Game Mechanics Explanation

[jerryrowe]

Do you want to enjoy LoG, but want to understand precisely what the heck the rules are first?
Are you considering buying LoG, but want to understand what's going on before you do?
Then this post is for you.

Topics Covered:
Stats
Resistances
Food Consumption
Skill Points
Traits
Skills / Spells (lists)
Experience Points
Armor
Inventory
Back Row Attacks
General Combat
Puzzles (no spoilers, don't worry)

Stats
Every character uses Vitality to determine HP, not just at the start, but on levelups. More vitality at the start means much more HP at the end.
Melee combat uses Dexterity (to determine how often you connect with a hit), and Strength (to determine bonuses to damage above that of the weapon being used). However, the skillpoints put into a weapon type will more heavily influence the hit / damage than the starting stats will, at (roughly) a 2:1 ratio of points / accuracy AND damage.
Ranged combat (both thrown and bow) will ONLY be influenced by Strength (to determine a bonus to damage). Just so you're clear: ranged combat ALWAYS hits, always. If you throw / shoot, and an enemy is in front of you, it gets hit. Ranged attacks never miss. (Repetitive, yes, but it's absolutely bizarre to me that this would be the case, so I reiterated.)
Every character uses Willpower to determine their blue "energy" bar. You lose a lot of energy to cast a spell, and a little energy to swing a melee weapon (even your fists), and a teeny tiny amount of energy to do a ranged attack. On levelups, like Vitality affects HP, your Willpower will give more Energy (or "MP" as most of us will think of it).

Stats do not go up from leveling up, although HP and MP do (based on Vitality and Willpower respectively).

Resistances
Each point of a resist is equal to 1% resistance. So a resistance of 50 means 50% less damage from that energy source, and a resistance of 100% would mean immunity to that energy source. ("Poison" is the "earth" energy type for some reason.)

Food Consumption
Most of the things you kill will drop food.
Being "empty" on your food gauge means you do not replenish your HP or MP over time (which is the primary way of healing in this game; the other way is making pot6ions and drinking them, which is comparatively rare and primarily for intense combat. Much like Zelda games, you have to get a flask first, but then you also need a mortar and pestle, and the ingredients, and then you need to learn a recipie --- you can learn those out of game if you want). Also, you do half damage when out of food.
Food consumption really ought not to be a factor when choosing a race.

Skillpoints
Every level, all characters get 4 skillpoints to spend, regardless of race.

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT
You can plan on being about level thirteen at the end of the game; you can go higher if you reeeeally want to, but most people find it silly to bother.
POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

Traits
Each character only ever gets the 2 traits they select at character creation. You never get any more than the 2 original traits. The UI is deceptive in this regard, since it looks like you could possibly get quite a few. Choose wisely!

Most of the traits are +2 <stat>, +25% <element resistance>, +15 <HP or MP>.
The one you're most likely to be curious about is the headhunter Trait. You do not get to loot skulls from dead enemies. You don't even typically get to loot them from the environment. They are rare, and there are only a few in the game, which is QUITE contrary to what one might expect with the trailer footage of hoards of skeletons running around, each with a skull just waiting to go in your bag and boost your attack power.

Skills / Spells
Full lists can be obtained from the URL below:
http://www.gamebanshee.com/legendofgrimrock/skills.php

Sadly, a great many of the actual numbers on the melee and ranged 'special moves' remain a total mystery to me.
I can help clarify some important things, though:

Special attacks for melee / ranged combat are done automatically; you cannot choose when they occur.
They do not always occur either.

All magic appears to be "Area of Effect" for the square you are facing.
If you are facing a wall you can hurt yourself with some spells (like fireball).
Area effect is stupendously good for some situations, since you sometimes face, say, a 2x2 group of skeletons arranged identically the way your party is...and each skeleton has its own HP and attack. Thus, an area effect damage is a big deal. Magic is the only way to get Area Effect damage. (Don't think, though, that this means you need to have it; it just makes those particular kinds of fights go much faster.)

Although the game has scrolls scattered throughout to teach you spells, you only need the sufficient rank in the spell school to be able to cast a spell.

A complete spell list (and the accompanying runic keypad combinations) can be found here:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=586

Of note regarding spells, all spell schools get the basic progression for their whole list:
Minor damage for <element>
Enchant arrows with <element>
Major damage for <element>
Upgraded minor damage spell (you use the same spell keypad combination as the minor damage spell you get at first, but it is MUCH more powerful; just get a high enough rank and this automatically happens)
Party Buff of Resist <element> +35%

The one exception is the Air magic school, which gets the Invisibility spell.
Anyone who has ever played a tabletop game should know how grand that is.

