Any hints on what the numbers do?

Nihil Fit (guest) 11 years ago

Hi! I'm a few hours in, definitely enjoying the game so far, but my gamer-brain is complaining about being asked to make stat-point choices without any real information about what the options do. With a bit of testing, it's not too hard to get a rough estimate for Con (+2hp?) and Int (+1mp, +1%xp?), but it's a bit frustrating that there's no in-game indication of how much difference a point in St, Dex or Ag actually makes.

(Ditto for Karma and armor, but it's not so much of an issue since we're not asked to make permanent decisions about them.)

To be sure, Driftmoon isn't the sort of game where min-maxing feels especially appropriate, but a bit more information to inform our choices would remove some pain from the leveling-up process. I can imagine that you don't want to put too much into the tooltips, to avoid stressing out the people who just want to focus on the story. But maybe a readme? Or at least a hint or two for the forum-dwellers?

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ville 11 years ago

You're right, the stats are like that on purpose to keep the game a bit simpler - but there's no harm telling since you ask. It's very simple actually.

One point of strength increases the damage you cause by 3%.
One point of dexterity increases your attack speed (how often you can use your weapon) by 3%.
One point of agility increases your walk speed by 3%.
One point of constitution increases you hit points by 3% when compared to the base level, which is 50. Therefore each point of constitution equals 1.5 hit points.
One point of intelligence gives you one mana, and increases your xp gained from hereon by 1.5%.
One point of armor means 1% of damage resistance.

Karma affects the price in shops, this is actually merchant-specific as well as item-specific, but on average a karma point means 1.75% discount. Karma also affects the strength of your companions via the Morale talent.

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Nihil Fit (guest) 11 years ago

Ah, thanks! That's very helpful.

So strength affects missile damage too? If so, you might want to update the tooltip. It currently says "how much damage your weapons do in hand to hand combat", which I interpreted as meaning it applies to melee only.

Also, hmm ... if armor is a %resist rather than a subtraction from damage, then the common dynamic of +damage being good against heavy armor and +speed against light armor doesn't apply. So functionally, St and Dx are basically interchangeable, then? Or is there some sort of situation/opponent where one would fare better than the other?

Anyway, another few hours in and I'm still having fun.

I preordered ages ago, and then managed to "strategically forget" about the game to avoid the pain of waiting, so its arrival has been a nice surprise!

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ville 11 years ago

Actually, strength doesn't affect ranged damage. In a sense it's a better idea to invest in dexterity because that affects the firing speed of ranged weapons as well. On the other hand, if you can fell your opponent in one powerful stroke, he may not be able to retaliate at all. And some weapons require a high strength to use.

Glad to hear you're having fun!

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madscientist 11 years ago

I know that you wanted to keep stats simple, but I always want as much as possible of information like that, and I'm surely not alone, so it'd be nice if you give options to reveal more of the game mechanics.
Although I'm sure you could find a lot of info by studying the game files and reading the modding tutorials, it provides less of a game experience for me than having it naturally presented ingame.
Edited 11 years ago

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ville 11 years ago

You're certainly not alone.

We'll have to see if we can improve the descriptions a bit.

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Any hints on what the numbers do?

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