the original lock picking system and the new fixed skill requirement system in the gameplay options menu.

- A bug where "Recalling" into a home (in certain situations) would prevent the home's roof from fading away was fixed.

- More 1H weapons were placed around the starting areas.

- You can now quickly cycle through item quantities in the stacking interface by holding down the right mouse button.

- Cost of training now starts around 190 (with 5 barter) and increases every 10 levels. Cost is also affected slightly by the difficulty setting.

- You can now quick load while in combat.

- You can now hit 'v' to make non-active player transparent during combat.

- Several items with slightly off values were tweaked to prevent stacking exploits.

Version 1.1.4:

- The level cap now virtually removed. This shouldn't really change much practically speaking.

- Foe levels are no longer visible. This is related to the first item. Instead, the foe’s hp/max hp will be visible if it’s within several levels of your party or if you have sufficient Lore.

- Skill and attribute points granted during level ups are now subject to diminishing returns past level 14.

- 100 Foraging now results in 2% less random drops than before.

- The lock picking system has been totally overhauled. It's now a fixed value single skill check system. Each lock has a difficulty value, if your lock picking meets or exceeds it then you'll be able to open it 100% of the time assuming you have a pick. Each time you open a lock one pick is removed.

- Training Skill points now has a base cost of 125 instead of 90.

- Barter 100 is now 5% less effective.

Version 1.1.3:

- Fixed a lock picking issue that was causing lock pick difficulty to scale incorrectly when the game difficulty was set to easy or difficult.

- Reduced the value of several anomalously priced Human Ear items that had previously allowed for stacking exploits.

- Trainers will now stop training a character when her base Skill hits 100.

- Barter is now clamped to 100 in all situations including for bed rentals.

- Arrows now have a fixed price of 1g for buying and selling. They're now the only item in the game not affected by barter.

- Fixed a quick load selected item duping exploit.

- Various spelling and grammatical issues have been fixed.

- Being sent to prison now pushes your character’s SP and HP down to 1. Also, you can no longer use the Recall spell to cut short a prison sentence.

- All random drops were increased by 2%.

- 100 Defense now results in an extra 10% chance to block using a shield.

- You can now hover over a spell's quick slot to bring up its sp cost tooltip.

Version 1.1.2

- You can now right-click character portraits to open their inventories.

- Being sent to prison no longer costs 1 of each skill point for every player.

- An alchemy duping exploit was fixed.

- Removed a small invisible barrier in the middle of the ocean.

- Fixed a barter exploit where if you had 100 Barter and some + Barter gear you could make money from buying and then selling back the same item.

- Added a warning on the party creation screen that party order cannot be altered once in the game.

- An unused empty spell slot was remove from the spell book interface.

- A random misplaced trigger in Mooncrest that caused Fraustford to appear on the travel map was removed.

Version 1.1.0

- Skill descriptions now clarify how certain Skills are being used by the game to determine outcomes. Take Barter for example:

"Determines your ability to strike favorable deals with vendors. Your party's highest Barter skill is automatically used."

Automatic means that you don't have to select your party member with the highest Barter while shopping.

- Random drops from monsters have increased noticeably.

- A resolution issue preventing some players with less common resolutions such as 1366x768 from toggling fullscreen mode on was resolved.

- Trainers now train for up to 50 levels instead of 25.

- Certain spells were displaying inaccurate to hit % cursor tooltips.

- A few bugged items were fixed, including "Staff of Persuasion", the "Resurrect" spell tome and a piece of garbage that had +50 Wisdom.

- Various spelling and grammatical issues were fixed.

- More arrows were added to vendors around the world. This fix would only take effect after creating a new game.

Thanks so much everyone for your continued support of AntharioN!

-Orphic Software

[/quote}

Glad to see they're still alive. Hadn't heard much from them for awhile and their forums are pretty much dead. Overall, I enjoyed the game and glad that I backed them. Looking forward to my boxed edition. :thumbsup:
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'm still playing it on and off, but I don't see any discussion about the game anywhere.
 

Shaewaroz

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I'm very into cock and ball torture
Great little game, I was actually surprised at it's depth. I love how overpowered pickpocketing is - I've played maybe 3 hours and my party is already at level 5 and most of it came from stealing from people. You literally get as much exp for stealing one item than from killing a 3-4 group of enemies. Loot seems interesting enough, not BG level but decent enough.
 

Saxon1974

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Update:



Glad to see they're still alive. Hadn't heard much from them for awhile and their forums are pretty much dead. Overall, I enjoyed the game and glad that I backed them. Looking forward to my boxed edition. :thumbsup:

Haven't played much yet, was waiting for patches. Amazing how dead their forums are, makes me think it's not selling well.
 

Courtier

Prophet
Joined
Aug 12, 2015
Messages
441
I didn't expect the game to be this much fun, I'm hooked. Combat is pretty simple but solid, exploring and character progression are very rewarding, and the ways to gain experience out of combat top it all off. There are so many useful ways to spend money, too. Like the guy above me, time has flown by as I've been playing. I'm maybe halfway through and already looking forward to a sequel or something new by these guys. Lots of good games coming out recently, or in the works.
:incline:
 

Jaesun

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That's a damn shame, but not unexpected. I am hoping they will continue to make more games, what little I did play of it was enjoyable (though I am just so fucking burned out on generic fantasy). Would be awesme if the did a different non fantasy setting.
 

