The more I look at this, the sadder this statement is. Saying that you will always be absolutely close-mouthed about updates is a really poor reflection of what community engagement looks like. The developer has had success with past games but that doesn’t guarantee future success. Trading on this past success by hiding in a “developer tower” is the fastest way to ensure failure.
It’s been six weeks since the last update and the words “0.38 (or next) update” have not been uttered hardly at all by anyone with connection to the game (except for a couple of possible bug fixes).
Somewhere along the line, the game developers have become convinced that they are protecting the nuclear launch codes, and not making a sophisticated toy.
And then there is great wonderment over negativity in the community. Note to the “team”… if you treat your player community as adversaries, they will adapt to that role and behave accordingly.
Not all game developers. I’ve been a part of a trading card game called Inifinity Wars on steam… it’s had a colored history but the way they have listened and adapted to community feedback to improve their games have been great. There are heaps of examples of studios really embracing their community and building a game around the fans…
… however this game is not one of them, not at the moment anyway
This is a great example of how one word, missing word or wrong word choice can muck up the entire meaning of a sentence!
In my case, the word missing is “the.” I’ll fix it. Most of the games that I’ve played over the years, have had a lot of communication from their development team.
I agree. I’ve been part of many other gaming communities and I’ve seen both approaches – those that communicate game details very freely (development roadmaps, drop rates, even complex algorithms that drive core elements of the game), and I’ve seen others that seem to guard every detail like they are Nuclear launch codes. From my experience, the communities with open communication are always happier and more appreciative of the Dev Team and the communities with poor or no communication are constantly frustrated.
To be clear, I’m using the concept of “open communication” pretty loosely here. In several instances I can think of, the communication was actually coming directly from the Devs (through regular AMAs) or representatives from the game (through forums or official wiki sites), but in some instances, there are also unofficial wikis with all the detailed info you could ever want to know about the game including “rumors” of future changes and studio responses to key ideas from contributors that have a known or suspected link to the studio.
With PQ3, we currently have neither official or unofficial sources of detailed game info. The flow of information is largely one way from the community to the PQ3 team, which leaves (at least some) players of PQ3 frustrated and with tons of questions, feeling like they are in the dark.
What is particularly frustrating is that this is early access, which is basically open beta. Then entire idea of a beta, open or closed is to find problems and solve them. But the community here is left listening to the sounds of one hand clapping.
To make things worse, the game went to EA in a very very privative state. The community said, ok! They rolled up their sleeves and made good faith efforts to document things objectively. And that’s just the bonafide bugs! Others, like @Sibelios and @Tacet have gone past bugs into “design catastrophes.”
Eveline’s Relic Exchange was the big win of 0.37. Gaining a full set of Epic armor/accessories/spells/etc. is no longer an issue. Access to the Citadel pre-finishing the story is big as well, as that allows for additional power jump to assist in finishing the story that did not exist before. For example, early access to the + %Armor traits buys the player additional time to get their looping sequence activated. Often that extra armor that buys 1 additional turn of time is often the difference between a successful run and a failed one.
Also, Bone and/or Relic rings are your friends here. Perhaps a Savior’s Helm also for a fast start.
Shamans can be scary powerful if given enough time to build up power. Sample screenshot posted above (not my best damage output by a considerable margin, but representative enough to demonstrate this point). The trick is surviving long enough to build up Thanos/Goku-tier power levels. There are multiple ways to achieve this based on how you want to build your Shaman.
For big damage, there’s not much of a secret to discuss. It’s how the Shaman class is designed to function.
Shamans are designed to start weak and build up damage potential over time. This is achieved by stacking Jujus on the player, which accumulate over time as a run progresses. Currently, in 0.37, there is no cap on the stackable limit of Jujus. There’s a point where the damage gets to be so high that enemies just die, which serves a form of a damage limit. But, if you can get there, it is a mostly irrelevant limit. As event dungeons have the longest runs currently, Shamans have the most time to snowball stackable Jujus by the final boss, which can result in damage numbers such as what is posted in the screenshot.
Of course, as with any update, if there is the re-balancing expected in 0.38 with spells and items, some mechanics may change. Relic Ring stacking to speed up Ultimate generation and Juju potion creation could very well receive the nerfbat in 0.38.
That said, there are multiple ways to pile up the damage on a given turn. This can be said for any class and not just the Shaman, look for gear that provides secondary effects for matching the desired color of the class. In the case of the Shaman, that is Green. So look for gear that provides secondary effects when Green is matched. For example, Juju potions count as Green matches (that’s a trigger)… which spawns more green gems that could match again on the same turn (that’s another trigger potential), which could skyfall more green… and so on. (Side note, Assassins can do the exact same thing with their Ultimate and Purple gems.)
There are posts about players generating too much Speed on these forums. But, what about other, more beneficial stats such as Power, Crit Chance, and so on? There’s plenty of gear out there that can do this now (and likely more once gear effects are rebalanced fully). Loop those stats up and you can start doing some big damage by the end of each run.
It became too hard. It’s a mobile game. It’s supposed to be easy and fast to have fun.
Isn’t even there a real time pvp battle. What’s the point to make it harder and impossibile to complete.
I’m going to replay the original puzzle quest 1. You guys lost your way.
