A bit frustrated

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Huh, I've been playing a dwarf berzerker since before the dwarfs even had their own start location and never had any problems with the boss or the starting dungeon. I've even had Norgan die on me a few times before reaching him and still killed him without much difficulty.

Just lucky, maybe?

[ohioastro]

There are good points here . Sorry for getting snappy - it's easy to misread tone on the internet.

I think it's a good idea to focus in on the two starts (yeek + dwarf) that are substantially harder than the others; it will make the game friendlier to newer players. It is true that melee vs. caster is a totally different game experience. I blast through Subject Z with casters without noticing; the only problem is avoiding collateral damage. But I finally got a dwarf cursed through the opening gauntlet, only to see myself unable to keep up with Z in damage or status inflicting - death x 3 and goodnight. Same player, different experience.

I'd also take a look at the random adventurer parties. It used to be that you only had to worry about random encounters in the east (and the orc patrols there were super-deadly.) Moving the adventurer parties to the west adds spice when rare, but it's yet another land-mine that makes it harder for people to survive. This is especially true when there are a lot of them. Perhaps tie them to the higher difficulty levels?

I also think that neutering the escort rewards so severely has made it more difficult to balance classes, as some of the "good" rewards were extremely useful for classes that lacked crucial capabilities (e.g. providence, stun resist chant, and so on). One possibility would be to make some of these rewards for completing some of the more interesting / difficult encounters in the west (elven ruins, halfling ruins, etc.) Give a few options and design it so that these could round out characters - this will help a great deal with balancing classes and does fit within the overall theme.

[darkgod]

The only removal was providence, which was not nice, it was a no brainer, for everybody. Now you got to think about maybe keeping a wild infusion on
If some classes are uterly broken by that it's the class that is broken and please report it.
The other removal with imbue item which mostly only came into play in the east anyway

[SageAcrin]

Lack of Providence did hit Ghouls(which lack heavily on status healing options) pretty hard, but it is still possible to get by with grabbing either Conditioning or Light, if you can get the categories(They can cure Mental status with two different items, and they naturally resist Stun, but natural resistance isn't immunity, their natural speed makes Stun even nastier, and you may not get one of those items before, say, Daikara.). Otherwise, everything I've ever played can get by without it(Skeletons get a natural form of, admittedly limited, but also universal, status resistance.).

I kinda wish Extract Gems had been the replacement for Imbue instead of nothing, but oh well. It wasn't that important of a skill for countering niche issues, it was just overly strong.

Also there never was a stun resist chant(or hasn't been since I started playing in b37, I believe it was?, at least), just a Hymn. And the save boosting chant is still in the escort rewards. The only changes were Imbue Item and Providence.

[ohioastro]

Is there any significant reward currently possible for escorts? Or at least one that's better than +2 to a stat you may or may not need?
I'm honestly curious. I haven't seen any that would be anything more than a minor perk. Most involve spending a resource that I probably don't have, or a minor buff to something (+8 detect invisible!) that I don't even notice. Remember that the rewards have steadily been removed over time - the two removed this last round were just the last 2 remaining that were interesting to me. (the stun resist chant was made globally weaker.)

My main point is that a formerly interesting part of the game has been balanced into what is basically irrelevance, and that is a loss.

[SageAcrin]

Lessee.

Warriors: Unflinching Resolve coughs up a 10%-20% chance to shrug off Stuns. Conditioning Category is a potential investment to deal with status in general.
Alchemists: Two okay categories, but no skills worth noting except for Channel Staff/Stone Touch for a few niche classes(Anorithil/Necromancer/free points for Alchemists). Probably the least generally useful escort right now, but the categories aren't bad(Practically anyone that wants a good Generic sink can go with the Gem Alchemy category.).
Seer: Vision's okay, Arcane Eye is better(and quite useful if utilized heavily), and Premonition is great-for a non-mana class, it's free resistance, with the downside that it gives you a mana bar(this doesn't seem like a downside right up until you hit Gorbat, at which point you get smacked in the face by every enemy around for high Arcane damage, then lose your Premonition.). Pretty useful without feeling required.
Rogues: Heightened Senses is hardly required, but it's useful, same with Piercing Sight.
Anorithil: Healing Light is very good healing if you have magic abilities. (and surprisingly not totally useless if you don't, I had a Summoner manage to save four this run. Has a 150 heal they crit all the time.) Great category, if you have magical abilities.
Sun Paladin: Chant of Fortitude is basically free saves, Chant of Fortress is basically free physical resistance. Can't see anything wrong with either.
Loremaster: Disarm and Spit Poison are kinda useless in practice(Spit Poison has a strongly scaling formula that doesn't work well at 0.7 and Disarm only grants about two turns of disarming at 0.7), but Mind Sear is quite good for any Mindpower using class as a backup skill. Unless you're a Solipist, then it's just free Class points.

