My thought on skills in Solomon Dark beta

This is my opinion of some of the skills. 

Channel Mana & Battle Mage: I feel like they got nerfed in solomon dark because it was op in the previous games (battle mage definitely, channel mana maybe) and the new addition of concentration system. 

Fireball and its upgrades: It feels like it is way weaker than other solomon game. Explode raidus at lvl 1 got very small and you must put skill points on explode to increase the radius. The fireball's hitbox feels much smaller than before (it sometimes passes through enemies without hitting them). The damage of the fireball and ember seems underwhelming. The summoning imp skill, on the other hand, has really decent dps and it FOLLOWS ENEMIES. After all the horrible nerf that fireball recieved, this one is the only hope that remains in fireball.

Ring of Fire: Same as usual. I wouldn't spend skill points in this.

Firewalk: In my opinion, it is useless. The trail is small and does not last long enough to deal damage. I regret myself for spending two skill points on this on the first run. It really needs some buff on its duration and size.

Lighting and its upgrades: It's pretty much same. The disintegrate(instant kill on low health enemies) seems interesting though but I think hurricane is still better (hurricane deflects arrows). 

Prismatic Shock: This ability increases lighting damage a lot. Very useful for lighting and magic storm user. 

Magic Storm: Even though this is a successor of one of the worst skills in previous games (acid rain), this one is really good. Its dps is really powerful and the cooldown is pretty quick. It is very useful aoe damage dealing skill now and it even has an upgrade (magic tornado). Hugh potential for late game.

Magic trap: pretty good skill but the visual effect is very annoying.

Magic Circle: Dire Alice's Magic circle(tragic circle) is strong but you aren't Dire Alice. So...NO.

Call Leviathan: Somewhat useful ally but not good enough

Enchant staff: here is the problem, our character is mage, not a tank or a warrior. You need to get point-blank range to use this ability and that is never good in this game. However, if u are earth mage, this skill can help get through enemies.

Stoneskin: few seconds of invulnerability. simple and good. Be aware that the cooldown for this ability is high

Meditation: It got slightly buffed(when meditation is concentrated, it does regenerate faster while walking without firing) but still not useful. 

Boulder: pretty decent damage but too slow to charge up. you have to use the golem wisely to survive with starting this ability. Once you start getting some upgrades, its fine I think. For the flourish(the final tier), rock surge is better in my opinion because it allows you to spam big boulders instantaneously.

Raise Golem: Deals decent damage and taunts nearby enemies. Pretty useful in early games.

Magic Shield and Explosive Shield: With the addition of explosive shield, this skill just got way better.

Magic Missile: Pretty same. The new final tier, piercing is really good though. 

Planewalker: It looks cool. Duration is fine.

Siege Mage: More damage, better it is. Just as good as usual

Resist Magic: I never got far enough to make good use of this but it will be quite useful when there are mass lightning mages with impenetrable magic shields.



So far, I love this game, though I feel like fire skills, my fav, got too nerfed. It would have been great if that unfortunate event that made this game abandoned never happened. Thank you Mr. Raptis and keep up the good work :D

P.S. Lightning is too good. 

Comments

  • edited November 2016
    Incidentally, since I do not intend to support/develop/etc this game any further, I will tell you that in the data/wizardskills folder, you will find config files for all skills, that can be edited.  If I had finished the game, those would have been encrypted-- but they're not... so if you guys want to tweak the heck out of the game to balance it better, I am totally cool with that.

    Sadly, I never got to the "final balance" pass... some of the balancing is a little raw because I was finding the sweet spot between story mode and survival when Acid Rain hit me.

    Also, even though the Dark Cloud sharing doesn't work, you can still create levels and share them manually with dropbox, etc.  The story levels that exist so far were made within this editor-- it's fairly powerful, but part of finishing the game would have been to eliminate the quirks from the editor.  The quirks are still there and will have to be worked around.
  • yea, I have been able to edit the spells, charater names, waves, and items from out of game. save and everythibg else is encrypted.... :p
  • This is a pretty accurate description of the spells. What do you think of the melded magic? I tried magic boulder, and found it to be ok, although the homing effect is REALLY weak unless you've upgraded smart missiles. You can have up to 3 boulders at a time too, with more missiles upgrades.

