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KickStarter The Legends of Eisenwald Thread

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IncendiaryDevice

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I remember that quest on the first map too, it was indeed confusing, I never figured it out. My solution: getting over it and doing something else, its just one shitty little sidequest so w/e.

Yeah, that's fine and all, but it's symptomatic, you know, every point in my post was interrelated, it's kinda meaningless stripping out one line to individually edge-post about. That's just the first quest to alert you to the on-going issue. You're proposing a head-in-the-sand mentality.
 

SausageInYourFace

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Yes but its the only specific issue where I share the sentiment, at least as far as I remember. As others have said, one is supposed to pay attention to the legends and hints and figure stuff out on your own, its not always spelled out directly, which is a good thing.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Yes but its the only specific issue where I share the sentiment, at least as far as I remember. As others have said, one is supposed to pay attention to the legends and hints and figure stuff out on your own, its not always spelled out directly, which is a good thing.

& what I said was that it's pointless paying attention to a lot of the legends and hints on your own as a lot of them are complete horseshit "just look around the map until you can't be bothered any more", as evidence by extensive examples.

That might be the only one you remember because, for likely most people, you don't have to find barely any of the note quests, you can just brute force your way through the game, which likely most people do - such as ending up in some form of battle scene to cross the river in map 3, because the final required gems are hidden in a spot you'd have to google to find (or spend literally hours examining every single piece of scenery all the while hoping you don't miss the pixel from bad pathfinding). There's barely even any on-line walkthroughs for Eziel's Treasure, the only one I even found was a single youtube video.

But, yeah, just hacking your way through the game is certainly feasible, if you're the kind of player who doesn't mind leaving acres of quests unsolved every time you change maps...
 

Monkeyfinger

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I beat the game pretty thoroughly without once needing to look up a macguffin/quest trigger online. I can do that with maybe 30% of RPGs that I beat. LoE is way above average in terms of quality of directions/not wasting your time when you do have to explore for stuff.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Map 5 turned out to be very enjoyable for the most part. There was lots going on and the pacing worked well. There were even several points at which one could comfortably exit the game without feeling like you were just halfway through something, which was nice. 90% nice at least. The ending to the map left a lot to be desired:

In taking out all of Otto's castles you could only go so far. In that after you'd taken them all you then couldn't perform the coup de grace and take his castle to finish them off. Well, you probably could, but I'm not sure that was their intention. When I went to have a look it had 4 armies in it plus the garrison. So I went off to report back to my quest givers. By the time I reached the quest givers those 4 armies had gone about recovering all the castles I took. It was at this point that, for the first time in the game, I changed the game speed from x1 to x4 (max), ran back, re-took all the castles. This time there were only 2 armies left in Otto's castle. Rinse repeat until there was just one army left in Otto's castle and this seemed to be enough, the game stopped re-taking my conquered castles. This was all fine and I get what the game was doing here and I understand why things happened they way they did. I'm just highlighting the point at which I changed to 4x speed.

The next phase of the mission did nothing to make me go back to normal speed. The next mission was literally to go to each corner of the map in-turn. The castle in the top-left, then the castle in the top-right, then the castle in the bottom-right, then the NPC in the bottom left. That's just walking. And it felt like cynical game-time padding. Nothing wrong with the quests themselves & etc, just that it was so obvious and blatant that, after doing all the map, it suddenly requires you to walk to all the four corners of the map just for some brief conversations. So 4x speed stayed on.

Then the back and forth between some random NPC and the main-quest giver where you do the whole go-between between warring lovers routine. He said this, what do you say back, ok, I'll come back when I've spoken to him again, etc etc. So 4x speed stayed on.

So I ended the map and then found myself all hectic and rushing about my house in a hyper frame of mind completely unchilled, the exact opposite of how I'd been patiently enjoying the map before then.

The final objective is easily the hardest objective of the game so far. I have to pick two colleagues to go along with me to the next map. I have no idea who's the best to take. I have patiently maxed out most of my posse of nine comrades and each of them has a unique skill I'd like to take forward. The cleric with exorcism & mass power-boost? Oh, yes please. The healer with maxed mass healing? Oh, yes please. The noble who's now also a heavy horseman? Absolutely. The badass archer? God yes. The crossbowman? No reason not to. The heavy infantryman? The dude's been a rock since map 3. Etc. I've spent days thinking about it in preparation for my next session and I still haven't made up my mind.
 

hilfazer

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I've got some more observations/informations.


