Mod Ren'Py Abandoned Time For Dragons - Defiler Wings: Deranged Dragon Mod [29-07-2020] [Jman]

[Laxard]

I still think it's kinda sus.

Alduin among us.

 

[Malorn]

Two, in fact. Though only one is suited for demosnpawn. Go and spend some cash at Smugglers' Isle. I'm actually amazed that you managed to get a fire hatchery before the others.

Real talk, my first hatchery after green was the forest hatchery, I can't find the Fiery or Cold hatcheries even now that I am actively looking. Perhaps I am doing something wrong? Do I need large amounts of fire or cold resist even to see those locations?

Edit: moved a major edit to a new post.

 

[Jman9]

I'm aware that the hatcheries, the Enchanted Forest and finding potential lairs are problematic. The security at the Alven Grove has already been beefed up (more magic needed to enter, deerbeast reinforcements). Hatcheries have been tiered to require previous ones. No more jumping straight to elven or dwarven versions.

I also have a new 'starter' hatchery and plan to make another one. Making potential lairs more plentiful is also high on my todo list. The second item, in fact.

To continue with the teasing... (No, there's still no ETA for a new release.)

I finally finished up and made a first debugging pass at sky hunting. This incidentally means that nothing is currently outright broken in the WIP version (that I'm aware of ).





Maiden death/eaten pics have a little more variety now (and it took me fucking forever to find pictures for that):






Edit:
Malorn: You wouldn't happen to be a dev for a project with 2D 'maidens' as well, would you?

 

[Malorn]

Malorn: You wouldn't happen to be a dev for a project with 2D 'maidens' as well, would you?

If it involves a certain HHS project then yes, I do hold a modest place designing most of the events. Coding-wise I am far more limited, but I can find my way around most scripting languages.

:::

I should say, I really love the mod, but balance is a very real concern with quests, knights, and thieves especially. Combat is generally in a good place, and the random events are solid. A lot of things are small rough patches that come down to testing and number tweaks in various places. It's possible these are things you've already looked at, since I know how it is with a long dev period.

A lot of quests seem to unlock a bit... too late? Maybe I progress too fast in certain areas, but I often find myself being given access to something or being told to do something long after I was already trying to do it. In other cases I cannot figure out how to fulfill a requirement, such as the cold or fire quests. I spent a LONG time flying around looking for cloud castles, etc. I ended up skipping to forest hatcheries entirely, and then took the dwarves down for stone hatcheries, but those fire and ice quests still remain. Equally the way certain quests unlock access to various things can cause some nasty problems if you don't know which quests to complete in order to complete a quest. Perhaps tying quests more to in-game events as triggers might solve part of the problem, rather then tying them to other quests?

Knights and thieves have a bad habit of 'powering up' for more then a year, even when the dragon is in a fairly accessible lair. This means when they finally do find the dragon, they are often incredibly powerful. This can be dealt with by running away from knights, but 'kill' knights do not retire, meaning that same incredibly powerful death machine will keep coming after you. This is, I am sure, somewhat intended, but knights can very easily grow to the point where you need an endgame dragon and party to kill them. Thieves can be killed via paying the smugglers, so it can be dealt with. But stealing from the knights is mostly a waste of time for the price, since they lose one item only which they quickly replace. Long term, I suggest perhaps introducing some methods to 'provoke' knights, basically giving them your location openly and challenging them to come after you, obviously such an action should have downsides in some way.

But the easy fix is just increasing the 'searching' outcome, so that both thieves and knights find the lair earlier. There is already code for both to decide the dragon is too powerful to confront, so it seems fair that they arrive a bit more quickly when possible. This means that knights tend to arrive while they are not at absolute strength, and equally that thieves have a greater chance of being not fully prepared. Knights come down to combat, which is a pretty solid system as I said, so they really need nothing else except the chance of finding the lair without being totally powered up.

But considering thieves... let's talk randomness, especially with thieves. Thieves are very deterministic, even down to their rolls. If they have sleeping powder or deft hands, then all you have to defend with is the gold head, which provides 10 base power, plus 2 more per additional gold head. Thieves receive half their level - 1 + a random number from 1 to their level. That means a max level thief at 60, cannot roll under a 30. Which means countering such a thief is prohibitively troublesome. You would need 4 golden heads to even have a chance of countering them, and that chance would be under 2%. And with sleeping powder and deft hands, they would have to fail twice, which puts us to roughly 0.02% chance, that is 1 in 5000 times. Yes, one can have more then 4 golden heads, but that is a very specialized dragon at that point, and deft hands/sleeping powder are not that rare.

I strongly suggest using min(unseen_mod+(dragon.level+dragon.fear//2)//2,60) instead of min(unseen_mod*2),60) for defense against deft hands and sleeping powder. That means that fear and level still play a solid roll, while making unseen_mod more effective on average. This will result in more thief failures, and if both thief and dragon max themselves out, then the thief still has a 50% chance by default. And with both hand and powder, actually has a 75% chance overall of pulling something off.

Another approach is to have at least some chance of failure built into the system. Even the very best thief can just get unlucky, I would think. And it would make those rare moments quite exciting. Something like the following inserted at the beginning to provide that incredibly rare chance the thief just fails miserably.

                    if random.randint(1,100) == 1:
                        renpy.say("","Sometimes even the perfect thief has a tiny bit of bad luck. [thief.name] happens to step on the dragons tail as it lies buried in treasure.")
                        renpy.play(get_random_file("sound/scream/"))
                        renpy.say(th,"Oops...")
                        woke_up_dragon = True
                        failed_defences = True

Equally, there would be nothing wrong with a similar check right after for the thief to have a 1 in 100 chance of just getting hugely lucky and succeeding without having to pass any other checks. A little random is never the worst thing.

:::

Obviously I really admire the work you have done expanding the game and improving it, so I don't want the only takeaway being criticism. There's a lot of very good systems in the game, from the evolution system, to the food balance. There are weak points, but they are noticeable because of the many strong points the modded game has going for it.

 

[Sabs249]

Sorry to bother , i am a bit courious what it is about Darkwood and how many Latern Cycles there are , i am now at 11 , is this a bug ? And where do you find Alchemey ?

 

[Jman9]

what it is about Darkwood and how many Latern Cycles there are , i am now at 11 , is this a bug ? And where do you find Alchemey ?

