Flash Abandoned Crimson Keep [Ch. 7 v1.6] [introspurt]

[Zytoxx]

Gotta say I genuinely hate the difficulty spike in chapter 5 and 6, dmg output is just ridiculous to the point of being tedious forcing a constant high hp pot spam + covenant swapping to keep em alive if you're on the intended difficulty setting and what is the point of build diversity in a bunch of covenants, equips and stats when 70-80% of them are borderline useless during boss fights or require very specific spell, covenant swapping combos like a puzzle to clear the boss by a hair.

Idk I just wanna rant cuz I tend to roam hard difficulties that are reasonably balanced + fun to play and midmax but am I alone in feeling that the boss dmg/overall dmg is a tad juiced? I know that resists matter but this game is exceptionally difficult to wing it if you don't use puzzle perfect covenants on bosses ,Normal mobs were doable but literally every boss past chapter 5 savinia chunk like 50-60% hp constantly with each attack or 30-35% with resists when when you go 50% agil/intellect that also includes mdef and evade chance.
Do you guys usually manage the ch 5 and beyond bosses on your own without any guides or do I just suck balls at memorizing and using the pixel perfect combo vs the "intended difficulty" dmg output in this game?

 

[crackad]

Gotta say I genuinely hate the difficulty spike in chapter 5 and 6, dmg output is just ridiculous to the point of being tedious forcing a constant high hp pot spam + covenant swapping to keep em alive if you're on the intended difficulty setting and what is the point of build diversity in a bunch of covenants, equips and stats when 70-80% of them are borderline useless during boss fights or require very specific spell, covenant swapping combos like a puzzle to clear the boss by a hair.

Idk I just wanna rant cuz I tend to roam hard difficulties that are reasonably balanced + fun to play and midmax but am I alone in feeling that the boss dmg/overall dmg is a tad juiced? I know that resists matter but this game is exceptionally difficult to wing it if you don't use puzzle perfect covenants on bosses ,Normal mobs were doable but literally every boss past chapter 5 savinia chunk like 50-60% hp constantly with each attack or 30-35% with resists when when you go 50% agil/intellect that also includes mdef and evade chance.
Do you guys usually manage the ch 5 and beyond bosses on your own without any guides or do I just suck balls at memorizing and using the pixel perfect combo vs the "intended difficulty" dmg output in this game?

Puzzle mechanic for defeating bosses is core of this game imo and the extent is yeah... as you said quite specific. You don't have leeway on using many covenants/skills. Each bosses are to be defeated with a combination of certain covenants only but that's the point.
That being said I feel the game is still fair. maybe will not appeal to players who are not so into strict puzzle bosses

 

[Zytoxx]

Puzzle mechanic for defeating bosses is core of this game imo and the extent is yeah... as you said quite specific. You don't have leeway on using many covenants/skills. Each bosses are to be defeated with a combination of certain covenants only but that's the point.
That being said I feel the game is still fair. maybe will not appeal to players who are not so into strict puzzle bosses

Yeah I don't mind puzzle bosses with a specific way to defeat them for the most part, it's just ends up a bit of a slog for me when I gotta just know which out of the 20ish covenants got the right skills and when to use them when the high dmg output really forces you to find that almost pixel perfect combo
Didn't really mind the difficulty in previous chapters, but it's definitely a spike in difficulty in the ch 5 update and beyond :S

I remember playing the first trilogy of monster girl quest which was basically puzzle boss fights with a pattern, but you didn't have like 20 chars to memorize, each with their own sets of abilities, resists and weaknesses that are basically use or die if you don't use specific chars.

 

[Kisama33]

Gotta say I genuinely hate the difficulty spike in chapter 5 and 6, dmg output is just ridiculous to the point of being tedious forcing a constant high hp pot spam + covenant swapping to keep em alive if you're on the intended difficulty setting and what is the point of build diversity in a bunch of covenants, equips and stats when 70-80% of them are borderline useless during boss fights or require very specific spell, covenant swapping combos like a puzzle to clear the boss by a hair.