Units:
Units in garrisons will choose their career path on their own. It's not decided when lvlup happens but when unit is generated.
It sucks when your 3rd row priest upgrades to a monk :( but it can also happen to your enemies :)
It also sucks if you have monks and your healer upgrades into a witch, giving them -willpower. That's why i avoid garrisoning monks.
However, it's not a big problem to have a witch and a priest in your group as priests don't rely on willpower as much as monks.

I don't know how much time is needed to restock recruits but available recruits change their parameters every six hours (starting from midnight).
It is important when playing with randomized stats turned on. Otherwise it's just the name.
All 6 parameters can change. Penalties and bonuses do not need to be balanced (sry, mr Sawyer). If you're patient/lucky you can recruit some ubermensch.
I once rolled a noble with -1 HP +1 damage and +2 willpower. He made a great paladin.
Stats can be negative but still displayed as 0! It applies to ranged defense and most likely to melee defense as well. To check if this is the case, recruit a unit and give it an item with defense bonus. Negative willpower is displayed as such.
When playing with randomized stats names start to make sense. My +2 willpower guys were nicknamed "God's Will". My infantryman with extra melee def was nicknamed "Two Shields" :)


Trading:
Prices depend on how rich you are - the richer the worse. Consider not selling loot until you're low on cash (less than 1k).
You can check item's value on inventory screen but you can't when trading. Trading shows selling prices only.
Good selling prices are at 2/3 of items value or higher. Best price i saw was around 75%. In Blood of November selling price can go over 100%.
Some shops pay well for heavy armour but pay crap for light and vice versa. Armours are not a single category. General rule is: shops pay well for item types they sell.


Combat:
Dual wielding units will only attack once if their target has a shield (pavise counts too). IIRC it does not apply when flanking.
Horsemen with shields can't be immune to bows.
Give auto-combat a chance! I was often surprised how well it performed and it saves a lot of time. Those combat animations are slooow.

Units with 2 attack benefit doubly from dmg bonuses and also suffer doubly from penalties. It includes range penalty and Blessed Weapon. Giving Silver Cross to an archer, buffing it with Blessing and surrounding it with other units (so ghosts can't park nearby) is pretty effective. Damage from Blessing is supernatural so it can harm ghosts.

Units that add willpower to attack/defense will actually suffer penalties should their WP become negative. And that's a real possibility when fighting ghosts. Units with Preacher attribute do not get extra willpower Preacher grants. Sry, monks. But paladin ain't no preacher so he does!


XP from combat:
This thing is complex and only a dev can give a good explanation. I'll share some observation, tho.
The biggest factor is theoretical power of your squad vs theoretical power of enemy squad. I say theoretical because a group of 3 powerful units can be facerolling groups of superior number and receive absurd amount of XP. Or a baroness/knight with a shield soloing 4 archers.
Other factor is how many times unit has moved. It is easily observable on units getting extra turns via Gift of Medbh.


Exploits:
Paladin can't equip unholy items like Alchemist Amulet or Ring with Black Agate. But armiger can and those items will remain equipped when he upgrades to a paladin!
Same thing with Witch and holy items like George's amulet.

When unit is mounted it can equip 2H weapon and a shield. It will benefit from both items when horse becomes unavailable, for example during sieges.
Having your unit mounted when attempting a siege will make it lose less HP.



All of this is based on game version 1.101.


The final objective is easily the hardest objective of the game so far. I have to pick two colleagues to go along with me to the next map. I have no idea who's the best to take. I have patiently maxed out most of my posse of nine comrades and each of them has a unique skill I'd like to take forward. The cleric with exorcism & mass power-boost? Oh, yes please. The healer with maxed mass healing? Oh, yes please. The noble who's now also a heavy horseman? Absolutely. The badass archer? God yes. The crossbowman? No reason not to. The heavy infantryman? The dude's been a rock since map 3. Etc. I've spent days thinking about it in preparation for my next session and I still haven't made up my mind.

