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New archetypes preview: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2186680/view/4265557936889641697

In the upcoming DLC, the Lord Captain will come face to face with an Imperial Death Cult. These masters of assassination demonstrate their devotion to the God-Emperor by studying every facet and aspect of death: their grotesque rituals and bloody sacrifices conceal, like a sheath, the sophisticated art of slaughter's honed blade. To understand first-hand the lethal grace of their craft, simply examine the arsenal of abilities possessed by Kibellah — a Death Cult representative seeking to join your retinue. The new archetypes available at character creation were specifically designed to reflect the terrifying efficiency of the Death Cult.

Let's take a closer look at the new archetypes in the Void Shadows DLC: the first-tier archetype — the Bladedancer and the second-tier archetype — the Executioner. Both are primarily focused on attributes desirable for any melee combatant. These new archetypes not only complement each other excellently but also open up numerous lucrative synergies with existing character-build options.

Oh nice!

Having not delved too deeply into the DLC announcement, outside of the trailers, I thought we were just getting a new companion and some quests. This content would make a new playthrough worthwhile.

Also came as a surprise to me, have not seen any mention of new archetypes myself either.

For people who have done multiple, play throughs, what have you done to mix it up?

You can obviously change which companions you take out. Even if you take the same, you can branch/spec them differently.

Dogma/iconoclast/heretic paths.
Planet upgrade branches.
Some quest choices have ramifications.

Finished my first run a few weeks ago and am going to wait for the DLC and have another go. Figure a few other folks are planning the same…

Still need to beat it, I completely lost steam and interest right after I managed to get through the worst part of the game.

At this point, I may leave the game and try a third restart when both DLC characters have been released? 😅

The news makes me wonder what they're planning on adding for the Imperial Tithe DLC.

A question about an unexpected difficulty spike:



I have been winning every fight easily on the first attempt so far, so there was zero warning that my characters may be lacking anything.

Cyel wrote:
How exactly am I supposed to kill Malice in Commoragh?

My characters deal paltry 2-3 wounds with the crappy weapons they can find around and they get killed in 2-3 swings/shots. The character chosen to talk to Malice doesn't even get to activate, ever.

Abelard survives longer but, after Malice's goons take out Commissar and his soldiers, his luck ends at some point and just a few hits need to get through to kill him.

What diff are you playing

You can get a load of weapons in the camp before you fight him including a super powerful pistol - I had Abelard fight him whilst Sister and my character slaughtered the rest but I was on normal

I play on one above normal iirc and I have been winning every fight easily on the first attempt so far.

I finished the game last night. And it's nice. Mostly thumbs up from me.

Especially with regard to my main concern prior to release. But it turns out that normal difficulty actually feels normal. The only two combat encounters I had to do twice were down to game crashes. Annoyingly one of them was Aurora which happened to crash when the last lousy cultist was one hit away from dying. It wasn't vexing, though, and in fact was kind of fun doing the fight all over again.

That's one area where the game is pretty good. The fights are fun, engaging and for the most part not dragged out. I can appreciate how some boss fights are designed to throw a few extra hurdles your way and mix things up in how you solve them.

On the flip side, I didn't stabilize many warp routes. While that's great for leveling my characters, it really highlighted the limited ways in which these encounters were designed. It becomes something of a chore especially on higher levels when the fights involve a lot of real world time activating a ton of abilities only to massacre everything in half a turn. It doesn't help that there was a notable slant towards Khorne and Tzeentch encounters while Slaanesh and Nurgle remained rare. Specific groups also only seem to have one or two deployment variations. That's too much repetition for a frequently recurring feature.

I had a bit of an issue with leveling. I like the game mechanics as such and you can make a lot of meaningful choices up to, I don't know, halfway through the highest archetype tier when you have everything you want and start picking abilities that didn't make the cut earlier. The math formulas don't even bother me as the ability formatting makes is easy enough to understand the function of an ability and figure out quickly if it's for you before you have to do any math and learn the exact value of the boost. But it is a lot of stuff to come back to every time you level your character, at least six times to account for your core party, modified by equipment and attributes, and passive boosts, and stretched out over two month's worth of playing the game. For instance, I couldn't say why Yrliet can shoot five times in her turn without getting any extra turns, but she can. During combat it's all tied to four of five abilities. Past choices are a lot to keep track of when during actual combat most of it is hidden behind a few buttons with no reminder of how you got there.. It's easy to use when it counts, but takes up a good bit of brain space when you level up and try to build on existing strengths.

The story is fun and guess the right kind of over the top four 40k. I guess Owlcat got the tone right. Can't complain about that.

And visual character customization is nice. It doesn't have an overwhelming amount of option, but the ability to import a character portrait alone is great. I played Ministorum origin for no other reason than that there was a haircut available that aligns with a priest from my Sororitas army. Some fiddling with a picture I had of the model to adjust size and add some filters to blend better into the game graphics, and instead of basing my choices on game mechanics, I started out by recreating a model. That was cool. And dumb. Because she ended up as the weakest character in the party. But that's cool, because game difficulty is decent and allows for fluffy choices over hardcore optimization and still let a character function meaningfully.

