The Age of Decadence March Update

We’re really close to April but that didn’t stop Iron Tower Studio from putting out a March update for The Age of Decadence on their forums which deals with the feedback they’ve received from demo players and how they will address it. Here’s a snip:

It has come to our attention that combat is way too difficult for the masses. And not the “I cried when Aeris died” masses but the allegedly hardcore masses (probably the very same people who whined that Shadow of the Horned Rat was too difficult).

It goes without saying that we want people to play our game instead of reloading in frustration. Frustration is bad for your cholesterol and we don’t want to see kids suffer, but unfortunately or fortunately it’s not universal. We have 2 camps now:

– (the difficulty is great, please don’t change a thing!)
– (combat is impossible; rage-quitting is my only option!)

. which makes it very hard to decide what to do. I don’t think the difficulty slider is the answer. So, first, we’ll try a few things and see if the work.

We gave you 5 (five!) extra points at chargen. You can either put them in combat, which should make it easier or, if you’re happy with combat’s difficulty, put them in a secondary skill.

The main issue, in my opinion, is that you were stuck with default equipment in the vignette fights. Now you can hit the store first and buy yourself something nice.

Defense is king at the moment, which is what makes the difficulty so brutal, and, coincidentally, makes CON a dump stat. You either get hit a lot and 10-20 extra hit points won’t make a difference, or get hit rarely and don’t need extra HP. So.

We changed the THC formula. Now the focus is on offensive and balanced builds.
CON affects the chance of stat damage.
Increased STR and decreased PER bonuses, as PER was a bit too useful and STR a bit useless. Best builds until now were high DEX, high PER, although some people did well with high STR and crafting.
Different STR bonuses for different weapons: two-handers get more, daggers get less.
THC bonus from lighter weapons reduced.
Defense penalty for heavy armor – each subsequent attack IN A SINGLE TURN is harder to block than the one before. We’re trying to tie it to your STR and CON now.
Tweaked crafting. Lowered the damage techniques, improved masterwork for armors to help dodgers, and added hardened technique for leather armors
INT will now determine a number of tagged skills – 1 tagged skill at INT5, 2 at 6, etc. Tagged skills will receive X bonus points for every 10 earned.