I'll make it half as hard - take a horseman. Horses are business. In single round a horseman can kill 2 frontline guys and block one ranged unit (if not more). Knight and paladins rule. They're about as rocky as heavy infantryman and more when on horse.
You can take your heavy infantryman as well - 2 solid frontliners can win a lot.
Archer vs crossbowman is a tough choice. There will be some enemies an archer will totally rape (with proper equipment). Crossbowman won't be bad, just not as awesome. OTOH there's a nice xbow you may find. I don't like when cool items occupy my backpack.

There is one side quest in following map where some of your units won't help you. Those units are:
Priest, Enchantress
There is another side quest in following map where some of your units won't help you. Those units are:
Any with heavy armor
 
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ERYFKRAD

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Give auto-combat a chance! I was often surprised how well it performed and it saves a lot of time. Those combat animations are slooow.
Just click about when the animation is playing and it speeds up, if I remember right.
 

hilfazer

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Give auto-combat a chance! I was often surprised how well it performed and it saves a lot of time. Those combat animations are slooow.
Just click about when the animation is playing and it speeds up, if I remember right.

Hmm, doesn't work for me. Neither mouse, Space nor Enter.
But let me guess... you've been playing Age of Wonders 3?
 

ERYFKRAD

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Give auto-combat a chance! I was often surprised how well it performed and it saves a lot of time. Those combat animations are slooow.
Just click about when the animation is playing and it speeds up, if I remember right.

Hmm, doesn't work for me. Neither mouse, Space nor Enter.
But let me guess... you've been playing Age of Wonders 3?
Nope.
Eador would've been a closer hit though.
 

Citizen

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Give auto-combat a chance! I was often surprised how well it performed and it saves a lot of time. Those combat animations are slooow.
Just click about when the animation is playing and it speeds up, if I remember right.

Hmm, doesn't work for me. Neither mouse, Space nor Enter.
But let me guess... you've been playing Age of Wonders 3?
Nope.
Eador would've been a closer hit though.

Eador:Genesis has lightning fast animations. Or you were playing one of the later ones?
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Yeah. But I could have sworn Eisenwald had that speed-click option.
 

hilfazer

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Yeah. But I could have sworn Eisenwald had that speed-click option.

I'm playing pretty old version (newer versions crash on launch for me), maybe it was added with some patch and omitted in patch notes.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Legends of appalling pacing.

Map 6, just about complete & I can't go on any more, it's already drained my patience to its maximum. Zero motivation left in the well. I quit.

The theme seems to be:

Start of maps are ok, the fun of expectant exploration twinkles like gems in the rocks waiting to be mined. But then you get the big lore & mini-quest dump in the Inn, to which just clicking through it all feels like missing the point of the game but reading them all is just an exercise in gibberish and inanity, with none of the dragged out stories giving any sense of wonder or atmosphere, just an over bearing sense of "oh, please DO get on with it".

Then you get the main quest details and it's HoMM type go grab some castles, which is ok, but fairly uninspiring when castles don't offer you even a variety of troop nor more armies to control, just an extra slot in your current team, which, most of the time, just results in you having to carry some n00b troop who dies in the first round for god knows how long anyway. But nevertheless, this is still the most fun part of the game and the only part of the game which has a semblance of pacing as you build up a rhythm of combat, healing, combat, combat, combat, sorting loot, healing, combat etc.

And on the topic of loot, that all seems to have dried up on this map as well. The shops are still selling the same crap they were selling at map 2, quests are starting to provide nothing that really even competes with what you already have and tooling up your minions isn't very exciting, considering the game has a mechanic where they auto-upgrade all their set-loot upon level-up anyway. & never knowing who's going with you to the next map gives little motivation to give a shit about the snail-paced arrow-fodder's character development either.

Once the main meat of the castle grabbing is over, and it's over very quickly, the game then retreats into very basic RPG questing, usually "go to location, have a fight", which is fine, if that's all it was then that would be fine, but instead each location/fight is hidden behind a 100 mile hike of boredom where you have to speak to X before Y triggers, often resulting in absurdities like needing to do 3 really shitty such sub-quests in order to find the location of something you've already found and is already marked on your map. And then this is made even more tedious by having many of the quests require you to be at a location at an exactly specific time, usually resulting in you arriving there and having nothing to do but literally just stand there and hold your dick while the game works through it's hours of the day.

