First let me start with some sentiments the friends who introduced me to you have given and things I agree with. This game is an amazing concept, the characters, world, setting… all of it is an amazing set-piece for people to play in. It strikes me on a level that few games have before despite it’s unfortunate flaws that I would expect even in an AAA title. I enjoy the difficulty in the different mechanics and while I’m not a fan of lockpicking it’s the sheer and inherited difficulty IN doing so that makes opening them so much more rewarding. I understand you’re re-working because it’s not quite as fair to console users so I am certainly wondering how it will look in the future.
That said I have to join the crowd on the save feature but from a different angle. I come from a position of disagreeing with it as a whole but not with it’s specifics. If it’s tweaked and certain things are permitted it is FAR more tolerable to deal with. That the FIRST Mod to come out for it on the PC was to disable this interesting feature is disheartening and saddening as it means your efforts were close, but ultimately pointless to your majority market.
Here’s what I would do(Besides agreeing on multiple difficulty)
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Make the Savior Schnapps a permanent item. Put it in the chest in the beginning or even modify it as a new item so it gives you 5% more drunkenness but it’s something you can choose to keep in your inventory and doesn’t deplete with use. It’s not THAT difficult to get a hold of them either way and even at the start you can buy quite a few before you run out of funds(That will be my tips at the end) so it kind of defeats your purpose in limiting it in such a way as it scares you away at the start and makes it seem like it’s FAR more difficult to do so if you don’t get past the first few hours and believe me a lot of people WON’T because of it.
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Create a save on exit/save state that deletes when you reload. That this left the production floor without one feels like a spit in the eye to those who want to enjoy the difficulty without needing to be there for hours(mostly just the beginning). It’s not a stable enough game/system to where it’s feasible to always be near a potential save point to leave the game. This is so crucial in the beginning as unless you do what I suggest later it’s nigh foolish to waste what few you’re given.
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On the difficulty changes make one mode standard and the other something insulting if you want to add the save anywhere feature as a difficulty mode. Ala Doom: “Pansy Mode: Save anywhere without Schnapps” I don’t mind the insults for difficulty settings. Anyone who takes it offensively is just being a snowflake.
As an aside for a lot of people, myself included, we’re going to just cheese the game harder with a system like this. I go in KNOWING it’s going to be difficult but I’m the type of gamer(of which almost everyone I know plays in a way similar to me) that WILL reload an hour ago grind session to push for a better outcome. I will also look online for consequences to certain actions if I feel iffy about it. I and many others will be ENCOURAGED to spoil the game SIMPLY because the save system is so unforgiving, never even giving much of a chance to see the natural flow of a quest. While I would agree that it’s my fault for spoiling it I can easily see MANY more losing interest in the story and making any attempt at the sidequests simply because they scoured online JUST to keep from having reloaded.
This isn’t a fight you can win no matter WHAT system you implement, no matter how easy or hard you punish the player you’re ONLY taking away choice and PUSHING people into exploits by taking away such a simple feature. No matter HOW you implement it saving is simply immersion breaking. It’s not like this is a new concept, saving has ALWAYS been like this. It’s just an accepted gaming reality.
I APPLAUD your interesting efforts and I encourage OTHER devolopers to try similar methods but ultimately no matter how awesome your game is you’re going to lose potential fan base out of stubbornness. I don’t say this out conjecture, LITERALLY people returned this game because of the save feature.
Alright, now that that’s done with(I’m sure I’m not the first) allow me to give some tips for the beginning that helped me. And yes, this will be cheesing.
Prepare for spending a couple of hours in the starting area. Also, IMO since Speech is the only really limited skill in the starting Town I just dump the two points in that but another good alternative is Agility.