What do you want to know about Darkwood? It's a weird extra location loosely based on the Kingdom of Death: Monster boardgame, AFAIK. It's there for you to have weird encounters and invade the lairs of other strange creatures.

Why would LE 11 be a bug? Lantern cycles/eras can go up to infinity if you have the patience.

If 'Alchemey' means alchemy, then nowhere. Eliont had a separate crafting system for alchemy at some point in the dim past, but it didn't really survive into the final version of the game and I don't even know of it ever did anything useful. And (re)creating an alchemy/crafting system from scratch didn't look very inviting.

...since I know how it is with a long dev period.

Well, the one you're in is a bit different from mine. I'm not even trying to look like a serious dev.

...okay, I do have an ulterior motive for delaying. I reached a tentative agreement with 4MW for using and crediting Ravager assets, and spent a little while implementing in-game credits during summer. So my plan was to get a relatively solid update, bugfix it a little, and then piggyback on Ravager's popularity for advertising. They already hate me a bit. But I can't do this with all the current problems still intact.

Combat is generally in a good place, and the random events are solid.

IDK. Endgame combat is way too easy, and the last review was very aggressive about there being <1% 'meaningful encounters'. Which was one of the catalysts for the sky hunting overhaul.

...balance is a very real concern with quests, knights, and thieves especially.

Maybe. Knights and thieves are supposed to be a major PITA.

A lot of quests seem to unlock a bit... too late? Maybe I progress too fast in certain areas, but I often find myself being given access to something or being told to do something long after I was already trying to do it.

Well, you're supposed to rush up the quest tree if you feel the need to. Most quests that block a fundamental mechanic are relatively easy to complete. Maybe Scourge and Desolation are a little high on the quest tree, but milk farms and workshops aren't really necessary to progress. The Witch will be selling some milk, too.

In other cases I cannot figure out how to fulfill a requirement, such as the cold or fire quests.

Mom does tell you how, doesn't she? It's just that it currently requires insane amounts of grinding to do what she says.

Fortunately, both of these quests don't gate anything important and are just there to make you go looking.

Equally the way certain quests unlock access to various things can cause some nasty problems...

Can you give more examples of quests that needlessly block you from something? I mean, doing quests is heavily incentivised for smaller dragons via XP awards. You should want to get them done ASAP if you're able to.

Knights and thieves have a bad habit of 'powering up'...

I've overhauled knight and thief progression. They now do their own thing regardless of whether the big D is sleeping or not, can be 'invited' and knights have a much bigger power range (see the screenshots). Whether it addresses your issues remains to be seen.

...'kill' knights do not retire...

What do you mean? If you get rid of a knight (either by killing, capturing or running away), you get a brand new, unupgraded knight. Well, exactly how unupgraded depends on your infamy, but currently they don't have a death squad anymore and will not be anywhere near maxed on equipment. Will change somewhat for high-infamy dragons, who will be attracting tougher challengers.

...incredibly powerful death machine...
...need an endgame dragon and party to kill them.

You will hate the new knights. And you don't really need an endgame dragon. The toughest a current knight can be:


Died all the same vs a huge, nonoptimised red dragon. The guy on the right was the MVP, and you only need an elfgirl (Hakim if nothing else), fire hatchery+ and 15 virility (impressive size + Strong Seed minimum).

I also tried four of the same maxed drakes, and still won (but lost three of them).

But stealing from the knights is mostly a waste of time...

Stealing is not a solution, it's a delaying tactic. I'm not sure about the current release, but when I last played, a smallish dragon could keep a knight nearly locked on the equipment front by having the bandits constantly harass him/her.

...some methods to 'provoke' knights...

Exists in the WIP version. You can pay the smugglers to spread rumours of your lair's location to both knights and thieves. Has a cooldown, but no other downsides. I'm not sure what these would be, although I'd like to attach some cost to that. Ideas welcome.

Well, one drawback is that capturing these 'n00b' knights and thieves doesn't give you as good maidens. But that was always the case.

But the easy fix is just increasing the 'searching' outcome, so that both thieves and knights find the lair earlier.

That's not the (full) problem. The problem is that both can just sit still on 99/100 progress and not roll the 'found lair' event, even if it becomes more likely. I've introduced a hierarchy of events (robbed or killed, lair rumours, progress from 99 knowledge, all others) to resolve the issue.

Thieves are very deterministic, even down to their rolls.

When it comes to actually bypassing defences, you're right. I'll have her roll between 1.5 and 2.5 her level for that.

But otherwise, not really. The 'come back later' roll is excessively random and the 'wake up' rolls also have pretty high variance, 1/2 to full level.

If they have sleeping powder or deft hands, then all you have to defend with is the gold head, which provides 10 base power, plus 2 more per additional gold head.

Um, it provides 2*(10+2 per additional head). That means 60 for 11 gold heads. Even a Prince of Thieves is going to fail that over 50% of the time, and you get another roll every time she touches something.

That means a max level thief ... countering such a thief is prohibitively troublesome.

Well, it's supposed to be. If she's excessively specialised in taking your shinies, you also need to be equally specialised to counter that particular trick. But you don't need to, since there are other ways of catching or getting rid of a thief.

...with sleeping powder and deft hands, they would have to fail twice

I'll make that into once, didn't really intend this.

I strongly suggest using min(unseen_mod+(dragon.level+dragon.fear//2)//2,60) ...
That means that fear and level still play a solid roll...

My idea was that when the thief is actually in your inner sanctum, she's largely won. You're doing last-ditch damage control here. For deft hands and sleeping powder, the dragon is supposed to be so dormant that his fear aura and scary appearance don't affect the thief who 'knows' he's harmless for the moment.

...the thief still has a 50% chance by default.

Per item, which is nearly guaranteed failure over the whole encounter.

Another approach is to have at least some chance of failure built into the system.

That's a better idea I'll code in a random chance of 1/thief.level to step on the dragon's tail if he has at least 10k worth of treasure (not 10k gold, 10k 'nominal price' of everything, including eggs, raw materials, cash, etc). I'll also give her a 1% chance per 6 levels to succeed no matter the odds, 1% minimum. Thieves are annoyingly lucky.

Obviously I really admire the work you have done expanding the game and improving it, so I don't want the only takeaway being criticism.

I like criticism. Praise doesn't improve things (much). Even if I write long posts detailing why I think the criticism is wrong. I do this so players can see my reasoning and find any weaknesses, not to put them down.

