really liked the game, made it to the end of the demo after 10 hours but then started a new run trying to get unarmed combat mastery up and explore more of the menar grove (i stopped after defeating the world tree sapling because i didnt want to get axe mastery to 90 to cut it down)
I keep asking myself that - sorry for the delays. I'm going to post an update now just so no one thinks I've ghosted, although I haven't gotten things where I wanted them to be yet
Hey, thanks for playing! Because some game updates before 0.3 made fixes to underlying game mechanics, I would recommend starting a new save - carrying over an older save may cause some weird errors. That having been said, it is possible to carry over a save. Wherever on your computer you have the game set up, you should be able to find a saves directory and copy those files over to the new version.
hey, thanks for checking in - I've had life stuff getting in the way and been working on other things. I'll try to put up a post this weekend with a general update
Hi really love this game. Been trying to get all the skills up to 90 or so but I don't really know much on how to get gathering or other skills up to there.
Thanks for playing! Some skills have lower caps right now - each activity that can increase skills only increases it up to a certain point, and not all skills have higher tier activities available so far. Gathering can't go any higher than level 30 at this point in the game. Eventually I'd like it to be possible for all skills to get to at least level 50, if not 90, but it might not be in Graham's destiny to be a Master at everything.
Thanks! I'm still working on it, just got distracted by the Diablo II expansion and slay the spire 2, but I'll have an update out in the next couple of weeks with the finished library, and then a full content update in the next couple of months
Alright after defeating the world tree sapling I have a few comments.
1. A lot of the time in combat I ended up defending in order to regain stamina. That would be fine until I got more than two actions. At which point I had to press defend a whole bunch of times and you only get stamina once per turn. That was a lot of unnecessary button presses. It would be good if there was a skill to regain stamina or a way to just defend and pass the entire turn.
2. In a similar vein spamming the buttons to do an action multiple times was painful. I mean literally painful. My hand hurts now. Some of the actions defaulted to the same button, like chopping menar wood, and even that was rough. But the ones where it exited the menu and you had to go back were even worse. And the ones where you had to navigate to a specific dialogue option were just terrible.
This was why the clock option to skip a loop was useless. Having to scroll down to the required choice each time, and read the time dialogue, and get back and scroll again, 15 times. Was just too much time and work. It was legitimately faster to just run down to the specific activity.
Let the clock just spend all 15 actions on the same action. There's almost no reason you'll want to train different actions in the same loop if you're doing the clock skip. Also let the classes be really impactful. They didn't seem to offer much training.
3. Some of the actions had a little bit of dialogue when you got to the point where they no longer offered training. Given the button spamming nature of it I missed most of these as they flashed up on the screen. Please have them repeat both so people can read them if they miss them. And so they don't waste time if they come back to the action later and forget they already finished it.
4. Some method of seeing how much experience we have in each skill would be nice. I've seen that sort of thing in rpg maker before so I'm pretty sure there's a plugin for it.
All that said I liked it. I think you have a good basis for a game here. I'm looking forward to your updates.
Thanks for playing and thanks for your feedback - I'll address what I can here.
1) A skill to regain stamina is a good idea... ;)
2) Sorry about your hand. If there are specific interactions that are very annoying, please let me know via the bug report link. I'm terms of the overall grindiness of the game, I understand not everyone likes it but grindiness is the point, not an unfortunate side effect. I'm definitely willing to add or alter some quality of life improvements such as the clock time skip, but it's still going to be grindy.
3) This is also something I've been eliciting specific feedback on so I can try to make changes. I think I can add a forced time (that is, you can't immediately skip) to the training cap messages, I think that would help.
4) You can see what level the skill is (menu - items - skills), but I'm intentionally not showing you how close you are to the next level. I don't know how other RPGmaker games do things, my skill system is my own cobbled together mess. Again I know how I could share more detail, but at least for now I've chosen not to.
There are too many painful points to list them all. If you absolutely insist that the player need to do it manually, then at least give each skill its own dedicated training spot.
I will list four examples.
First the menar tree that you can't cut down. This is good because you can just spam the action key. There's no unnecessary dialogue. You don't stop training until you want to.
