Lower level of entry into combat

[Pommfritz]

So I was just remembering that when I started a few months ago without any clue I wasn't fighting anything for probably 2 weeks at least, neither did I have any points in UA or MC until I moved out of my noob base. The reason for this was that everything seemed very confusing and I couldn't bother deciphering it nor did it seem very necessairy. I probably read 2-3 guides and had to figure out which information was outdated and which wasn't plus I had no clue how strong I needed to be to not get killed by animals. I just had some vague memories how strong each animal was in comparision to eachother. Once I figured it out it wasn't too bad however. It was just a mess getting there and I think a lot of noobs might have the same problem

My idea is to add a very weak creature that you could beat with a bunch of punching and 1 UA, make it drop a small curio like those ant soldiers, this would want noobs to fight more of them and try to figure out how to fight them more efficiently (obv by increasing UA and getting a bit str/agi and more skills and reading up on skills)
This creature would be aggressive and starts attacking you so you have to fight back, however it's very very weak and should be really hard to get KO'd by, also you don't have many buttons to press, not so hard to figure out what works here

additionally I think it might be a good idea to just start with punch and your stance and this little creature would teach you your defensive maneuvers very quickly so you just need to understand one thing at a time, punch it a few times -> learn a maneuver, read what it does and add it to combat deck -> go fight more of them to get more skills and curios.

From then on it is probably a lot easier to understand the combat system and get ready for "normal" animals

For experienced players this is obviously completely unneccessairy except for curios in a new world but I think it gives new players a very good start to get into combat and how their deck works etc

[Nightdawg]

The combat system in this game is so counter intuitive and complicated when you first look at it, and so stupidly easy once you learned how to cheese everything and how to pvp.
I don't even know what to say about it. The devs probably don't even know how it works lol.

In my honest opinion, your suggestion would imply teaching newbies that the way to go at it is to facetank stuff, which is not.

You have to literally cheese everything in this game. I don't even think you're supposed to tank anything ever, unless it takes you 2 hits to kill it. Loftar might have intended it to be that way, but it's not.

[Pommfritz]

Well you could probably cheese that thing too or just run away and deaggro xd
I don't think it's the intended way to play the game tho (cheesing) so why would you teach that. It's ofc very nice once you figure it out and like you said probably the best way to kill stuff but that comes imo after learning the normal/intended way.

The other day I was actually thinking about making it possible to build actual animal traps instead of having to abuse mechanics etc so you could build a trap, lure the animal in and kill it much easier. Basically developing and working with it instead of against it and it also makes sense to have traps in a game like this but I forgot to make a thread xd The outcome would be relatively similiar tho so maybe it's just for larping lol

edit: and the main purpose is to teach new players how their skills work and which buttons to press and how to create their deck. if they go off and chesse animals with that knowledge, I really don't care, like you said it's the best way to kill stuff and good for them if they figure it out early.

[Zbyx]

A weak aggro animal can be quite annoying to deal with. I would suggest to add some non-aggro animal and give people a starting quest to kill 10 of it or something.

Also maybe a good idea would be to add a starters quest line for combat in general - spar with a person, get X stats , kill X animal etc.

[vatas]

Safest way to figure out combat is to find an anthill near water, ants can't follow you even into the shallow water so you always have the option to back out of fight.

Note: raiding the ant causes every ant swarm to aggro you, but you can aggro them yourself individually.

[abt79]

Well you could probably cheese that thing too or just run away and deaggro xd
I don't think it's the intended way to play the game tho (cheesing) so why would you teach that. It's ofc very nice once you figure it out and like you said probably the best way to kill stuff but that comes imo after learning the normal/intended way.

The other day I was actually thinking about making it possible to build actual animal traps instead of having to abuse mechanics etc so you could build a trap, lure the animal in and kill it much easier. Basically developing and working with it instead of against it and it also makes sense to have traps in a game like this but I forgot to make a thread xd The outcome would be relatively similiar tho so maybe it's just for larping lol

edit: and the main purpose is to teach new players how their skills work and which buttons to press and how to create their deck. if they go off and chesse animals with that knowledge, I really don't care, like you said it's the best way to kill stuff and good for them if they figure it out early.

The devs created a tedious, permadeath game where, if you facetank anything worth killing at a given stat/progression tier, armor degradation and small annoying wounds are pretty much unavoidable. Cheesing may not be the “intended” method of combat (assuming the devs really thought it thru enough to have one) but considering how time-consuming and obtuse healing and armor creation are, it’s very strongly incentivized.

[Nightdawg]

Loftar literally said on stream that it's intended to cheese stuff. Granted the way we cheese stuff is probably not what he had in mind, but still.

[Zbyx]

Safest way to figure out combat is to find an anthill near water, ants can't follow you even into the shallow water so you always have the option to back out of fight.

Note: raiding the ant causes every ant swarm to aggro you, but you can aggro them yourself individually.

This does not help much , many people don't read forums (a lot of people probably don't understand english too) .
I am pretty sure that ants are too hard to fight for people who don't understand how combat skills work at all.
If you make a quest in game to do it then people will have a reason to try to fight, mostly they will avoid to do it otherwise.


A good way to teach would be in my opinion , for example , creating 2 new creatures (or change some current one a bit) and make quests to get 10 uac,10 agi and then give quest to kill 5 of each of them.
First creature uses only green attack and second only blue, to make learning as easy as possible.
A player when starts the game has his combat deck already set-up by default to 1 green attack, 1 green defense , 1 blue attack , 1 blue defense (and buttons more visible which does what).
Creature should be killable easily with those stats.
Could be with low stamina so it would try to run at low hp but for a very short time and it wouldn't be hard to catch up to it.

[jordancoles]

Unfortunately for pvp complete mastery of the combat system means nothing once you bring attributes and gear qualities into the equation. There is very little that skill can do for you when you're outclassed in all other aspects in a standing fight. It is possible to escape using various speed boosts, but you are not going to KO a fully geared titan with the stats of an average player unless your opponent has literally no idea what they're doing.

I don't see a great way to have a competitive and balanced combat system when gear/strength/agility/con/UA/MC are all factors to consider, but for pve the barrier of entry could be dropped down a bit, sure. But that could be done by providing things like wooden swords, armor made of boards and string, and by removing armor penetration from ants.