Obviously I really admire ... food balance.

I'm kinda conflicted to hear this, because I've gone to great lengths to provide more food sources (another wildling village, eating more than a few animals from a herd, raiding villages specifically for food; whales are waiting to become a thing).

There are weak points, but they are noticeable because of the many strong points the modded game has going for it.

If it involves a certain HHS project then yes

A lot of the weaknesses are due to my peculiar tastes. I think you've probably seen me at least polluting the HHS forum sidebar if not my full insanity there.

 

[Laxard]

Well, you're supposed to rush up the quest tree if you feel the need to.

The part of problem he is refering to is that you need to abandon your progress to finish some quests.
Fire/Ice hatchery is the worst offender indeed, but there are also one that makes you play with the kingdom stats while shooting you own leg.
I don't think ability to built hatcheries even need to be tied to the lairs or quest, it will make more sense if you can kind of "research" them and just need to use specific resources available in some locations as a core for them.

Also, I don't believe that any balancing of the fights outside of Thief and, maybe, Knight is actually possible while there is exist an ability to suck stats.
I think an ability of limited reinforcments/minions retreat will serve better. Even if it's seems to be a pain to implement.


And please, please, make different background color for the "false options" that serve as "headers" like "HUNT".
Speaking of UI, dark blue mana number on black background on battle screen is hard to see. And there is no point to have 4/8 here if /8 serves no purpose due to not having any ability to recover mana during the fight (as far as I know) so just mana available is informative enough.

 

[Jman9]

The part of problem he is refering to is that you need to abandon your progress to finish some quests.
...shooting you own leg.

What progress? The worst thing is raising infamy, which can put you permanently at >5 infamy. But I don't think you're really able to keep infamy down below that when you're solidly into mid-game.

All other quests that gate a building don't cost you anything important that you're not trying to get anyway. Building a trap, a cage, a guard post, a fortification, 100 defence, a minion, a Lizardman. For the WIP version, unlocking all the villages by releasing some more minions (gating breeding pits holes) and catching a knight+thief for a luxury cage.

Fire/Ice hatchery is the worst offender indeed...

Not really. There is no rush, they don't gate anything important beyond endgame, and you want the ice/fire maidens. And the big issue is not that they're gating something, it's again that giant lairs are so bloody rare.

I don't think ability to built hatcheries even need to be tied to the lairs or quest... "research" ... resources ...

Dragons don't do research. This is a trope dragon in a medieval fantasy kingdom chock full of cliches. Nobody does anything remotely like research there.

And how would adding these resources do anything beyond extra busywork for me and delaying the release even further? I need some sort of gating, and that already exists and is well tied to existing mechanics (ability to find lair locations and defeat their inhabitants). If the resources are easy to get, they'll be a pointless extra layer of complexity. If not, what's going to be the difficulty in acquiring them that isn't also measured by the same stats as getting hatcheries via lairs?

Also, I don't believe that any balancing of the fights outside of Thief and, maybe, Knight is actually possible while there is exist an ability to suck stats.

I don't think 'sucking stats' is the problem here, the stat caps are. I've seriously nerfed all minions since, putting the stat cap at 125% instead of 200% and making them start as weakened hatchlings. Minionettes are capped at 100% instead of 200%, and homunculi are nerfed even further.

I think an ability of limited reinforcments/minions retreat will serve better. Even if it's seems to be a pain to implement.

It might not be a terrible pain to do. But I don't think it'd be any better. In fact, I think it's just about the worst suggestion I've seen here. I don't think you really gave this much thought.

The mod is all about limited resources and management thereof. This would just be an invitation to an arms race, because now the dragon's party has a more variable and higher power limit, so all fights will need to escalate or any resemblance of balance will die a fiery death. So it's a lot of rebalancing of the mod in order to make all encounters bigger, create more places for bugs to hide and make things less maintainable in general. And the end result is at best the same, except with more moving parts.

More than one game has been ruined because the designers couldn't say no to feature creep.

Also, fluff-wise, if the dragon shows up with a small army, or goes adventuring with one, his enemies would be able to detect him more easily and will dogpile him. They are the ones with a resource advantage here. Armies are for the Final Battle.

And please, please, make different background color for the "false options" that serve as "headers" like "HUNT".

Why? It's not as if clicking these does anything bad... Customizing the Ren'Py menu is a major PITA. I'll take a quick look, but no promises.

Edit:

Speaking of UI, dark blue mana number on black background on battle screen is hard to see.

Suggest a better colour.

And there is no point to have 4/8 here if /8 serves no purpose...

How does it hurt you to know the max, though? Maybe someone else wants to do some kind of multi-battle mana economising, and doesn't want to open the full info screen all the time.

 

[Laxard]

Also, fluff-wise, if the dragon shows up with a small army, or goes adventuring with one, his enemies would be able to detect him more easily and will dogpile him. They are the ones with a resource advantage here. Armies are for the Final Battle.

There is already bunch of events where enemy attack in waves.

The mod is all about limited resources and management thereof. This would just be an invitation to an arms race, because now the dragon's party has a more variable and higher power limit

It will also give you ability to safeguard linited minions. I mean, like right now when you are meating an enemy with an ability to counter, and they are boss level treats, you have only two way of saving your limited edition ultra rare minion from being killed, either kill that enemy very very fast, that isn't always an option, or use 5 mana spell to heal the most important minions which is viable option even more rarely. This is also will get rid of the need to go to the lair to change your party into squad menu before and after every serious fight.

Also, fluff-wise, if the dragon shows up with a small army, or goes adventuring with one, his enemies would be able to detect him more easily and will dogpile him.

You know, when your dragon is bigger than house, having a bit more snakes at his side will not make much difference to his detection. You can easily enough tie minion limit with the dragon size, if you will go for this option.
Even more, if you are feeling especially sadistic (so, like usual) you can tie minion tier to the party cost (so like Basilisk can cost the same number of points as 4 goblins) and balance the game this way.
Fluff-wise you can have Goblin Flying Cavalry and fuckmeat-armor with elemental resistances and more insane and silly stuff that will completely break the balance even further so I really will not accept this as an argument in this situation.

Why? It's not as if clicking these does anything bad

Because it's an constant annoyance that doesn't allow to judge screens at glance.

Customizing the Ren'Py menu is a major PITA. I'll take a quick look, but no promises.

Then take a look here

You must be registered to see the links

 

[Jman9]

There is already bunch of events where enemy attack in waves.