Second the crystal ball in the reliquary. It has two options, mana control and starsight. You can't spam the action button if you want to do starsight because it defaults to mana control. So you have to navigate the menu and push enter each time. Which takes longer even if you do it right, and if you do it wrong, well that's a wasted action.
Third reading the books in the office. You select the book from the list, and then it takes you to a continue or leave menu instead of back to the full book list. This lets you spam the action button. This is much better. If you're going to have spots that can train more than one thing do it like this please.
Fourth woodworking with menar wood. Mr. Harris exclaims "Where did you get that!" and then pauses every single time before it gets to the menu to actually do something. There is admittedly not a lot of menar wood so you can't really spam it. But you can still do it several times in a loop so it gets annoying. It's also weird. Why is he questioning me about Menar wood when he literally just said that. Maybe only have him do it the first time each loop.
In summary, I don't mind the grind so much as all the unnecessary button presses and waiting. Lets us just mash the action key if we want to train something. Training the different magic things is also painful because even though you can just hit the action button it has several lines of dialogue each time.
Totally makes sense, thanks for giving specific examples, I can try to improve those. If you use the bug report form it makes it less likely that I'll forget about it.
A lot of it would be alleviated if the game would remember where the cursor was in a fight/dialog menu. This would allow, for example, spamming Starsight in the church, make the clock more useful, combat training less of a pain...
There should be a RPG Maker plugin for that, too.
Also, different actions should give different experience levels. Sure, I can train blacksmithing twice in the academy, or I can do it 60+ times at the blacksmith and get 30 times as much experience.
As you said, this is an RPGmaker limitation - I haven't seen a plugin for that specifically and I'm not sure if it's possible.
As for different actions giving different amounts of experience, they do! Taking a class in the academy spends more time and also gives you more experience than a single action of training it yourself that takes 1 unit of time. More differentiation will happen in future updates (e.g. new things you can craft but you have to learn at the academy)
I'm using itch's way to update files now, so it may make things a little weird. If you can visit the library in the academy it's definitely 0.32. I'll check what's going on when I get a chance
I can visit the library. In that case it looks like reading the first dragon book still lets you read it constantly. And the exercise/mana control in your bedroom requires me to go back and forth to use it.
Ah, if your Mana Control skill is less than 5 I see why exercise wouldn't be repeatable. That will be fixed in the next update. There were also some hiccups with the "continue reading" and the dragon event that I think I've nailed down.
Yes, i may be bad at fighting, inept at magic, and my craftsmanship is average at best, but god damn it if Im not annoying xD. Good luck to all my enemies, for every turn you take I spend 12 of mine boosting my dodge and fliping u off.
Thanks for playing, and sorry about this bug. In 0.31 the blacksmith is bugged, but you can sneak past the bug if you exercised at home that morning. 0.32 will have that bugfix, other bugfixes, and some new content, probably this weekend
Thanks for the workaround. Is there a way to exercise at home other than through the clock? Once I use the clock, I don't seem to have the option to leave and go somewhere else. So I'm confused about how to exercise at home prior to visiting the blacksmith to forge something. Thanks for the help!
exercising at home is done on the right side of graham's room, below the status book. it's only available up to physical fitness 20 though. i should have 0.32 uploaded here tomorrow with the fix (and other stuff), just getting some testing in today
Much appreciated! Umm... I'm new here. Love the game so far. It really captures the vibe of Stubborn Skill Grinder. Thanks for making it. Newbie question- how do I download the version you're dropping this weekend? Will it overwrite my progress or is it like a patch?
Download it from here, it's essentially a new game but you can manually move your savefile (it's a file called something like "Save01.rvdata2" in your game folder). Just copy that over to the new install location, pitch the old game, and you're good to go.
New build should go up later today, i'm just still trying to fix an uncooperative bug.
just imported the save from 30 to 31 and now the blacksmith says the dialogue from when you try to touch his weapons without permission even with the correct dialogue options, he even says that hes glad but the block dialogue still appears
Yep, I've gotten a few reports about that and it's been fixed for the next update. Weirdly enough, you can fix that now by exercising in your room (but if your physical fitness is too high for that you're out of luck). I'm planning on getting 0.32 out by sometime next week, which will have that, another small bugfix, and some new content for the academy. Sorry for the inconvenience!
i really don't know how to get the better axe for the sapling, im with blacksmith 60 and tried menar wood but nothing, the other thing it could be is woodworking or magic, are these ideas true?
