Newcomer's Thoughts on AT

[SirGrindsalot]

Hello guys, lurking lurker unlurks!

So i'm new-ish to Andor's Trail, been playing it for a couple weeks steady now, although i'm an old school PnP DM/GM so ofc i feel entitled to tell everyone what's good and bad (joke).

Anyway, here's my thoughts on AT;

1) great game.

2) great writing, when i first started i thought "omg, not another JRPG where i have to find my brother" but it turns out AT has better characters and quests than any JRPG. IMHO it's pretty easy to side with The Shadow rather than Feygard, but i don't think that makes it one-plotline only; my thoughts here are "Andor .. dude. you've been away for a couple days and you've managed to kill a bunch of people, fall in with the wrong crowd, and go through a whole bunch of monsters - mom was right saying you're no good".

3) balancing issues.

the beginning of the game is a lot slower exp-wise until you manage to make it through BWM, where the money is - once you get your DR up to 3 and AC to a decent rating, you can grind snakes forever. BWM from bottom to the teleport will net you 14k exp and 2k gold plus drops.
before then, grinding snakes can be a real pain.

legendary items aren't really worth it as i see it; i'm trying for a RoL now but at the rate at which Imps spawn, it's going to take me about 30-40 days of dedicated grinding, given an average of 11 imps every 3 minutes if you let them all respawn, or slightly less if you just keep moving about in the same room.

atm the mob that pays the most is the stone giants (no idea what they are called, but are around the brutes) on the Remgard bridges, at 407xp per kill; compared to other non-unique mobs, these guys are pathetic and 4-5 minutes of grinding pay 20k exp at the cost of maybe 2 BMP.

so sure the RoL is great, but i don't see how it can compete with 30-40 extra levels. With DR10, 100% BC and a stack of BMP against mob criticals, it's ridiculously easy to rack up 4-5 levels a day; maybe down to 1 level a day once you get to lev 150, but a player spending that much time to get a RoL with a lev 30-40 toon would otherwise wind up lev 80+ if he were to dedicate the same time to plain grinding, and let's face it, grinding along the Remgard coast is far less boring than staying in the same room for an hour or more, especially with the dark background and dark red colour of the imps.

grinding can be an issue for play continuity as well; i followed the questline as a good RPG player would, grinded a couple levels in the rat/snake caves at first "to give me an edge, i foolishly thought", and eventually found myself STUCK ON BWM as you do, then had to grind my way down with no potions (thank you Regeneration!).
With new content on the way, i'm curious to see if there will be new midrange areas to explore or if it will all be "Remgard and higher", and with such low exp coming from quests, i don't really think it's possible to play all this game without some grinding being forced.

The reasoning behind this "complaint" is that if a player is allowed to more or less just follow the storyline, then the designers can pretty much decide how much gold and exp he will have, making grinding something that simply gives you a lil'bit more. Instead, when faced with forced grinding (say, you've got a DR/BC build and are trying to kill Plaguestriders, or those regenerating mobs, and you can't hit them for the life of you), you soon amass vast amounts of cash which in the end will all go to buy BMPs; which for example, makes my Regeneration skill now completely useless. I haven't used regen in 20+ levels, and even if the skill will now pay 1hp per round, i fail to see how it can compete with mobs dealing 60hp dmg per round; also, 51 gold is really little... atm i have 1k BMPs and 50k gold, every basic item in the game.

Thing is, this isn't because i grinded really hard; i hardly could have made it past those Plaguestrides without boosting my AC. And i could not have made it past those regenerating mobs if i didn't have high BC ... etc. Except a few runs up'n'down BWM to test my DR5 build, i didn't really do any "extra" grinding if not what i needed to actually progress with the quests; i'v finished Remgard two days ago.



Anyway, great game. reminds me of good ol' Wasteland.

[Meirerion]

First, welcome to the forums and thank you for your opinion, it helps the game much.

The problem of the quest not giving enough xp was being discussed at the last Devs Meeting I think.
My suggestion is that the experience given at the end of a quest should vary depending of your level.

[Tomcat]

First, welcome to the forums and thank you for your opinion, it helps the game much.

The problem of the quest not giving enough xp was being discussed at the last Devs Meeting I think.
My suggestion is that the experience given at the end of a quest should vary depending of your level.

I'd rather see the quest reward be simply a function of the quest difficulty. Finding four sheep is finding four sheep, and killing a big boss is easier for a high level character, not harder, so why reward more? Remember that in the final game, you won't need to kill time waiting for new quests, so helping a level 100 reach 101 faster should not be necessary .. just look for more quests, until you've beaten the game.