Idk I just wanna rant cuz I tend to roam hard difficulties that are reasonably balanced + fun to play and midmax but am I alone in feeling that the boss dmg/overall dmg is a tad juiced? I know that resists matter but this game is exceptionally difficult to wing it if you don't use puzzle perfect covenants on bosses ,Normal mobs were doable but literally every boss past chapter 5 savinia chunk like 50-60% hp constantly with each attack or 30-35% with resists when when you go 50% agil/intellect that also includes mdef and evade chance.
Do you guys usually manage the ch 5 and beyond bosses on your own without any guides or do I just suck balls at memorizing and using the pixel perfect combo vs the "intended difficulty" dmg output in this game?

Chapter 5 sufers from the fact that still using the "stat points" build system that depending from your build may result in a total different experience, for exemple players with a heavy Fervor build will have a easy time since most foes are very week to it, as long you have a little bit of speed to not become overcomed by your enemy.

For chapters 6 onwards you need to make good use of tatics, normally every enemy is more week to one of them than the others you just need to see what works better.

Another really important thing is optional content, sometimes that especific piece of equipment, skill or covenant really makes the difference to the point you curse yourself for not have obtained it when you had the chance.

I think making bosses look like a puzzle is exactly the intention of the dev and that they will probably be like that most of the times in the future and in the "remake" compilation, I do agree that that makes the fights less diverse and most players need to defeat them in pretty similar ways but that also means that once you beat it one time you can beat it pretty much every time after if you use an optimal strat, some bosses become so incredible easy that you feel that you are cheating so the main issue is just to find one of those strats on your own what can be frustating.

Each chapter is an opportunity to try something new, some things work well others not and need to be removed or changed, that is still happening even now until the dev reachs what is to him the perfect gameplay experience that he wants the players to feel, if anything the dev wants to make things hard but not impossible to the point that only very few players can overcome the challenge and that's why even with a difficultty setting he still makes stuff like optional (mini)boss fights not be affected by it to make those more casual players feel tempted to face the challenge as intended so one day they can face the entire game the "normal" way.

I personally feel that hardcore games and crazy challenges or runs are for masochists but after completing a few challenges in this series (like beating Zazna at level 25 without applying stat points) I feel a little of a masochist myself and are always waiting to see what other challenges I can complete and because of that I just don't take the normal difficulty serious anymore and try to play casual even if that means dying some times along the way I don't let that bother me to much because I know that somewhere is a strat that will make it just so much easier and all I need to do is try and try again until I find it.

This game is not for everyone, as the fan community usually says "This is not a porn game with RPG elements but a RPG with porn elements" the dev wants you to face the challenge and get the deserved "reward" once you beat it, he refuses to take any money to support the project so he can make HIS game as HE sees it and as HE want others to enjoy it, the question is if you are that kind of player or not, games are not made to please everyone and if a game doesn't it for you it's totally fine but it's a little bit unfair if you change a game to much to be enjoyed by a larger audience when you want it to "hit" a very specific type of player. So I hope you can find a way to enjoy the game as it is, even if you can't do it now maybe one day it will happen. Just don't feel mad if you don't because that is probably because the objective of the game was not to please you in the first place.

 

[SpicyWintercress]

Do you guys usually manage the ch 5 and beyond bosses on your own without any guides or do I just suck balls at memorizing and using the pixel perfect combo vs the "intended difficulty" dmg output in this game?

I liked the difficulty a lot. I didn't have any real trouble even though I didn't really bother minmaxing and just built basically brainless-balanced of "try to keep numbers same" and it landed me at a nice "losing IS actually possible and I have something to do here, it's just not a pressing issue" zone. The bosses were puzzles and required figuring out a specific approach, but if I recall there was still usually enough leeway that it was possible to bumble through the fight to work it out from within it. The one fight I had to look up was the optional mercury elemental fight and that had unusual mechanics and an actual extra failure* condition and I just didn't feel like working it out. So I'm quite happy with how things are here, they're very "it's a real game", and it might just not be your cup of tea - but the way I see it, if you want to persist despite that then looking at guides is also perfectly fine and works as a sort of difficulty-lowering assist mode. Maybe it would help if someone (maybe even the dev, if he wanted to integrate it directly into the game?) would compile hints of different levels of specificity for each boss (from "consider how this boss responds to different types of attacks" all the way to "to beat the boss equip this and this and then do that") like what you would see in an adventure game puzzle? There's an idea.

