There are some players sharing information and thoughts about forging, but all scattered around.
So, maybe lets try and have one topic to provide devs with solid feedback here.
I will start with a question though, not my thoughts on forge balance.
I have noticed that, when I have 3 boons and still can afford more rounds, the forge seem to do nothing sometimes, even though I get a hit. Boon points are taken from the bar, but they don’t add up to any of the three existing boons. Is the system still deciding between leveling up existing boons and adding a new one (even though there are no free slots left for new boons)? And then, when adding a new boon happens, points are lost because a new boon cannot be added?
I have not experienced this problem, are you sure its not just going into something and it doesn’t have enough power to level it? I have done a TON of forging and have never noticed a success do literally nothing
That having been said, I do have a few things to say about the system…
I’d love to see the recipes varied up a bit. Switch some of them into using vital orbs, into different mushroom types, into things that are used a bit less. That’ll be good for resource values and variance
I think its probably well known by now, but the forge has a visual glitch where it shows you one thing while the animation is going but then when the animation finishes it switches to something else. Quite irritating!
A ton of the GUI elements of a forged tool are broken, the special buffs for slingbows are all broken, the special effects on bombs are mostly broken. While we on the topic of bombs - the tooltip needs to be INFINITELY clearer that if you get the world regen bombs, they no longer damage. Same with healing bombs. I get why they work as they do, but the tooltips are NOT clear about this. And my healing bombs do not indicate at all that they are healing bombs when they are finished too!
Balance wise, the biggest problem I’ve encountered is the “Random Hit” effect. As far as I can tell, this is the only effect that gives you a penalty for maxing it out, and it feels really bad. I don’t have a problem with the random hit effect itself, that it targets random blocks around your main target can be really useful still, but the fact that it can target air blocks and not actually have any special effect at all pretty frequently is really a big time bummer. It should always target a minimum of one solid block nearby, so its not so awful
I was watching the boons bars, not levels.
However to look at three bars at the same time and with the bug where initial prediction changes, maybe I did miss some tiny movement in bar progression in one of the boons? I can’t be sure 100% now.
My feeling about boons in general is that they are too strong. I created an iron hammer with 2100 durability and 45 action speed (basic stats: 900 and 10) plus that attraction boon with little effort. I think doubling stats for lvl 10 boon would be enough and having boons increasing stats by some 50% as average would be just cool. Lower tier grapples with 40 meters range and 60 m/s reel speed is bit too much and too easy to achieve as well.
Also, I think it would be better if the stat bonus from boons was expressed as % increase rather than fixed value. That 35 extra action speed added to swift hammer is kinda ok but added to iron heavy hammer gives me OP feeling. If it was a % value, lets say 100% for that level, then iron would go from 10 to 20 and a hammer with basic 30 would have 60 after the boon (instead of 45 and 65 the way it is now). Swift hammers would remain swift and heavy, although buffed, would still feel heavy enough.
If it stays the way it is (bonuses as fixed value), I would half them all.
As for random factors. I have noted 3 moments when they apply:
The amount of boon points transferred from boon point bar after a hit. I’ve seen as little as around 100 moved (when after a hit the bar remained almost full) and as much as around 800 (when almost a full bar dropped to nearly 0%).
The choice between adding a new boon and leveling an existing one.
Chosing a new boon.
There are ingredients affecting stages 2 and 3. No ingredient for the stage 1.
SUGGESTION: an ingredient increasing the minimal amount of points moved after a hit. So, if its randomly 100-900 (just example), that ingredient would change it to 200-900 and 400-900 (for 2 levels of the ingredient).
It is really painful to get a hit and see a tiny chunk of points moving to boons, changing almost nothing. Would be nice to have an ingredient to help there a bit.
While I feel you are partially correct about the forge being op, the randomness and difficulty of setting it up balances this out. Besides - on higher tier worlds, we are going to need some OP tools and gear to keep up with the new difficulty levels.
Used special gum, but 8 of 10 times i get the “Hit block harder” one.
The only other i got after a stack of spanners was a few magnetic pickup, and 1 time i got a useful one with repair bonus.
Even after removing the block hit with remove buff, i got it again.
And it looks like the hit block sucks up the most of my points.
Now i have a stack of spanner that hit really hard.
@Aridhol@boundmore I have had this problem before, but it ends up correcting itself on the next round.
The order in which mine happened was this: New Round
Compound goes in
First Boon levels up to 4
First Boon goes back to 2 New Round
Compound goes in
Second Boon levels up to 5
Second Boon goes back down to 3
First boon goes back up to 4 (it should have last round) New Round
Compound goes in
Third Boon goes up to 6
Second Boon goes back to 5
All balance is restored
This is what happened to me at least. I am unsure what the cause was at the time.
Thanks for the feedback guys – there are some really helpful points here. I will be taking another run at the balance before 1.0.
On one specific point:
The “Fate” buff was intended to do this. Having a “Fate” buff activated makes the white slider more likely to land nearer the top of the bar for Boons, and more likely to miss for Defects and Quirks. Having that active will improve the amount of points you get into the Boons.
Defect Guard Paste 2 is supposed to half defect points gain from Imperfect or unstable compounds. However it also affects Defect Protection Compound and reduces defect points removed through that. So, it reduces both negative and positive effects from ingredients. Is that intended as well?