Just saw this game recommended to me on reddit today and already put in several hours I was just wondering if you might be able to release some sort of skill guide?
Thanks for playing! I've mostly been focused on getting the content in the game, but I'm going to be adding some more few quality of life / in-game hints in the next couple of small updates. The wiki isn't fully up to date, but it's got a lot of the basics for early game stuff
No, sorry - that's kinda the point of the game. In the first half or so of the content that exists right now you can use the clock in the house to select your activities and that speeds up the process a bit but I don't know if I'll add anything like that for the post-dragon content.
Can't figure out what i am supposed to do to get to menar woods. I have both skills like 15 or higher, got the cleave skill but still wont let me and I am tired of dying to the tree
Have you been anywhere besides the lumberyard? It is possible to just grind your way up by dying to the tree over and over again until you can survive it, but that's not the easiest way.
I believe some areas have a little background music, but it hasn't been my focus. I usually end up muting background music when I'm playing games, so I don't think of it too much as a game developer. I'll try to make sure each area has BG music included, even if it's just from the rpgmaker default assets.
The first alpha build of 0.3 is available to play testers now in the SSG discord, I'll probably have a second build this weekend. Planning to get the final update out before the end of the year!
Hey there, something of returning player from I think 0.1.6x, loving the new changes since 0.2, but I'm curious about how to get that mana circulations skill again.
I remember in the past you got it pretty easily at apprentice or something like that, the wiki says you have to talk to that Reliquary Worker, but to me the only options related to learning anything is "Learn more advanced magic", and he only tells me he can't teach me anything, that I should search for the guild or academy.
Since I'm guessing entering the academy requires beating the Imperial Army first, it's still a bit before I can do that, is it also taught at the academy now? I've gotten mana bolt from the guild, but that's it currently.
Edit: It became an option to learn from reliquary worker all of a sudden, only thing of note I've done is become an Expert in Evasion, Mana Control is still at 25, not sure what triggered it still. Wait, the Regeneration skill? just got that as well.
I'll double check the requirements when I get a chance (so not for a couple days because I'm away for the weekend), but I believe you can't ask about healing magic (and get introductory magic) unless you have the regeneration skill already.
Lumberjacking is the only skill that goes over 90; a few other skills can get to 90 but 50-90 goes pretty slow. Using magic skills in combat gives XP for that type of magic, so those, evasion, combat mastery, toughness, axe mastery can all get to 90. Regeneration can get to 90 but it's difficult (50+ you only get XP from being at low health AND poisoned or on fire). There's no requirement of any skill over Expert (50) except for lumberjacking.
To get regeneration: you need level 25 physical fitness, then you need to be at low (below 10%) health during combat and it should trigger to gain the skill
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really liked the game, made it to the end of the demo after 10 hours but then started a new run trying to get unarmed combat mastery up and explore more of the menar grove (i stopped after defeating the world tree sapling because i didnt want to get axe mastery to 90 to cut it down)
how's the progress?
ah, slow. sorry, family stuff is taking up more of my free time and brainpower than I would like at this point
it's alright, your personal life is more important than working on this game lol
Is it the weekend yet?
I keep asking myself that - sorry for the delays. I'm going to post an update now just so no one thinks I've ghosted, although I haven't gotten things where I wanted them to be yet
First, awesome game! How do I update the game without having to start a new save? Can I transfer saves? I have a save on 21a, how do I update to 32?
Hey, thanks for playing! Because some game updates before 0.3 made fixes to underlying game mechanics, I would recommend starting a new save - carrying over an older save may cause some weird errors. That having been said, it is possible to carry over a save. Wherever on your computer you have the game set up, you should be able to find a saves directory and copy those files over to the new version.
