Feedback after 30 hours

Wicked Feedback
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1

The Madrigal brings salvation to our sickened island!

I’d like to provide some feedback after “finishing” the early access content currently available.

I’m 32 years old, have a toddler and I am missing one finger from my keyboard hand due to a workplace accident. To set the stage and mindset.

Difficulty

Initially the game is difficult due to the steep learning curve. I haven’t played any soulslike games and don’t really enjoy those. But here it feels so satisfying learning a fight and the dopamine hit when you defeat a boss feels so rewarding.

However the game becomes too easy after your initial struggles at the mariners keep. Darak took only a couple of tries and so did the Twins.

I understand it’s an early access game. But the enemies need to be scaled to the player level at all times. I went through the content too fast when the normal mobs didin’t provide any challenge at all. And I feel like in this game you’d want the journey to be what matters, not the destination.

Especially with a lot of the modifiers not working, atk speed etc. The game will become even easier once those are fixed. Tier 1 mariners keep with no gear has the best balance at the moment.

Parrying could be made easier to react to, I found just dodging provided me with better oppoturnities to backstab and control the fight than gambling on being able to parry.
I understand it can’t be made too easy. But I found I didin’t really use parry unless a daily quest requested me to do so. Maybe needs some tweaks.

Sacrament

I personally like the time gated content, feels rewarding ending a day / play session knowing you have stuff brewing in the background. Obviously this is a bit biased as I have a lot of responsibilities in real life. But for me leaving my character at Carolines Tavern or setting a few of the traders to upgrade feel rewarding and cozy. And I’m in no hurry.

I want the game to provide months or even years of content. That I don’t want to end too abruptly. But this is more to do with the player character becoming too powerful quickly in the EA and you breezing through the content.

Also I wish the public speaker woman would be available even when you progress the story. I grew accustomed to her yelling in the town square, and she delivers her line like she fkin means it.

Also I’d like if you’d need refined materials to upgrade the buildings, felt too easy to just farm the materials and depositing them to the Master Builder. Would add another layer of immersion if you had to refine them either with the traders or at your own house.

Crafting

Crafting needs to be rebalanced. I wanted so badly to craft items, but the game showered me with new items from mobs that I really didn’t need to. And the crafting costs were gatekeeping being able to craft anything really.

When you consider the crafted item might become crap quality when enchanted and just sold.

Items

I started building a dexterity focused character (As I usually play the thief type in roleplaying games), and quickly realized having sporting light armour was just a detriment. Now I’m running dual daggers with full plate armour.

I only dress in leather when in town to play more into my Class fantasy. But this needs to be looked at. Currently for me there are no positives equipping anything below plate as with some points in Equip Load you can run in full plate with the normal speed. To be still able to dodge roll.

Also healing on damage done is pretty broken with fast weapons currently. Maybe needs an overhaul as to not make the game too easy.

Some Plagued items currently have negligible downsides. Durability Halved, Experience gain Reduced, Experience loss on death.
Are really not that big of a deal, making the items super powerful. Needs to be looked at.

Rings are too powerful. Maybe just 2 ring slots would be enough? Also not gatekeeped by ichor. Player power never should be gatekeeped. The other ichor upgrades are fine.

Recipes And Runes

Need a tooltip explanation of what the recipe food/Rune does.

Inventory Space

I didin’t really have problems with the inventory space after I unlocked the player housing. Before that it was a bit of a chore, but not too bad as people make it out to be. People nowadays want everything to be without hiccups.

There’s a huge dopamine hit reward after you unlock your house and couple of ichors for more space in the inventory.

Maybe having 5 more slots in each section would ease out the burden before you unlock your own house?

Death

After patching the durability. There is no downsides to death other than missed material costs for consumables. Maybe need to look upping the durability loss again and making repair cost way more.

Story

Can’t wait for more!

Art

Superb

I’ll update this feedback when anything else comes to mind! Really love the game and want it to succeed!

Edit: Death, Plagued items, Tooltips

2

Agree with all your points.

Same, I basically only use my alchemy table, and only to make bombs and stamina potions.

Light weight needs a bit of a buff imo. Heavy weight gets the shoulder charge, as well as being able to be an absolute beast. Light weight gets a quickstep instead of a roll… I played light weight until mids 20s and then switched to medium and felt like a god, lol. The quickstep doesn’t seem any better than medium roll, it’s a problem.

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I read your feedback for some inspiration aswell. You have great points mate!

How do you feel about the difficulty?

I didin’t even craft any alchemy items as when you get to the crucible the droprates are insane. The crucible should be nerfed especially with the droprates.

4

Difficulty seems really inconsistent.

Ranges from pulling out your hair frustrating early on, to suddenly being a walk in a park. Some of this is to be expected with learning curve and progression.

Though, I think it’s hard to gauge difficulty at this point because we most likely don’t have the full content (even in terms of this act).

I know there was a point before the second boss I felt like I hit a wall, seemed like every hit from normal mobs was chunking away 80%+ (this could have been because I was adamant to sticking with light armor though). I started another realm and was able to stroll through the beginning, then when I got up to where I was in the previous realm, I felt like I was where I needed to be level-wise.

Again, this is probably due to missing quests that likely would have resulted in that extra level or two I needed.

After that, things were more or less a comfortable difficulty for me. I think bosses are bit easy, but no clue how to make them any tougher without making them a slog.

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5

Agree, hit the same wall with light armour as you did. But after it was easy/moderate at max.

I wonder if player power creep needs to be toned down instead of making bosses harder?

Maybe add more HP to the normal mobs as the game progresses. Or reduce the power creep with stats and gear.

Maybe remove level requirements alltogether from gear and make the stat increases not so substantial. Would help with leveling up alts etc aswell, while not making the game too easy.

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