Defender's Quest DX release is imminent

#8

Ways to potentially improve dragons:

Dragons get gradually stronger with each kill they make per battle. The sooner you can plunk them down, the better.

Dragons start with both a melee and fire ranged attack? The skill for the first ranged attack just powers the ranged attack up.

Dragon fireball actually splashes and ignites foes in an AoE around the target. Single-target fire makes it not worthwhile in a lot of later stages. Weirdly, Fireball in DQDX says ā€˜Splash: 0 dmg, 0 tilesā€™ like fireball was intended to splash? Fire Breath doesnā€™t have that text.

On a side note, I got a Null Object Reference crash when just moving across the world map. That wasā€¦ odd. Canā€™t get it to repeat either.

#9

Niru could be improved in early game by having 1 point assigned in Epic Halitosis (Niru is 1 skill point shorter when you recruit her anyway). Dragons could also have a less steep stat curve by increasing their attack in early levels or by increasing their speed by a tiny bit.

#10

Fireball IS intended to splash. It should do that in the original game, does it not in DQDX? If no, please file a bug report so I remember to fix it.

#11

Fire Ball says 0 dmg and 0 tiles if it has no points assigned to it.

#12

My 100% save Niru had 9 points in it, 0/0. I reset her points, pumped it up, still stuck at 0/0. It says itā€™ll increase when you try to, but it doesnā€™t. Iā€™ll file a report.

Oh, ManDude already did. Oops.

#13

Congrats Lars! Really looking forward to the release

Wow - the new overworld looks gorgeous :open_mouth: Amazing work!

My votes on feedback items:

Hero Mode 100%

Actually @Ethan recently achieved this, and it is impressive.

My vote is to leave the game as-is. You can currently get all-but-3 stars pretty easily. The remaining ones are tough but technically possible :wink: This gives very dedicated players something to shoot for and feel proud of, so mission accomplished.

Leaving it alone also means we avoid the discussion of whether you ā€œreallyā€ got 100% because you did it in DQDX rather than the original with all of the original math and settings.

Plus - leaving the game alone means no extra work for you :wink:

Buff dragons

My vote is to leave this alone as well. That avoids discussions about whether it alters the ā€œvalueā€ and difficulty of achievements from the original game to DQDX. You donā€™t have to do any re-balancing or figure out all of the effects it might have on game difficulty. Plus the game is modable, so if anyone really wants more powerful dragons they can mod for that :slight_smile:

It also means no extra work for you :wink:

Congrats again, and good luck with the rest!

#14

YES!!! Canā€™t wait to replay this fantastic game. Thanks!

#15

Well, as it turns out forum dwellers have been doing an amazing job posting lots of last minute critical bugs, so time alone may dictate my choices here :slight_smile: Glad to hear 100% hero mode is actually possible, gotta read that thread now!

And yes, avoiding any gripes on the steam page is a pretty big priority for meā€¦ so Iā€™m still not sure what Iā€™ll do in the end, but I do see the wisdom in ā€œdonā€™t fix whatā€™s not broken.ā€

I am still going to go forward on making super low level recruits level up faster, though, and making new recruits come in at some sensible level. The old implementation seems like a pure drag that nobody will miss.

#16

I definitely agree about dragons having a balance issue. IMO, their only useful contributions were Halitosis and Roar. I found the fire damage not very useful due to use of ice mages to control the field, but Roar + Ice mages was fun for keeping enemies still. Itā€™d be nice if there was some way they could follow up by doing area damage, like a higher level ā€œTail Swipeā€ that is a Whirlwind-type attack. You could then modify that to ā€œimpaleā€ with tail spikes, doing bleed damage, or ā€œthick platesā€ for a knockback effect. That would combine some of the best parts of the other classes, making them worth the extra cost. But Iā€™m not a super experienced tower-defense gamer, so I donā€™t know how balanced that would be XD

#17

Iā€™m ridiculously excited. This game hit all my buttons; even where I would get bored with other tower defense games, this would just kept building. Thank you!

