NeverGrind: EQ inspired, browser-based single player RPG

Quineloe_sl said:

No

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You demand this?Attachment 64352

Wow I ruined my Manastone and my Crude Stein and my Shimmering Orb (all offhand spellcaster items). I was optimistic that the bug wasn't that widespread, but yup, seems any offhanded item upgraded for a caster, or at least a Mage, makes your spells do 0 damage. Very sad panda :*( was so happy with the Manastone, such good stats, uggggh. fuuuuckk. Logging out for the night :S. Should make it possible to un upgrade while these bugs exist

oh and @lightsource was the issue in Lguk, just didn't understand why it wasn't happening anywhere else, thanks The BTC I just thought were useable because plate and such are and the item wasn't red, but I see, makes sense.

Hi there, I have a small suggestion. I think there needs to be a few more quest hubs when you hit level 50-ish.

Right now, the only quests I have are the Hero Quests Bosses and all I can do is just grind the quests to level up. I finally downed Vox at level 53. Even though that quest conned a dark blue at 50, I couldnt finish it until now.

Instead of just grinding the boss quests over and over, I think you should add a few more quest areas so that the transition to level up for the bosses isn't such a grind.

Mr. MorrowGirl_sl said:

How? When you enter combat, your spells automatically change and there's no option to summon pets

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Your pet shouldn't die too much once you have the pet heal skill. If it is still dying using the heal then the stuff you are fighting is probably too hard

Grundge_sl said:

Hi there, I have a small suggestion. I think there needs to be a few more quest hubs when you hit level 50-ish.

Right now, the only quests I have are the Hero Quests Bosses and all I can do is just grind the quests to level up. I finally downed Vox at level 53. Even though that quest conned a dark blue at 50, I couldnt finish it until now.

Instead of just grinding the boss quests over and over, I think you should add a few more quest areas so that the transition to level up for the bosses isn't such a grind.

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I will probably make the top dungeon quests like l guk 3 and nagafen's lair 3 repeatable.

Mr. MorrowGirl_sl said:

Wow I ruined my Manastone and my Crude Stein and my Shimmering Orb (all offhand spellcaster items). I was optimistic that the bug wasn't that widespread, but yup, seems any offhanded item upgraded for a caster, or at least a Mage, makes your spells do 0 damage. Very sad panda :*( was so happy with the Manastone, such good stats, uggggh. fuuuuckk. Logging out for the night :S. Should make it possible to un upgrade while these bugs exist

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Sorry to hear that :/ I think I fixed this (again). To this day I've never seen this happen. What browser do you use?

Maelfyn_sl said:

Your pet shouldn't die too much once you have the pet heal skill. If it is still dying using the heal then the stuff you are fighting is probably too hard

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I know. I was merely responding to the fact that someone asked if it was possible to combat chain pets, and you said it was, I asked how it was possible because it doesn't seem to be and I don't think it is.

I'm using Firefox and I'll take some screenshots in a min to show.

Any idea what's up with Mage pet randomly switching targets without me telling it too? It's usually when I switch targets and it follows me, problem is, it doesn't always do that so it's hard to predict and what tends to happen is I switch targets to cast Stasis Field and CC a blue undercon that just spawned so I can deal with the other 3 mobs I have and by the time I see that my pet has auto switched onto it it's too late and now that mob is under Stasis and can't take damage and my pet is stuck attacking it doing 0 damage. Can be really frustrating. I don't even want to use the pet attack queue button because it'll still mess things up with the stasis duration. Maybe change it so the pet does not auto switch targets based on the Mage target? At least I have my pet up to 8 levels higher than me at the moment.

The bug with my off hand items being upgraded and then causing all my spells to do 0 damage seems to have disappeared upon having logged in today. In the past, I had logged out and back in over the course of 2 days and the Shimmering Crystal Ball that if I equipped caused me to do 0 damage stayed consistent, alway bugged me at 0 damage. But logging in today, all my bugged offhand items that were causing me to do 0 damage aren't doing so anymore, so that's a relief. Very very strange bug.