    I also tried meteor shower. All i can say is that the mana usage is ridiculous. But hey, we can just tweak all that away, I guess.
  • The New bosses are..... Wow just get past wave 30.... then your in for a treat.... 
    *Spoilers*
    I fought (Didn't get the names)
    Boss Skeleton
    Boss Zombie
    Portals that spawn imps
    3x Dire wizards (Air, Ether, and Fire)
    Picture because I can't get it on here

  • Hey Shadow, I'd be interested in seeing you do a longplay on Youtube, if you're game.  I'd like to observe some of the play styles.

    Glad you liked the three mages... they'll be back in Keep, as will Heartmonger, the portals, and the maggot-coffins.
  • -Saffogus

    magic boulder shines when enemies come at you from various directions. If you have normal boulder, you might have shot one big boulder while magic boulder shoots multiple boulders at a faster rate. Also, having homing ability allows the shrinked version of boulders to have more chances to take out few more enemies than regular boulder does.

    hailstones... they are really fun to play. When you charge, it shoots like a shotgun and when you just click rapidly (requires hasten rocks), it shoots like a minigun(with a very terrible accuracy). There are some problems: 
    1. getting cone of ice decreases your accuracy by widening the shots. That is not much of a problem if you shoot like a shotgun. You must never get cone of ice if u wish to just spam click. 
    2. The accuracy in general is pretty terrible. You will see how often it will miss a skeleton that is at point-blank range.
    Besides the accuracy problem, it has good dps, good mass mob clear, fast shot speed, very low mana cost.

    Crawling Shock is simple but pretty good skill. Normally, randomly moving projectiles are considered weak. However, Its hitbox seems pretty big enough to hit enemies without missing them. Also, they tend to DODGE SMALL OBJECTS like tombstones which is what magic boulder and regular boulder do not have. This one is the easiest to hit enemies with among the earth welding magic

    Meteor Swarm is a fancy lookin' garbage. When I tried meteor swarm i had boulder 2, hasten rocks 5, bind rocks 1, fireball 1, explode 1, embers and I got 199.1 mana per sec for the mana cost of this skill. I have no idea what was the math behind this ridiculous mana cost and the worst part is that SKILL FILE FOR THIS ABILITY(welded ability) DOES NOT EXIST IN WIZARDSKILLS FOLDER. So, we will need some help from Mr. Raptis for this one. 
    Lets say that the mana cost is fixed. The other problems with this aiblity are that it is RANDOM and the firing delay is too long even with hasten rocks 5 (that is the max level for it without using items and etc). And like I said earlier with the Crawling Shock, random skills are not good. Therefore, only use this ability if you want to see something that looks cool but utterly useless.

    Overall Opinion: fire sucks.
  • edited November 2016
    -ShadowKnight

    I don't know what wave was it but I reached to see the Discorporeal. (two times but killed only once)
    I don't think i can get there anymore cuz Im too impatient to do this thing all over again just to see that damn skull. Even though the name is The Discorporeal (the first boss in boneyard), its pattern is similar to The Unholy(the strongest boss in boneyard). So far, I seen it shooting triple eye lasers, the shoop da whoop laser, regular fire wall and fire wall with imps. However, it feels little more difficult then the boneyard the unholy boss.

    Apparently, it seems like the discorporeal is the strongest boss in this game because I have not found any other boss image that I have not seen.

    There is also a fire demon kind of thing (called lesser demon in the editor) that showed up in Soloon's Keep. Compared to the Keep version, this one dies way to quickly and doesn't seem to spawn any imps (or maybe my magic tornado killed all of them before I looked at it)

    P.S. I've checked the data for the discorporeal in the editor and apparently there seems to be no charging attack for the discorporeal.


  • Monsters in Dark 1

    *Discorporeal and lesser demon is on the comment right above this one.

