Feedback after playing the game 30h+

Wicked Feedback
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No Rest for the Wicked – First Impressions (Critique Only)

This review focuses solely on negative aspects and issues I encountered during my first playthrough of No Rest for the Wicked. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad game – in fact, I had many positive experiences – but I want to highlight the things I believe could use improvement, balancing, or bug fixing.

If any dev reads this, feel free to take from it what you want.

Crafting & Equipment Progression

  • The cook in the city is too expensive, which makes him practically useless early on.
  • Weapon upgrade paths seem random.
  • Some weapons need rare stuff like bear claws early, while others can reach level 9 using only copper, iron, and silver bars.
  • Crafting weapons requires materials that are too hard to get.
  • By the time you’ve gathered them, you’ve probably already found a stronger weapon in the world.
  • No in-game explanation for certain effects.
  • For example: What does Plague Infusion or the Plague Affliction do exactly?
  • Fallen Ember re-enchanting feels tedious.
  • Too many effects rely on specific conditions like backstabbing, dodging, or staggering. This limits viable builds.
  • Heavy armor isn’t giving enough defense.
  • The cost/reward feels bad. Investing heavily into Equip Load grants only a few % of damage reduction.
  • Durability loss on death serves no purpose other than to annoy the player – especially since 90% of my deaths were from gravity.
  • No transmog feature.
  • You’re forced to look goofy because most gear doesn’t match unless you wear the full set.
  • The 40-slot all-items chest doesn’t have enough space to hold all crafting materials.
  • You’re forced to split mats into multiple chests – very annoying.

Exploration & World Design

  • No fast backtracking other than teleporting to your last used Whisper.
  • Gathering animations are too long, even with better tools.
  • No potion or mechanic to increase movement speed.
  • Lowland Meadows is confusing and hard to navigate, with lots of dead ends.
  • Bad visuals can soft-lock you.
  • Sometimes you just don’t see chests or pickups because they blend into the environment.
  • Example: The Windmill Key in Lowland Meadows can easily be missed because the shimmer effect is barely visible.
  • Marin Woods (SW of the village) has random enemy respawns.
  • Isometric camera leads to unclear 3D jumps.
  • No indication when an enemy approaches from below the camera – South is a blind spot that got me into trouble multiple times.
  • Marin Village NPC faces are missing on the map.

Mechanics & UI

  • Shield stats are confusing.
  • What does the number next to the shield mean?
  • Why doesn’t my shield block 100% damage?
  • The upgrade path is unclear.
  • It’s not always obvious what’s better.
  • Too many cloth/leather crafting mats that don’t differentiate enough.
  • No easy respec option.
  • If you try out a build and it doesn’t work, you can’t finish the Crucible – softlocking your character.
  • Crucible scales with your level.
  • If you tackle it early, it’s easier. If you wait, enemies get extremely high HP, stagger resistance, and damage.
  • Example: I focused on Strength and had a strong 2h weapon, but still needed 5–10 hits for trash enemies, while they could two-shot me.
  • If I built tankier, I would’ve needed 20–30 hits per enemy, which is even worse.
  • Level cap at 30.
  • After level 20, enemies scale harder, but you barely get stronger.
  • I’d love a feature that lets you cap your level (e.g., at 20) to avoid being punished for leveling.

Bosses & Combat Issues

  • Some enemies stop mid-fight to drink from a bottle – super easy to backstab them.
  • Caretaker boss is missing a visual indicator for how big the explosion is.
  • Boar rampage can stunlock you, and it continues to hit you while you’re on the ground.
  • The Silent Huntress boss has same issue.
  • Her slam knocks you down, and before you can get up, you’re hit again – basically a stun lock.
  • Double AOE bombs feel unfair, especially if you’re already out of stamina.
  • Some attack animations are way too fast.
  • Example: Bears have 0.1s attacks with no visual warning.
  • Attack hitboxes don’t always match the visuals.
  • Sometimes your character won’t jump, grab walls, or climb down.
  • Getting stuck in a corner because an enemy pushes you into it happens more often than it should.

Final Thoughts

After level 20, it feels like your character is getting weaker, not stronger, due to enemy scaling.
Without a respec system, fast travel, or transmog, the game starts to feel punishing in ways that aren’t fun – even though the world and gameplay do have lots of promise.

Dunno if I want to continue at the moment because the Silent Huntress Boss has the bear attack set (which is super annoying, like the rune bears in Elden Ring)

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Overall, good feed back.

The game is in an interesting spot at the moment.. as many of your issues have been addressed by the team along with potential “solutions” on the way.

