How is summer treating you so far? Are you accruing levels of exhaustion through failing the onslaught of heat-induced Constitution saving throws, or did you manage to find a place safe and hidden from the almighty Sun (CR Unknown)? We at Tactical Adventures are pursuing the development of Solasta II through what we colloquially call the “Summer Cheese” (hon hon so French) - with a schedule full of holes due to people taking a long rest with some well deserved vacations. But worry not, yours truly remains here to share new project advancements!
New project advancements AND cute animal pictures, I know some of you come for that sweet dose of serotonin.
Community Stream #11 Friday August 8th
A new month means a new Community Stream. Join us this Friday to discuss everything Tactical Adventures and Solasta II… with a little something more! We’ll be diving back into some of Solasta’s original inspirations - starting with revisiting The Temple of Elemental Evil!
- Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/tacticaladventures
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TacticalAdventures/streams
For those who may not know this game, The Temple of Elemental Evil (or ToEE) is a D&D 3.5 game released in 2003 by Troika Games, who also made both classics Arcanum (2001) and Vampire Bloodlines (2004). It is a Turn-Based Tactical RPG with full party creation which was arguably the most faithful representation of the 3.5 ruleset at the time. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Turns out I still had the game box in French lying somewhere in my house. Perception check, success!
More traps, more boom boom!
Last month we showed you scalding hot geysers, this month we’ll show you a bit more of the traps we’re currently adding to the game - starting with magical runes that will lay in wait for greedy pillagers venturing into long forgotten ruins
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If you’re thinking “well obviously let’s not walk onto the glowing sigils”, first of all congratulations you’re probably smarter than the average adventurer who likes to touch everything that glows and eat anything that grows, but just know these magic symbols will NOT be visible to you unless you succeed on a Perception Check.
Fashion is mandatory
Many of you let us know that you enjoyed seeing the various armors we’re working on, so we’ll be sharing a few more today! Here are researches we’re doing on magical versions of the Studded Leather Armor and the Hide Armor.
We’ve also had a few questions regarding Wondrous Items and if they would appear on your characters when equipped. We are happy to say that some items such as gloves, bracers and boots will be visible on your character! Smaller items such as rings, bracelets and necklaces won’t be as they are a little too tiny to be visible most of the time so we prefer spending time working on other things instead. Headgears are also a little complex so they are not planned at the moment (as always, a smaller team means choices must be made…)
Let us see more of that brand new world…
As we’ve said in the past, Neokos is vast and varied in biomes and environments - all of which will need to be visible on the world map. We’re continuing our research on how to make your exploratory journey through the continent an interesting and visually pleasant one!
But the world map alone isn’t enough to make for an exciting adventure, so we’ve started creating smaller levels for random encounters! Did you ever wonder how they look very early on before we start adding all the visual fluff? Let me draw back the curtain for once.
Oh boy there isn’t much to see here! Are those spherical green blobs native to these lands?
Yes, every single location you’ll be walking through in the final game has started looking somewhat like this! But with just a few strokes of our talent level builders (alright I lied, more like a few days to a few weeks), all these barren levels soon become like… this!
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Pretty stuff aside, what about the gameplay?
While we obviously can’t show you TOO much, we’re of course also working on adding new features on the gameplay side! For example, some of you noticed that in the Solasta II demo items wouldn’t stack properly - this is no longer a problem.
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That aside, we’re also slowly adding new class features and spells to get ready for Early Access. Today we’re sharing with you the new Innate Sorcery power of the Sorcerer! Starting at level 1, they can use a Bonus Action to enter a heightened state during which their Sorcerer spell DC increases by 1 and they gain advantage on their Sorcerer spell attack rolls.
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Oh and before we close this article, here are some fun facts from the survey!
- Although no longer officially in the 2024 edition, the Half-Elf ranked amongst the most popular ancestry! The Half-Orc, not so much. Also, most of you would prefer us to keep their gameplay bonuses as close as possible to the 2014 version.
- Among the classes that won’t be implemented at the start of Early Access, they were all surprisingly close in ranking, although the Warlock does eke out a win here.
- The Ready Action is your top choice among the combat features you’re looking forward to.
- Unsurprisingly, one of the things you look the most forward to in future post 1.0 launch content is a higher level cap (it’s also the hardest to do because of the implications, but hey never say never!)
And that’s it for today! Come back next time for more news about the game, and see you on Friday at 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT / 6 pm CEST for those joining us on August’s Community Stream.
Article by Tactical Myzzrym
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2975950/Solasta_II/
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