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
Developer
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Mar 1, 2012
Messages
2,052
The problem of this game is that it's fun start but really hard to finish - once my party became powerful enough to get through pretty much anything, there was zero incentive to press on. There's pretty much no story and, considering they could've gone for anything, that's rather baffling. As well as having crap like seagulls/crabs/rats/frogs as the enemies for the majority of the game - it's not like drawing some eldritch horror or abomination or good old undead or spectre is that much more difficult than drawing a crab. Less ridiculous, though.

So, authors not giving a fuck about the plot and the setting (which is also the worst sort of generic) makes it somewhat hard to care about their game. And, gameplay-wise, the game becomes repetitive rather fast - the combat is mostly the same and there is zero functional difference between all those crabs, seagulls and whatnot. They even all move at the same pace. The only truly different encounters are the casters but those are rather badly done - way too much of random chance dependence. You go second against the party of necrophil raiders, for example, you're getting 2-4 party members disabled per one of your turn. If it is 4, it's like an instant auto-lose. With you not being able to do anything about this (apart from reloading) as there are simply no real mechanics to deal with all of this. Those fights are not unwinnable, of course, as two black magic casters will also devastate those guys in a matter of turn, but it just takes out the skill and the planning and leaves only the coinflip.

And exploration, while nice, also lacks brilliance. That's another real issue with the game. Or maybe a different way to call the first one? Anyhow, while being nice, it really lacks the brilliance in any areas. While going to other cities prematurely is a pretty powerful move and luring your foes on NPCs can bring you some easy rewards, these aspects are not really developed. And, in terms of some loot that can be easily accessed by guile, there's also not a lot - just a couple of thousands worth on the eastern islands. And there are definitely no Dragonbone Cuirasses here (or, at the very least, Goldbrands). No Big Whoop. Even the quest's rewards are very disappointing - say, the expert pickpocket quest. Travel across the entire world, steal the 4 items from 4 different cities, what do you get in return? Ring of +5 pickpocketing. That's pretty much a polite version of "fuck you" as, at the time, my thief already had 100 maxed out skill and +31 from different (and much better) magical items.

So I dunno. The game would've been really warmly received if it came out in the Eschalon era as it's probably better than those. Still not as good as Geneforges, though. But right now, when the niche is overcrowded? The result is hardly surprising.
 

Mustawd

Guest
Welcome to faux Vogel games with less story. The limitations, as well as a lot of the charm (stealing!!), of Spiderweb Software games are really present in this game. If I had to do it over again, I'd just buy Avernum: Escape from the Pit (which I did for PC recently) or just donate to Vogel so he can remake Geneforge already.
 

roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
I tried a bit of this, and I think it's much more playable than Vogelware. I mean, the locations actually convey ambiance and atmosphere, and there's music too, and the graphics and art are charming and interesting as opposed to barely serviceable. There's just so much more to draw you in. I checked out some of the newer Vogel games, and I think the new indies coming out of Kickstarter have really kicked it up several notches in terms of ambiance, production values, delivery, and sound and music. I guess those who played such games during the great dearth are used to it, but with the market today, I really don't see how Vogel's games can compete as overall experiences anymore.
 

Ellef

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Dec 29, 2014
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Shitposter's Island
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I'm too much of a combatfag to see this game through to the end. I enjoy the general feel of the game but I got tired of combat. I think Pope Amole II sums up the problem with the combat well, but i certainly got enough hours out of it to be look forward to their next game!
 

Shaewaroz

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I'm very into cock and ball torture
So, authors not giving a fuck about the plot and the setting (which is also the worst sort of generic) makes it somewhat hard to care about their game. And, gameplay-wise, the game becomes repetitive rather fast - the combat is mostly the same and there is zero functional difference between all those crabs, seagulls and whatnot. They even all move at the same pace.

I completely agree, I also feel the enemies are too much the same - they deal approximately the same damage and have the same amount of action points. The devs should have experimented more with ultra fast and slow enemy types. The problem with enemies having more than 5-6 action points might be the engagement system - usually in the start of combat the enemies are about 5-6 squares away from the party and therefore enemies that would have 7-8 action point could easily wipeout one or more PCs in one turn given the initiative. To prevent this problem they should implement some kind of skill/perk to spot enemies from further distance.

I really liked the spellcaster enemies though.

And, in terms of some loot that can be easily accessed by guile, there's also not a lot - just a couple of thousands worth on the eastern islands. And there are definitely no Dragonbone Cuirasses here (or, at the very least, Goldbrands). No Big Whoop.

So did you ever get arrested and tried to escape the jail?

To me it was rather clever (although it makes absolutely no sense) to put some of the most powerful items in the game into the jail and reward players who are not just going to reload after being captured by the guards.
 