I tend to roam

Roaming is the one thing which I think could be massively improved in this game. The "each step can bring you into combat with random invisible enemies" mechanic was obnoxious back in the '90s and it's not gotten better since. I'm kinda hoping that with the Unity rework this gets adjusted too. Just having encounters with map-visible enemies that respawn when you reenter the area instead of every-few-steps randoms would be enough for me, and it would improve the roaming experience I'm pretty sure.

 

[Kisama33]

The one fight I had to look up was the optional mercury elemental fight.

And then you learn that she can be tempted with a single covenant that provides you with all the tools you need for the fight as long as you have a heavy Temp build and that with it you can finish in less than 3 minutes.

The "each step can bring you into combat with random invisible enemies" mechanic was obnoxious back in the '90s and it's not gotten better since. I'm kinda hoping that with the Unity rework this gets adjusted too. Just having encounters with map-visible enemies that respawn when you reenter the area instead of every-few-steps randoms would be enough for me.

Yeah that's the thing, if I'm not wrong the dev is a fan of those old style JRPG's like Final Fantasy and much of the inspiration for the game comes from them and other Hgames like Evenicle so that will probably not change, first because if he wanted it to be that way he could have done it in Flash too, you can see such a thing in chapters 3, 5, 6 and 7 where there are some "map-visible enemies" you can interact with and that's the point, by making then "visible" you know they are somehow more important than the others, either a sort of "elite" enemy you may want to avoid or a quest "target" you need to defeat or even they could be a way to make a eventual boss easier if you kill them before the fight like happens in chapter 7, making every enemy visible may take your focus from the right direction and from what's is important besides it would help "cheating" the game a little because if you know what's to come you can make the right preparations (tactic, equipment, covenant) before the fight takes place what is not so easier when you don't know what enemy you might run into, true there are alternatives to fix this problem like for exemple mark the spots with a question mark or a default "random encounter mark" but it would be easier to make something that you kinda have already, like the passive skills from certain covenants that make random encounters less frequent, and upgrade them to allow you to avoid all random encounters or even a consumable/equipment you can use/equip would work too, adding all the new "visible enemies" would take more time and planning to do than that.

Of course that after Eld (dev's other project) where all enemies are visible to the player it's always possible that he may try that aprouch in CK as well so who knows.

 

[SpicyWintercress]

besides it would help "cheating" the game a little because if you know what's to come you can make the right preparations (tactic, equipment, covenant) before the fight takes place what is not so easier when you don't know what enemy you might run into

There's no real need to do any workarounds for this though. The speedbump mobs aren't really a tactical issue anyway, and I can't imagine enjoying the level of micromanagement necessary to minmax for every one of those encounters, nor do I see much point in it. Let's consider what it would mean if a player did have the option to do it and actually did it.

Like I said, the random fights aren't really blockers (even the more difficult ones that appear later). The filters are the bosses. So how are the boss fights affected?
- The player who doesn't optimize (since right now they just can't) gets to the bosses no problem, so no change here
- A boss encounter is basically guaranteed to be super heavily telegraphed, so the player will top up on hp/mp. So in terms of those resources at the start of the boss fights, no change
- Because the player optimized the random fights, they didn't use consumables so heavily and so they have more stocked and that's the one actual difference. This only actually matters if you literally run out during the boss fight, which I can't say ever happened to me, and I never did any deliberate farming. And speaking of, this whole difference can be nullified by farming even if you don't bother to minmax so it's honestly quite moot