These are relatively small waves, because you still catch them by various degrees of surprise.

It will also give you ability to safeguard linited minions.
...use 5 mana spell to heal the most important minions which is viable option even more rarely.

The healing spell is supposed to be for that. If it doesn't work, then it's the spell that needs adjusting, not a core game concept. Why is the spell not viable?

...boss level treats, you have only two way of saving your limited edition ultra rare minion from being killed...

The only irrecoverable 'ultra rare' minions are the unique maidens, and you really shouldn't be going near any kind of big bad boss critter with those.

This is also will get rid of the need to go to the lair to change your party into squad menu before and after every serious fight.

Preparing for serious fights is bad now how? The ability to set up several squads and name them is exactly for this purpose, changing your party composition on the fly.

Any squad change needs UI interaction at some point. Clicking 'lair -> squads -> pick squad -> exit' or 'D - S - [squad #] - D' with the new hotkeys isn't meaningfully more complicated than any alternative, and shows you all the relevant info and provides access to all existing minions instead of only some hypothetical backup squad.

You know, when your dragon is bigger than house, having a bit more snakes at his side will not make much difference to his detection. You can easily enough tie minion limit with the dragon size ... party cost ...

It's a gameplay contrivance. Maybe these are gossiping snakes who make a lot of (hissing) noise, and your dragon is very good at pretending to be a house.

Edit:
More seriously, if the dragon is small, numbers matter for detection. When he's big, he presumably carries the others, or at least some of the others, and thus maintains mobility and tactical surprise for the whole party. So carrying capacity, or perhaps unwillingness to carry more than four freeloaders matters.
/Edit

And a complex minion calculus is the last thing I want. Different tiers of minions exist exactly so that you can make better use of your limited party slots. A drake is worth a shitton of snakes or goblins, etc.

Fluff-wise you can have Goblin Flying Cavalry ... will completely break the balance even further so I really will not accept this as an argument in this situation.

Theoretically you could. In a highly unbalanced mod-mod, fork or whatever. Not in the mod as I'm trying to make it.

Gameplay is secondary to 'realism', anyway. Edit: Or maybe the other way around. Who can tell...

Because it's an constant annoyance that doesn't allow to judge screens at glance.

Uh, I added these extra fake choices exactly to allow judging at a glance. How does it prevent you from doing so? And what would you suggest as an alternative?

Then take a look here

How will changing the whole UI or parts of it on the fly help me? The menu buttons are still all following the same style.

Anyway, I think I figured it out. Tell me what you want changed (BG colour and/or text colour, mainly) and I'll see if I can get it to work.

And if you still dislike the battle mana colour, propose another.

Edit2:
Right now, made the fake choices have a slightly darker background and not light up on mouseover:

 

[Laxard]

Right now, made the fake choices have a slightly darker background and not light up on mouseover:

Yeah, it's enough.

And if you still dislike the battle mana colour, propose another.

Eh, try Deep Sky Blue
#00BFFF

 

[uterus]

i cant seem to get all the required virgins but i cant figure out who is missing.
i have the 4 human variants, alvar and dark alvar, beast girl, oni and fireling, homunculus, angel and demon (even fairy), huntress and mermaid.
who am i missing? dwarfs?

 

[Jman9]

i cant seem to get all the required virgins but i cant figure out who is missing.
...
who am i missing? dwarfs?

No dwarven women for you. If your list is right, it's an ice maiden who's missing.

Yeah, it's enough.

Made the text a triflle whiter, too. Bold looked bad, and size changes weren't particularly better, either.

Eh, try Deep Sky Blue

Too dull Not 'deep' enough to be magic. The closest non-'#0000FF' I found that was shiny enough for me was Bluebonnet. Which is not much of an improvement.

I guess I've been seduced by the electric shininess of 'programmer colours'. There is no going back now...

 

[Sabs249]

i cant seem to get all the required virgins but i cant figure out who is missing.
i have the 4 human variants, alvar and dark alvar, beast girl, oni and fireling, homunculus, angel and demon (even fairy), huntress and mermaid.
who am i missing? dwarfs?

Have the same Problem , have you already in your List Ice Maiden ?

 

[uterus]

no
i havnt even come across an ice maiden.
are they found in the mountains?

 

[Ambjorn187]

no
i havnt even come across an ice maiden.
are they found in the mountains?

yes, and sky.

 

[Malorn]

IDK. Endgame combat is way too easy, and the last review was very aggressive about there being <1% 'meaningful encounters'. Which was one of the catalysts for the sky hunting overhaul.

I would agree there, one can 'grow out' of certain events to the point where they are a waste of time (looking at you bunny). On the other hand, it's a nice reminder of your origins, and 5 food is hardly useless. I like that some events allow a 'shortcut' option after you reach certain sizes/power, to represent how easy some things have become.

Do keep in mind how far into the game one has to get to reach endgame, however. Midgame has a lot of threats, especially if you don't keep poverty quite high. I do think that poverty is a bit out of wack, since keeping it around 50 means that no meaningful resistance can be mounted against you. And it's when you reach the ability to keep poverty around 50 that you actually are strong enough to confront real resistance.

Maybe. Knights and thieves are supposed to be a major PITA.

Zero disagreement there, I just want them to be an interesting PITA. I don't generally like event chains that I know the outcome of before I start them, and with theives currently... I generally know what is going to happen before they show up, it's just how much money I will lose or which trap will slay them at that point. Uncertainly in outcome, even to small degrees, is what makes games engaging, at least from my perspective.

Well, you're supposed to rush up the quest tree if you feel the need to. Most quests that block a fundamental mechanic are relatively easy to complete. Maybe Scourge and Desolation are a little high on the quest tree, but milk farms and workshops aren't really necessary to progress. The Witch will be selling some milk, too.

Mom does tell you how, doesn't she? It's just that it currently requires insane amounts of grinding to do what she says.

Fortunately, both of these quests don't gate anything important and are just there to make you go looking.

Can you give more examples of quests that needlessly block you from something? I mean, doing quests is heavily incentivised for smaller dragons via XP awards. You should want to get them done ASAP if you're able to.

I think the largest problem was that I had no idea which quests gated what content, or which gated which other quests which then provided content. I assumed, in error, that the way to get better hatcheries was to follow the 'hatchery' line of quests, which was fire or ice hatcheries. Then I thought perhaps it was related to the 1000 spawn quest, since that involved a lot of breeding, and thus might logically provide better ways to breed. It was only after digging through the quest files in notepad++ that I realized I had been stupid, and just needed to trash the elves.