Seriously loving this though. Well done Malefyn. Have you written anywhere what your future plans are with the game and what you're currently working on? I'd be interested to see, I'm really loving this project. I hope for backpacks one day and a unique bank with shared bank slots and being able to deposit coin Gambling would be loads of fun and the ultimate wet dream would be Alternate Advancement points or Diablo skill tree stuff. I know AA wasn't classic EQ, but this isn't a classic EQ game, not really, anyways. This game mixes the best of Everquest with Diablo and World of Warcraft and that's awesome. The next best thing to add would be cool class builds where people could tinker with things and try to create unique builds. Any plans to add a few more spells and skills to each class? I'm kind of bummed that as a Mage, once in battle I only have 11 abilities. Still great though, nothing at all is redundant, so well done man.

Okay, discovered a pretty big game breaking bug. Went to Kedge and tried to start a fight, but nothing appeared. I got a "this zone has been cleared message" but then I noticed if after clicking "select battle" even though nothing appears, if I hit combat to enter the battle, my pet will attack the air and then I will gain experience instantly and for a brief second I will see a shark corpse appear and disappear and I get credit for the quest. So basically I can sit here spamming this and insta kill mobs for free exp AND loot. Just thought I'd let you know, although I guess now I've let everyone else know and they can go exploit it, easily creating a macro where the keyboard hits 1 and then 2 and then you afk with loot filter set at rare and below, but hey, what's the fun in that, no thank you.

You should add more details to the character creation screen (e.g. I saw a tip when zoning that Trolls have a weakness to fire, you should add that to the details of the Troll race upon character creation, since it only says Regeneration atm). Another great thing would be to say whether a racial bonus is an Active ability or a Passive ability, because it's hard to tell with the wording the way it is right now.

I think you should take a look at upgrading Magician pets. You've got a lot of spells quite accurate with classic EQ (e.g. a level 42 lava bolt doing 350ish damage), but pets are far behind I think. My level 48 Mage Air Pet is only hitting level 42 mobs in the 60's and never over 68ish. Also I can hardly tell a difference between when I summon a level 48 pet vs a level 36 pet?? A level 48 Mage pet is essentially a level 49 Mage spell and they hit in the 90's. I've tested quite a bit with all the pets and I think a few adjustments should be made. The Fire Pet damage shield is worthless and because the Fire Pet itself is a high offense low life pet, the DS is essentially worthless and the Fire Pet itself not so great and not really usable in any situation.

The Earth pet's root should be reworked to make it far less likely for mobs to hit the Magician. I have no way of making it so mobs, even a single mob, don't hit me. Sure sometimes the mobs seem to hit the pet more than they hit me, but even when they do, it's like mobs hit both me and the pet at the same time, even with a solo pull? I don't understand that? I turned off auto attack so it's not riposte. I just don't see a single reason not to use Air pet and some more versatility would be nice. Earth should be for dungeons and for solo pulls and tanking and it should be impossible to get adds when you're using an Earth pet and you shouldn't get hit. Fire should be for burst damage and clearly do more damage than the other pets, Air should be for overall leveling and jack of all trades pet with the good damage and average health and the stuns. Water pet's freeze should last longer so you can actually benefit from the bonus damage mobs receive while frozen. You'd get to the end of a quest chain where you have 2 boss mobs coming up and you'd switch to the Water pet or something.

Maelfyn_sl said:

If you can find a front-facing picture of Quillmane that doesn't suck, I'd be happy to replace it.

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I had a simple question while playing: what affects the damage of my melee abilities? I decided to do some tests with what weapons I had stored away:


It seems 1-handed vs 2-handed changes the minimum for frenzy only. +% damage does add to the maximum of all melee, including slam (interesting ...). Strength seems to increase the max damage on a 1-to-1 ratio; as it should! It seems +dmg and +str hold equal weight. One's skill ... I don't see it actually mattering for max damage. Maybe only for your chance to bypass armor or to always hit for the max?