Courtier

Prophet
Joined
Aug 12, 2015
Messages
441
There's a handful of named items spread around, but crystals and consumables are pretty much the only worthwhile treasure that I don't pawn off. Most of the really good gear can be found in shops anyhow, and money is tight early on. I'm used to all the good stuff coming from dank caves, but I guess all the more reason to trawl through and sell all the junk you find.

Potions are cheap to make and cost only one action point to use in combat, ingredients are everywhere so alchemy is a must. Also if your barter is high enough, you can buy ingredients and sell back the potions you make at a profit, getting a nice chunk of EXP in the process.

Haste is great. Have your mage cast it on themselves, and they immediately get an extra turn to cast it again on someone else. The following turn, you've got two people with two actions. One of the two rounds of haste is wasted for anyone who comes before the mage in turn order, though.

My party for reference:
Elf ''Negotiator'' ++Barter, +Persuasion, +One handed, +Defense, +Grey Magic / +Str, +Dex, +Con, +Luck
Human ''Meat shield'' ++One handed, ++Defense / ++Str, +Dex, +Con, +Luck
Elf ''Utility mage'' ++Lore, +White magic, +Alchemy / ++Wis, +Int
Felmur ''Shoot it until it dies'' ++Archery, +Lock pick, +Foraging / ++Dex, +Luck

Most of my damage comes from hasting the archer. Pumping barter as much as I could allowed for investing shekels into lots of skill training.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
So, how is this game compared with Serpent of Staglands? Or SR: Hong Kong? And when are the Codex's reviews for each one coming?
 

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,158
The problem of this game is that it's fun start but really hard to finish - once my party became powerful enough to get through pretty much anything, there was zero incentive to press on. There's pretty much no story and, considering they could've gone for anything, that's rather baffling. As well as having crap like seagulls/crabs/rats/frogs as the enemies for the majority of the game - it's not like drawing some eldritch horror or abomination or good old undead or spectre is that much more difficult than drawing a crab. Less ridiculous, though.

So, authors not giving a fuck about the plot and the setting (which is also the worst sort of generic) makes it somewhat hard to care about their game. And, gameplay-wise, the game becomes repetitive rather fast - the combat is mostly the same and there is zero functional difference between all those crabs, seagulls and whatnot. They even all move at the same pace. The only truly different encounters are the casters but those are rather badly done - way too much of random chance dependence. You go second against the party of necrophil raiders, for example, you're getting 2-4 party members disabled per one of your turn. If it is 4, it's like an instant auto-lose. With you not being able to do anything about this (apart from reloading) as there are simply no real mechanics to deal with all of this. Those fights are not unwinnable, of course, as two black magic casters will also devastate those guys in a matter of turn, but it just takes out the skill and the planning and leaves only the coinflip.

And exploration, while nice, also lacks brilliance. That's another real issue with the game. Or maybe a different way to call the first one? Anyhow, while being nice, it really lacks the brilliance in any areas. While going to other cities prematurely is a pretty powerful move and luring your foes on NPCs can bring you some easy rewards, these aspects are not really developed. And, in terms of some loot that can be easily accessed by guile, there's also not a lot - just a couple of thousands worth on the eastern islands. And there are definitely no Dragonbone Cuirasses here (or, at the very least, Goldbrands). No Big Whoop. Even the quest's rewards are very disappointing - say, the expert pickpocket quest. Travel across the entire world, steal the 4 items from 4 different cities, what do you get in return? Ring of +5 pickpocketing. That's pretty much a polite version of "fuck you" as, at the time, my thief already had 100 maxed out skill and +31 from different (and much better) magical items.

So I dunno. The game would've been really warmly received if it came out in the Eschalon era as it's probably better than those. Still not as good as Geneforges, though. But right now, when the niche is overcrowded? The result is hardly surprising.

Its heavily discounted at humble store , so was thinking about it. Your post made me save money, it doesnt looks nearly good enough.
 

roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
So I tried a little bit of this game and it seems like it's fun! A slight discount currently on Steam. To buy or not to buy? What's the Codex consensus? Incline or not? If incline, to what level?

I liked Lords of Xulima a lot, should this game be right up my alley?
 

Shaewaroz

Arcane
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Messages
2,923
Location
In a hobo shack due to betting on neanderthal
I'm very into cock and ball torture
It's a fun experience, I couldn't proceed in the main story far enough to see whether it pays off but exploration in Antharion is certainly done right. Dungeon design is great for an indie game. I paid full price just to see them make more of this stuff. The skill balance also seems to be just right - all skills are useful and none is completely overpowered.

In their next game they have some room for improvement though:

- Ditch the seaguls, crabs and all other pointless fauna slaughtering. (but keep rats, they're mandatory)
- Make enemies more versatile (more special abilities, spells etc) and improve their AI.
- Improve the combat initiative and make especially enemy action points more varied.
- Fix the experience system (more exp from combat)
- Go for more specified items with item descriptions and unique abilities (a la BG)
- Improve the story and make NPCs have more personality.
- Go for a more serious tone in quest design (no more fetching dead cats from catacombs). Humor is always welcome, but it has to be tied to strong characters, which Antharion doesn't have.
 

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