Feedback on the beginning of the game

I will start a thread for myself, anybody can reply if they want to, but I will be posting here with my observations and feedback as I play.

Just to get started, I like the game already, it pretty to look at and fun to play. I’m not sure I love the item degradation so much… or there needs to be some way to work your way out of being a naked noob at the beginning of the game. When I play a game like this I explore and like to learn combat by fighting all kinds of things… and I will attack stuff which maybe I’m not ready to and I am persistent and I will die… and I will take that as a challenge and keep fighting that guy until I kill him. The situation I am in now is that I have died so much that I have no equipment… enemies are getting tougher and I have to kill them will my bare hands. That is not really fun… there needs to be some way to get at least a basic weapon (or if there is one, I haven’t seen it yet).

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Ok, a bit more time and a patch or two later… I started a new world and was able to get enough traction with enough weapons and armor to keep going. Maybe I just had bad luck on my first run? I only found a couple pieces of armor and one weapon in my first couple hours of the game (and I was thorough and searched all corners)… so when that stuff broke down I had no weapons or armor and couldn’t go forward. Maybe it was the patch, I am finding lots of stuff all over the place now.

I’m still not really convinced on the weapon degradation though… I’ll be honest, I’m old… my reactions times aren’t what they used to be. I have beaten Darks Souls I, II and III, and Bloodborne and Elden Ring… so I love tough games but I finish those game with persistence. I will just keep getting up and fighting those bastards… sometimes I fight a boss 20 - 30 times but I will not give up. Here… I am punished for persistence because my weapons and armor keeps breaking down.

I am having a lot of fun with the game now though… I am very curious to see where it goes and how it will improve over time. My most recent complaint is that some of these enemies are really tough… like these tall tree-looking guys with the huge ass hammer thing. I have learned their attacks but I can’t seem to pull off the moves. I feel like in Souls games or Elden Ring I know the guy does three quick slams of the club… I can learn it and time the dodging so I don’t get hit… but in this game the dodging is not super responsive… it’s sluggish and not precise… so I try to dodge three quick times and I get hit 2 out of 3 times. Then I’m out of stamina and he picks me up and slams me around and I’m dead. I’ve taken out a few of them… but I can’t seem to do it consistently. Maybe it’s just me sucking because I’m slow… but in souls games, when I learn the patterns eventually enemies become easy because I know what to do… here I’m struggling to pull off the moves even when I know what to do (or what I want to do).

Oh well, I will keep with it and keep trying. The game is fun and I want to keep going.

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I got the guilts for totally trashing the ship, but can’t get out of it. There’s only one ladder that I can see. Perhaps now I think of it, I’m meant to go out of one of those handy holes in the hull! I am having issues with assignment of keys. I use an MMO mouse with thumbpad, and a three key foot pad, and I’ll go look for someone to chat to about this issue. Sadly, life doesn’t give us everything. This noob has clothes and some weapons, but of course, no food. It’s always a challenge, and it looks like it will be an awesome game. I have Ori, and that , also was sad, beautiful, and dark by turns. Sorry if this could have been put somewhere more appropriate. I jumped on the thread title like a drowning Cerim…

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I agree. The game is very experimentation unfriendly without the use of dispostable realm mechanics. This should either be incorporated as a more obvious element to the in-game checkpoint mechanics, or eliminated so the game has to work without disposable realm shennegins.

I think the food mechanics are worse than durability (which is now free in the starter zone).

As soon as I found the first boss, I fought him a few times, spamming food in combat like it was going out of style trying to learn the fight mechanics…and I eneded up completely stuck with no way to get more food (within the realm, aka “the game as I knew it”).

I had to go to youtube to find out about these (silly IMO) disposable realm mechanics, and repeatedly spawn realms to farm food so I could go back to my original realm to thrash on the boss the way I wanted to.

Ironically, those farming runs ended up giving me XP, levels, and better loot, which made the game easier which is not what I wanted… I just wanted to pound my head against a boss for a while without putting the game in a dead state.

The irony is, realm farming makes the game feel trivial, because you can just spin up a disposable realm and (XL, level, items, gear) grind your way out of any challenge.

IMO, it would be so much simpler and more enjoyable if there was a checkpoint system, where dying reset your stuff (including consumables) back to the last saved checkpoint. Yes, if you got that sweet drop, you might decide you wanted to run back and checkpoint, but that’s kind of par-for-the-course for these types of games.

If you really want to soften it, then just reset consumables when someone dies… and give us a “challenge” mode that resets everything (including XP!)

I have to admit that I am taken aback to read about realm farming. I play MMOs where the ability/time to make alts in other worlds in order to make money/get gear you hoped to funnel to your main is actively circumvented by an absolute inability to send/trade money/mats to your main. Or where constraints on storage/inventory are such that though all alts share in common they are really restricted as to storage/inventory space. I’m still shocked really, it’s not a test of your character’s ability to survive and prosper in the game if they’re being aided by alts. I agree wiki is helpful. I am concerned that I can’t key map to move as I can in other MMOs., so I may not get as far as alternate worlds anyway. It looks up front like such a darkly beautiful game, but may not be for me, unless there are changes.