Overall, I feel that wielding a 2-hander should affect cleave and death strike just as it does frenzy. There is just no reason to bother with it, when the bonus to slam far outpaces the bonus to frenzy, with the added benefit of extra survivability. I am still confused over why a weapon's damage and delay actually matters outside of auto-attack.

Also, I tried getting to 20% health for the frenzy with that executioners axe: it wasn't worth the massive loss of gold from eating a death. I don't think I even finished hitting with all of my attacks before dying.

Does skill haste do anything for pure casters? What exactly is skill haste?

@Great Ogre Dictator, have you found a use for gold? I haven't really found any good items on merchants, maybe 1 or 2. Other than a few +Conjuration items I've bought to swap out when I summon my pet, it all seems quite worthless. Since upgrading doesn't cost much gold and sucks anyways (really should consider making upgrades actually do something more worthwhile and buff the entire item's stats, or at least for weapons actually make it so the damage upgrade is noticeable etc.)

Female also seems to be universally better than male, which hey, is fine by me, but it would be cool to have a more noticeable/distinguishable difference. I mean if you're going to have a difference between the genders, may as well go for it. Give Males +10 Strength and +10 Stamina and +HP Regeneration and give Females +10 Wisdom +10 Charisma and +Mana Regeneration.

The items the merchant stocks up on get better as you level. For instance, once you hit 47, you should start seeing "exceptional items", which means the item attributes can get higher scores. Since uniques have a preset list of attributes that I may not always need, the random items may be a better fit. The big exception seems to be with procs; I've yet to see a random weapon with a proc. Even as a caster this would matter -- my little twink magi loves that brain hew (mana drain) proc.

As for the genders question: I honestly find it harder to gear for pure stats, whereas almost all items have some form of hp/mana restoration. Casters may decide they want the hp/mana regen more, but I would still be tempted by the bonus hp from sta. I suppose at end game it wouldn't matter, as whatever choice you make can be voided by a single item, but for now, I am glad I went male on my knight.

Race is a bit more important: for me, every day I wish I had gone ogre over troll. I was suckered in by the lure of hp regen, when I should've known that stun immunity reigned supreme. Of them all, the biggest loser seems to be erudite. A clicky boost to resists? Unless that can go past the 75% cap, I think it is a big stinker. Should've given them a clicky rune; then they would at least be a contender.

Edit: Oh, as for skill haste, it lowers the global cooldown, so you can spam your major nuke more. I think the global is default 2 seconds, so every 5% will reduce it by .1 second. Very important when the mobs start casting their fast heals and you need to get that stun off in time.

After dwelling on it, I've come to the conclusion that there is no missing in this game. All attack does is allows you to bypass armor, which means you will more often hit for your maximum amount. With this, I've redone my item attribute weight scale:

Mana leech (? 3) > health leech (? 10) > skill haste (25 - 50%) > +elemental/physical dmg > Dex > Crit % and Crit dmg > Absorb > Mitigation > Resists (up to 300) > Sta > Magic Skills.

I need at least 3 mana leech to sustain by big ticket spells, and at least 10 health leech to survive named fights. Global cooldown at 1 to 1.5 second is required to fuck up a caster's day. With elemental/physical damage seeming to bypass the armor/attack system, it is much more valuable than strength. While straight crit gains are more cost effective than dex, the +dex also increases proc rate, which can hit very hard and is also unmitigated.

As for the defensive weights, well, every peice of armor is going to have AC. I'll try to always gear for plate, but may dip into chain or even leather if the return is good enough. Straight absorption is always going to trump mitigation, which in turn seems more important that playing the AC/Attack game. Resists seem largely worthless up until boss fights, where they really do shine. I may end up creating a seperate set just for boss fights because of this. Lastly is stam; more hit points means I can take more hits -- no way to get around this simple fact. If I can't get something better, I can always go for the stamina.

