Question for someone who develops the game. tl:dr. Got killed by monster spawns from portal storm, feels kinda unfair since I was strong, not injured, well equipped, and in my safe home away from monsters. Developers, is this working as intended, or needs tweaking so you don’t get killed by portal storm rng.
I’m in my home, a portal storm occurs. The game says portals open up and monsters come out. 3 flaming eyes come out. I try to kill one. Then a bunch of different colored gas covers the entire screen. Hounds of Tindalos spawn. The flaming eyes blind me. I try to escape but cant see anything and am surrounded by monsters(hounds of tindalos and Giant Appendages. I cant see. I am eventually killed. Is this to be expected from the game?
My gripe is, I’m wearing heavy survivor armor, wielding a fire axe. (My follower is equipped the same) My skills are decent. I’m not near any portals or science laboratories. I was not injured and at 12 strength and 12 dexterity. In a normal world (no settings about portals being stronger or more frequent) just base game, no mods other than blaze industries and no npc needs. I understand life isnt fair.
My gripe is, I was strong, soloing Skeletal Juggernauts, and a portal storm spawned monsters that killed me in my home. How does one survive something like this? They can spawn in closed rooms. Is this portal spawning mechanism working as expected. Is this just me dying by unlucky rng? This makes me feel like having a long playthrough can unfairly just end if you get unlucky rng from a portal storm, not anything to do with poor player decision making.
This does not feel balanced from me as a player. Developers, is this working as intended?
Sleeping also seems to be a solution to avoid any spawning of monsters, so a working but un-realistic solution for anyone out there hoping to avoid this is to just sleep through the portal storms and nothing will spawn and try and kill you.
First most of my work on portal storms up until recently has been in creating the framework which allows it to all be controlled by json files and require no c++ to change. I’m now starting to try and balance them which means all the feedback you can give is very helpful. At the moment I do not at all consider them to be fully balanced or ready, but this is the experimental version so thats ok for the moment and I plan to work hard to make them better for stable.
Second is that if you are inside monsters should not have spawned unless there is an npc outside and that is a bug. If you have any more details about where you were I can try to see if I can figure out what went wrong. Was there a roof above you?
Third sleeping should not affect monster spawns at all, just being inside should be enough.
Fourth flaming eyes are harsh and spawning multiple of them at once is probably too much, possibly fewer appendages too. I hear people complaining that the end game is too easy so I am trying to give end game players harder challenges but its certainly possible I went too far.
Thank you very much for your helpful feedback and please feel free to share any more thoughts you have on portal storms as they are still a work in progress.
Thank you for all of your hard work Ramza13! I think the addition of portal storms is wonderful and everything that comes with it adds a sense of challenge, eeriness. I think that it can spawn monsters and be dangerous is wonderful. My tone in the previous post was one of frustration due to having had my character die(though I’m going to savescum this one time). Thank you.
The flaming eyes spawned the turn I stepped outside, so it seems that them not spawning if you are inside is working as intended. I think my npc remained trapped outside so monsters may have continued to spawn even once I went inside but I cant know for sure.
Interesting mechanic! So it seems you really shouldnt listen to the voices telling you to go outside. Out of curiosity, why does being inside protect you? I like the idea that following their guidance to go outside will lead to danger/death. Kind of a detail, and again thank you for your hard work.
This doesnt feel like an end game type of challenge, given that portal storms happen very early on in the apocalypse. but I like its addition and helps give another reason as to why so many people died. Similar to how we used to have caustic plumes come out of portals (in the old lore) and this led to acid rain that damaged vehicles and killed millions (was implemented a long time ago). This is a nice version of that but with portals and much more potential. Seems like a good ambiance building aspect.
In regards to feedback. I have surived for about 1.5 seasons with this character and at this point It feels that portal storms happen all the time and I am no longer afraid of them since I can just sleep inside and ignore the messages. With this exception where I went outside and it lead to my death. I feel it is a little unintuitive how to avoid the dangers of the portals or that being inside will protect you. But I like the idea a lot, and again thank you for your hard work and beautiful addition:) with lots fo potential.
The idea has been floated around of portal dungeons and such. One potential idea you might like(which also requires much more work) is if weaker enemies come outside if portals if you step outside, but if you look around and get lucky a portal can stay open long enough for you to enter it (since as of now these portals open and close instantly so you cant witness them) and in there you will fight stronger monsters and potentially have higher level loot, so a neat challenge for endgame characters that could be tied with exodii and other aspects of the game. This might give a reason for end game characters to pay more attention to portal storms and actively use these storms as opportunities for loot and facing danger rather than just as times to sleep as mu non-endgame character might use them for. That way the danger isnt as high as I encountered but if you enter one of these portals it offers high risk/reward for late game characters.
I don’t know the details of how exodii travel through portals/dimensions, but this could also be another potential future idea. Of other areas/dimensions being accessed through these portals. Would allow for different world generation of what other planets/conquered species cities might be like. This game has so much potential(and it already has so much… its crazy)
Thank you again for your hard work! Great addition to this evolving masterpiece.
In the lore there are these things called 5-point anchors that can only be found in labs. They where used to protect from portal and dimentinal shenaniganse by anchoring you to our dimention/laws of physics. Maybe these things should protect you from the effects of portal storms as well allowing you to go outside safely during a protal storm as long as that thing has power.
Yeah, I’m not sure about portal storms. I mean, I love the mechanic and the feel of them, but I want to wait until they are ready for prime time before judging them. They seem to get tougher, but that might just be random. I don’t see any incentive to go out in one, and since they happen about once a week they just seem to be a random chance of inescapable death if I get caught outside or in a vehicle in one with bad monsters. I go back and forth about whether I have a problem with that sort of inescapable danger. Maybe the rule will be, never be far from a building, and hope you can reach it before the storm spawns a TPK, and hope you can beat whatever might be inside the nearby building. But right now I’m trending more toward it just being a cheap death, like a die roll every day, and if you fail, you just die. Hopefully that’s because it isn’t done.
But they definitely don’t feel end-game right now. I’ve never had a character anywhere near end-game, and they’re unavoidable if you happen to be exploring, no matter how strong you are.
Cars counts as closed buildings. I didn’t try but maybe a tent also enough.
Ah, well, I haven’t updated in a while so maybe it’s changed, or maybe the vehicle has to be perfectly repaired, or some other reason, but last time I was caught in one I was in a vehicle when it started and thought I’d try waiting it out in the vehicle. They spawned outside the vehicle and attacked me while I was inside. I fought my way into the house and found more in there fighting the NPCs, who had been set to guard inside.
this seems like less of a portal storm problem and more of a balancing problem with the flaming eyes. If flaming eyes see you for too long your sanity breaks and a hound appears through the tear in reality.. While the giant appendages can be damaging, they aren’t necessarily a game ending monster like the hound, since the appendages dissapear and can’t really follow you.