    Skeletal Warriors: There are there types of warriors in this game: normal, armored and burning. Normal is normal. Nothing special. Burning is fast like the keep and boneyard is. Armored is the new one. When the armored skeleton reaches zero health the armor comes off and gains small portion of health. So you need at least two hits to kill them.

    Skeletal Archers: Apparently there are archer that shots mult-arrows and strafing shots. I never got to see them because both of my plays that reached the discorporeal had some wired glitch that 
    prevented stone golems, archers, and mages to attack. 

    Skeletal Mages: The new things about mages is that they can cloak (invisible I think) and shield others. However, I've never seen any mages that does that in any run. I guess those two abilities are just editor only thing i guess.

    Zombies: Besides the fact that it is slightly faster, it is same as usual.

    Wraiths: They only sounds different. That is all.

    Imps: There are now imp splitting noise!

  • edited November 2016
    Monsters in Dark 2

    Spider(new!): This annoying little critters are terrible. If you get hit by those spider shots multiple times, you become immobile. After that, they charge in and bite you to death. The worst part is that they are small and TANKY (compared to regular skeletons)! If you love machine gunning hailstone, you will definitely love this dude so much that you will never play hailstone again. (Try this at home!)

    Coffin(new!): After short rumbling, coffins pops up and spits out maggots at you. They are very slow and the animation is slow also. They just look scary but they shouldn't be that much of a problem (unless you are playing monk style or steam jet) The maggots, like the ones on the keep, deals poison damage.

    Heartmonger(new!): This one may seems really strong with these crow attacks but it is actually pretty easy one to deal with. You just need to keep long distance with it and snipe it a lot (it has about 2000 hp). If you are melee only, steam jet, frost jet, Meteor Swarm(yuck!) lovers, good luck.

    Dire Faculty(new!): So far I've found three of them (Sirmin, Aliss, Lucritus) but there could be also Morth(or not implemented in the endless mode). Each faculty has a primary attack and secondary attack. Be aware, the attacks are filled with PUNS!

    Sirmin has Death Missile and Acid Pain. Death Missile is a single magic missile that moves  like skeletal mage's bolt. Acid Pain is the dire version of acid rain and it seem to be lot  stronger then what my sirmin in boneyard used :(

    Aliss has Blighting and Tragic Circle. Blighting can be dodged by moving side ways or using  teleport. Tragic Circle is a strong aoe slow. You must get out of that circle or you will be  bombarded with their primary attacks. I guess the name Tragic Circle fits well because most  player hated magic circle.

    Lucritus has Direball and Ring of Dire Your pants are on Dire.  I don't remember how ring of  dire worked but I think it was dodge-able. Direball is a fireball with a dire. It acts like those  firebolts that mages shoot at you.

    If there was Morth, he would ahve Faust Jet and Thing of Ice. I wish I could try him but the  editor's try map doesn't work so... I will never know.

    Imp Portal(new!): Basically, it keeps summoning imps till you destroy it. There is a difficulty scaling of "very low" to "you will die"(I am not joking. That is what it says in the editor).
  • Raptis, if you decide to keep some things that were in Dark, there are a few things I'd like to see return.

    Playing as Sirmin in the epilogue was extremely nostalgic for me and the bickering between him and Solomon was great. I loved it. Having acid rain was nostalgic as well, and I wish that acid rain was usable by other randomly generated mages. I had a really good time playing as one of the original dudes from Solomon's Boneyard. So perhaps having a prologue or something along those lines, that'd be amazing fan service for the old timers.

    I'd also like to see the melee system return, I noticed in the trailer for Solomon's Keep reboot and it seems that Sirius swung his melee at a chest, which implies a key press for swing? I liked the auto swing so maybe it can be an optional setting.

    That's all my concerns for now.
  • i would love to do a vidoe of my style of play. not saying i am anything close to some of the people on this forum but I will give it my best. been here sense about 3/4 of the way of fhe last forum. and sorry Raptisoft but I like breaking things... so at least one.vidoe i will be having fun. ;) have any ideas for how to fix the editor?, and have a good way to video the screen?, I can set up a camera but it would be terrible quality and just terrible. 
  • @Email_Soup Prologue, not epilogue.
  • You might use "open source broadcaster". I have the program and am considering using it myself, but recording and producing worthwhile content is time consuming and I have a very barebones laptop.
  • >and I wish that acid rain was usable by other randomly generated mages

    FYI, talk to the wizard at the college that is casting experimental spells in the safe circle.

