Ren'Py Divine Dawn [v0.33] [Cryswar]

[Absurdity]

Alright, trying this. Expectations are high just from the class customization, though it doesn't seem that I can pick the custom class unless I'm missing something? Once I pick my stats and element I see no option to go forward. But oh well, picking aeromancer for now.

 

[Cryswar]

Alright, trying this. Expectations are high just from the class customization, though it doesn't seem that I can pick the custom class unless I'm missing something? Once I pick my stats and element I see no option to go forward. But oh well, picking aeromancer for now.

You can make custom classes from the start, yeah. Just keep clicking/tapping the button to the bottom right, iirc after Elements is Equips. You can go back to the previous as well by just clicking the one to the left.

 

[UnDeaD_CyBorG]

Complete honesty, I don't fully understand the first half.

Quite possible it isn't rational. I'm working off fuzzy memory here - I had to reread my earlier, year old comment draft and go from there. At this point this exchange is fresher in my memory than either the game or my thoughts back then.

It may be just, there is such a thing as trying too hard.
Perhaps that is on me; I value control and clarity, and I don't think I've ever been seriously drunk in my life.
As means of an analogy: If you'd only ever have sex while on drugs, can you really tell if it's good? Which I believe is kind of the case here, as exemplified by my likening her to a dealer using her own product.*
It's compounded by the obvious lack of conscious selfcontrol, seeing how the temple scene plays out.
And there's no way to ever bring that up, no way to say "you're a bit much, but it's ok".

failed to explain something properly and gave a darker impression than intended.

Perhaps;

Charm magic mostly accentuates what the target is already feeling.

Maybe that isn't communicated sufficiently, or probably I just overlooked it or forgot (been months between updates in the past, after all, and I didn't get that feeling when first playing).
But, once that trust wasn't there, she kind of creeped me out.

In a way, Sarah reminded me of other game's Yandere characters in her momentary obsessiveness - minus the jealousy, if that even makes any sense.
Which most likely wasn't what you were going for. Just as I really wasn't going for criticising your direction;

It sounds like something I thought was harmless

It probably was.
I am aware the whole camp is basically a therapy circle, and behavior that raises warning flags for me is probably the point.

I mostly answered this now while gathering my thoughts about (before there's a year of distance again and I'm not sure why I had an opinion^^), but I should probably get back to it - it's literally been >10 months. Your explanation of intent is already influencing my outlook, so I'm not sure if could even still advocate my own past position if that was my intent. I appologize if it's a bit of a mess.

Maybe I could start over to get a fresher feel for it;
I do remember that back when I thought I should have started with Earth magic, as there wasn't a teacher for that around at the time, and it promised more interesting interactions.

Edit: I consider it quite fascinating how your intention may diverge from my interpretation, but knowing your intention might change my interpretation, in the same way that the solution to a problem can be "obvious" in hindsight.
*Also, to adress my earlier analogy, I'm aware that there's people, good friends or in a relationship, that meet up and get wasted on the regular - that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that, just that I can plainly not relate.

 

[Lord Atomsk]

I think i understand what you mean. I'll preface this by saying I don't think that this is the case in the game but, when you first hear charm magic your mind can go to "Subconscious Influence" and when you combine that with succubi before you get a chance to get to know the characters involved it can make you think that even though they think they are attracted to and have feelings/love each other it could just be a mix of a succubi's nature and charm magic influencing them instead of just having a natural spark.

Again though I don't think that's the case in the game at all. It has been a while since i played from the start but from what I remember and what Cryswar has said in the thread already Charm magic just amplifies feelings already there so they wouldn't fall in love solely because of charm magic it just makes them a bit more...frisky when their feelings start running high.

Maybe more powerful succubi could've used it to manipulate people but I believe that would be more of a conscious choice than how it works when we're with Ashley or Sarah anyways.

 

[NullHorizon]

I've only just reached the Camp for the first time, and I've been going through everyone's conversations. Game's been great so far, in a lot of ways!

I do have to ask, though... What's the deal with the way Sam is referred to swapping back and forth? Some remnant from a previous concept for her or something?

 

[TheeSonus]

I do have to ask, though... What's the deal with the way Sam is referred to swapping back and forth? Some remnant from a previous concept for her or something?

Sam is a tomboy now, but previously the player was given the choice to have Sam be just a boy. This was eventually scrapped due to the whole "oh that requires a LOT of scenes to be written twice" along with the fact that, despite the saying being "bros before hoes", there were very few people who chose to follow that phrase and chose the hoe over the bro.
...Admittedly, I am one of those people. But come on, the signature should say it all.

