Observations (new character on a new realm.)

Wicked Feedback
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This is my second time playing the game from the beginning. Thought it’d could be helpful to make observations.

I’ll preface by saying I cheated a tiny bit. I knew I wanted to play a mage, so I gave myself a gnarled staff with Blink and Pulse of Health (I haven’t actually used either spell yet, lol). I also gave myself 3 agility rings, because… reasons? As well as silver tools.

Below is my toon, just after arriving at sanctuary.

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So handful of observations.

  • Stamina is still as rough as I remember it, and this is with three agility rings.

  • Fall damage isn’t as bad as I remember it, I think it must have been toned down (did I miss this in patch notes?)

  • Drop rates for new characters is bonkers, (can’t remember the last time I saw a bloodstone on my main):
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  • I remember Sacrament being overwhelming my first time there, obviously less so now. However, I think it wouldn’t hurt to display quest offering NPCs on the map. I totally forgot I had to speak with Winnick to get Of Rats and Raiders. Games like Elden Ring don’t do this for immersion’s sake, but No Rest already has floating question marks and exclamation points, so it’s really just a QoL thing.

  • Fighting Warrick with a mage felt like easy mode. With a full focus bar and one small focus potion I was able to make quick work of him. While, ofc, at this point I know his attack patterns quite well, he went down much easier than I expected.

  • The mushroom-headed fire-chuckers (I think they are called apprentices) are waaaaaaaay overtuned. I died twice in total, both times to these dudes. I thought my experience would allow me to skate through them, not so much. Not only are they a pain at a distance, but probably the most difficult early game enemy in melee range.
    Fire-chucking is their whole deal, so no complaint there. Their melee attacks are super quick and tricky to read, which is a surprising, but fine. They do, however, have a shocking amount of HP given their robust offense and audio/visual styling.

  • I’d love to say I was able to do this without any healing items (maybe 6?), but that wasn’t the case. I used a fair chunk of mushroom soup. One to fall damage, one to a botched backstab attempt, another misjudging Warrick’s range, the rest used in the fight before entering the room to rescue Fillmore. I got to sanctuary with 4 soups left. I have 18 mushrooms and 2 herbs to make more soup: which is pretty reminiscent of my first playthrough, stacks of mushrooms, not enough herbs. Herbs spawn rate could probably use a buff, mushrooms a nerf.

  • One of the biggest issues is repeating what I had mentioned in a feedback post I made: weapons chose your class, not you, and this feels bad. In this opening chapter I found various swords and daggers, a shield, a hammer, but no staff. Had I not been able to gift myself a staff, I’d likely have been forced into a different “class”.

Anyhow, I’ll probably keep adding to this thread as I go.

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In one of the first few Hotfixes they actually changed it so Fillmore, the blacksmith whom you save from the three risen bandits, sells a bigger variety of weapons. You could have bought a staff from him.