Progress to the next major update
hey, thanks for checking in - I've had life stuff getting in the way and been working on other things. I'll try to put up a post this weekend with a general update
Hi really love this game. Been trying to get all the skills up to 90 or so but I don't really know much on how to get gathering or other skills up to there.
Thanks for playing!
Some skills have lower caps right now - each activity that can increase skills only increases it up to a certain point, and not all skills have higher tier activities available so far. Gathering can't go any higher than level 30 at this point in the game. Eventually I'd like it to be possible for all skills to get to at least level 50, if not 90, but it might not be in Graham's destiny to be a Master at everything.
I am a big fan of your game. I check every week for updates. Thank you very much for continuing development!
Thanks! I'm still working on it, just got distracted by the Diablo II expansion and slay the spire 2, but I'll have an update out in the next couple of weeks with the finished library, and then a full content update in the next couple of months
Hell yeah!
Alright after defeating the world tree sapling I have a few comments.
1. A lot of the time in combat I ended up defending in order to regain stamina. That would be fine until I got more than two actions. At which point I had to press defend a whole bunch of times and you only get stamina once per turn. That was a lot of unnecessary button presses. It would be good if there was a skill to regain stamina or a way to just defend and pass the entire turn.
2. In a similar vein spamming the buttons to do an action multiple times was painful. I mean literally painful. My hand hurts now. Some of the actions defaulted to the same button, like chopping menar wood, and even that was rough. But the ones where it exited the menu and you had to go back were even worse. And the ones where you had to navigate to a specific dialogue option were just terrible.
This was why the clock option to skip a loop was useless. Having to scroll down to the required choice each time, and read the time dialogue, and get back and scroll again, 15 times. Was just too much time and work. It was legitimately faster to just run down to the specific activity.
Let the clock just spend all 15 actions on the same action. There's almost no reason you'll want to train different actions in the same loop if you're doing the clock skip. Also let the classes be really impactful. They didn't seem to offer much training.
3. Some of the actions had a little bit of dialogue when you got to the point where they no longer offered training. Given the button spamming nature of it I missed most of these as they flashed up on the screen. Please have them repeat both so people can read them if they miss them. And so they don't waste time if they come back to the action later and forget they already finished it.
4. Some method of seeing how much experience we have in each skill would be nice. I've seen that sort of thing in rpg maker before so I'm pretty sure there's a plugin for it.
All that said I liked it. I think you have a good basis for a game here. I'm looking forward to your updates.
Thanks for playing and thanks for your feedback - I'll address what I can here.
1) A skill to regain stamina is a good idea... ;)
2) Sorry about your hand. If there are specific interactions that are very annoying, please let me know via the bug report link. I'm terms of the overall grindiness of the game, I understand not everyone likes it but grindiness is the point, not an unfortunate side effect. I'm definitely willing to add or alter some quality of life improvements such as the clock time skip, but it's still going to be grindy.
3) This is also something I've been eliciting specific feedback on so I can try to make changes. I think I can add a forced time (that is, you can't immediately skip) to the training cap messages, I think that would help.
4) You can see what level the skill is (menu - items - skills), but I'm intentionally not showing you how close you are to the next level. I don't know how other RPGmaker games do things, my skill system is my own cobbled together mess. Again I know how I could share more detail, but at least for now I've chosen not to.
There are too many painful points to list them all. If you absolutely insist that the player need to do it manually, then at least give each skill its own dedicated training spot.
I will list four examples.
First the menar tree that you can't cut down. This is good because you can just spam the action key. There's no unnecessary dialogue. You don't stop training until you want to.
Second the crystal ball in the reliquary. It has two options, mana control and starsight. You can't spam the action button if you want to do starsight because it defaults to mana control. So you have to navigate the menu and push enter each time. Which takes longer even if you do it right, and if you do it wrong, well that's a wasted action.
Third reading the books in the office. You select the book from the list, and then it takes you to a continue or leave menu instead of back to the full book list. This lets you spam the action button. This is much better. If you're going to have spots that can train more than one thing do it like this please.
Fourth woodworking with menar wood. Mr. Harris exclaims "Where did you get that!" and then pauses every single time before it gets to the menu to actually do something. There is admittedly not a lot of menar wood so you can't really spam it. But you can still do it several times in a loop so it gets annoying. It's also weird. Why is he questioning me about Menar wood when he literally just said that. Maybe only have him do it the first time each loop.
