Today's GameDuJour promotion - Eschalon book I

[Binary]

If you haven't grabbed it yet, now it's a decent chance at half price

http://www.gamedujour.com/3407-eschalon-book-i

Today only.

 

[burrie]

Neat, I'm-a getting this. Thanks for the head-up.

 

[Bluebottle]

Done. Thanks.

And I was just thinking that I needed something new to play. Good timing. Now all I have to do is wait patiently until I get home.

Is it 5:00 yet?

Any tips on builds? I seem to remember hearing that map reading, or catography or something was pretty necessary for navigating about.

 

[JarlFrank]

Cartography should be raised to skill level 3 or 4 right from the beginning. But I think 6 or 8 is the maximum skill level, beyond that it doesn't make any difference anymore. So, try to raise Cartography to 6 and then invest in other skills. Some kind of weapon. Probably armor, too.

 

[Uz0rnaem]

Did the developer ever find a way to improve movement speed? It was the only issue I had with the game, but it was so severe that I ended up never getting the full version.

 

[Binary]

Cartography should be raised to skill level 3 or 4 right from the beginning. But I think 6 or 8 is the maximum skill level, beyond that it doesn't make any difference anymore. So, try to raise Cartography to 6 and then invest in other skills. Some kind of weapon. Probably armor, too.

Alrighty can you give more recommendations? Melee or magic then?

Is there any class that's like a total failure or extremely hard to play?

 

[JarlFrank]

Alright, I never really experimented with magic, and for the melee weapons I'd suggest swords. You should get some armor skills, and you really should get a shield skill, because using a shield without being skilled in its use gives you a penalty, and shields can be really useful.

It was quite a while ago since I played the game, though. You could also take a few levels in dodge skill, but you might want something else more than this, as dodge only gives you 1% chance of evading an enemy attack per skill level [but if you successfully evade an enemy attack, that enemy is easier to hit in the next turn].

Also, getting a new skill costs more skill points than raising one of the skills you already have, so trying to be a jack of all trades is a bad idea. Try to specialize yourself.

 

[Brother None]

Alright, I never really experimented with magic, and for the melee weapons I'd suggest swords.

As JarlFrank says, specialize.

I'd advise against magic. Eschalon's magic system isn't very good. Very boring.

 

[FrancoTAU]

You should take the 1 Level in each magic realm when you get a couple level ups. Might as well take advantage of your magic points that aren't doing shit before hand to save money with the heal spell.

 

[Claw]

After playing a mage, I'll say this:

The game isn't really designed for a pure mage. I meant to play an elementalist and ended up casting mostly divine buffs before charging the enemy later in the game.

It's useful to have a few levels in divination for heals and buffs and maybe some in elemental for Air Shield, a neat protection against ranged attacks.

 

[someone else]

I bought it just because of the discount, never played the demo. Kinda like it, have yet to win the game.

The slow movement, darkness, poor magic and very random loot generation is a minus. Hope Book II fixes it.

From what I know:

HP/level = Endurance/5, this is not retroactive so pump end early.
Mana/level = [Perception+Wisdom(Healers) or Int(Magicians)]/ 5. like Endurance pump them early. Makes sense to start with a Healer or Magician just for the mana.

I start with 35 perception+wisdom and 25 endurance, leveled endurance to 40.

Some skills can be trained up to level 5:

Blunt, Cleave, Swords, Divine, Elemental, Cartography, Missile, Alchemy I know of.
Books can be used to boost from 5 to 7.

The lighting is nice, fighting in the dark with night vision is a tremedous advantage.

 

[Caveman]

I'm a huge fan of indie games but this game SUCKS!

Every aspect of the game is below average.

You have to be a fucking nerd to finish it twice.
The game is 10 hours long only because very slow player movement speed.


Even Diablo 1 is bigger, more complicated and has better grafhixs.

 

[Jasede]

Thanks for being specific, brother.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I'm a huge fan of indie games but this game SUCKS!

Every aspect of the game is below average.

You have to be a fucking nerd to finish it twice.
The game is 10 hours long only because very slow player movement speed.


Even Diablo 1 is bigger, more complicated and has better grafhixs.

Fuck you tard. Be specific or I will stab you in the ass with my meat balloon.

 

[Kraszu]

It is very cpu demanding game it was way to slow on my athlon 1.7+ to play.

 

[Jasede]

Movement speed is slow if you insist in not using Open GL mode. Next?

 

[LCJr.]

I'm a huge fan of indie games but this game SUCKS!

Every aspect of the game is below average.

You have to be a fucking nerd to finish it twice.
The game is 10 hours long only because very slow player movement speed.


Even Diablo 1 is bigger, more complicated and has better grafhixs.

