torkenstiem
Active Member
- May 1, 2017
- 903
- 2,244
- 467
Just to be clear, the dev currently plans to develop another game alongside the updates for SKA, and because of that the planned content for SKA for now should only finish releasing in about two years at least. As we mostly know exactly what the updates will bring (you can check it on the open post on patreon "Long-Term Development Roadmap Post-1.0"), you could have strategic saves to check the new content as they release on Steam/here every 6 months (or less if someone keep posting the patreon updates here), as they're mainly bad end branches.
i want to change my device so i will put my save here for a while if you want to use it, go ahead. it's not 100% but you can use it as a new game+
Few days ago I was this close to dropping the game,I think the feedback could be useful so here are the sources of my frustration.
Enemies hidden behind environment – I’m not a fan when loot is hidden this way but argument can be made that finding it can be exciting and you don’t need to find all the loot to progress the game. But ask yourself what is gonna happen when player gets ambushed by enemy he didn’t see ? Yup a load, that's fun eh ?
Extra fast enemies – if you don’t want given enemy to be ambushed, fix their location in such way that they can’t be or make them unable to be ambushed in some other way. This is nothing but invitation for save scumming.
Hidden passages – not the cracks you need to blow up but the holes in the ground that you need to walk into to discover them. It is one thing when you expect there is a passage and you look for it it is another when you casualty walk around and then suddenly screen changes. I had three of those situations that I walked into a passage and that begs a question how many have I missed. Now ask yourself what type of gameplay this promotes? Face checking like a lunatic every cranny that is obscured by environment.
Why do you think enemies got levels in RPGs? (those that don’t either employ “you can finish game at lv1” approach or have some other way of communicating/controlling difficulty). In this game there is no way of telling how hard is the enemy other than saving and face checking it. There is bestiary but it is inaccurate and you need to fight the enemy first to have info while its not accessible in combat and you can’t run away from fights.
All and all I feel like the game got many outdated design choices from times where one game would have to last you for months. That is no longer the case, I don’t need/want to be playing same game/ piece of game until I get things right, that is not fun. Also do not mistake it with me wanting to game to be easy, I enjoy challenge. Read on the difference between challenging and punishing games, SKA is more of the latter.
Enemies hidden behind environment – I’m not a fan when loot is hidden this way but argument can be made that finding it can be exciting and you don’t need to find all the loot to progress the game. But ask yourself what is gonna happen when player gets ambushed by enemy he didn’t see ? Yup a load, that's fun eh ?
Extra fast enemies – if you don’t want given enemy to be ambushed, fix their location in such way that they can’t be or make them unable to be ambushed in some other way. This is nothing but invitation for save scumming.
Hidden passages – not the cracks you need to blow up but the holes in the ground that you need to walk into to discover them. It is one thing when you expect there is a passage and you look for it it is another when you casualty walk around and then suddenly screen changes. I had three of those situations that I walked into a passage and that begs a question how many have I missed. Now ask yourself what type of gameplay this promotes? Face checking like a lunatic every cranny that is obscured by environment.
Why do you think enemies got levels in RPGs? (those that don’t either employ “you can finish game at lv1” approach or have some other way of communicating/controlling difficulty). In this game there is no way of telling how hard is the enemy other than saving and face checking it. There is bestiary but it is inaccurate and you need to fight the enemy first to have info while its not accessible in combat and you can’t run away from fights.
All and all I feel like the game got many outdated design choices from times where one game would have to last you for months. That is no longer the case, I don’t need/want to be playing same game/ piece of game until I get things right, that is not fun. Also do not mistake it with me wanting to game to be easy, I enjoy challenge. Read on the difference between challenging and punishing games, SKA is more of the latter.
pretty sure most of that is intentional to get you to go to the next day or force you to use collar.
It could still ease up on the difficulty of some fights. The underwater area is just painfully hard. It doesn't need to be a lot easier, just a little bit. It's kinda silly that it's insanely harder than the area that immediately follows.
How exactly is it harder for you?
Because most areas or dungeons have a gimmick to them, particular element that is super effective or some other way of making things easier.
Like how you need Water Skin to not take constant damage in lava areas, how you need high MDef to not get the Arms of Wrath curse at Draknor...
smkey21
Active Member
- Nov 15, 2017
- 707
- 550
- 318
The underwater area, assuming you mean the lake, is sort of an outlier insofar as it's an entirely optional area balanced around visiting it near the final third or so of the game that a determined player can brute force their way into. Most other areas don't unlock until you can sort of reasonably handle them if you're careful. Having access to the air bubble is practically mandatory and storm is pretty useful for many of the enemies in that zone. I feel like the previous zone you needed to clear should have given you some idea that you were getting in over your head. The enemies there are also a big step up in difficulty.
Yellowie The Goldie
Active Member
- May 8, 2022
- 872
- 1,096
- 267
The lake is actually one of the harder mid-game areas to clear. Especially given that it is actually pretty large as a dungeon. But the rewards for clearing it are also quite enticing too. Quite a few bosses and even a "superboss" or whatever you call them.