Spellcraft gives a light / dark spell, which is handy for ignoring torches (which go out after a few minutes when held, and cannot be re-lit).

Experience Points
If a character did ANY damage to an enemy, when the enemy dies, that character will get full XP.
If a character did NOT do any damage, when the enemy dies, that character will get half XP.
Since ranged combat always hits, remember to let your weaker characters, especially at first, carry a rock or something to make sure everyone gets full XP.
Of note, a 0-damage hit will not count as a hit. Someone who replied to this post said it should, but in the version of the game I got, it did not. You can experiment for yourself, but I was unable to have a 0-damage hit count toward getting full credit.

Armor
Again, even the players who are working with the content generator are frustrated tremendously at the lack of any meaning behind the numbers.

Still, here's some important things to note:
If a character is not 'proficient' in a type of armor (i.e., fighter with armor training), they receive protection (damage reduction), but actually go DOWN in avoidance. Many, many enemies in this game bypass "protection" for a variety of reasons. Many people have been disappointed attempting to make "tanks," and this really just doesn't work in LoG if you mean the traditional "heavy armor"-type tank. Avoidance tanks on the other hand can work fine.

It does appear, though, that the benefit for investment for both avoidance and protection appears to be logarithmic. (That is, 75 avoidance and 0 protection is significantly better than 50 avoidance and 50 protection.) Avoidance however is FAR easier to obtain, and is viable throughout the game.

Inventory
Bags do exist for inventory; the bigger issue I saw in the game was with weight.
If even one character is almost to their max capacity (like, 75% of their max), the whole party is slowed.
If even one character is at their max capacity, then the whole party is immobile.

Back Row Combat
There are a few ways to do damage from the back row:
Spells
Ranged Attacks (Bow and Thrown)
Rogue with 12 ranks in Assassin
Spears (sadly, there is no way to boost "spears" with the current skill list)

General Combat
If you are considering buying LoG, this is the most important thing for you to read.
When I watched the trailers for the game and saw practically no user interface, I was overjoyed. I thought you got to pay attention to the action, rather than fumbling with button presses like in a traditional MMORPG. How very wrong I was. Instead of watching the action, you will be watching the bottom right hand corner of your screen, waiting for greyed out weapon icons to return to a brighter shade so you can attack.

Also you will wind up running backwards in a circle (well, a very small square) if you fight difficult enemies, which is a significant proportion of the enemies in LoG. You will barely be able to pay attention to your surroundings, which is quite the opposite of what I'd hoped for when I (impulse) bought this game.

Spellcasting is also quite bizarre; you have to press the correct runes every single time you want to cast a spell. If you input a wrong combination, you lose MP. However, magic damage is typically far above normal damage. It can be difficult to fight several smaller enemies though, since you can run out of MP easily. Four-mage parties might run into problems of imbalanced XP from one-shotting enemies.

The game is decent when played as a puzzle game, and supremely unfun (for me) when viewed as a combat game. I wound up staring at my reuse timers, not the fun stuff on the screen. And when it's more fun to watch someone play a game than to get to play the game, in my estimation, you're doing it wrong as a developer.

As both a blessing and a curse, the game uses a limited tileset. That means "hidden button" walls have a precious few appearances, and would be recognizable in short order. The drawback to this is that you are, for a large part, playing "Systematically Look at Every Single Nigh-Identical Wall Tile: THE GAME" instead of "Legend of Grimrock," which was that awesome thing I saw a trailer for where you were fighting minotaurs and solving puzzles that weren't primarily "look at thousands of wall tiles in a row."

The puzzles that aren't based around looking at every single wall of every single square are decent fun though.

Also: there is no music beyond the introduction / character creation screens. This was a huge let-down for me, since the music is half the fun of a video game for me, if not more.

Puzzles
If you are deaf or hard of hearing you may be annoyed, since many puzzles rely VERY heavily on audio clues (where a wall or gate has moved, where an enemy might be, &c).
Some puzzles will be very frustrating indeed on slower systems, since they require precision timing (not influenced at all by game difficulty--they're always the same difficulty in timing).
If it seems like you COULD run past something (or to, or through, or whatever preposition you like), chances are you are supposed to.




Well, that's about all I can say without spoilers.
I hope this helps someone who was frustrated like myself, and I'll add to it later if I get any questions I can answer.

[Ixnatifual]

Do you have any proposals for how to make the player want to look at the whole screen during combat rather than at the UI?

I know in previous games of a similar vein you could press hotkeys to make the characters attack. Unfortunately this led to you mashing the keys constantly in combat, which also isn't the greatest system.