In summary, I don't mind the grind so much as all the unnecessary button presses and waiting. Lets us just mash the action key if we want to train something. Training the different magic things is also painful because even though you can just hit the action button it has several lines of dialogue each time.
Totally makes sense, thanks for giving specific examples, I can try to improve those. If you use the bug report form it makes it less likely that I'll forget about it.
A lot of it would be alleviated if the game would remember where the cursor was in a fight/dialog menu. This would allow, for example, spamming Starsight in the church, make the clock more useful, combat training less of a pain...
There should be a RPG Maker plugin for that, too.
Also, different actions should give different experience levels. Sure, I can train blacksmithing twice in the academy, or I can do it 60+ times at the blacksmith and get 30 times as much experience.
As you said, this is an RPGmaker limitation - I haven't seen a plugin for that specifically and I'm not sure if it's possible.
As for different actions giving different amounts of experience, they do! Taking a class in the academy spends more time and also gives you more experience than a single action of training it yourself that takes 1 unit of time. More differentiation will happen in future updates (e.g. new things you can craft but you have to learn at the academy)
yeah i agree with every point made here
The link to the 0.32 doesn't actually seem to be the 0.32 version. It says it was uploaded 20 days ago and I can still read while facing the dragon.
I'm using itch's way to update files now, so it may make things a little weird. If you can visit the library in the academy it's definitely 0.32. I'll check what's going on when I get a chance
I can visit the library. In that case it looks like reading the first dragon book still lets you read it constantly. And the exercise/mana control in your bedroom requires me to go back and forth to use it.
Ah, if your Mana Control skill is less than 5 I see why exercise wouldn't be repeatable. That will be fixed in the next update. There were also some hiccups with the "continue reading" and the dragon event that I think I've nailed down.
Yes, i may be bad at fighting, inept at magic, and my craftsmanship is average at best, but god damn it if Im not annoying xD. Good luck to all my enemies, for every turn you take I spend 12 of mine boosting my dodge and fliping u off.
90 evasion is bult diff
How the hell did you get 90 eva???????
just a lot of getting into fights and using "defend".
fun fact, Evasion Mastery title gives +40% defense, +25% critical hit evasion, +50% effectiveness of the guard (defend) action, and +30% to evasion
Not sure why, but I can only train blacksmith multiple times at clock. There is no "other station" for me to work.
Seriously please, I don't know how to trigger it and I am just stuck grinding with weaker damage without the axe boosts.
Thanks for playing, and sorry about this bug. In 0.31 the blacksmith is bugged, but you can sneak past the bug if you exercised at home that morning. 0.32 will have that bugfix, other bugfixes, and some new content, probably this weekend
Thanks for the information. I am still a bit stuck though without being able to get greataxe.
Sorry about that - hopefully you can enjoy some other games and hobbies for a few days while I get the next update out.
I will. And just like you to know I've been enjoying game so far. Nice coding on restrictions.
Thanks for the workaround. Is there a way to exercise at home other than through the clock? Once I use the clock, I don't seem to have the option to leave and go somewhere else. So I'm confused about how to exercise at home prior to visiting the blacksmith to forge something. Thanks for the help!
exercising at home is done on the right side of graham's room, below the status book. it's only available up to physical fitness 20 though. i should have 0.32 uploaded here tomorrow with the fix (and other stuff), just getting some testing in today
Much appreciated! Umm... I'm new here. Love the game so far. It really captures the vibe of Stubborn Skill Grinder. Thanks for making it. Newbie question- how do I download the version you're dropping this weekend? Will it overwrite my progress or is it like a patch?
Download it from here, it's essentially a new game but you can manually move your savefile (it's a file called something like "Save01.rvdata2" in your game folder). Just copy that over to the new install location, pitch the old game, and you're good to go.