    Talk to the witch too.

    There's a lot more in this game than just "play and die."

    Pepper, what happens when you try to play a map in the editor?
  • when you click on the potion (which I am assuming is start) game freezes and locks 
  • When I pressed the beaker button to test out my map, the game froze. There were no "SolomonDark.exe is not responding" text and it did not crashed. It just stayed in that screen until I close out the game.
  • I'll take a look at that when I get a chance... if it's something simple, I'll provide a fix.
  • Damn straight. It's "play, die, and improve", and that last part is in both skills and resources.
    Funnily enough, I played an Ether-Arcane game where I focused on improving Leviathan first, and I got all the way to Dire and level (or was it wave?) 30. If only I'd have known how to better select flourish, though...I missed out on Piercing. Maggots also tough, and imps, though I got a Frost Jet later as a secret weapon for those. (Who really needs welded spells to make good use out of both of them?) I lost to a bad teleport which put me right into a ton of guys, and while I'm pretty sure I had my shield up, I instantly died. What the heck, but it had to come to an end sometime.
    In any case, I'm not salty. I now have a ton of things, and you can be sure I'll leverage them.
  • @NiGHTcapD_ntc

    Piercing is AMAZING. It solves the problem that most ether users have with boneyard: clearing massive amounts of weaklings. You should always go for it when playing ehter in this game.
  • @Peppermaster Agreed. I just made a clicking mistake. Now I know you can only have one floursih.
  • As far as game balance goes I've gotten to round 34-35 (can't recall if I died on 34 or 35) but I absolutely love the merge spell with fireballs and Magic missles it's so good until you get into the 250 mana a second with a 45% reduction from concentrating battle Mage so that's a little crazy *spoiliers* but I love the call backs to the boneyard boss that literally rips you to shreds in boneyard you could run from his laser but here it literally rips you to shreds and it feels so awesome
  • edited November 2016
    I think the bosses are nice, but mostly rather unbalanced and not that interesting to fight, similar to Boneyard. Ironmaw, Slumpgut and Heartmonger are just slow tanks which may take some or some more time to kill, but I've never had any problem with them (except for fighting Heartmonger using Frost Jet, that's annoying). The amount of experience you get from Slumpgut's army of zombies is ridiculous! Foulshaft is interesting, especially with his troop of mobile archers. But, either your defense against arrows is weak, then he's pretty tough to defeat, or it's strong, in which case he's a pushover. The Dire Three, though, they are cool! Very fun to fight against, especially as their chatter adds quite some character to them. I love the sound effects used for them, very creepy.

    And then the Discorporeal... His normal attack is interesting to dodge and takes some getting used to, but is it actually possible to dodge the laser? I've seen only three possible means of surviving it: 1. Having Teleport with a low cooldown to get out of there and hopefully out of his reach, or 2. Having lots of health positions and hopefully a strong Magic Shield or 3. Being lucky that he doesn't use the laser much. I've actually managed to defeat him once with a high-powered Storm Mage which was very exciting, but judging the game design I think it's very weak with only so few options of defeating him.
  • @Syrion

    To deal Discorporeal's laser,

    First, stay close to discorporeal when he is shooting that laser. Further away u are, harder for u to dodge it.

    Second, Stoneskin

    Third, never get on his sight when he appears by using frost missile or blizzard beam with decent chill wind. (my favorite way in boneyard but not sure if you can do that in dark)
  • Fun fact: that last way (in boneyard) is possible using just frost jet with max cone of ice and a couple levels of chill wind, although it takes some luck for him to be in just the right place to start that.
  • The 3 Dires seem quite difficult to beat. Everytime I reach the 3 Dires, my game crashes before I can fight or I get to fight, I die and my game still crashes. This way I can't end my run, any idea what's going on?
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