 

[Elona Spiral]

I haven't been here for a long time I think.
The last time I was here, I remember that there weren't any character portraits and the game ended shortly after you reach the village after beating the Eldrich Abomination.

I see that the Dev have added character portraits and you can have deep conversations with some characters.

I want to ask if the game still requires you to min-max in order to keep up with your party members?
By min-max, I mean that you have to put your stat points into a few stats and leave the rest as low as possible.
I'm the type of person who wants to try everything and see which ones are interesting to me, which is why I favor games with an open ended leveling system where you can eventually be strong in most areas, the only investment you need is a lot of time and effort.

 

[NullHorizon]

Sam is a tomboy now, but previously the player was given the choice to have Sam be just a boy. This was eventually scrapped due to the whole "oh that requires a LOT of scenes to be written twice" along with the fact that, despite the saying being "bros before hoes", there were very few people who chose to follow that phrase and chose the hoe over the bro.
...Admittedly, I am one of those people. But come on, the signature should say it all.

Ah, okay, that makes sense, I guess. I imagine the remnants of that still in the dialogue will be cleaned up at some point, then. Definitely doesn't need to be a priority or anything, of course. It just seemed weird and all, y'know?

 

[maroder]

I want to ask if the game still requires you to min-max in order to keep up with your party members?
By min-max, I mean that you have to put your stat points into a few stats and leave the rest as low as possible.
I'm the type of person who wants to try everything and see which ones are interesting to me, which is why I favor games with an open ended leveling system where you can eventually be strong in most areas, the only investment you need is a lot of time and effort.

yes having few very high stat is still best approach. there are some things that ameliorate these 1 that you can respec everything any time you want so if you want to check different playstyle its very easy second technically you can be jack of all trades and make it work but its not easy. you will be losing efficiency for versatility which is interesting choice to make and i have done that but i would not say that its optimal in any way

 

[NullHorizon]

Metatron's big smile, man. It gets me every time.

 

[lazydude]

the weaker sex

haha that makes remember my best friend was once a 300+lb fatass(he's lost a lot of weight since then still fat btw) being effortlessly carried around by his cousin who looks like a gentle breeze could blow her over on a good day that girl was was scrawny as hell back then too heck i could pick her up with one hand

 

[dwel-2]

chose the hoe over the bro.

Me... I had Sam be my bro when it was an option. So much for the bash brothers and trying to see if I could hook him up with one of the girls as well.

 

[wendesel]

I will show you how to achieve funny numbers:

- Max Strength and Magic, we need as much damage as we can feasibly wring out.
- Start with greatsword and earth magic, greatsword because it has very high-damage skills and earth because we cannot train it later.
- Put 10 points into focus, 5 in insight, and the rest into vitality, more than that is redundant if you take the cd trait you get at 5 focus.
- The insight is to learn aether magic for a necessary buff.
- Your damage skills will be Seismic Rupture, Purgatory Seal and Cyclonic Strike. You will be cycling between these for the majority of your turns, since they simply have the highest(?) damage numbers in the game at 180%.
- Your channel buffs are Strength of Earth from the earth magic tree for 25% extra strength, Ignition from the fire tree for 30% attack damage, Gale from the wind tree for 20% extra physical damage (which is all your damage), Symbol of Wrath from the aether tree for 15% extra damage to the whole party, and power stance from the general tree for 15% extra physical damage. The water tree gives us no additional damage, Rising Tide simply cripples your tempo, but some stuff like Lifestream or Frozen Armor could be useful if you can afford the mana cost.
- Some greatsword abilites like Destruction Cut or Iron Whirlwind have an upgrade that increases attack by an additional 20% for 4 turns when used, something we can incorporate into our rotation if appropriate (usually Iron Whirlwind against multiple enemies).
- Since the average strength scaling of your attacks are 86.6% we deal on average 317-445% of our level's worth of damage with every attack (I assume percentage buffs stack multiplicatively), letting us take out most enemies in one or two hits.
- This buff cycle is very (VERY) mana intensive, so anything that buffs mana is a big plus, traits like Channeling, Winds of Magic and Reserves come to mind. But we will almost never be casting spells (they simply deal less damage), despite having max Magic and every school unlocked, which alleviates our mana issues somewhat. Pick spells that do other things than single target damage. Turn off your less efficient buffs (like power stance) if need be.
- Initiative will be a problem, but taking lighter armors like tunics or even unarmed can alleviate that somewhat.

