Yea make magic available early I want black metal too from necks or rocks in the meadows and flax should grow every where why do they make us wait to play with any of it and why wait for that sweet crossbow that should be all early game totally

You need to draw eitr into your body, and the only way of doing that which we know of is to ingest edible items that have grown in the mist permeating from remains of jotun. It wouldn't make any sense to have magic fueled by that available earlier in the game.

Ymir's flesh could perhaps be used to similar extent, just as it is used to craft magical weapons like Frostner, but it would lie outside of the eitr system and thus not function as true magic as it is available in the game.

Furthermore, it's important for all players to learn the basics of battling in melee as well as when to rely on ranged attacks. Progression to magic instead of starting out with it is just fine.

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

You need to draw eitr into your body, and the only way of doing that which we know of is to ingest edible items that have grown in the mist permeating from remains of jotun. It wouldn't make any sense to have magic fueled by that available earlier in the game.

Ymir's flesh could perhaps be used to similar extent, just as it is used to craft magical weapons like Frostner, but it would lie outside of the eitr system and thus not function as true magic as it is available in the game.

Furthermore, it's important for all players to learn the basics of battling in melee as well as when to rely on ranged attacks. Progression to magic instead of starting out with it is just fine.

Hmm well reasoned.

Its true that Hand to hand skills have to be learned both in game levels and by the player themselves.

Thanks to Jonnins detailed reply above I think that confirms what I thought the Magic items as we have them at Mistland levels will (oh what a surprise! - as Vanflyhightanzek observed) Roll over everything before them if we have an unlimited supply of them.

I think I will have a play about with a new toon that gets one such staff and maybe a couple of stacks of low food - but no more. That would give us a "Big Gun" we could pull out for the Boss fights maybe but not use to steamroller the basic stuff.

This sort of "teaser" item logic could be extended to other items, to show what awaits you when you progress but without the craft skills to repair it should ensure - if the drops of these paragon items from later on were low enough; that players get a feel of what can come next and invest early in learning the attendant skills so they don't HAVE to resort to cheesy Grinding to catch up when they finally get said items. ?

Originally posted by jonnin:

I tried this, by making a new guy and providing the new toys.
Its not well balanced; all the bosses fell easily, never died, low risk until at least the mountains. I even limited myself a lot (eg only frost staff and raw mushroom food until mountains) and it was still OP.
Then mistlands the magic becomes a bit equalized there, low health and armor for an all in mage can't take a lot of abuse and is extra vulnerable to the mines. A hybrid mage (wear armor, eat only 1 magic food, give up pets and high stamina to get nukes) works really, really well.

Bottom line though, its not balanced for it, and it won't work well without a total redo of the numbers/scaling or adding low tier gear with the new system.

Taking later game stuff to earlier parts make it really easy, huh?
Who would've thought.

Of course they'd have to tune it to be equivalent to early game weapons. But the option to have a completely new play style for a play through is very appealing.

I don't really see a reason to keep it completely restricted to the end game.

Variety is always great in games like this. Early magic weapons can just be lower damage/much more basic spells/effects. Then progressing to the mistlands unlocks the cooler spells.

I think I saw a Necromancer pet style spell? The early game weapon could start off with a small, relatively weak skeleton and progress into a larger skele warrior (or whatever the current version is).

Considering how the rest of the game is not build for different builds I doubt they will do this now, perhaps later when the content is fully complete. For example light armor can only be built from certain enemies and they are so far apart being sneaky/agile is not an option for 90% of the game so I wouldn't keep my hopes up.

Originally posted by Zathabar:

Originally posted by jonnin:

I tried this, by making a new guy and providing the new toys.
Its not well balanced; all the bosses fell easily, never died, low risk until at least the mountains. I even limited myself a lot (eg only frost staff and raw mushroom food until mountains) and it was still OP. ...

Thank you for this Jonnnin. I was wondering how OP having say a single staff early on (Say found in a crypt in the black Forest as an uber rare drop) In my scenario Eityr food would also be hyper rare and there would be no means to repair said staff till you got to Mistlands.
How did your test do that? You said you took only the lowest Eityr food which was fair enough, thought more than I was thinking personally, but did you replace staves when they broke or did you actually have a repair station as well?

Magic needs to be retconed into the game at some point far earlier (as I say Black forest or Swamp levels I suggest) But how to do so without making it utterly OP is the question.

If its too powerful as is do we need a "Weak staff of Fire or Frost" with reduced stats to be introduced you think? Or reduce the base ones stats, but sharply up them when we can increase quality on the staves? IE make current T1 = T3 and have T1 &2 Lower so they can be used in BF and Mountain levels perhaps? (This assumes eventually we can get T4 or 5)

Thoughts?