New build should go up later today, i'm just still trying to fix an uncooperative bug.
just imported the save from 30 to 31 and now the blacksmith says the dialogue from when you try to touch his weapons without permission even with the correct dialogue options, he even says that hes glad but the block dialogue still appears
Yep, I've gotten a few reports about that and it's been fixed for the next update. Weirdly enough, you can fix that now by exercising in your room (but if your physical fitness is too high for that you're out of luck). I'm planning on getting 0.32 out by sometime next week, which will have that, another small bugfix, and some new content for the academy. Sorry for the inconvenience!
well, time to wait so
i really don't know how to get the better axe for the sapling, im with blacksmith 60 and tried menar wood but nothing, the other thing it could be is woodworking or magic, are these ideas true?
Menar wood + woodworking, then go to the blacksmith
Just saw this game recommended to me on reddit today and already put in several hours I was just wondering if you might be able to release some sort of skill guide?
Thanks for playing! I've mostly been focused on getting the content in the game, but I'm going to be adding some more few quality of life / in-game hints in the next couple of small updates. The wiki isn't fully up to date, but it's got a lot of the basics for early game stuff
Hey just curious I've already reached the end of the current content is there a way to increase xp to speed up grinding?
No, sorry - that's kinda the point of the game. In the first half or so of the content that exists right now you can use the clock in the house to select your activities and that speeds up the process a bit but I don't know if I'll add anything like that for the post-dragon content.
Oh thanks that's exactly what I wanted
Can't figure out what i am supposed to do to get to menar woods. I have both skills like 15 or higher, got the cleave skill but still wont let me and I am tired of dying to the tree
Thanks for playing!
Have you been anywhere besides the lumberyard? It is possible to just grind your way up by dying to the tree over and over again until you can survive it, but that's not the easiest way.
Needs music.
I believe some areas have a little background music, but it hasn't been my focus. I usually end up muting background music when I'm playing games, so I don't think of it too much as a game developer. I'll try to make sure each area has BG music included, even if it's just from the rpgmaker default assets.
Sooooooo. Update when?
The first alpha build of 0.3 is available to play testers now in the SSG discord, I'll probably have a second build this weekend. Planning to get the final update out before the end of the year!
YEAYYYYYY
Will save files be usable? Or are you gonna kill them?
Save files should be able to transfer over safely
Yeayyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Hey there, something of returning player from I think 0.1.6x, loving the new changes since 0.2, but I'm curious about how to get that mana circulations skill again.
I remember in the past you got it pretty easily at apprentice or something like that, the wiki says you have to talk to that Reliquary Worker, but to me the only options related to learning anything is "Learn more advanced magic", and he only tells me he can't teach me anything, that I should search for the guild or academy.
Since I'm guessing entering the academy requires beating the Imperial Army first, it's still a bit before I can do that, is it also taught at the academy now? I've gotten mana bolt from the guild, but that's it currently.
Edit: It became an option to learn from reliquary worker all of a sudden, only thing of note I've done is become an Expert in Evasion, Mana Control is still at 25, not sure what triggered it still. Wait, the Regeneration skill? just got that as well.
I'll double check the requirements when I get a chance (so not for a couple days because I'm away for the weekend), but I believe you can't ask about healing magic (and get introductory magic) unless you have the regeneration skill already.
how do you get a skill over 90? Im stuck at 90 for lumber
Talk to master Osgood in the reliquary. If you're at 90 you should have spoken to him already, but he may have some different things to say now.
"Do you know what's the strongest magic? Chronomancy!"
this sounds very brennan lee mulligan :3
it's a more subtle reference than the one in my other game :D
Yes!
what are the caps for all skills? most seem to cap at 70
Depend. Lumber can go over, axe can. The magic is caped at 50 for now. It goes from skill to skill
Lumberjacking is the only skill that goes over 90; a few other skills can get to 90 but 50-90 goes pretty slow. Using magic skills in combat gives XP for that type of magic, so those, evasion, combat mastery, toughness, axe mastery can all get to 90. Regeneration can get to 90 but it's difficult (50+ you only get XP from being at low health AND poisoned or on fire). There's no requirement of any skill over Expert (50) except for lumberjacking.
how I get regeneration?
To get regeneration: you need level 25 physical fitness, then you need to be at low (below 10%) health during combat and it should trigger to gain the skill