my thoughts and suggestions after finishing normal and hard

[kuliksco]

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.

The second time I played on hard it was much easier than normal with the party fighter (swords) dex/str, rogue (unarmed/evasion) dex/str, rogue (crossbow) max str, rogue (throwing weapons) max str. Only took about 8 hours and I used the walkthrough to help find some of the treasures, secrets I missed. I was at 67/71 secrets and 7/7 treasures.

I like the casting system but the combat is way too fast paced. Same thing for trying to fumble through inventory during the fight. On hard the ranged rogues destroyed anything most of the time before it could even get to me. My normal run with the mage was harder because I was clunkily trying to click runes taking lots of extra damage. Maybe give us the option to keep the last runes activated so they could at least compete with the damage output of the rogues.

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. The rest of the game seemed like I could just strafe and everything would be ok. I do like the idea of ironman and doing away with quicksaves. I know I have the option to do it on my own but it's hard not to do if it's there. This would make potions much more useful.

I did not use any bombs on my second run on hard. They just cluttered up my inventory. I tested them out on normal and the times I tried to manage my inventory while strafing usually ended up getting me cornered or the fight was easy enough circle strafing I could do without. Definitely need some quickslots for items, maybe two so we could have one potion and a throwing item.

Also, trying to manage inventory while fighting basically blocks off the right side of the screen. Please have a screen where we can just see the inventory without all the character stat information. I always felt gimped while running around with my inventory open.

[Saice]

My only suggestion on fighting and inventory. You can fight in the dark so pocket your torch before a big fight you don't need it and drop a bomb into that now empty hand.

I have to agree while I like the spell system i found it was just cumbersome enough that I drop using mages from my party completely. Ended up with 2 fighters 2 rogues. I don't think the spell system is bad really just missing something. Sure you can queue up a spell but after that plugging in glyphs just was to slow for me in combat. Same with potion use I really did not use them as much as I should have. Opening my inventory in mid fight always ended up with someone getting hit and me missing my side step. So I used them mostly for the buff potions and thats about it.

[affa]

agreed.
i'm still on my first playthrough -- hard, old school (graph paper!), and custom party. i didn't look at the sample party, but based on your post, it sounds like i created it myself:
minotaur heavy armor / mace
human light armor / sword
lizardman rogue / crossbow
insectoid mage / fire

I would NEVER use a mage again. Somewhat useful for carrying the orb of radiance (perma-light), but other than one good hit at the beginning, near useless during combat. I'd much rather have another rogue.

To be honest, there's a decent chance i'd never go bow again, either, since that takes two hands and I think i'd likely prefer two assassins in the back row. then i can focus on 'dancing' with enemies and have 4 constant attackers.

Or, if i wanted range, I'd go with thrown weapons, since i could keep a free hand for a torch.

ALSO -- auto-pickup works great... unless you want to enchant arrows. in which case, it's extremely annoying. your arrows don't get picked up, and you keep having to re-enchant them. massive annoyance, and not worth the trouble.

ps- I LOVE THIS GAME. absolutely love it.

[Saice]

To be honest, there's a decent chance i'd never go bow again, either, since that takes two hands and I think i'd likely prefer two assassins in the back row. then i can focus on 'dancing' with enemies and have 4 constant attackers.

That how I ran it. Mace/Sword up front and two assassins in the back.

[dark jelly]

ALSO -- auto-pickup works great... unless you want to enchant arrows. in which case, it's extremely annoying. your arrows don't get picked up, and you keep having to re-enchant them. massive annoyance, and not worth the trouble.

Mage with orb of radiance in one hand and a single non-enchanted arrow in the other hand.

The mage automatically picks up all your used enchanted arrows. When he has all of them, you can quickly give 1 arrow to the missile rogue, enchant the rest, and switch them. No inventory use or manual pick up.

[NakedGranny]

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.

[Saice]

I honestly think a simple fix would allowing mages to use charged items like the fire sword without using a charged. Just make it so they require spellcraft in place of say sword to use.

[affa]

ALSO -- auto-pickup works great... unless you want to enchant arrows. in which case, it's extremely annoying. your arrows don't get picked up, and you keep having to re-enchant them. massive annoyance, and not worth the trouble.

Mage with orb of radiance in one hand and a single non-enchanted arrow in the other hand.

The mage automatically picks up all your used enchanted arrows. When he has all of them, you can quickly give 1 arrow to the missile rogue, enchant the rest, and switch them. No inventory use or manual pick up.

Why in the world wouldn't you have your mage carry two orbs, or an orb and a staff?

[affa]

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.

as much as i love this game, i have to agree. mages need more spells, and better spells.
heck, there should be reasons to devote half your points to different areas... like, say, special spells for fire/air combos. that would force us to choose between hyper-focusing on fire, or getting the combo spells.

as it is? i'd never have a mage again.

[xdeath]

I found my mage useful for freezing enemies, then circling enemies and getting a backstab.
But even then My mage was still the weak link of the party.
I would usually queue up a spell when the rest of the party was in cool down, but it is pretty difficult to do that while strafing.