The issue is that quests that seem unrelated gate other quests which unlock things you need, while other quests seem related but don't actually matter. And not knowing which quests to complete to move towards you want makes progress unpleasant and more stabbing in the dark. I nearly had a demon invasion crash down on my head once because I could not for the life of me figure out which quest would unlock altars. I was down to 50- seals when I finally stumbled upon it. Basically, it's the sort of problem that wouldn't effect a veteran player or a dev, but will destroy anyone new to the game.

I've overhauled knight and thief progression. They now do their own thing regardless of whether the big D is sleeping or not, can be 'invited' and knights have a much bigger power range (see the screenshots). Whether it addresses your issues remains to be seen.

It sounds like it's aimed at a lot of the same problems I had.

What do you mean? If you get rid of a knight (either by killing, capturing or running away), you get a brand new, unupgraded knight. Well, exactly how unupgraded depends on your infamy, but currently they don't have a death squad anymore and will not be anywhere near maxed on equipment. Will change somewhat for high-infamy dragons, who will be attracting tougher challengers.

Sorry, I used the code for it. Knightd which have a 'kill' goal as opposed to 'free' goal do not ever retire, as far as I see. This means that it can be a horrid cycle of misery if you fail to take one out early, such as being caught when you were low on hp, so you had to flee. That is fine and quite reasonable, good gameplay. But then the knight wanders around for the next year powering up without letting you have another chance to fight him. Then say you get VERY unluckly and he catches you with low hp again, so you flee again. Then he spends another year leveling up while he looks for your lair, and by that point he is too powerful to have any chance of fighting... or so I thought. More on that in a moment.

You will hate the new knights. And you don't really need an endgame dragon. The toughest a current knight can be:
View attachment 1432790

Died all the same vs a huge, nonoptimised red dragon. The guy on the right was the MVP, and you only need an elfgirl (Hakim if nothing else), fire hatchery+ and 15 virility (impressive size + Strong Seed minimum).

I also tried four of the same maxed drakes, and still won (but lost three of them).

See... this screenshot tells me something that upsets me to an endless degree. It tells me that I can be a careful dragon who let's his minions die first against knights and other powerhouses. This upsets me because I have no idea how to do that. I thought the dragon was locked to the center position in combat? That is a huge balance shift. Is that part of the new WIP build you're working on? Or is this some ability I just never knew I had.

Joking aside, yeah, that changes a huge amount of my balance commentary, in both directions. The combat (with the exception of knights) felt quite balanced because the dragon was always at the center facing the worst the enemy could throw at them. It meant that no matter how good your minions were, you had to be able to take the damage and deal it out. Almost all fights put the strongest enemy in the center, just as with the knight above, so I assumed that was intention. If I can use minions as meat shields, I think I could probably handle almost anything the game threw at me, probably a bit too easily once you get a nice durable meatshield.

Knights were always a disaster because they often hit so hard that you couldn't wait them out even with healing and shielding magic. For example in the above, that would be a certain loss if your dragon was in the middle, I'd guess perhaps 5-6 rounds, maybe 7 with good magic and physical resistances. And there is no way that knight is dead by 7 rounds. You see my problem. But with meatshielding, that is quite doable. That means that I have had to flee fights that should be winnable. If this isn't the WIP version of the game, how in the world do you move your dragon. I tried doing that once just on reflex, and drag and drop didn't seem to work, then I just assumed that was how the game worked. (A lot of my combat feedback is obsolete if this is in the current version, because I was apparently facetanking when I didn't need to.)

Stealing is not a solution, it's a delaying tactic. I'm not sure about the current release, but when I last played, a smallish dragon could keep a knight nearly locked on the equipment front by having the bandits constantly harass him/her.

I think you have more money than I do. My knights often cost 90 a pop to harass, and you can't harass more then once per sleep, and then there is gathering the money (certainly doable, 14 actions can get a lot done, but the RNG can be cruel with giving out caravans to loot.). But yes, it shouldn't be a solution, it just seemed... well, not very useful overall as an option. But again, this might be effected by knights being impossible for me to kill due to the above combat center thing.

Exists in the WIP version. You can pay the smugglers to spread rumours of your lair's location to both knights and thieves. Has a cooldown, but no other downsides. I'm not sure what these would be, although I'd like to attach some cost to that. Ideas welcome.

Well, one drawback is that capturing these 'n00b' knights and thieves doesn't give you as good maidens. But that was always the case.

See, it's notable that I have never captured a knight or thief, that's how bad it got in my games, I didn't know you got maidens from them. I finally got to the point where I hid my lair so well they never found it, and that finally stopped all the misery. Which also was a balance oddity, or maybe my game broke. But they went more then 4 years without showing up, which I was happy about. But again, center combat thing may effect the milage...

As to downsides... my bet would be some advantage in being prepared. Basically to spread rumors about your lair, you need to give them information, so perhaps a extra opportunity to get loot, or more weighting of the loot towards your lair specifically? Something like that.

I must admit, I was kinda hoping to actually be able to challenge the knight directly, like fly up, roar at him, and then just let him follow me back. Would have a certain hilarity to it. Though this brings up a thing about knights... you never can run into them. It might be interesting if there was a low chance to run into knights when you went out to do things, since they are wandering around and adventuring. Sort of like the 'worst patrol outcome'. It'd be hilarious to sometimes have a knight come up and interrupt you chasing sheep around. Just a very low chance, obviously, but interesting when it happened. And an opportunity to catch a knight early in his career if luck favored you.

That's not the (full) problem. The problem is that both can just sit still on 99/100 progress and not roll the 'found lair' event, even if it becomes more likely. I've introduced a hierarchy of events (robbed or killed, lair rumours, progress from 99 knowledge, all others) to resolve the issue.

That would explain some things. I think that's a good solution.

When it comes to actually bypassing defences, you're right. I'll have her roll between 1.5 and 2.5 her level for that.

But otherwise, not really. The 'come back later' roll is excessively random and the 'wake up' rolls also have pretty high variance, 1/2 to full level.

Could always make it a little less random on coming back later. And I like the wake up rolls as they currently stand, just not the ones for deft hands/sleeping powder, since fear/power/size play ZERO roll in that.