Catching up on this thread, it looks like giving it half a year for Owlcat to get bugs under control was a good choice. It's not entirely bug free yet, but I had very little that got in the way of enjoying the game.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Cyel wrote:
How exactly am I supposed to kill Malice in Commoragh?

My characters deal paltry 2-3 wounds with the crappy weapons they can find around and they get killed in 2-3 swings/shots. The character chosen to talk to Malice doesn't even get to activate, ever.

Abelard survives longer but, after Malice's goons take out Commissar and his soldiers, his luck ends at some point and just a few hits need to get through to kill him.

What diff are you playing

You can get a load of weapons in the camp before you fight him including a super powerful pistol - I had Abelard fight him whilst Sister and my character slaughtered the rest but I was on normal

I don't think I had trouble with that (on normal difficulty) since I barely remember anything about the fight. I think I had Yrliet and Argenta at the time, along with my Rogue Trader who is a complete bum. Must have worked out pretty well for me, though. I guess I invested in a lot of tanky abilities early on because I found my party to be killy enough without taking every last ability to boost killing power. That may be beneficial in this case, although I can't say that with any amount of certainty.

I do remember that part of the game to be the most challenging because of decreased overall damage and mitigating abilities from wargear, but not so much that any of my characters got downed.

One of my favorite abilities is Argenta's kick (remember to yell SPAAARTAAAA! when you activate it to unlock its full potential) because it can send an enemy to the ground, which takes it out of the fight for a turn. I don't know if it worked on Malice, or if I even had the ability at the time, but if I did, I'm sure I tried. Doesn't matter how bad an enemy is if it can't fight back.

Hmm...

From the Owl Cat Games X page -

https://x.com/OwlcatGames/status/1838231068614295823?t=m8M_Bz3hb31qNS11G_4SAA&s=19

THE STAR CHILDREN ARE COMING

Iron Man Grim Darkness Mode announced: https://roguetrader.owlcat.games/news/en/43

What is the Grim Darkness Mode?
Often referred to as “Ironman” in other titles, the Grim Darkness mode is the ultimate trial for the boldest of Lord Captains - a challenge for the most experienced, most prepared (or perhaps, most reckless!) players, who wish to truly immerse themselves in the dark and dangerous universe of Warhammer 40,000.

In this mode, you only have a single save, which is updated automatically every time you exit the game. No second chances - you will have to live with the consequences of all your actions and decisions. If your party or voidship are defeated, your Grim Darkness journey will end.

Full description and reward in article linked above.

and by adding brand new content in major updates.

Interesting.

Well, a couple of days after asking about the problematic Malice fight I finally kind of cheesed through it.

Glad you made it past that point. I'm going to have to pay attention to that fight if and when I play it again.

Something interesting from the latest patch notes:

Many formulae in the game were updated to show the final expected numbers instead of complicated mathematical operations;

I'm sure that'll make a lot of people happy.

I think the malice fight was one of the ones I TPK’d the first attempt. Second try I pre-positioned the party in the area behind him where things were a little more shielded from the room and made it work.

The complex formulas made leveling up rough, good that they are simplifying things. Especially bad when leveling up characters you don’t use often. What stacks of what do they generate? What’s leveraged off of what? What’s the name of the power that does the thing, and is it worth boosting?

Character design needed one of those crazy red string conspiracy boards to sort out.

 Nevelon wrote:
I think the malice fight was one of the ones I TPK’d the first attempt. Second try I pre-positioned the party in the area behind him where things were a little more shielded from the room and made it work.

The complex formulas made leveling up rough, good that they are simplifying things. Especially bad when leveling up characters you don’t use often. What stacks of what do they generate? What’s leveraged off of what? What’s the name of the power that does the thing, and is it worth boosting?

Character design needed one of those crazy red string conspiracy boards to sort out.

Malice was a fight I did die first time but I had no equipment - sorted that out quickly and got Sister to help who has no stats mods.

Normal meant I did not have to worry to much about min-maxing and just choose advised things or stuff that looked in keeping with character/fun

Cyel wrote:
Well, a couple of days after asking about the problematic Malice fight I finally kind of cheesed through it.

Spoiler:

I separated my characters to just have my RT talk to Malice as I knew anyone who will be there will die/almost die before getting a chance to activate.

I deployed Argenta and Abelard in hard cover near the entry, where our reinforcements appear.

As predicted my RT was incapacitated immediately, before getting to activate once, but other characters were far enough to not suffer damage (or be knocked out instantly) and that gave them a chance to start applying various buffs.

Enemies were bottlenecked in the entry and blocked by Commissar's men when they arrived. The fight went pretty well from that position.