Even converting to 4x speed doesn't really help the situation as with 4x speed you're just trading atmosphere and rhythm for a sense of impatience and epilepsy inducing camera management. This is further compounded by a few of the quests suddenly requiring you to dump members of your team before you can trigger the quest location, thereby making it a complete pain navigating between all the respawning trash mobs as your forced-solo run to location X becomes a game of RtwP mob dodging of the worst kind.

And the respawns are terrible. The're on the same level as something like Sacred Gold, except you don't even need to leave a map for them to reappear, just walk round the map and they're back. They seem to serve no purpose at all in the game other than to provide a grinding opportunity to counterbalance the fact that units can auto-level-up by just sitting in a castle. Wait, let me be fair here, they did have a purpose with one quest, a particularly dumb, purely time wasting quest, which required you to have three combats, one per day for three days, without breaking to heal, to which the only combats left on the board were trash-mob ones. Wow, that quest involved a whole lot of standing around doing nothing at 4x speed...

So by the end of this map it just feels like the game has given everything it has to offer, and the realisation that what it's offering is it's desire to just take the piss out of you and your time. I guess one could set the game to story mode and just try to enjoy the story, but I honestly stopped giving a fuck about the story on this map as well. There's only so many times you can establish everyone as a double-dealing conspiracy enthusiast before you stop giving a shit about any of them.

I got just over 40 hours of game time out of it, which is over double what I got out of Shadowrun Returns: Dead Man's Switch which I posted about recently, but even though I wasn't a huge fan of SR: DMS, I still feel like I got more fun for my time from SR: DMS that I did wasting double figure hours in this game jumping through some of the most tedious hoops I've ever encountered in a video game.

The game is an interesting hybrid of the HoMM/AoW style of game and the traditional cRPG but, unlike something like King's Bounty, this one just doesn't seem to know what it wants other than to make you walk around a map uncovering a plot you have no interest in. The combat is too uninspired, the character development is too weak, the story is full of too much gibberish and inanity/who-cares'ness, I could go on and on about how all the features don't add up to any sum with no individual feature particularly standing out either.

I could imagine someone liking the game, I've seen people giving the game the full-on fanboy praise of perfection, but I can't say I have any idea what feature of the game is making them that way inclined. I can't see what it's unique point of interest is, everything, to me, just seems underwhelming and meh. Unless it's just the German medieval location? I dunno, are German medieval locations a rarity enough to make this something unique enough to be praised even if it's a bit crap?
 
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Darth Roxor

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Been playing Bastard for the last few days. It's p. cool, better than Blood o' November for sure, but two gripes I have with it are that

1. It's pretty railroaded. Feels like it doesn't have any sidequests at all. Actually, I'm pretty sure it doesn't have any sidequests at all.
2. The "ask around local villages for clues" formula gets stale eventually. It was particularly boring in map 3, which consists more or less of cruising back and forth between 2 taverns until you unlock the final convo and win. Map 3 wasn't very gud in general - unlike the preceding two it never gives you any solid clues on which you can base your own theory as to what's going on, and instead just leads you around in the dark between taverns until at last the final convo reveals everything at once and you go on your merry way.

Still, flashing your authority around is fun.
 

Darth Roxor

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lol okay the 4th and final map took much less time than i anticipated

it was 'k, but i felt like some of the blackpilling and the 'dilemmas' in this game was just a bit too fedora-tipping and anachronistic

funny endings though
 

cvv

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Jesus this game came out 3 years ago? Time fucking flies.

Anyhow, finally got around to finish my playthrough, got only in the 3rd chapter last time I played. So I'm in the 5th chapter now and there's this quest where I either stab my friend Olle in the back or I lose ALL my units and most of my gold. I tried to place my units in a castle before triggering the event with the Chancellor but no dice, I still lose them.

What gives? I feel it happens pretty deep into the chapter, I already had a veteran crossbowman, a veteran watch, a healer woman and two esquires. What was Aterdux thinking here? Do I get them back? Or am I supposed to grind basic bitch bandits for 3 hours to build my army back up? I suspect the reward will be p. sweet somewhere down the road but I really don't feel like going through the bandit grind again.
 

hilfazer

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cvv

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If you place your troops in a tower for example on the Red Wolf lands you won't lose them. You can also buy stuff and leave it with your troops to prevent losing gold.

