Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem - Catch All

Did offline mode make it into release?

Yes. Some streamer named Dan (something) is streaming in offline mode

fangblackbone wrote:

You can start it and pause when your nephew plays Fortnite. Or you know, you can tell the kid to chill for a bit and get some fresh air ;P

You've wildly misjudged the balance of power in our relationship there.

In fact, Offline was the only mode I could get into. Played into the first actual Act (through the city and a bit after that). Not bad. Complexity similar to D3, perhaps a bit more, not nearly as complicated so far as PoE.

Lots of 'splody stuff for magic users to fling at enemies, so that's good.

It immediately looks from gameplay videos to have a lot more... personality? polish? whatever key it was that was, for me, sorely lacking in PoE.

To me it has a better sense of space and world. PoE at the start is very angular and copy/paste to me.

How is it compared to a Grim Dawn? That's been the gold standard for me. PoE is excellent but I found the setting extremely derivative.

Vector wrote:

How is it compared to a Grim Dawn? That's been the gold standard for me. PoE is excellent but I found the setting extremely derivative.

The art style is loads better than GD. I consider all ARPG settings here in the West derivatives of Diablo. The gameplay here is new while being familiar

Also the video above mentions this but don’t be afraid of dipping into other colors for your build. During testing I went mage(blue), but dipped into green to add in more crit.

I am definitely going green... until I'm not
This game is going to drive my altoholism crazy (especially because all my alts will be in one character).

Things that have stood out to me from videos over the years:
flails
rebounding shield throw
pistols
turrets
beam(s)

Things that I have heard of and want but they have not shown:
summons (aside from turrets)
traps
spear and shield
thrown weapons (may be for dagger wielding ranged/green characters)
more mage stuff/weapons other than staves, fireballs and meteors

Path of exile had it's fair share of good and bad traits but it was the camera that finally made me knock it on the head. It was too zoomed in. I couldn't bear it after a while. It would be such an easy fix, they'd only have had to widen the fov or bring the camera back a tiny bit and it would have made a huge difference.

I remember searching for fixes and there were lots of people having the same issue. I don't think the devs considered it an issue so it was never addressed.

That Rhykker tips and tricks video is very good and thorough.
I was an early backer and it clarifies so much that I had barely a passing familiarity with.
Really has me pumped!

Got online :O But cant create a game
They have recreated the D3 experience to perfection.

Seems like the servers have been problematic all day.
The handful of streamers I've seen are playing offline.

Error 037 - Never Forget

They are going to push patches and server side fixes in a few hours as of 730pm EST.

Got it, played in offline mode because the server(s?) I was connected to kept going down. Played fine until I got to the first area after the town then FPS went in the toilet. With a 1080Ti and 8700K, that is not what I expected. Looking around for a potential mitigation but have not found anything yet.

May need to wait for a couple more patches to play this.

Stayed up to give it a quick try and played for 4 hours straight. That's a very good sign
I always play these games offline if it's an option so the server issues aren't effecting me personally.

Really enjoying it so far. Nice, relaxing comfort gaming. Rocking the dual pistols at the minute, pumping a lot of points into attack speed and the bodies are hitting the floor fast.
No complaints so far. Touch wood, it's all looking good!

I'm playing a "get a large weapon and swing it a lot" build. No magic, all melee and ground stomping (or leap slamming, whatever that ability is called). I haven't made it all that far yet but having fun doing it. Based on goodjers and friends playing last night, of which I think there were 6, we all picked different builds and were having a blast with all of them.

fangblackbone wrote:

Things that I have heard of and want but they have not shown:
summons (aside from turrets)

Believe they showed off zombies last week.

Enjoying it quite a bit. No performance issues outside of the early login problems. Seems like fps is at 90+ most of the time with max settings, which is surprisingly good.
Starting with some kind of mage, experimenting with elemental + ailments. Seems like the passives tree doesn’t really support that, it is occult dmg + ailments only, but time will tell.

Ended up grabbing it last night. I really like the cinematic presentation they're going for. Some of the animations are a bit... goofy... and that maybe makes some of the scenes cause a giggle when that probably wasn't the intention, but regardless it's still super cool. This seems to already have that coat of polish I was never able to find in PoE. Played offline, as I do, with zero issues.

Fireballs are fun, too. Love that they hit multiple enemies.

clippa wrote:

Path of exile had it's fair share of good and bad traits but it was the camera that finally made me knock it on the head. It was too zoomed in. I couldn't bear it after a while. It would be such an easy fix, they'd only have had to widen the fov or bring the camera back a tiny bit and it would have made a huge difference.

I remember searching for fixes and there were lots of people having the same issue. I don't think the devs considered it an issue so it was never addressed.

