Ink Stains Games have announced that their Early Access and thoroughly challenging roguelike, Stoneshard, is set to get a huge overhaul to the AI and Dungeon Generation systems.
This was actually announced back in June, with the team going over their plans for it. For the AI they want to make it a lot more complex to allow different behaviours between factions, add in new enemy types with unique abilities, better pathfinding, add random NPC encounters and a whole lot more. As for the Dungeon rework, they're looking to add lots of unique rooms to it, removing a bunch of plain mandatory hallways you might see and add new types of dungeons.
In the latest Equipment Update, they noted all of the above and more is currently well under way but to keep players going a little for now they also pushed out a patch with these extras:
- 2 new daggers: Commoner’s Dagger and Elven Stiletto
- 5 new axes: Exquisite Tabar, Heavy Aldorian Axe, Aldwynnian Axe, Gilded Axe, and Lordly Axe
- 1 new mace: Elven Flail
- 4 new chest pieces: Dwarven Armor, Light Brigandine, Elven Brigandine, and Skadian Yushman
- 8 new helmets: Barbute (4 variants) and Cervelliere (4 variants)
- 3 new pieces of footwear: Town Shoes, Duelist Boots, and Splint Boots
- 3 new mage sets (mantle + cowl): Cryomancer, Electromancer, and Chronomancer
- 4 new amulets: Gold Medallion, Jibean Pendant, Amber Amulet, Lazurite Amulet
- 1 new cape: Jousting Cloak
Plus they've fixed various bugs like an incorrect block power calculation, critical shots now get a proper log message and the list of bug fixes continues.
Stoneshard proved to be quite popular at release, gaining over twelve thousand user reviews and an all-time online player count of over ten thousand which was impressive. The player count quickly dropped though where it now regularly sits at around 400 people. Looks like the difficulty has been the biggest source of player woes, along with saving only done at specific points (like the location pictured above) rather than whenever you want.
I'm extremely keen to see how they plan to expand it further once the aforementioned upcoming updates are out, as it does hold a huge amount of promise. If you can take the challenge, Stoneshard is already a lot of fun.
You can buy it DRM-free on GOG and also Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It's a weird omission for a turn-based RPG.
Plintslîcho Jul 31, 2020
Quoting: scaineThe exact moment that this game saves when I shut it down (ala Tales of Maj'Eyal), I'll buy it and invest many hours into it. It has huge promise, but if I have hours to invest in gaming on any given day, it's going into "better" games (by which I mean the games I find truly compelling/engrossing - FPS, VR, Co-Op). So when I play games like Stoneshard (and ToME), I need to be able to dip in and out.
Wait, does this mean you can't save at any given time in the game? That would be a huge no-go for me.
I really like the art style of the game. But from what I've seen on YouTube so far, I find the movement quite awkward.
Quoting: PlintslîchoQuoting: scaineThe exact moment that this game saves when I shut it down (ala Tales of Maj'Eyal), I'll buy it and invest many hours into it. It has huge promise, but if I have hours to invest in gaming on any given day, it's going into "better" games (by which I mean the games I find truly compelling/engrossing - FPS, VR, Co-Op). So when I play games like Stoneshard (and ToME), I need to be able to dip in and out.
Wait, does this mean you can't save at any given time in the game? That would be a huge no-go for me.
I really like the art style of the game. But from what I've seen on YouTube so far, I find the movement quite awkward.
As Liam notes in the article, the biggest gripe about Stoneshard (other than its difficulty) is the lack of a save-anywhere mechanism. You can only save in towns or other obvious checkpoints. The other gripe I hear a lot is that there's no auto-movement, so making your way from the village/town and into dungeons and then back again is apparently pretty boring.
I played the prologue, which is apparently not really amazingly reflective of the "real" experience, but I haven't played the full game itself. If they add save-on-exit, I'll buy this for sure. As it stands, I'd just never play it, so it would be a waste of money.
I'm also heavily invested in Tales of Maj'Eyal, so... it's already got a mountain to climb there. ToME is an eight year old masterpiece. I have over 300 hours in that game, and I've only really played one character!
Last edited by scaine on 31 July 2020 at 11:29 pm UTC
Originally the caravan, don't know if they put it into the game yet. Was going to act as a type of mobile save point once you have it.
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