Um, it provides 2*(10+2 per additional head). That means 60 for 11 gold heads. Even a Prince of Thieves is going to fail that over 50% of the time, and you get another roll every time she touches something.

Yeah, that was my math as well, but having 11 gold heads would be a problem in many other places in the game. Realistically 4 gold heads is already a huge investment,. It's more a scaling thing, you need X heads to do anything. It would be better if the gold heads had less influence, and other factors still got to play in.

Well, it's supposed to be. If she's excessively specialised in taking your shinies, you also need to be equally specialised to counter that particular trick. But you don't need to, since there are other ways of catching or getting rid of a thief.

And the issue is more that lvl 40+ thieves with deft hands and sleeping powder seem to be the only thieves I ever get. Seriously not joking there. It does seem like thieves can stack abilities without a limit, so it's not really specializing at that point. Again, I don't see this as a serious problem, since you can kill thieves for a very reasonable price (actually maybe too reasonable). But I rarely saw thieves that didn't have almost every ability after a surprisingly short period of time, often before they found my lair the first time.

It's not like the thief has to choose between being good at avoiding traps/guards/dragon. Most thieves seem to be perfect at nearly all of it at the same time.

My idea was that when the thief is actually in your inner sanctum, she's largely won. You're doing last-ditch damage control here. For deft hands and sleeping powder, the dragon is supposed to be so dormant that his fear aura and scary appearance don't affect the thief who 'knows' he's harmless for the moment.

Per item, which is nearly guaranteed failure over the whole encounter.

I kinda agree with your logic here, I would design it the same way. I'm just not sure that is how it plays out. Again, my thieves(and knights) seem to wait a long time and gather power before attacking. That means I don't see thieves under 30th level, even as a large dragon, and they seem to have almost all the abilities by that point.

I had one thief (admittedly level 45+) who wandered in and out of my lair 8 times, said lair had 100+ defenses, succubi/dragonspawn guards, and every single type of trap in multiples. She never failed to avoid them. Even my tentacle traps, which I had such hopes for, she just got 'lucky' every time. My two golden heads still failed me every time. I finally ordered her killed, which was sad because I really wanted to catch her. Then the next thief never found my lair until she was lvl 60, and it was sad.

That's a better idea I'll code in a random chance of 1/thief.level to step on the dragon's tail if he has at least 10k worth of treasure (not 10k gold, 10k 'nominal price' of everything, including eggs, raw materials, cash, etc). I'll also give her a 1% chance per 6 levels to succeed no matter the odds, 1% minimum. Thieves are annoyingly lucky.

Glad you like it. 10% maximum on something that has to be rerolled many times isn't unfair.

I like criticism. Praise doesn't improve things (much). Even if I write long posts detailing why I think the criticism is wrong. I do this so players can see my reasoning and find any weaknesses, not to put them down.

I'm kinda conflicted to hear this, because I've gone to great lengths to provide more food sources (another wildling village, eating more than a few animals from a herd, raiding villages specifically for food; whales are waiting to become a thing).

I'm excited to hear it. I guess I found the struggle for food interesting, so it felt in a good place. May I make a suggestion perhaps? With herds, it might not be a bad idea to let you choose to stay around if you aren't full to catch and eat more animals, but at the risk of patrols finding you or other interference happening. That might provide some balance in the system. If I had to say, it's early game food that is really rough, since you can't really get most of the food in the game. The deer run away from you, the rams jump away, and you can't really win fights with bulls. That means you live on rabbits, foxes, sheep, and if you're lucky and have goblins, perhaps pigs. (Or fish, but blue head required at that point, which is a cool balancing factor.)

Scrabbling for food, however, isn't really a bad thing in a lot of ways. Since food is realisitically the only limit on evolution (I've always had more xp then I knew what to do with). It means that low food doesn't mean you lose the game, it just means you don't progress as rapidly. Equally damage must be healed using food, stamina restored, etc.

It might be worth considering having some tiny-medium dragon size foods that get phased out as you enter larger sizes and powers. Like the rabbit. It might be reasonable to consider that a large+ dragon would never see a rabbit, because he was too big and terrifying. So maybe reverse gating some events to only smaller dragons wouldn't be a bad thing. That way you could provide more early food, perhaps with risks or fights. (Would be really interesting, for example, to have wolves or starving dogs come you after you killed some prey items, or the fox come and try to steal your rabbit.)

Again, more uncertain outcomes can benefit. So sometimes you kill a rabbit and eat it, and sometimes you kill a rabbit and a fox tries to drive you away. Or you kill a deer and sometimes wolves will come to try to claim your kill and you are forced to fight or flee. Anything to create more variation in outcome from a steady start.

Also... elk would be a really cool addition to the forest as more filling but also dangerous prey. And I like the idea of whales being a thing, that will be fun. Ditto raiding for food specifically.

::::

As part of a more long-term question, have you given any thought to creating more permanent tributary relationships with human villages, etc. The dragon is certainly capable of such an arrangement, and it appeals to the classic fantasy of 'a village which every month must provide a virgin to the dragon.' Something similar can happen with the alves, which I thought was a very cool event. The idea of the dragon being unable to break his word, despite being completely evil, offers some interesting options if developed in other areas.

Perhaps at a certain point in poverty you might have human refugees willing to settle near the dragon and provide him regular tribute in exchange for protection (mostly from the dragon, but perhaps from other forces as well.) It could also be worked into one-off events such as a maiden offering to lead the dragon to treasure so long as she is spared. Offering the player a choice between treasure or breeding. Or hell, even in theory maiden's bargaining with their own virginity, if they want something badly enough. We already see that with the niece and duchess, who do seem to come out well by the bargain. Might be interesting to have an event where a maiden seeks out the dragon to provide him her virginity in exchange for revenge or somesuch.

While the dragon should, I agree, be evil and a monster, part of dragon lore has been the idea of deals being possible. And certainly the dragon as he is shown in the game does make quite a few deals, and keeps them in almost all cases.

 

[Laxard]

Might be interesting to have an event where a maiden seeks out the dragon to provide him her virginity in exchange for revenge or somesuch.

I remember something about game having alternative ending (tied to the de Ad questline?) where Dragon is fallen in love with some elf, saved her life and they becoming new gods of the world.
Not sure what to think about your idea of dragon being honest thought. They tend to be sneaky pieces of lying shit, even when shown as wise.