I get that the dev might like the random encounter system even if I personally dislike it, but I don't see dropping it in favour of something like Chrono Trigger had which was also back in the Deep Nineties creating balance issues. As for the other thing of using them to focus the attention of the player, you can still do that easily. Making those special enemies stand out is no big deal at all. The laziest way is to light a halo or something around them, and with that as your baseline of "least amount of effort that gets you something that works" you can then get fancy with some other solutions if you like.

the passive skills from certain covenants that make random encounters less frequent, and upgrade them to allow you to avoid all random encounters or even a consumable/equipment you can use/equip would work too

Equipping items like this even when they exist generally isn't a great idea. The random fights, speedbumpy as they are, are typically net resource generators rather than resource drains (even when we account for level caps). Which means a player that avoids them will have fewer resources than the game designer planned for when they get to a boss, and with the bosses being actually tricky here that might be a problem. As such this isn't really a solution, as the player is heavily disincentivized to use them. Not to mention of course that if it's something equippable, then equipping it takes up a slot which would otherwise go to something actually useful in case a fight DOES happen. And if it's a consumable, well, just obtaining and using it is a further resource drain on top of already shrinking that resource input stream.

Anyway, we'll see what the dev does. I'm good either way, it would just be more in line with my preferences if this changed and yes Eld does suggest to me that it's not impossible that it might happen.

 

[-FlavorTown-]

I haven't checked on this in a while. What happened to this game? Did the author get burnout?

 

[Kisama33]

I haven't checked on this in a while. What happened to this game? Did the author get burnout?

The dev is currently working on chapter 8, he was busy getting used to a new engine (Unity) that will replace Flash and did a side project called "Eld" to gain experience with it, you can check said project in the original post (there's a link to it there in the others games section), but it will still take more than half year for you to see something new from Crimson Keep (wild guess).

 

[Kisama33]

The speedbump mobs aren't really a tactical issue anyway, and I can't imagine enjoying the level of micromanagement necessary to minmax for every one of those encounters, nor do I see much point in it.

I can almost completly agree with this and I only say almost because there is a small thing that you can do that can make a big difference that doesn't require almost any time, that is to select an optimal covenant for the fight with a single press of a key thanks to the customizable covenant quick-keys but other than that I don't see much people losing their time masking a full change to each encounter unless they were trying to attemp some type of challenge or run but that will only remain true as long as the "trash mobs" difficulty remain easy as they are even if I don't think it will change too much since you need to grind a little sometimes.

As for the other thing of using them to focus the attention of the player, you can still do that easily. Making those special enemies stand out is no big deal at all. The laziest way is to light a halo or something around them, and with that as your baseline of "least amount of effort that gets you something that works" you can then get fancy with some other solutions if you like.

The only bad thing I can see here is the element of surprise you can lose with a bad option and don't take me wrong I find these encouters annoying sometimes and that would help a lot to save time you could just ignore all the "trash" you don't need and pick the "useful" ones that give the best rewards but because of this you could lose some memorable moments, like did you know that you can fight 4 Nyzerin Concealers in chapter 7, three are mandatory but there's a "Surprise Mada Fucka!!" one that you can runs into in the last area before the Collossal Slime boss that have a 1% chance to be found, if you remember that cave is not particulary good with ther "rewards" you get from defeating mobs so most people would prefer to ignore all of them and go directly to the boss and miss it completly, even if with a 1% change that happens to most players that surprise when you are casually walking and you just see the "boss circle" appear in the screen and think "what the hell is going on, is this a bug, a secret, a bad joke?" is a really nice experience that would probably not feel the same if done in other way.

The random fights, speedbumpy as they are, are typically net resource generators rather than resource drains (even when we account for level caps). Which means a player that avoids them will have fewer resources than the game designer planned for when they get to a boss, and with the bosses being actually tricky here that might be a problem.

Totally agree and this may very well be the reason for invisible encounters, different than Eld the MC is not "forced" to go home to "heal", many players still see the game as a simple porn game and they want to get the "lewd stuff" as soon as possible and if they can just ignore all the unwanted encounters they will do it but then when facing a true challenge they may not be ready for it not only in terms of lv but also consumables so I think the dev wants to force players to acumulate exp and hp/mp healing itens for them not having a excluse to not be able to face the real challenges in their way.