I gave myself the repair station, of course.
So basically I had a 25 (quickly falls down) eitr and the frost staff (5/shot) so I had 5 shots then had to regen. I did that through the swamp.
After bonemass I gave myself the fire staff and the the real food, but only 1 eitr food at a time, so now I had 85 eitr and could use the fire staff for 2 shots before regen.
that took out the mountains easily, and the plains as well. The fire staff is too strong for even the plains, but the frost staff won't work on moder.
regardless, it was stronger than I expected. I thought that by limiting the # of shots by having reduced eitr food and no armor it would be on par, but it was not.
Here is the thing: its a ranged combat style. The only close quarters you have in a run like my attempt are the crypts in the black forest. Every other fight can be kited to death with the frost staff: all other instances until mistlands are optional. You can do the same thing with wood arrows and a crude bow, if you have enough patiences, but the frost staff hits much harder than that, of course.

so the issue is a mix of ranged combat style being nearly immortal (outside of ML mines) + high damage and worse, the fire staff's aoe. Whether you want to be snarky about taking high level stuff to lower areas, this is just the effect of kiting, not the gear.
the fact that the staves also hit hard and are powerful gear adds to it, but not that much. If you were at-risk from the enemy, I don't think the frost staff and 25 eitr is OP for the forest or swamp; its not notably better than fire arrows in a fine bow.

apart from the core tests I also tested the skeletons and they are way, way OP until the mountains. The mountains and plains mess those guys up without the shield staff buff.

Originally posted by ShaftAlmighty:

It's like i said awhile back with the claws, it is a new weapon type so they should add more inferior types earlier on in the game.

As the claws level in unarmed skill the inferior type earlier in the game are fists.

While I can understand the idea of magic being too strong if the full power is given early, surely if they made weaker magic for early on it would be a way around it. I've yet to get far enough to get magic myself but if you could find or make one that is say only 25% of the base strength and such.

If nothing else I suppose modders may always take up that task.

I tried this, by making a new guy and providing the new toys.
Its not well balanced; all the bosses fell easily, never died, low risk until at least the mountains. I even limited myself a lot (eg only frost staff and raw mushroom food until mountains) and it was still OP.
Then mistlands the magic becomes a bit equalized there, low health and armor for an all in mage can't take a lot of abuse and is extra vulnerable to the mines. A hybrid mage (wear armor, eat only 1 magic food, give up pets and high stamina to get nukes) works really, really well.

Bottom line though, its not balanced for it, and it won't work well without a total redo of the numbers/scaling or adding low tier gear with the new system.

I would rather prefer magic weapons to be far later in the game than it's now, so kuiddos stop spamming napalm. It should be a final reward for beating the game once the last biome is added and enable a NG+ mode with tougher enemies that make staves balanced.
Maybe the dead raiser could be an exception and be added even earlier than it's now, but would spawn lesser skellies.

Originally posted by jonnin:

I tried this, by making a new guy and providing the new toys.
Its not well balanced; all the bosses fell easily, never died, low risk until at least the mountains. I even limited myself a lot (eg only frost staff and raw mushroom food until mountains) and it was still OP. ...

Thank you for this Jonnnin. I was wondering how OP having say a single staff early on (Say found in a crypt in the black Forest as an uber rare drop) In my scenario Eityr food would also be hyper rare and there would be no means to repair said staff till you got to Mistlands.
How did your test do that? You said you took only the lowest Eityr food which was fair enough, thought more than I was thinking personally, but did you replace staves when they broke or did you actually have a repair station as well?

Magic needs to be retconed into the game at some point far earlier (as I say Black forest or Swamp levels I suggest) But how to do so without making it utterly OP is the question.

If its too powerful as is do we need a "Weak staff of Fire or Frost" with reduced stats to be introduced you think? Or reduce the base ones stats, but sharply up them when we can increase quality on the staves? IE make current T1 = T3 and have T1 &2 Lower so they can be used in BF and Mountain levels perhaps? (This assumes eventually we can get T4 or 5)

Thoughts?

I try to play the game as "blind" as possible so I focused on upgrading my normal gear before I got the magic stuff and realized that it's much better against the mistlands enemies. So I was pretty much done with the mistlands, only had the last boss to slay and just started using magic. So I did something I have never done before and built a draugr spawn arena in the swamps to level up my blood magic to level 40 and tickled a stuck stone golem until I got elemental magic to around level 35 before I felt ready to face the final boss. The progression system in the mistlands definitely seems a bit off, once you get all the new gear the biome becomes almost easy but you are also already done with it...

I think the idea is to have you go through different play styles before you become a "legend" worthy of Valhalla.
Narratively it makes sense. You start with brute force then become more refined in basic warfare, once you've mastered that (as demonstrated by you taking down the plains boss) you start to learn the mystic arts. You start to become more than just another warrior.

I imagine we'll eventually produce equipment that combines the two disciplines.
For example, Thor's hammer (just a random example) is a weapon of war *and* a focus for magical energies. It would require mastery of both combat and magic to wield effectively.
Only someone who had done that could defeat Odin. Which is likely whats coming.

I completely agree with OP. Magic is an entirely new weapon type as well as feature, we should have access very early on. Maybe nerf the effectiveness and make the upgrades impossible until mistlands materials.

It's like i said awhile back with the claws, it is a new weapon type so they should add more inferior types earlier on in the game.