A very simple alternative system:
- You click on an enemy in range to make your guys attack it (or them)
- Your guys begin to automatically attack that enemy until you move, provided the enemy is in range.

This could probably work, but may be a little boring. Here's an idea to make it a little more interactive.
- If an enemy as a result of your attack goes into a pain state (you know, when they flinch, which they sometimes do as you hit them), you can quickly right-click on them and the character who made the enemy flinch follows up on it with a bonus attack.

Not sure how spells would be handled with that system.

[Dr.Disaster]

Do you want to enjoy LoG, but want to understand precisely what the heck the rules are first?
Are you considering buying LoG, but want to understand what's going on before you do?
Then this post is for you.

I see your desire to collect information. Yet it lacks accuracy. Your write-up is what you figured out so far although others provided you with information and the further down i read the more it goes into guess-work and personal opinion.

Ranged combat (both thrown and bow) will ONLY be influenced by Strength (to determine a bonus to damage). Just so you're clear: ranged combat ALWAYS hits, always. If you throw / shoot, and an enemy is in front of you, it gets hit. Ranged attacks never miss. (Repetitive, yes, but it's absolutely bizarre to me that this would be the case, so I reiterated.)

"In front" becomes a matter when dealing with 1x2 or 2x2 enemy formations. If the monster(s) on one side of the attacked square are all killed a ranged attacker keeping up it's fire on this side will indeed miss.

Stats do not go up from leveling up.

That's in itself correct but does not tell the whole story.

On level-up a character gets added an amount of Health and Energy. How much this will be is influenced by both luck (which you can't controll) and the values of the basic stats Vitality and Wisdom. Boosting these values before level up point grants a larger amount so if you don't dare micromanaging it's good to keep all +Vitality and +Wisdom gear around.

Food Consumption
Most of the things you kill will drop food.
Being "empty" on your food gauge means you do not replenish your HP over time (which is the primary way of healing in this game; the other way is making potions and drinking them, which is comparatively rare and primarily for intense combat.

Food regenerates both Health and Energy. Starving heros don't regen anything and they do only half their regular damage.

Experience Points
If a character did ANY damage to an enemy, when the enemy dies, that character will get full XP.
If a character did NOT do any damage, when the enemy dies, that character will get half XP.

If a character gains full or half XP is based on hit not damage. A hit doing 0 (zero) damage awards your hero full XP.

Four-mage parties might run into problems of imbalanced XP from one-shotting enemies.

Even maxed the spells are not that powerful. Also enemies grow in power.

Not sure how spells would be handled with that system.

Without a feature to define a default spell it won't.

[Neutronium Dragon]

Some things to add to the original post, oriented toward new players:

CLASSES:

The only difference between the fighter and the rogue is the selection of combat styles they provide. There is no rogue-exclusive "lockpicking" or "trapfinding", for example.

No specific class or skill is required to play the game. New players should probably try to build a party consisting of two melee and two ranged characters, but this isn't strictly necessary. It's also a good idea to stick to one mage during your first run, as rune management can take some getting used to.

There are NO healing classes/character powers available in the game. If you're used to "Tank/Healer/DPS" party models then it's important to understand that in Grimrock, "Every class is a DPS class."

STATS:

Dexterity also improves evasion for all characters. Ranged characters probably don't want to focus on it, but everyone potentially benefits from it.

Attack skills improve accuracy and damage by 3/4 of the skill level. 8 Swords will give you +6 attack/damage with swords.

Stats do not go up directly as a result of leveling up, but most skill chains do provide occasional stat increases.

FOOD:

Only certain creature types will drop food (and only some of the time), but you'll run into enough of these that food consumption shouldn't be an issue unless you're taking an abnormally long time or (maybe) running an all-minotaur group. There are a couple of places where food-dropping enemies respawn, and these can be used to replenish your supply.

SKILL POINTS:

Your character receives 1-4 skill points at character creation based on race. From level 2 onward, the 4/level rule applies.

There are a few special items in the game that grant additional skill points to a character. These can only be used once each, and they are unique (you will never get them as random drops).

TRAITS:

It is possible for a character to have more than two traits, but standard character creation doesn't allow it. (There is a special gameplay mode where this becomes relevant, but you have to complete the normal game to unlock it.)

There are ~6 skulls to be found throughout the game. Headhunter is quite viable on one character (it is a very strong trait with six skulls), but it is inadvisable to have more than one character with it since they'll have to split the supply.

Skilled is also a very strong trait. If you aren't sure what else to take, go for Skilled.

SKILLS/SPELLS:

It's also possible to generate AoE damage with certain expendable items.

Earth Magic is not recommended for a first-time playthrough as using it to full effect can be tricky.