Yeah, leaving them in a castle actually works, no idea why I thought it doesn't. But if the workaround is that easy you shouldn't have bothered with the removal of the troops in the first place. It's not the only design quirk btw. The game is really good but it's p. obvious it's your first and there's a lot of room to learn ;) Still, big kudos.
 

Aterdux Entertainment

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You mean quest design? This workaround was found only by a few initially and had people think about this. In closed beta most people reacted either emotionally (including myself since I on purpose didn't read the entire text) and lost troops or betrayed Olly. It seems obvious after a while and it's good so, leaving more for additional playthroughs. There are many glitches and quirks of course, but I'd disagree about this one :)
 

cvv

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This workaround was found only by a few initially

Really? It's literally the first thing that occurs to you half a second after you lose the troops - to reload and stash them somewhere safe.

It's a really small detail tho. Overall the quest design is unheard of for this type of game, quest items and decisions carrying over entire chapters. Plus I really like how the maps are structured, that you have to maneuvre the local feudal politics, fight or ally local lords, this is genuinely great.

While we're doing the feedback thing, a few comments - from a commercial viewpoint I wouldn't have gone for this quasi-historical German setting with weird names. Sure you get a huge gold star for originality and balls but a smart Game of Thrones or Witcher type low fantasy world would be more relatable for more people and the game could sell better. Also the game relies too much on walls of text. A lot is hidden in lengthy expositions and stories. The texts are certainly not bad but they're not first class either (plus they don't flow very well on a stylistic level, it's obvious they're translated) and for long texts in videogames to work they have to be first class. Let Numanuma be forever a cautionary tale about that.

But these are really the only two serious gripes I have with this game (plus the German setting isn't really a gripe, it's just me being sad the game more known and played). The rest is largely small technical quirks like the pointless, easily avoided troop loss or sometimes confusing descriptions of quests (when a story refers to ABC mountains or XYZ forest, leaving you baffled as to where exactly those might be). The fact I'm 30 hours in and still playing is proof enough that I really like the game because that doesn't happen often these days.
 

Aterdux Entertainment

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From a commercial standpoint would you do a popamole f2p mobile game? I think if we went for something more commercial, the game wouldn't be finished. The only thing that kept us going through all the development issues and roadblocks is our passion for medieval stuff. Yes, the game is far from perfect but at least it was finished and did reasonably well financially.

But I agree about the names and overall the text. Initially the idea was to have less text. But then for some reason everyone got excited about new dialog system we put in place and as a result many simple descriptions turned into lengthy talks which probably increased the size of the text by 30-40%.

The quest system was done on purpose without hand holding. Unsure now if it was a right decision, probably more not - overall our combat that looks rather simple and sophisticated quest system don't really match. Maybe we should have gone more commercial way, without all these notes and need for a player to explore more. Back then I had no idea but simple solutions are better. Nobody wants real hardcore anymore :) At least not in the area of map exploration.
 

Darth Roxor

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I, for one, liked the texts in Eisenwald OC a lot.

In fact, I disagree with cvv completely on both that front and "generic faux-medieval low fantasy" somehow being a more desired element. It isn't.
 

cvv

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I, for one, liked the texts in Eisenwald OC a lot.

In fact, I disagree with cvv completely on both that front and "generic faux-medieval low fantasy" somehow being a more desired element. It isn't.

Fantasy isn't more popular in vidya than history? Please. Personally I always prefer serious settings over retarded stock fantasy cliches I've grown out of 20 years ago, I've been ranting about it on Codex for years after all, but to say most gaymers are the same is krazy. Just look around you.

Again, I only say all that bc it's a shame LoE isn't as popular as Homam or Disciples and a fantasy setting would help a lot to get there. But I accept Alexander's comment about a passion project. As I said, this game deserves a huge kudos on many different levels.

The quest system was done on purpose without hand holding. Unsure now if it was a right decision, probably more not

For most people not, nowadays most people want autoplay quest GPS. What would've helped is this - if a quest says "Forest of Abrakadabra" it'd help if I can see the name in the quest map. Or if I can see where I can go on the overworld map, without furiously clicking around. Sometimes objects are hard too see too, I looked for that damn Saint Hermit hut for half and hour before I accidentally clicked on a seeming impassable place on the map and suddenly a "Hermit Hut" label popped up. Didn't see there was a building at all.

But again, exploration and questing is mostly fine, it's just little details that are sometimes frustrating.
 
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