Anyway, we'll see what the dev does. I'm good either way, it would just be more in line with my preferences if this changed and yes Eld does suggest to me that it's not impossible that it might happen.

Indeed and the truth is that the dev knows there a lot of stuff that could be better like that the whole "sufer damage - eat a bunch of calories to heal - attack - repeat" is not optimal and he his still thinking in ways to change this with a new less consumable-dependent mechanic and you can see some small steps in that direction with 2 of the 3 last covenants from chapter 7 and how when well used you can just reduce the waste of consumables to 0 when grinding for exemple, maybe it will be chapter 8 that will gives us the first glimpse of this mechanic that will later be extended to all previous chapters for the compile version or maybe we will if it works or we may only see it in the next arc as a test so this may chance things a lot and make the need to actual face "trash" more even less needed what can be good or bad, a mod already mentioned that the "next game" (from new arc or spin-off can't really say what will be) "will have new mechanics" and each chapter is an oportunity to try something new so anything can happen we only need to wait and see.

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Is there a chapter 1 summary somewhere? I really don't want to play a couple of hours in one go, it's a pain in the ass that you can't save in chapter 1.

 

[usugames]

Hello, im a bit worried i downloaded the exe from chapter one , scanned it with virustotal and its shows in the community comments this :
FileScan.IO Analysis:

Verdict: LIKELY_MALICIOUS
Confidence: 100/100

this is the link

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is there malware on the exe or something that i should be worry about?. i opened the exe so, i am screwed?

 

[Kisama33]

I really don't want to play a couple of hours in one go, it's a pain in the ass that you can't save in chapter 1.

More like 20 minutes if you are really slow. The last speed run I saw took less than 10 minutes taking the fact that the only thing they did better than the rest was skipping dialogues faster.

 

[Fuchsschweif]

More like 20 minutes if you are really slow. The last speed run I saw took less than 10 minutes taking the fact that the only thing they did better than the rest was skipping dialogues faster.

Okay but I asked for the story, how am I supposed to speedrun and skip all dialogues if I want to learn about what happens in chapter 1?

And I played over 1 hour yesterday and was not done with chapter 1. I was right before mother would send me down to a village or something, after you have sex with your blue maid and learn that you can get abilities from women you have sex with.

How much story is after that in chapter one?

 

[Kisama33]

Okay but I asked for the story, how am I supposed to speedrun and skip all dialogues if I want to learn about what happens in chapter 1?

And I played over 1 hour yesterday and was not done with chapter 1. I was right before mother would send me down to a village or something, after you have sex with your blue maid and learn that you can get abilities from women you have sex with.

How much story is after that in chapter one?

Lol, you just had to go back to the place where you started the chapter (teleport circle in the bridge) and the game would end right away, you would then see a new screen with a code you can use to start chapter 2 to keep your inventary and level so you can just start chapter 2 right ahead if you want, you are not gonna miss anything really.

 

[Kisama33]

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X(twitter) account.

"Just imagine what CK could have been like if Intro hadn't stopped using Patreon".



Context new Patreon guidelines.

 

[Fuchsschweif]

Lol, you just had to go back to the place where you started the chapter (teleport circle in the bridge) and the game would end right away, you would then see a new screen with a code you can use to start chapter 2 to keep your inventary and level so you can just start chapter 2 right ahead if you want, you are not gonna miss anything really.

Cool, thanks!
Are the other chapters longer than 1?

 

[Kisama33]

Cool, thanks!
Are the other chapters longer than 1?

Yes, 1 is the smaller, 2 and 4 are after it then 3, lastly 5, 6 and 7 are reeeally big, but you can save this time. Have fun.

 

[Justfoinca]

are the exes safe?

 

[crackad]

are the exes safe?

Yes, they're safe. Windows/Antiviruses sometimes flag it as otherwise due to Flah being discontinued for couple of years now. You can get the .swf files along with the flashplayer if you're still skeptical.

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