IE: Stat system overhaul into a Job System.

They’ve also posted a teaser for the upcoming Hotfix 4 and Patch 1, which might perk your interest. (featuring Stardew Valley styled farming/crafting and a “native rune” system to help alleviate some of the combat issues).

All that said, I do agree with how tedious fighting is in the game at the moment. It’s why so many of us run builds similar to the “Subzero” loadout.

It negates the need for healing and focus generation.

Essentially trivializing many core features of the game.. which at least makes the end game grind somewhat fun.

Granted, just like the addition of “unlimited fast travel” teased in the Patch 1 preview. Many players are against the mere existence of anything like the Ring of Determination.

So on one side of the argument people are upset and want it nerfed. On the other, even with the speed and power you get.. the game still feels unrewarding.

I’ve cleared the Crucible near 30x times.
*Even doing so without ever purchasing a single “Echo”.

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Yet at the end of each run, I know all I’ll get is some legendary gear that’s far inferior to plagued gear. Along with some mats and gear that’s basically just gonna get sold for cash.

Again, these are things the devs are working on.
So I wouldn’t get disheartened with the current state of the game.

If anything, the devs ( @thomasmahler specifically ) are very open to feed back and willing to incorporate new systems as needed.

That said, one of the biggest issues with combat is that enemies aren’t really built in a way to deal with magic, let alone ranged players in-general.

So the devs made it hard to generate focus early-mid game forcing players to engage with the parry/block mechanic. (This explains why the Ring of Determination is so valuable/essential to most builds).

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In fact, we use to have a potion that simply refueled your focus.. but of course this meant players didn’t need to engage with the “parry” mechanic anymore (thus trivializing it).

So the devs changed it to a “bonus” for focus gain.

In contrast, you have games like Elden Ring that simply allow you to play ranged/mage builds instead of melee or parry focused.

I’m not saying Elden Ring is what NRftW should be.. but there’s a clear difference in how the mobs interact with the players “fighting style”.

Going forward, I’d like to see the mobs and their encounters fleshed out and feel more unique.

After all, with a wider variety of mobs (with fewer shared mechanics), the less likely the devs will feel the need to nerf anything that endangers specific mob types.

At the end of the day tho, the devs seem to have a goal and are trying to move toward it while incorporating player feedback.

So it’ll be interesting to see how the game evolves as we get close to the official launch.

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I didn’t even know this ring existed. But the very thought that they want to force the player into a gameplay mechanic—parrying—that has failed in literally every other game is a bit concerning. I never engage with parrying because I hate it in EVERY game. That’s also why I pointed out that I dislike it when developers rely too much on conditions for giving buffs.

Looking at Diablo 4, it had the same problem:
:up_arrow: More stagger damage when parrying
:up_arrow: More damage after backstabbing
:up_arrow: Gain focus on dodging

This just leads players to ignore the whole mechanic because it is frustrating and not rewarding. Just give me a plain Focus Gain Increase on every item, so I have a consistent increase in power—not some Willy Wonka, "IF the moons align, you get 5 focus.

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Ah ya.. it took me a little over 20x full runs in the Crucible to get the ring.

Once you have it, the world is yours for the taking.
*Most put it in a freeze + life steal build and can speed run pretty much any T4 outbreak with ease.

I’m not surprised they locked it away in the Crucible and gave it an extremely low drop chance.

Honestly, I think it was the last “legendary” I needed for my collection. Having picked up multiple copies of everything else.

Though I do wonder how they’ll progress going forward.
*Are they leaving the Ring in the game so we can have our fun before launch?

At which point, they’ll simply nerf or outright change it’s functionality.

Hmm.. food for thought I guess?

Regardless, I seen @thomasmahler was on Twitter earlier asking about peoples favorite Rogue-lites. Perhaps he’s looking for ideas on how to improve the Crucible.

Would be a good chance to drop in on’em (for anyone interested) and point at some games you’d like him to take “inspiration” from.

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Just a few points, as most of your post is just “the game is too hard for me, make it easier please”.

You don’t need anything besides upgraded gear to finish crucible. And especially - you don’t need a “build” to do anything in this game.

If you are taking 20-30 hits to kill an enemy, there is something seriously wrong with your gear (not upgraded and/or your stat are wrongly allocated).

Upgraded mesh armor makes you extremely tanky.

How is that an issue ? Avoid the damn attack or suffer the consequences (or parry it, you can parry everything from boars, although you cannot parry-stagger them). Blocking likely works fine as well, but haven’t bothered against this enemy.

They don’t. And all of their attacks have telegraphs long enough so you can react as you see fit.

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