 

[zilzmaer]

i'll see your funny numbers and counter with near-perfect survivability:

- max Magic, Agility, Vitality
- can take some Insight for aether if you want, the aether buffs are good but it isn't necessary
- start with mana blade and water magic
- only weapon skill you'll learn is Siphon Strike
- buffs are Lifestream and Frozen Armor
- spells are Essence-Weaving and Shared Flow
- it'll take a while to kill things in the temple, but you shouldn't ever be in danger
- as soon as you can, learn fire magic for Smoulder; the stacking burn will be your main source of damage from now on
- Smoulder mastery should be the one that increases damage over time; make sure to master it before Siofra
- after that, wind magic for Havoc Gale helps reduce incoming damage
- trait priority is anything that helps mana regen or lowers upkeep costs > anything that helps max mana > anything that helps health, defense, resist > anything that helps healing
- start unarmored but switch to robes when you have points to start taking the robe traits, especially the mana regen one; at that point, robes are just better unarmored
- main combat action is Siphon Strike, it'll do terrible damage but the reason you're using it is the extra mana regen, and it has no cooldown. when needed, you'll be able to heal yourself or your party member, though the only time that'll really be an issue is when you have stacking bleeds/poisons/burns
- this buff cycle is pretty mana intensive, but you'll have plenty of regen to keep it active constantly; the biggest threat is actually ending battles too soon, before you can regen back to full mana for the next fight, but since most of your damage comes from Smoulder that shouldn't be an issue
- initiative doesn't really matter, even if you go last you'll hardly take any damage and you'll passively heal most of it

(i had a version of this that used nether's Miasma instead of Smoulder, because it did more damage and ramped faster, but it actually killed bosses too quickly; after a couple turns to build up, it started doing enough damage to skip past health triggers for in-combat dialogs or even phase changes. i pointed this out to the dev, but i haven't checked if it's been fixed.)


there are a lot of ways to make flavorful, but still really effective, builds. i worry that maybe a little too much time is being spent on the combat system instead of on plot, but it's undeniably the most fun and interesting combat system i've ever seen in a Ren'py game.

 

[wendesel]

i'll see your funny numbers and counter with near-perfect survivability:

- max Magic, Agility, Vitality
- can take some Insight for aether if you want, the aether buffs are good but it isn't necessary
- start with mana blade and water magic
- only weapon skill you'll learn is Siphon Strike
- buffs are Lifestream and Frozen Armor
- spells are Essence-Weaving and Shared Flow
- it'll take a while to kill things in the temple, but you shouldn't ever be in danger
- as soon as you can, learn fire magic for Smoulder; the stacking burn will be your main source of damage from now on
- Smoulder mastery should be the one that increases damage over time; make sure to master it before Siofra
- after that, wind magic for Havoc Gale helps reduce incoming damage
- trait priority is anything that helps mana regen or lowers upkeep costs > anything that helps max mana > anything that helps health, defense, resist > anything that helps healing
- start unarmored but switch to robes when you have points to start taking the robe traits, especially the mana regen one; at that point, robes are just better unarmored
- main combat action is Siphon Strike, it'll do terrible damage but the reason you're using it is the extra mana regen, and it has no cooldown. when needed, you'll be able to heal yourself or your party member, though the only time that'll really be an issue is when you have stacking bleeds/poisons/burns
- this buff cycle is pretty mana intensive, but you'll have plenty of regen to keep it active constantly; the biggest threat is actually ending battles too soon, before you can regen back to full mana for the next fight, but since most of your damage comes from Smoulder that shouldn't be an issue
- initiative doesn't really matter, even if you go last you'll hardly take any damage and you'll passively heal most of it

(i had a version of this that used nether's Miasma instead of Smoulder, because it did more damage and ramped faster, but it actually killed bosses too quickly; after a couple turns to build up, it started doing enough damage to skip past health triggers for in-combat dialogs or even phase changes. i pointed this out to the dev, but i haven't checked if it's been fixed.)


there are a lot of ways to make flavorful, but still really effective, builds. i worry that maybe a little too much time is being spent on the combat system instead of on plot, but it's undeniably the most fun and interesting combat system i've ever seen in a Ren'py game.

I agree the RPG mechanics are really fun. It's easy to just see an ability, make a build idea around it and use it to great effect, and most skill trees have something going for them. I've been trying to theorycraft a Tiger build for unarmed but it honestly just seems bad to me, it requires the same stat investment as a mana blade or other spellsword build while dealing 100% damage instead of the more standard 120-140%. Celestial Claws is supposed to bridge that gap I suppose, but wasting a turn to get your damage on par is a pretty big deal. Grass Spider seems really good though, it scales (and scales rather highly) off of your defensive stat, while giving you pretty good buffs and conditions for free. There is probably an omega-cheese build somewhere that relies on getting a 0 cooldown Skittering Scythe to permastun bosses. Still, I would say nerf greatsword but I am quite fond of my toy. Also, Celica is a cuck (but I love her anyway)