 

[Jman9]

Good feedback here!

I do think that poverty is a bit out of wack, since keeping it around 50 means that no meaningful resistance can be mounted against you.

Even 100 poverty only takes away 10 mobilization out of up to 20. And high poverty downscales a lot of encounter rewards and wastes your time with the 'poverty' encounters. Maybe there are more fine-grained issues, but I don't see anything very wrong with poverty.

...it's just how much money I will lose or which trap will slay them at that point.

Then randomising defence/trap rolls and getting them to come earlier (by mandating 'lair found at 99 knowledge' and making larger dragons not 'sleep-block' their progress) should make them more interesting.

I assumed, in error, that the way to get better hatcheries was to follow the 'hatchery' line of quests, which was fire or ice hatcheries.

Yeah, hatcheries are not telegraphed. It'll be even worse now that I have two intro hatcheries unlocked by quests, but not the others.

Not sure what to do about it, either. Except for making giant lairs more common, and thus raising the chance of the player getting a hatchery from there and figuring out that this is the way to get new ones. I doubt people read Mom's briefings or tips all that carefully.

The issue is that quests that seem unrelated gate other quests which unlock things you need, while other quests seem related but don't actually matter.

How so? I mean, most quests chains have some sort logic to them. Size quests. Make a good lair -> Get offspring -> Get offspring to make a village -> Get lots of/special offspring. Rampage -> Fortify the lair -> Rampage more / Catch intruders. Some jumps are kinda unintuitive, but, well, the Mistress is female. She's fickle.

I nearly had a demon invasion crash down on my head once because I could not for the life of me figure out which quest would unlock altars.

Well, she does say "Prepare yourself by doing the tasks I give you." So you do as many as you can. The quest that unlocks altars comes much earlier now than it did originally, after just three quests.

Knightd which have a 'kill' goal as opposed to 'free' goal do not ever retire, as far as I see.

Hmm, that was actually not intended and didn't even work like that (all knights always retired), but it's a good idea. I'll extend the mechanic so that only maiden-freeing knights who actually free some maidens retire. Dragon-slayers, blue-balled paladins and sluts (yes, you can have a 'slut vow' now; happens after you release a female knight after capturing her) will be relentless.

You have only yourself to blame for this.

This means that it can be a horrid cycle of misery if you fail to take one out early...

Well, you're supposed to keep a low profile until you can handle one. I'll hold onto the current mechanics for now, since knights got changed to start much weaker. If they're still OP, maybe I'll fiddle with difficulty settings.

...facetanking when I didn't need to.

See... this screenshot tells me something that upsets me to an endless degree. It tells me that I can be a careful dragon who let's his minions die first against knights and other powerhouses.
...
Is that part of the new WIP build you're working on? Or is this some ability I just never knew I had.

It's been in the game since... forever. Clicking on 'hero cards' in the active party moves the dragon back one position. You can do any kind of sorting with that and carefully adding/removing minions.

It is kind of hidden, although I didn't have trouble finding it myself when I first played, because I habitually try to interact with anything in a game. But the criticism is valid, and most places have sorting buttons now, including party management:


I've also added Big Brother coming in after a week in your first game ever and telling you to let the others take the hits.

If I can use minions as meat shields, I think I could probably handle almost anything the game threw at me, probably a bit too easily once you get a nice durable meatshield.

Which is why I nerfed minions, especially Homunculi, and plan to make some tougher enemies.

Although do remember that there are harder difficulty levels which boost enemies and weaken the dragon. A lot. And minions who are not juiced to the gills via torture aren't quite as good.

I think you have more money than I do. My knights often cost 90 a pop to harass, and you can't harass more then once per sleep...

I might, but the thing is, robbing them costs less when they're weak, so constant robbery is both more effective and cheaper.

I did say smallish dragon, because big ones indeed have it much worse due to long sleep cycles. But they can at least aspire to beat the knight in open combat, or stack traps/guards to weaken the party. My screenshot had the knight weakened quite a bit just from some random debug minions and traps.

...it just seemed... well, not very useful overall as an option.

Even for a big dragon, managing to steal e.g. the Dragon-Slaying Lance or Mirrored Shield so he won't have it in combat is pretty huge. A knight is not guaranteed an equipment levelup during the next sleep cycle.

...the RNG can be cruel with giving out caravans to loot.

You can hunt all the caravans that exist once your dragon is level 25+. Well, you may have to kill some patrols first. And sky hunting is excessively powerful for that ATM.

...I have never captured a knight or thief... I didn't know you got maidens from them.

indeed.

I finally got to the point where I hid my lair so well they never found it, and that finally stopped all the misery. Which also was a balance oddity...

Again, my thieves(and knights) seem to wait a long time and gather power before attacking.

It's an artefact of them only getting one event per sleep cycle, long sleeps and the ability to hover at 99 knowledge for pretty much ever. Which are both changed now. I tried to make them come roughly... six months when starting from zero, I think? But the variance is still pretty huge due to all the random rolls.

As to downsides...
...extra opportunity to get loot, or more weighting of the loot towards your lair specifically?

That would defeat the purpose of this mechanic, since the goal is to "get them while they're young".

I really have no good ideas here, since most penalties I could think of (infamy, boosting this or future knights, siccing the King on you after several sessions) would make the whole thing not worth it.

I must admit, I was kinda hoping to actually be able to challenge the knight directly, like fly up, roar at him, and then just let him follow me back. Would have a certain hilarity to it.

Well, there's a random event where you do that. The one that gives the knight the 'Liberator' ability.

But the idea is that it's really difficult to find a single person in the whole Kingdom. The smugglers don't actually find the knight, they wait until (s)he hits a tavern and asks for info. But the big guy can't really stake out a tavern for weeks on end.

It might be interesting if there was a low chance to run into knights...

Fluff-wise, same problem as before. But the real reason is that there are actually three different combat environments in the game, normal, Darkwood and, you guessed it, knights invading lairs. I'm too lazy to try to refactor the whole mess, and adding the knight as part of the Final Battle cured me of any desire to put the bugger anywhere else.

You can console yourself with the tourney champions and road knights, I guess.

Could always make it a little less random on coming back later. And I like the wake up rolls as they currently stand, just not the ones for deft hands/sleeping powder, since fear/power/size play ZERO roll in that.

And the issue is more that lvl 40+ thieves with deft hands and sleeping powder seem to be the only thieves I ever get.