On a different note, would there be any interest in a Latin translation of the game? I doubt it would be marketable, but I have a PhD in Latin and Greek and could definitely put one together :slight_smile:

#18

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Did the characters become a lot less expressive, or were the same old/new poses not used?

Top Ketta: Sassy/sarcastic eye roll.
Bottom Ketta: A little uncomfortable.

Top Slak: Buff Superman hero posing.
Bottom Slak: Just hanginā€™. Chillinā€™.

#19

If youā€™re unhappy with the HD version you can always switch to old cutscenes. :V

#20

Speaking of minor rebalances, Crystal Patch is veryā€¦ odd. It puts a crystal on the 8 surrounding tiles around Azra, if theyā€™re free. The problem is that almost all levels have 1-2 free tiles for crystals, making it never worth a book slot.

Seems like it would be better if it did any other number of things:

  • Spawn # crystals at random locations around the level.
  • Your first # crystals are free to place, donā€™t auto-explode and have no energy cost.
  • Crystals no longer auto-explode, must be zapped, but spawn as large crystals.
  • Every # seconds a crystal forms in one of the eight slots around Azra, if any tiles are available to grow on.

Might be too close to the deadline for things like this, though.

#21

One thing with crystal patch is that thereā€™s no cooldown for the crystals placed on start, whereas there is for crystals summoned with a spell.

#22

So, uh, I have a strange request.

I would like the option to recruit units at level 1 and the absence penalty to remain as an option. Maybe for a terrible reason, but, hear me out:

Healer Grenades

I never realized how amazing the Explosive End book was! A character dies and it blows up surrounding enemies for 5-6k damage a pop! Imagine what I could do with 5 15 HP healer grenades peppering the battlefield being continuously blown up! :smiley: Ahahahaā€¦ am I going to hell?

#23

I think thatā€™s still a viable strategy even with the changes, defenders donā€™t cost more when they level up. Funny role playing scenario, though.

On another note ā€“ whatā€™s the consensus on the ā€œH-Bombā€ exploit? Itā€™s the kind of clever trick that I feel like rewarding by leaving it in, but it also kinda breaks the game :stuck_out_tongue:

That said, itā€™s widely considered ā€œcheatingā€ and we have a confirmed 100% hero mode completed without it, so I donā€™t feel super compelled to remove it unless those of you out there with a strong compulsive streak have a good argument otherwise.

#24

Our policy on fan translations is that if someone is crazy enough to make one, weā€™ll put it in the game and do the integration work and QA pass to make sure all the UI & stuff is lined up. I have a lot of friends who are classics majors so they would get a kick out of this.

That said, are you sure? This game has as much text as a small novel, itā€™s not small task :stuck_out_tongue:

But if you wanna give it a whack, Iā€™m planning on getting a streamlined fan translation interface up that connects github and google docs, so translators can just work in a friendly online spreadsheet, and then it syncs to a programmer-friendly github repo that tracks all the changes atomically.

#25

Itā€™s less a matter of them costing more and more that they gain HP when they level up. A level 1 healer will die to any late game enemy in one blow and boom, level 60 canā€™t be used as one-hit-boom grenades.

This feels like a viable strategy, since it canā€™t be endlessly spammed in pause mode. Explosive Start just feels cheap and boring, but I wouldnā€™t say it needs deleting.

#26

Ah, I see.

Yeah, I might consider getting around to that, just got a whole bunch of other things on the list to do first.

#27

Another balance suggestion:

This is what the majority of people experience during their first battle with Zelemir. He gets built up as this powerful dude for half the game and then you pound him down like a chump just by having a few defenders on him.

It seems like he ought to have a Summoning Shield to protect him for at least a little while. Starts at 100%, blocks 100% of damage. Every enemy that dies reduces the shield by 1%, allows 1% of damage to be done. Breaks entirely after the hundredth enemy being killed.

Itā€™s always seemed a shame that Zelemir should lose so pitifully there.