Still felt a little exploity, but at least I could continue playing. Every fight after that went back to being extremely easy, just like before the Malice fight.
A very weird difficulty spike.

I remember having to give that fight a few attempts and it came down to placement and equipment.

Were any of your fighters injured/wounded? The debuffs from wounds can be devastating on hit chances and such.

I forgot the update was today!

Got a new game started as a Psyker/Bladedancer and just got into the Officers Quarters section of the prologue/tutorial before I had to leave for work. Not decided on what my alignment will be just yet, but might go hard core dogmatic. We'll see how it goes.

Bladedancer is pretty wild.

Can leap over multiple enemies in range like a checker piece while hitting them, then select another ability that lets you jump back to where you started, hitting them all on the way back.

Granted, playing on normal, but my psyker/bladedancer with Kibellah in the party (keeping her in the party for the duration to see new dialogue and such) just mows throw everything if the enemy are bunched up. I haven't put much thought into my build just yet, but once I do some math I'll probably respec to a different build to make it even more effective.

Astropathic choir is a pretty neat new ship zone that I haven't found the purpose for yet(haven't left Footfall). Was pretty cool exploring the freight lines in the ship while looking for the death cult and seeing how the non-crew dregs of a ship live. Not sure what I expected, but I didn't expect trains in a spaceship. I really should've expected it, because this is 40K...

Sounds like fun. I played an almost exclusively ranged party, but I got a lot of use out of increased mobility.

I have yet to commit to the DLC, mostly since I only just finished a playthrough. I figured I'd play a pompous, full on dogmatic aristocrat next time. I also want to lean more into melee to see how the game plays that way, but that kind of goes against my vision for that character. So maybe I'll let myself get nudged into playing a stabby devotee of the Ruinous Powers first.

For me the trains got "spoiled" by the screenshot on the store page, but hey, why not? Capital ships are large and you have to move goods and people around somehow.

A few quests out of Comorragh and I've hit the end quest of the DLC content*, and I'm happy with my purchase of it. New character is pretty cool, as are her abilities. Her disposition fit my ultra-dogmatic disposition for this playthrough, so it felt natural. Aside from Deathcult centric weapons, I don't think I've even used any of the other equipment from the DLC antagonist faction.

*At least I think its the end. I swear I've stamped out this pesky insurrection like 3 times now.

Regarding Steam Achievements, today I found out:

 Bobthehero wrote:

Spoiler:

As far as I know he's an Iconoclast? The Traitor Companion is someone else

Decided to start a new game and still in act 1, but pleasantly surprised by the new content so far, fleshing out minor NPC's and oh my days, Kibellah x Abelard in combat is going to be a fun combo to say the least going off her tutorial.

Kibellah can become a real blender, for sure.

Level up her medicae skill and weapon skill stat, as there's a talent to make medicae use weapon skill as its stat, and then in executioner there's a talent to make medicae dictate your wounds rather than toughness. Couple that with talents to increase her number of wounds (It Will Not Die and one in the Bladedancer archetype I can't remember). Then there's an ability to convert 30% of your wounds into temp wounds and then you can use a consumable to convert those temp wounds into bonus damage on melee attacks for the round.

Only annoying thing for me is the bladedancer archetype abilities requiring specifically swords. So you can't do dual knives with it (and sword and knife doesn't count as 2 swords etc.).

Might be an unpopular take, but I wish loot was random.

 nels1031 wrote:
Might be an unpopular take, but I wish loot was random.

Maybe?

I generally prefer a mix in my games.

A lot of junk just went straight into the cargo hold to trade for rep. I held onto the good stuff in case I wanted to use it.

But there is not a huge amount of repeating quests/fights. So it’s not like you can just grind cultists until you get the rare chainsword drop. Not that huge grinds are fun.

I think randomness adds to replayability. You can just run and kill X for the golden bolter. Who knows where it will drop?

A mix of random loot tables and choosable quest rewards is my preference.

But not a big fan of 100% fixed.

 Nevelon wrote:

I think randomness adds to replayability.

That's mainly what I was aiming for in regards to random loot. Less on the grind aspect and more happy surprises, basically. Would make fighting every warp jump event more rewarding, for instance. edit: Which, after writing it, does get kind of grindy...

Yeah. There should always be some fixed loot. I'd say 80/20 would be a good random/fixed ratio overall. Certain missions should give specific items(especially if they are important for progression), but it would be nice if enemies had some randomness.

Granted, it is a little weird if a random cultist spawns with a heavy bolter in his inventory that he for some reason wasn't using. So at least keep the loot where it makes sense.

Random repeatable missions for actual loot grinding would be nice, with mission type/factors effecting what the loot generated would be. IE: do a repeatable DE raiding camp/ship/whatever to grind DE loot. Repeatable rebel traitor mission for general human weapons. Repeatable heretek camp for higher end weapons. etc...