I made both defense and 'come back' rolls 1.5-2.5*[thief level]. Deft hands/sleep powder are supposed to make dragon stats not matter. When thieves start coming in earlier and without all the abilities, I think it'll make more sense.

Realistically 4 gold heads is already a huge investment.
It would be better if the gold heads had less influence...

The thing is, 11 gold heads are a very specific build. One that's not really tailored to keep thieves away, because there are other ways to do that, notably just killing them off. And thieves don't really hurt you that badly, they're kinda like dragon taxes.

What lots of gold heads give you is the ability to reliably capture very high-level thieves. Who are one of the extremely rare sources of demonettes. So once you have enough captured thieves, you respec to whatever else you want to do.

I had one thief (admittedly level 45+) who wandered in and out of my lair 8 times, said lair had 100+ defenses, succubi/dragonspawn guards, and every single type of trap in multiples.

Even my tentacle traps, which I had such hopes for, she just got 'lucky' every time.

Traps and guards need to be stacked into a single type to have an effect. If you just rebuilt all your traps as tentacle traps, it might have turned out differently.

This is also why I'm giving traps their own size limit separate from other buildings, because constructing lots of traps is just a waste of space right now.

With herds, it might not be a bad idea to let you choose to stay around if you aren't full to catch and eat more animals, but at the risk of patrols finding you or other interference happening.

Good idea, done. There's now a random roll against mobilization to see if a patrol finds the dragon having a long meal. I think I won't let them interrupt the feeding, because the 0.5-1 extra action penalty is already pretty bad.

That means you live on rabbits, foxes, sheep, and if you're lucky and have goblins, perhaps pigs.

I usually live on (small) village food and use sheep or pigs to stock up for buildings or other satiety-intensive activities.

Also, pretty sure a (non-center!) starter dragon and four goblins can take on most pig herds.

As an aside, I just got reminded that minions can desert even from your active squad. I'm not sure I dislike it, made for a chuckle when the baby dragon showed up to raid a herd and discovered half his 'army' was AWOL.

Scrabbling for food, however, isn't really a bad thing in a lot of ways. Since food is realisitically the only limit on evolution (I've always had more xp then I knew what to do with).

I don't disagree, although I haven't played far enough to have such a surplus of XP. Might have to do with the fact that one of my last extended games was on impossible. And you can always speed things up with multiple evolutions if you have too much XP and food.

...damage must be healed using food...

I usually go to the Witch. It's costly, but much faster. Buying her rituals is also a good way to get some combat power.

It might be worth considering having some tiny-medium dragon size foods...
It might be reasonable to consider that a large+ dragon would never see a rabbit, because he was too big and terrifying.

But... I just made it possible to eat, lemme check... up to 12 bunnies at once. If there are enough bunnies around, of course.

And rabbits do get hard to hunt with 10+ fear. Most forest animals (and also sea and mountain hunts) have such a threshold. Not all of this is in the release version, but at least some is.

Basically, I think the mod already has enough 'small dragon food'. All these effin' goosegirls, rabbits, foxes, starving dogs, lonely/abandoned farms and whatnot. It's always been the big dragons who had trouble filling their (now huge) satiety meters. Maybe all the surplus food means I should bump up their metabolic rates. But since I also have a new feature that makes evolution slower if your hoard is too small (the dragon is tormented by shame and gets insomnia ), I won't do anything radical for now.

Would be really interesting, for example, to have wolves or starving dogs come you after you killed some prey items, or the fox come and try to steal your rabbit.

While a hilarious idea, predators aren't that stupid. I'll put it down as something I might come back to one day, but it's going straight to the bottom of the list.

Also... elk would be a really cool addition to the forest as more filling but also dangerous prey.

That niche is filled by boars and now also eating deer herds. While I'm not against it as such, there's more pressing new content I want to do.

As part of a more long-term question, have you given any thought to creating more permanent tributary relationships with human villages, etc.

Yes. The answer is "NO!". Or more specifically: "Minions can't have agency." Because then minions (dragonspawn or human) will need to be inserted everywhere, and this turns from a mod into a whole new game. One I wouldn't mind playing, but would take eons to make. This has been discussed several times.

...classic fantasy of 'a village which every month must provide a virgin to the dragon.'

This is kind of simulated by showing up in person dragon and demanding a virgin. The trope dragon also tends to come and collect the virgin himself.

The idea of the dragon being unable to break his word...
...the dragon as he is shown in the game does make quite a few deals, and keeps them in almost all cases.

They tend to be sneaky pieces of lying shit, even when shown as wise.

Actually, kind of agree with Laxard and like that he can break his word. I went and changed the forest event so that he can, at the expense of +5 mobilization. Or will, if he's currently frenzied.

I think the dragon can do as he wishes during the de'Ad storyline, and is not bound to anything. Isabella and Marianne are kind of a middle ground. Breaking your word about the payment doesn't really change anything, since the alternative was capturing (and sexing) them anyway.

What else is there?


On the 'sneaky pieces of lying shit', it's a matter of perspective. Dragons are very inhuman characters. Would you keep a promise to a housefly? Also, lots of literary dragons do keep their word. But they've either been hit with the Lawful Good nerf bat, or tend to interpret their 'word' somewhat differently from what mortals assume to be the case.

I remember something about game having alternative ending (tied to the de Ad questline?) where Dragon is fallen in love with some elf, saved her life and they becoming new gods of the world.

Yes, that's the third ending. Probably the easiest of the three to get, too. Although I don't think there's any real love involved, and they kinda fuck up the world in the process.

...a maiden offering to lead the dragon to treasure so long as she is spared.
...a maiden seeks out the dragon to provide him her virginity in exchange for revenge or somesuch.

Interesting ideas, but not really central to the 'dragon rape sim' experience. And I already have a whole bunch of ideas that need implementation (and motivation ).

...part of dragon lore has been the idea of deals being possible.

Sure. I can see all kinds of events going in that direction. But the core of the game is being a big, bad, rampaging sex-crazed dragon, and these are peripheral to that. More importantly, I haven't updated in 11 months, and that's because I set myself some (much less lofty!) goals and promptly drowned myself in things that started to look like work after a while.

 

[lordaran]

hi so i just downloaded the game and extracted it and when i try to launch the game it doesn't open like no error whatsoever it just doesn't open but my mouse shows it's loading but it never opens even when i open it multiple times any of you could help me please? thank you!