my thoughts and suggestions after finishing normal and hard

[EvilDarkrai]

I actually really enjoy the spellcasting interface because in my opinion it comes pretty close to simulating how a mage probably actually feels in a fight. Magic is a complicated art and when you're desperately kiting around an ogre just to stay alive I can't imagine it's very easy to remember/intone complicated incantations or runes. I'm not saying the system is flawless, but I don't want it to change from the basic idea of needing to manually que runes because it feels like I'm desperately trying to correctly recite the incantation for my fireball spell.

[Scase]

I actually really enjoy the spellcasting interface because in my opinion it comes pretty close to simulating how a mage probably actually feels in a fight. Magic is a complicated art and when you're desperately kiting around an ogre just to stay alive I can't imagine it's very easy to remember/intone complicated incantations or runes. I'm not saying the system is flawless, but I don't want it to change from the basic idea of needing to manually que runes because it feels like I'm desperately trying to correctly recite the incantation for my fireball spell.

I think the issue is more that the effort necessary for casting fireball per say, 3 runes + another cast click can be matched in damage and surpassed in energy efficiency by a single right click rogue. Meaning because the effort required is one click you can more efficiently attack, spending less time waiting for the next attack chance and shorter periods in between CDs, also there is a large lack of variety as pointed out by others in the spells. Frost/lightning/fireball for the most part do comparable damage with very little variance.

Only having access to 1 of the 4 shield spells without totally gimping yourself by not speccing into spellcaster at all makes them that much more useless. Essentially rogue/fighter are way more streamlined and more effective than a mage.

[Krotch ScroteGuzzle]

The problem with mages isn't the casting system, it's their overall uselessness.

Spells deal only about as much damage as the average dagger but cost ten or fifteen times as much energy to cast while cooling down about half as fast on top of their monopoly on your mouse. There just aren't many different spells in the first place, and they all basically do exactly the same thing (nothing but "damage") while absolutely requiring a focused investment in skills. Fighters can split up between Armor and Swords, for example, and do just fine at all points in the game. Rogues can dip into Assassination to get Reach and then dump everything into Daggers and be a powerhouse with 40% of the party's damage output.

Mages in Grimrock suck. They just suck. Their only real purpose in the party is casting the Light spell to remove the inconvenience of dealing with torches, but the Light spell isn't even as bright as a torch and yet still costs about 15-20% of your mage's energy per cast. If you want to deal damage to an area, use a bomb. If you need to carry more items, a Strength Rogue will deal more damage, carry more and still have better ranged attacks without requiring fumbling through the clunky spells interface -- all while being more durable!

Mages. Suck.

It's a huge problem and the devs should consider it an emergency priority in any upcoming patches.

Mages needs a wider variety of spells beyond "click to deal damage" because investing so deeply in a single skill means that even their shield spells are completely useless the vast majority of the time (even if all the damage types were equally common and equally dangerous, they're NOT, you still wouldn't be able to cast the appropriate shield type 75% of the time!)

Energy costs of spells are absolutely criminal. A mage is dropped to empty with only a few casts for the first half of the game, while only dealing about as much damage from that enormous expenditure as a Rogue could do with two piercing attacks in half the time. Even health recovers faster than Energy does! drain your Mage's Energy while your Fighters are low health, and then rest. Watch the difference in their regen rates.

The spellcasting interface, I could live with if it were worth the bother. That is, if spells actually did something cool and powerful rather than replicate a weak item (bombs). Where are the Spells??? You know, the mighty forces of magic that bend the nature of reality? A healing spell for Earth or Water? A spell for Fire to ignite your foes for damage over time? A Feather Falling spell for Air allowing you to ignore or mitigate falling damage? A Darkness spell that actually does something? A spell in Earth to buff your allies' Protection Values? A spell in Air to buff their Dodge? A spell in Water to buff your allies' weapon speeds or health regeneration rates? A Fire spell for energy regen?

I know Grimrock is young and has a lot of growing planned for it (now that it's proven commercially successful), but the sad fact is that Mages need a TON of balance and design changes to make them even worth their slot on a party. I can easily see Grimrock evolving into, with the release of map/mod tools, a delightful rogue-like. It's got a long way to go before it's anything more than a longer-than-usual gameplay demo, though.

Devs.

Get on this.

Totally agreed. Mages do similar damage to ranged Rogues but in addition have cumbersome casting mechanics and go out of mana quickly. I got to level 4 or so and found the Mage mechanics so bad that I rerolled with 2 Rogues in the back row.

[Whisper]

The first time I ran through with the default party (fighter swords, fighter maces, rogue missiles, fire mage). It took me about 14 hours and I used the walkthrough a handful of times. I found about 50 secrets and a few treasures. I really liked the game but thought it had a few issues.

Starting party is gimped. For example you have +25 fire resist trait for mage or 3 points in throwing for rogue.


But they did it because of storyline: personality of Sansaron is that he is evil man and has demon blood (aka +25 fire resist) etc.

[Whisper]

On my second run with hard I only used a handful of potions, used the blue crystal 2-3 times, and rested maybe less than 10 times. The rest of the time the natural regen was enough to keep me alive. Granted there was a handful of times I did have to reload. The only time I felt I really needed to use potions was during the fighter's challenge. I wish the game was a little more difficult in this regard.

They couldnt make Hard difficulty (even on Hard difficulty its actualy not hard) - because so many casuals and game needs to sell well.
Already - look this very forum - people complain about game being "too hard", all this complains about: spiders, not enough food, enemies kill too fast etc. And they probably already play on normal or easy difficulty!
So, no - sadly i dont expect any new game which wants to sell well amoung broad audience to be hard. Except Dark souls/Demon souls, of cause. But this exception just proves rule.

Developers cant make challenging, hard game because all this casuals will complain and complain (they already do even with such easy to play game as Grimrock!)

[t0tem]

I won't play through the game again. If I had the option of saving the map from earlier explorations I might have. Just saying.

[TheGallow]

My how-to guide to fix mages:

Spell Efficiency: DPS is low. Increase spell damage and decrease spell costs

Downtime: Energy regen needs to be VASTLY increased

Spell Variety: needs more utility spells at low/zero energy cost. These don't have to be anything that can affect combat, just stuff like vision zoom, or a mark/recall teleport type spell, or a teleport to a magical 'safe haven' or something

Spell specialization: all spells should be castable from the beginning if you can figure out the rune combination, but at half strength. Finding the scroll maybe should increase the efficiency by a %, and speccing into the spell should bring it to full power.

XP sharing: not sure if it a bug or not, but all party members have to hit a mob to gain full xp, mages usually get left out because of this. My previous suggestions should make this fix unneeded, but it is annoying. (Also, some weapons like the Dismantler will prevent XP gain if the killing blow is made by a damage proc)

[Mystify]

I agree, mages need more oomph. I like the concept of the rune system, but they don't utilize it well. They state that all these runes mean different things and combinations of various aspects matter... then you get this tiny, miniscule handful of spells you can cast. In fact, I don't think a mage ever needs more than 3 different spells. Their basic damage spell, perhaps the shield spell, and light. And light is optional once you get the glowing orb. 90% of the time, you just input the same rune combination to throw out a weak damage effect. Give mages more versatility and usefulness. Give me a reason to toy with the runes, don't make me figure out which specific combination is for the spell I just happened to unlock.