In essence, don't go in there unprepared, make sure to have Fire II to burn bushes and keep your slime on "Wind" form so that you could actually breathe there. Unless you're playing on "Story" difficulty, this will take you AT LEAST several in-game days to fully clear. Make sure to always backattack if you can, otherwise you'll have a hard time.
Bonus points if you also have learned "Slash II", it will come in handy with those nasty fish.
For anyone who wants it, I had the PDF saved for the most recent walkthrough that was wiped.
(All credit belongs to the original creator of the guide, I'm just uploading a copy lol) View attachment STA Guide.pdf
Edit: Guide is for Max Lewdness - version 0.43.x)
(All credit belongs to the original creator of the guide, I'm just uploading a copy lol) View attachment STA Guide.pdf
Edit: Guide is for Max Lewdness - version 0.43.x)
Last edited:
smkey21
Active Member
- Nov 15, 2017
- 707
- 550
- 318
It's probably worth mentioning which guide it is (pure vs max lewdness) in your post. The version it was written for might also be appreciated. I'm pretty sure that the harvesting costs for small nodes was doubled after the guides were last updated, so that could be a big change in the very early game.
If you refer to semi-hidden enemies at the start, I don't see the big problem. Yeah, you need to look closer sometimes, but you can spot them, so it's not a mess of forced ambushes you only can circumvent by save-scumming like you describe. In many playthroughs I didn't encounter a single enemy you literally can't see. Every fast enemy can be ambushed by spotting them beforehand and circumventing them, or through flash bombs (will elaborate on that later). Alternatively there are also slow enemies which can be circumvented by kiting, etc. Yes, it's possible to be caught of guard and you have to reload if it kills you, but it happened only a few times to me. Where save-scumming for me came into play is stuff like collecting gold for the Avian, but you can also kill it through other means if you want to.
Same goes for hidden passages - There are a few that are difficult to spot but for the majority of the game, the maps are also intuitively designed in terms of what can be looted and what can't be. And where to maybe look twice.
The point about difficulties not being communicated beforehand is fair, I would say a rule of thumb is that the order you receive quests can be a rough guideline. With the exception of optional dungeons like underwater and mount firestorm, those are basically ongoing challenges you just need to check in from time to time how things are looking there. SKA is not a game where you can just stat check against your opponent in order to weigh properly if you can beat them, many enemies can be beaten with proper strategies even with the stats not being that high. Like for example how Lightning Sword completely changes the difficulty against most mobs in Draknor Fortress. I think it makes more sense that x mob is always the same, so at least you know their weakness and how easy it was to beat them with x approach.
Elaboration on the bestiary statement would also be interesting, because it is literally not inaccurate? I wish it would contain a bit more information on skills specifically (though you can look them up on the wiki), but the information you get is correct.
And you can run away from fights using flash bombs. It's not something you should be doing for every single fight, but you can splurge gold on a decent bunch and use them when you feel its necessary - In fact, flash bombs allow you to back attack enemies you can't back attack otherwise so it opens up more avenues in that regard (and also why the game becomes imbalanced if you could abuse such a feature)
Last edited:
The part that got me were treants in east forest of runes. There visible path goes south and east - there is like 4-5 of them hidden, you lure out the first two sprint by the third you are happy because you left them behind almost at the big one... and then you run into another one... I just wanted to blow up the boss with SK
... I know now that there is a passage that you are supposed to take except you need to face check it to find it while running from one of the treants.Another example of this "punish the player" mentality are hidden curse traps- upsi doopsi you didn't see the circle that we hid on your path behind a tree, have a stat reduction! /fucking didn't run into it first time but I had to visit that place few times so sure enough I did eventually, thanks for auto-save and Yey for more loading/
It is not a first game that has weaknesses and resistances, none is expecting lv 10 dog and lv 10 giant to be on same difficulty. Neverless if you are lv 10 you should be able to deafeat lv 10 giant if you employ correct stragy. And if you had trouble with lv 10 when you see lv 20 one you know you should probably go somewhere else.
I checked Giant crab, t
I honestly didn't even remember they exist when writing it, I recalled later. But I'm so starved for gold that the idea I would be spending it to check enemy stats is preposterous. Also doesn't it require pyromantium ? thats very limited more like a luxury item to use when it counts.
Last edited:
While I understand the line of thought regarding levels, the thing is SKA enables different playstiles depending on if you go heavier into magic or physical, or more item related, so I think making that kind of categorization universally accurate is difficult. There are just multiple ways to approach enemies, and it depends on where you currently are and what skills you learned, which stats you invested in, etc.
Even in other RPGs I mostly rely on trying stuff out to see how easy the enemy actually is because any sort of label for strong, normal, or easy I find not to be that helpful... Except when it's a deliberate developer label that you shouldn't engage x enemy yet. In the end of the day you gotta test stuff out and see how it works.