The only question is should I worry about skills at all. Certainly not attack skills, but what about magic skills? I will most certainly keep a conjuration set for summoning my pet. Alteration seems like it may be necessary, but the only magic skill I care about that uses it is fear, which has a cap to effectiveness. So if I was to go for a magic skill, it would be evocation, for my life tap.

Well, with a plan laid out, I will let you know if this works.

Mr. MorrowGirl_sl said:

Okay, discovered a pretty big game breaking bug. Went to Kedge and tried to start a fight, but nothing appeared. I got a "this zone has been cleared message" but then I noticed if after clicking "select battle" even though nothing appears, if I hit combat to enter the battle, my pet will attack the air and then I will gain experience instantly and for a brief second I will see a shark corpse appear and disappear and I get credit for the quest. So basically I can sit here spamming this and insta kill mobs for free exp AND loot. Just thought I'd let you know, although I guess now I've let everyone else know and they can go exploit it, easily creating a macro where the keyboard hits 1 and then 2 and then you afk with loot filter set at rare and below, but hey, what's the fun in that, no thank you.

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Whew, nice find. Hotfixed.

Haste = Reduces the speed of your weapons and all melee skill damage increases as a result
Skill haste = global cooldown speed
Casting haste = le obvious

Great Ogre Dictator_sl said:

The only question is should I worry about skills at all. Certainly not attack skills, but what about magic skills? I will most certainly keep a conjuration set for summoning my pet. Alteration seems like it may be necessary, but the only magic skill I care about that uses it is fear, which has a cap to effectiveness. So if I was to go for a magic skill, it would be evocation, for my life tap.

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Skills leveling up is probably the main thing that is actually making you more powerful as you level. I'd say they're pretty important. How important? I don't know exactly.

Great Ogre Dictator_sl said:

Race is a bit more important: for me, every day I wish I had gone ogre over troll. I was suckered in by the lure of hp regen, when I should've known that stun immunity reigned supreme. Of them all, the biggest loser seems to be erudite. A clicky boost to resists? Unless that can go past the 75% cap, I think it is a big stinker. Should've given them a clicky rune; then they would at least be a contender.

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Don't be surprised if racials get revisited or expanded. It was one of the very first things I designed more than a year ago before any class was designed or any item was designed.

Great Ogre Dictator_sl said:

Overall, I feel that wielding a 2-hander should affect cleave and death strike just as it does frenzy. There is just no reason to bother with it, when the bonus to slam far outpaces the bonus to frenzy, with the added benefit of extra survivability. I am still confused over why a weapon's damage and delay actually matters outside of auto-attack.

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Damage/delay ratio is a key component of a damage calculation with all melee skills. How fast or slow a weapon is completely meaningless to any skill melee skill outside of a few exceptions like grasping frenzy, which is basically a series of auto attacks.

Mr. MorrowGirl_sl said:

Seriously loving this though. Well done Malefyn. Have you written anywhere what your future plans are with the game and what you're currently working on? I'd be interested to see, I'm really loving this project. I hope for backpacks one day and a unique bank with shared bank slots and being able to deposit coin

Gambling would be loads of fun and the ultimate wet dream would be Alternate Advancement points or Diablo skill tree stuff. I know AA wasn't classic EQ, but this isn't a classic EQ game, not really, anyways. This game mixes the best of Everquest with Diablo and World of Warcraft and that's awesome. The next best thing to add would be cool class builds where people could tinker with things and try to create unique builds. Any plans to add a few more spells and skills to each class? I'm kind of bummed that as a Mage, once in battle I only have 11 abilities. Still great though, nothing at all is redundant, so well done man.

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You're in luck. Talent trees are going in relatively soon. When I'm done itemizing hell and polishing up a few loose ends, talent trees are going in. Here's what I know for sure:

- 98 skill points; one for each level gained.
- Trees will be more D2 than WoW.
- They will be designed to promote roughly 3 main class specializations, such as ice wizard, fire wizard, defensive wizard etc