4Game

Hey ya'll.

Just finished my first run!

Overall, a pretty good experience.

Here's the main takeaways I had.

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Good things:

1. Great sense of progression. After getting the gear from a biome, it really does feel like you "conquered" it. Dying there afterwards mostly has to be a critical mistake by the player.
2. Intuitive gameplay. The ravens give you crucial hints, but otherwise, if you find the right things, you know what you need to do next.
3. Exploration feels good, especially the first time you encounter a biome. My wonder and fear the first time I saw the Mistlands was genuine and huge.
4. Amazing atmosphere. Each biome is unique and the devs really nailed the vibe and increasing sense of danger you're supposed to get in each one.
5. The mist especially is very cool on first experience. The bells ringing in your head as it lights up red with the boom of a Gjall in the distance, the Seekers you can hear, but can't see, even the Hares with their strange sounds that make you jump at a bunny rabbit. Excellent!

Straight up bad things:

1. There MUST be a way for the Trader to be found without chance or third party tools. I beat the Queen without even knowing about it and it's only after looking at the wiki did I even find it exists. I had 3 chests full of gems and coins that I was wondering what the hell to do with. Finding out I could have halved the number of Silver/Black Metal/Dragon Egg trips I needed is a huge bummer. Plus I missed out on FISHING!? 🙁
2. Hitboxes and elevation. Not sure much needs to be said here. It feels genuinely not good.
3. Mist is very cool at the start! It gets old fast. By the time you do 2-3 Infested Mines, you wish you had a better tools for vision that the super short torches and Mistlight. I had full Carapace gear by my 2nd mine. I needed to do 6 to get the pieces needed to craft the boss key. Finding mines is genuinely a bit tedious because of the mist. I can place 7 torches and it still won't look cleared.
4. Losing 5% skills on death. Yes, I understand death is supposed to be punishing. However, it does not make sense from a design point of view to make the game harder immediately because a player failed.

Subjective/quality of improvement critique:

1. If you don't find something early, you can feel clueless. My first Swamp didn't have a Crypt, for example, and I was exploring it for like 2 hours wondering what the hell I'm supposed to do.
2. Screen shaking is a nuisance. I turned it off in settings, but I still get a lot of it, especially climbing.
3. Comfort should not be a linear increase in Rested. It's not a huge deal, because Portals exist. The first levels (1-7/8?) are really easy to get. However, spending metal for just 1 more minute of Rested is a bit silly. Going from Comfort 10 to 11 should be something like 2 minutes more.
4. You get stamina increases, but the stamina costs also increase. It doesn't feel like much of an improvement.
5. Knockback is really annoying. The concept is fine, but needs tuning. Doing a perfect parry and getting pushed back 5 meters is a bit much. You can't even use the extra damage. I get that it incentivizes dodge rolling, but still.
6. Getting to a new biome and finding out you need the previous biome's metals is a nuisance. Plains needs metals from *2 biomes ago*. Mistlands addresses this, but it feels like it should be addressed earlier.
7. Sailing sucks. The Ocean is not interesting. Even if it had more content, because you need to sail so early, it gets a bit tiresome.
8. By the time you get to Mistlands, you're super tight on inventory space. You're carrying arrows, weapons, tools, potions, trinkets, food, building materials (usually a portable portal)…
9. Carapace armor looks like padded lol.
10. Arbalest loading bar does not match animation. There's still a second delay after the bar ends.

My suggestions:

1. Add a Vegvisir for Haldor. Alternatively, if you beat Moder, you should get a guaranteed Haldor spawn the next Black Forest you find.
2. Haldor should unlock a craftable Crossbow. Mistlands being the first time you're able to level it up is a bit annoying and you only mainly use it for the rare Gjall anyways. It also makes sense since he's a Dvergr.
3. Death should reduce experience, but not levels. This means you would basically go into an XP "debt". Same rules for skill drain apply.
4. Add a rudder to both sides of the boat, so you don't have to do a full rotation.
5. Either an upgrade for more inventory slots or things should take less slots. Wishbone, Swamp Key, Mistlight especially.
6. There should be a default or standard map. Grounded and Subnautica, for example, both use a standard map. It really helps with the sense of progression and fixes a lot of the issues of content potentially being missed and the player left standing around. Random generation should still be an option.