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

[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)

 

[lazydude]

i kinda miss when you could just melee attack when your mana was low

 

[Honorable Lord L]

I sure hope all this nether corruption won't hurt me, because there's no force on this earth that will keep me away from Ashley.

 

[FeLisk]

Good that I stumble upon this game
I’m only at the beginning, but I’ve already got a couple of quotes
If it goes on like this, it will be great

There are a couple of things I’d like to discuss tho
As I imagine, the developer is trying his best with this game, game engine included
My eyes already went sideways from character customization
On the one hand it’s good, on the other - not very
For example:
+ a lot of options for creation;
- too much text and mechanics right from the start without any deep explanation and any story relations
As for a simple novel where the text and pictures (well, and music) are the main things, I think it's too much
Like MC could start just with a basic set like wooden bat and a simple healing spell and THEN sometime after got a list of choices AFTER some events occur

But here’s a more important point
As I can see, there are a lot... no, a HUGE variety of dialogs dependent on a partner of choice
And also later dialogues, or even whole events, will vary from previous choices
It sounds nice and all, actually VERY nice, but
I can only imagine what hell of a chain of consequences from previous events this game already has
The sad part is that you can choose only ONE girl to be your battle companion, as to witness only her dialogues along the way
The dedication and autism is only respected, but it could be an overkill in a long run, for a solo developer =(

Also I didn't get when my "Charisma" stat will be useful in events, I only see it rn as a bother, mentioning that my party consist only from one girl while there is a whole army at the camp
Maybe it needs a tinkering, or I need to invest more hours in game to get anything from it
Sorry if it sounds aggressive, but it is sort of annoying

Game doesn't seem difficult, I played to the meeting with a fish princess as a water mage without side grinding

I didn't get the reason to ask player to rest between fights or get bonus chain exp, it was unnecessary confusing at the beginning, also mentioning that heal will be only 20%, like wth dude, that deal is trash

Girls are cool (not Sam tho)
I spent time mostly with Ashley, but I start having a feeling that I'm doing something wrong, like game wants to push me to interact with other girls, but I don't really have any desire to, only with Metatron but only after a game event

The dialogs are dumb and cool, sometimes heartwarming, I like it
But MC giving too much insight without any visual support, I disapprove such method of storytelling, skipping a lot
Nearly forgot to mention, there are too much swearing's that doesn't look good on some characters or in some events, I think

The quotes I discover being hilarious:



I'll continue playing and share more thoughts later
Developer has a big thumbs up from me
Similar vibes as MGQ, From Frontier, Monster Girl Dreams, etc

 

[Raysi]

Good that I stumble upon this game
I’m only at the beginning, but I’ve already got a couple of quotes
If it goes on like this, it will be great

There are a couple of things I’d like to discuss tho
As I imagine, the developer is trying his best with this game, game engine included
My eyes already went sideways from character customization
On the one hand it’s good, on the other - not very
For example:
+ a lot of options for creation;
- too much text and mechanics right from the start without any deep explanation and any story relations
As for a simple novel where the text and pictures (well, and music) are the main things, I think it's too much
Like MC could start just with a basic set like wooden bat and a simple healing spell and THEN sometime after got a list of choices AFTER some events occur

But here’s a more important point
As I can see, there are a lot... no, a HUGE variety of dialogs dependent on a partner of choice
And also later dialogues, or even whole events, will vary from previous choices
It sounds nice and all, actually VERY nice, but
I can only imagine what hell of a chain of consequences from previous events this game already has
The sad part is that you can choose only ONE girl to be your battle companion, as to witness only her dialogues along the way
The dedication and autism is only respected, but it could be an overkill in a long run, for a solo developer =(

Also I didn't get when my "Charisma" stat will be useful in events, I only see it rn as a bother, mentioning that my party consist only from one girl while there is a whole army at the camp
Maybe it needs a tinkering, or I need to invest more hours in game to get anything from it
Sorry if it sounds aggressive, but it is sort of annoying

Game doesn't seem difficult, I played to the meeting with a fish princess as a water mage without side grinding

I didn't get the reason to ask player to rest between fights or get bonus chain exp, it was unnecessary confusing at the beginning, also mentioning that heal will be only 20%, like wth dude, that deal is trash

Girls are cool (not Sam tho)
I spent time mostly with Ashley, but I start having a feeling that I'm doing something wrong, like game wants to push me to interact with other girls, but I don't really have any desire to, only with Metatron but only after a game event

The dialogs are dumb and cool, sometimes heartwarming, I like it
But MC giving too much insight without any visual support, I disapprove such method of storytelling, skipping a lot
Nearly forgot to mention, there are too much swearing's that doesn't look good on some characters or in some events, I think

The quotes I discover being hilarious:
View attachment 4958770 View attachment 4958771


I'll continue playing and share more thoughts later
Developer has a big thumbs up from me
Similar vibes as MGQ, From Frontier, Monster Girl Dreams, etc

Sam, not cool? You must be slain. In Minecraft of course

 

[Honorable Lord L]

Tbh Sam is also the girl I like the least-
The dude-bro dialogue gets grating after awhile.

 

[Big Green]

Tbh Sam is also the girl I like the least-
The dude-bro dialogue gets grating after awhile.

She is in this state beacuase of the whole choose a gender for this character. I thought dev already established her as a girl, yet still pushes hard on this dude-bro mentality.

 

[pingedme]

While I can understand the dude-bro dialogue can get grating I would say its a useful tool for storytelling. Highlights her immaturity which contrasts nicely with her desire to grow and mature. Also her relationship with the Protagonist has been "just friends" for the majority of their lives going from best buds to potential love interests is basically uncharted territory for them.

 

[Dizmazyy]

While I can understand the dude-bro dialogue can get grating I would say its a useful tool for storytelling. Highlights her immaturity which contrasts nicely with her desire to grow and mature. Also her relationship with the Protagonist has been "just friends" for the majority of their lives going from best buds to potential love interests is basically uncharted territory for them.

Yeah but can we like... move forward? Is not like this is a romance manga where everyone has to stay the same for 500 chapters just to keep selling more chapters.

 

[eggplant trauma]

Is not like this is a romance manga

this is a romance manga though,you will sex Metatron missionary while holding hands, kissing and confusing her about a future mini-tron

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.