They've updated the camera distance a couple of times now. I, too, bounced off of it a couple different times for that very reason and decided to give it a go again after the podcast was spewing rainbows about some of the updates about a year ago. It's still not as wide as many people - myself included - would prefer, but it's a far cry better than it started and the game itself is fantastic.

What builds are people looking at? I'm thinking about a 2 hander taking Bloodrager then Child of fury.

A Heads Up:

Offline characters do not seem to be Steam Cloud enabled. Was going to play a bit during downtime at work and my character from last night ain't here.

I went with red/warrior first ring, mage ailments second ring, and then the mage ailments 3rd ring that has a poison aura.

Really had a tough time with the third ring. They were all interesting but not what i wanted to do with my character. I am running pistol/catalyst/ailment/summoner. I might switch over to dagger to get some of the melee rage attacks. I am assuming that the attacks listed as melee count for daggers so long as they don't specify two handed or dual wield only.

I get the feeling that going straight down the line on the passives might be ease some inconsistency in attack flow when trying to build a hybrid. And I'd wager that melee combat is more straightforward as well.

You get a lot of skills and can purchase many more after an hour or so of play. Unfortunately the gold costs can be prohibitive at first. I'm level 13 now and about 20 minutes of play will net me enough to buy 2 skills if I don't need to make any changes to gear. I don't think I'd saved up enough to buy 1 skill after reaching level 5.

Anyways, to not get bogged down in the details, the game is very well done. Saying that it is a love child of Diablo 3 and PoE is true in part, but does not give the unique bits their do. The dual resource mechanic is really not like the Demon Hunter nor the Necro at all. And the end game stuff is a different enchilada altogether.

Yes it is a game that you should get now and it will only get more of a bargain during ensuing sales.

Back to detailed discussion:
I am running the annihilation ether beam as my main willpower spender and the turret as my rage dump.
The turret needs another 3 levels to get the trait I want: turning and auto aim. That will help my build a lot as right now positioning the turret to hit anything is cumbersome. So now it is just a skill to start the will power regen for more beam goodness.

I have the goliath beefcake summons which is good to keep enemies off me. I also just got the zombie archers which with be interesting once they get the trait that lessens the summons to 1 but increases the damage.

So the skill leveling up system is neat but really only more than a novelty at higher levels. (most skills get a trait at level 17 that changes their functionality in a major way) . The turret is fixed rotation until level 17, annihilation pierces at 14 or 17, some skills bounce at that level or add more projectiles or explode, etc.

You typically get a resource cost reduction trait out of the gate but it is only ~20% which isn't much of a difference at the rate the resources ebb and flow.

The good news bout the ring is that while it looks really daunting, you can get into 3rd ring passives around level 12. So it is not something that you have to wait until level 30-50 to unlock some powerful character alterations. For instance, imagine having access as a melee character to a major passive that regens rage instead of willpower by level 15? (the dual resource system standard is for willpower to regen and rage has to be generated and a lot of powerful melee abilities are attacks that use rage)

The good news is, as in any well developed game, playing the game is a great learning tool while still maintaining the fun. I can picture some amazing builds that would be akin to a dashing strike monk with huge finishers. And I really need to find a skill builder or at least something that lists the skills and a map of the passive tree.

Act 1 end boss took me a few tries. He could easily oneshot me. I guess Rhykker was right in his video after all.

One thing I am missing is better ways to see if I have debuffed enemies. I generally have no idea if my ailments are on a boss or not. You also seem to get buffs yourself, that doesnt show up.

Playing a pure caster it seems like hybrids have a strong inherent benefit from the resource system, with the ability to use both willpower and rage abilities to recharge each other. Quite a lot of downtime of recharging for me. But I wonder if gear helps with that later.

I haven't used willpower or rage potions yet but I bet that will help with down time.

I have been looking at the skills on a wiki here:
https://wolcen.wiki.fextralife.com/A...

Dreaming of building a dashing maniac with Aetherjump and Slayer's Fury or Wings of Ishmir.
Ishmir gets a trait that removes cooldown but costs a stamina point. More options are: force shield regen, knockback, reduced cooldown on kill or sucking in enemies.
Aetherjump gets a trait that damages enemies you pass through and another that allows being cast multiple times before triggering the cooldown.
Slayer's Fury gets lots of trait goodies: damages enemies passed through, aoe damage at destination, knockback or damage buff on recast

I'm spamming that willpower potion it only gives 325 willpower though, which doesn't really matter.

Bummer.
I will say that I am reading up on passives at that site I linked. There is a tier 3 passive that causes an explosion based on your max health or force shield every time you go below 30% willpower. It has a 5 second cooldown but it also grants 25% willpower.

It seems too good to pass up. And imagine it on an attack focused character where you pretty much get a free explosion every 5 seconds. And combine that with the passive that causes you to regen rage instead of willpower...