- Spend 30 minutes gathering herbs off the ground. Yes, Herbs. Pick up everything until you’re over-encumbered then sell them off little by little. There’s enough in your starting town to where you can even build up a point or two of strength. Avoid EVERY other quest just to pick herbs. Nettle is particularly abundant here but Sage has a higher re-sale value. It’s a great way to get some early starting cash and as you keep buying from the same vendors
prices go down significantly (I spent as little as 67 on Schnapps after boosts and selling).
This also helps in boosting your Charisma and Vitality by 2 just out of the gate as you earn one free perk and can get the boost early. Obviously go until level 10. There will be enough left over to build a point of strength as well. Gradually as the levels build you can start clearing fields with a few pick-ups making some EASY early money as this stuff is EVERYWHERE outside of the starting towns.
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SAVE with one of them. It takes about 10 real minutes to get over drunken-ness but that leads us to…
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Eat Something(Should be hungry by now). There’s a cook pot outside of your home and Carrots and Apples you can munch on in your house’s storage. Don’t be afraid to over-eat to give yourself a little extra time.
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Start the Combat tutorial. When he gets to combos wait between each strike, this will make it so you can slowly build up things like Strength, Warfare, Blade etc., I can usually get a point or two out of it if I’m extra patient but if nothing else it’s an easy first couple of points.
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Save again. Given how slow and tedious the first two can be you should have more than enough for not just a few nice items from the vendors but I typically have a good 3-4 schnapps anyway(without the free ones you get here soon.) There’s a good reason to save here as well.
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Get some free easy armor by choking out a guard. So my choice is the guard standing at the gate on the far end of the town, isolated, typically stationary and even with the worker in the field next to him you won’t be seen choking him out. Since, unlike the rest of the game jail means game over you’ll probably have to reload a few times regardless so you don’t start combat. Take everything from him. And then NEVER return while in the starting area.
This should also be an area that was already picked clean of flowers and is nowhere near where you’ll be going back to as doing so means immediate combat BUT even if you mistakenly do just start running the side-path until the swords at the top go away. You shouldn’t encounter any other guards and he will give up after a little bit of a chase. You MAY get a few nice arrows though :p. It’s unlikely you’ll have enough to pay the fine(as I spent it on Schnapps, the book and dried food) but if you want to, go ahead.
- Jump around. Literally. Just jump. Over and over. Keep jumping and usually every couple of minutes you’ll build a point in vitality at a time. There are two reasons I put it here: One, it’s not THAT vital if you just want to continue the game and two since time removes the stolen status from an item it’s a great way to kill two birds with one stone. Go ahead and jump until they(if not all them at least the swords) no longer have it.
I’m an old school gamer but a hardcore grinder. These tips come from a place of someone who could spend 8 hours grinding Seifer in Final Fantasy 8 up just to boost GF summons to level 99 just to have an easier start, from someone who will have a full set of masters materia(and two Master All’s) in the beginning of ff7 or a Master(99) Squire in Final Fantasy Tactics. I use these mostly because those are in and of themselves FAR more time consuming than this one. What I find works best with grinding is setting goals that DON’T have to do with grinding to keep yourself occupied.
Easiest would be to watch something on youtube and keep the patterns going off-hand until one or two videos pass, maybe watch ESO do an LP of this game.
I provide this to those who just sheer don’t like how difficult the start can be but still want to love the game. This doesn’t make the rest of the game a cake-walk but it makes the lack of a save feature in the start a LOT easier to bare until you either get the hang of it or start making enough to buy Schnapps easily as you can take on cheap bandits much earlier, it takes a little bit of challenge out to save yourself a headache(at the start, first hours beyond Rattay)
The reality is Schnapps are NOT that difficult to come by when you LEAVE the starting area and get a few hours into the main game(after Rattay) but they can certainly be intimidating to early players. I realize it’s not “hardcore” of me but as someone who wants this game to be supported and for people to STOP returning it just because it’s a weird system I find this is more constructive than crapping all over them for their concerns.
(Obviously this mostly applies to console gamers/gamers who don’t want to download mods or mess with the scripts)