Fuck you tard. Be specific or I will stab you in the ass with my meat balloon.

I'd say the every aspect of the game is below average pretty much sums it up.

Can't speak for Caveman but I'll give some of my specifics.

Actually the walking speed, although slow, didn't seem to bother me as much as it did others. Although the conspiracy theorist part of me thinks it was hobbled to stretch the gameplay hours.

The darkness. I absolutely hate dark games. I don't find it atmospheric and I don't care if it's "realistic". I get reality every second I'm awake. I want escapism and entertainment out of a game. I find the darkness is annoying and eyestraining. Gravediggers flame seemed to be the only thing in the game that actually produced enough light you could see some of your surrounding.

Combat. Bland. Move, attack, cast, drink potion. Same thing we've seen since the original Rogue. When was that 1980? Christ, people rag on Vogel's combat system but it's far more complicated than this.

edit> Typically I don't rag on combat unless the game is mostly combat as in this case. Torment had sucky combat but at least it went quick so I could tolerate it long enough to get to the good part, the story. This game is pretty much all combat and the developers seemly made zero effort to make it interesting. I'm not expecting TOEE but god damn give me something or don't make the game so focused on combat.

Dialogues, more like monologues. Writing wasn't completely hideous but nothing stood out either. Just don't get me started on the whole "You wake up with amnesia....". Your only choices were "Yes, I'll take your quest in hopes of getting XP and loot." or "No, I'm fucking idiot and won't take your quest. This in spite of the fact I need every $ I can get so I can buy more skills."

Just the whole character generation/advancement thing felt wrong to me. You get far more skillpoints from trainers and from books than you do from leveling up.

Pet peeve. Breaking doors and chests. Now I didn't try with endgame weapons but the early ones like maces and hand axes would usually result in weapon breaking. And this with the oh so amusing result of getting a splinter in the eye. BUT these same weapon shattering objects can be laid low by my bare mitts. Ah, so you think your kung fu is pretty good?

Magic. Didn't really seem to be much point beyond some buffs. The damage spells didn't seem to pay off for the amount of skill points you had to invest. You were better off with a bow, especially once you hit the goblins since they dropped a lot of decent arrows.

Another bitch of mine is Basilisk games themselves, specifically their hype. For example the aforementioned simplistic to the extreme combat.

Combat plays out at your pace. Eschalon: Book I features a turn-based system that allows you to roll through combat as fast or slow you want...make it fast and furious, or analyze every option for maximum advantage.

Or this bit.

Hundreds of items and dozens of creatures await your discovery. A combination of randomly generated treasure and carefully hidden goodies means that no two games will play the exact same way.

Everybody knows what you get when you open a chest is just the final word in replayability. Now why don't they mention the fact they don't store the random seed so you just keep save/loading til you get what you want.

A tile-built, turn-based game world where the result of absolutely every action is rolled, calculated or statistically determined. Strategy is paramount to success; careful skill management, equipment selection and magic usage will win your fights, not rapid button clicking. We are very pleased to say this is not another "action RPG".

Careful skill management? As I've already pointed out you primarily buy your skills. Being able to buy up to Lv7 in most skills kinda kills the strategy aspect of that.

Careful equipment selection? Do I equip the sword that does 4 damage or the one does 3? Tough descion there.

Well if I wouldn't have had to wait for the enemy to take their turn I think rapid button clicking would have sufficed. About the only strategy required was running away to heal early on or leading the AI to gunpowder barrels. Anyone else feel like they were playing Doom at times?

Lastly considering the simplicity of the combat it would have worked just as well as a realtime game. Actually the combat followed the same principle as most ARPG's, creep forward and try not to attract the attention of more than one enemy at a time. Lure the single enemy off and kill them. Rinse and repeat.

Is that specific enough? Mediocre game combined with a developer who hypes things up to much for my tastes. Actually I thought these guys were full of shit from square one. Go back and dig up some of the first news posts here where they try and nail them down on if the game will be TB or RT. Maybe it's a double standard on my part but I expect hype from the corporate outfits but it annoys the hell out of me when indie's do it. I look at indies to get away from everything I don't like about the mainstream not to be fed more bullshit.

 

[gunman]

It is not a classic turn based game, but simultaneous turn based, so if you do nothing, the game is paused, once you move one square, the critters move one square and so on depending on the speed. It's not that bad in principle, it's the repetitiveness that kills the game in the end.

However, for one man show, it's impressing. You're over reacting here with the hype, you should be annoyed with other kind of hype, a topic familiar around here.

 

[someone else]

I decided to restart and play ironman, this game is so much easier than other roguelikes. Currently near the end and forcing myself to complete it.
It was fun at first but gets old quick. ADOM and Unreal World is much more fun.