That's tossing out the often very useful AM rewards for taking in mages.

I'm not sure how you could think all of those are universally worse than two stat points. Some of them are a little niche, but even Alchemist has characters who won't want either category they provide, but still might want Channel Staff or Stone Touch. And stuff like Unflinching Resolve or Premonition or Chant of Fortitude are pretty universally useful. They're just not incredibly dominating.

Edit:

Er, "resource you don't have"? You get a resource bar when you get a skill that consumes a resource. How would Imbue Item have worked without that?

[tiger_eye]

Is there any significant reward currently possible for escorts?

The pleasure of stabbing them all in the back.

What, you think I'm joking? It's quite the thrill! Jabby McStab did them all from behind!

http://te4.org/characters/6887/tome/339 ... 25900d6212

[ohioastro]

Good summary. There is a very important proviso, however, that may not be obvious if you run a class like archmage. If you don't have a native method for re-gaining a resource it isn't a terribly useful ability because you run out of uses very, very quickly. It's OK for something like the alchemist gem ability, because you can rely on getting refilled when you gain a level. But this makes most abilities that use mana / equilibrium / etc. far less valuable for most classes. The loophole is sustained abilities, which can be used even if you don't normally have access. Given that, premonition is the only item on that list that remains interesting for most classes, perhaps a couple of the chants, and nothing would materially change how you play a class if you got it. This is a significant change from the time when you could get significant stat boosts from the alchemist or remove all status (which is currently very rare on wild infusions, if possible at all.)

[donkatsu]

You get unlimited uses of mana-based actives as soon as you find anything with +mana regen on it, which usually happens fairly early on. You can recover all equilibrium by going on the world map.

[edge2054]

Personally I wish escort rewards weren't so magic heavy.

In a world where magic is shunned and hidden the number of escort rewards that scale with the magic attribute is pretty crazy, it's the majority of them in fact.

Flavor aside, it makes the majority of the rewards less good for the majority of classes. If you're not pumping your magic stat you're not getting the most out of escort rewards, at least not generally.

I think the base wild-gift tree has some good talents in it people would use. A psi escort could offer talents from mentalism, dreaming, feedback, or one of the mindslayer trees. Gestures would be pretty neat on a few classes (though a doomed escort might not make a lot of sense).

Anyway, my main point is, when I'm playing a magic based class escort rewards are a lot more exciting. When I'm not, I tend to take a stat point if it's not a rogue, loremaster, or warrior. Which means I'm taking a stat point around 50% of the time.

[Avianpilot]

...though a doomed escort might not make a lot of sense.

But wait, aren't all escorts doomed? Running off randomly and getting themselves killed?

Oh, you meant the class. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun).

But in all seriousness, I do agree with your point about most of the rewards being based on the magic stat. I mostly play Phoenix Knights nowadays, so I don't notice as much anymore since they buff magic, but just about any other class that I would play has no use for the stat. Sometimes I'll try for an odd build that will include it just to make use of escorts, but I think it would be nice to have some rewards that used other stats.

[Grey]

Yeah, it's rare to see warrior escorts, and we could do with marauders being thrown into the mix offering Mobility talents.

[XLambda]

Yeah, it's rare to see warrior escorts, and we could do with marauders being thrown into the mix offering Mobility talents.

This. There's no real reason why Mobility should be restricted to AM escort quests, especially since so many classes would profit from it.

[bricks]

Relevant to some of the recent conversation.

[Grey]

Those changes should certainly reduce frustration a fair bit. Though I find the worst of stun is not being able to use talents. Still, it's nice to throw that effect on enemies :)