Now, I agree with you that the compendium should be more detailed. But it's not the biggest deal, even more so considering a lot of enemy attacks you can learn yourself (like Tenacity) so if you want to know the details you can look them up that way. And the unique ones I find very intuitive for the most part. Like when the Low Demon prepares a curse, of the one which inflicts Dark weakness. Where compendium was useful and is very useful is looking up stats, and I especially think it matters even more because damage calculation in SKA is very transparent. It's still a mighty feature and the battle system being so easy to plan out is a big plus to me. Could be better, but that applies to everything.
Gold is a general thing to manage in this game, it's a resource management challenge. The game is designed like that. However, I don't mean you have to buy many flash bombs, it's just a noteworthy and mighty possible strategy you can lean into if you like it. You do already get some through chests and co. and you can save them for if you need them (like back attacking certain enemies). In Fortress of Wrath for instance, they are kinda necessary. If you just want to look up the compendium, you can either SKA an opponent, or go to the wiki. For the former you reload ofc after having peeped the compendium.
It's also noteworthy that pyros become much more accessible later in the game.
Last thing which is also worth bringing up again (not a direct response) - SKA is meant to be a game where the odds are stacked against you. They game basically wants you to start leaning into lewd content to make things easier. If you are strong enough you can get through it pure, but pure is just by design the most difficult route. Requiring multiple attempts, tests and more to progress is just part of the game. Knowledge is power, so to speak. Normal Difficulty is also not meant to refer to what normal difficulty is like in other games, the developer just stated that it's the intended difficulty for this game. But that doesn't mean it's similarly difficult like other rpgs, and if you want a less frustrating experience you really shouldn't shy away from switching to lower difficulties. That's why they are in the game.
dragwar
New Member
- Nov 18, 2017
- 9
- 5
- 105
hello, i play this game long ago when it was still version 0.3/0.4, it had cgs on many scenes. but, in 1.0 all those scene are only shown black screen. is it because free version?
edit:
very stupid of me, who would think that adult mode will be disabled by default
edit:
very stupid of me, who would think that adult mode will be disabled by default
Last edited:
I have finally finished score-oriented nightmare run
but I got some questions regarding the bosses I couldn't get. So, if anyone is able and willing to answer these I'll appreciate it:
1. Scorpion Wasp boss - where is it? I cleared most of clockwork forest and couldn't find it. Though given that I somehow have bestiary entry for it and that I cleared half of the forest before it was fully implemented a while ago makes me think that I did in fact kill it and the counter just reset later on. I know it can happen when updating from older versions. But maybe I just missed a spot?
2. I have Luciela's boss entry at 1/2. The one you fight in the last battle didn't register. What could be the cause of that?
3. The last boss I didn't get is Lorraine. From what I understand you can only eventually fight her if you chose a vice path in her quest. Is that correct? Does it mean that maximum score is unattainable then, since it would require raising vice etc?
but I got some questions regarding the bosses I couldn't get. So, if anyone is able and willing to answer these I'll appreciate it:
1. Scorpion Wasp boss - where is it? I cleared most of clockwork forest and couldn't find it. Though given that I somehow have bestiary entry for it and that I cleared half of the forest before it was fully implemented a while ago makes me think that I did in fact kill it and the counter just reset later on. I know it can happen when updating from older versions. But maybe I just missed a spot?
2. I have Luciela's boss entry at 1/2. The one you fight in the last battle didn't register. What could be the cause of that?
3. The last boss I didn't get is Lorraine. From what I understand you can only eventually fight her if you chose a vice path in her quest. Is that correct? Does it mean that maximum score is unattainable then, since it would require raising vice etc?
Iexist
Engaged Member
- Jul 20, 2018
- 2,351
- 4,153
- 451
For 1, the only Scorpion Wasp boss I can think off is the one in the caves in Clockwork forest. I don't think it's easy to miss since you're gonna skulk around there eventually.
For 2 no idea.
For 3... I haven't tested it, but, based on what the wiki says, it MIGHT be possible to fight Lorraine if you fail to solve the mystery in that one case, no Vice needed, but you also have to leave Roland alive somehow during Reverse Summoning. If both of these happen, she'll show up as a sub-boss during Judgment of Pride with Roland there too. I don't think she shows up if Roland's dead.
This is mostly speculation though, I dunno if it can actually work that way. It might be that Lorraine only shows up if the explicit Vice path is taken... In which case, yeah, the max score would be impossible.
You sure it's Lorraine that's counted as a boss? As far as I'm aware, she only shows up during Judgment of Pride and at no other point...
Pretty sure, yeah:
Iexist
Engaged Member
- Jul 20, 2018
- 2,351
- 4,153
- 451
In that case, the only thing I can think of is that what I mentioned above is how it can work. You likely need to fail the case and keep Roland at 50 Fame so he can rez during Reverse Summoning. If he runs away like a little bitch, he'll be able to show up during Judgment of Pride with Lorraine. Unless of course she can show up there without Roland... but that doesn't make sense narratively speaking... But what do I know?