Wanderers of Sorceria Dedicated Update Thread

[RazorclawX]

Somewhat as an aside, for Book 6's Free mode I disposed of Prince Galar (and no one will miss him) and replaced him with Gina, whose main 'thing' is throwing knives. She throws lots of knives. Her single target attack is throwing a knife. Her AOE attack is throwing knives. Her Ultimate is throwing even more knives. Knives knives everywhere (she's not that dissimilar from the standard Warden, actually).

Probably should lay off the Dynasty Warriors there.

[RazorclawX]

Just random nonsense: if I have Kurumi dressed as a Japanese pop idol and Hikaru dressed as Michael Jackson, what would Shizuka be dressed as?

Spoiler

The actual answer is NOBODY, but it's still fun to speculate.

[RazorclawX]

I finally discovered why I was having so much problem with Book 5, Dragon Wing. The allied computer characters were always acting against the triggers and bogged the map down, leading to a constant crash. I used the same trigger in Book 4, but it never had any problems. The difference turned out to be a simple one-- the units I applied the trigger to in Book 4 were player-owned units, not computer controlled.

With this simple change the map runs exceptionally smooth and it no longer crashes.

[RazorclawX]

USELESS HEROES

Czarzeau the Lender is no more. In his place is the standard Treasure Vault that made its impact in Books 5 and 6. The small portion where Czarzeau was remotely useful is now fulfilled by the Treasure Vault (and therefore he no longer clutters the Hero list on the left).

Speaking of useless Heroes, Master Higure still only appears in Easy mode. His original purpose in Book 1 was to give players a Hero while playing the Arcadian side, but now that both Kosseimaru and Kanna are both Heroes themselves there really wasn't a point to him anymore.

Tendaro is also pretty useless; she also appears only in one level in Book 1 and her skills are junk. She is now only available on Easy mode.

The Three Stooges (Bellicose, Velcana, Spinorak) also appeared usable in only one level, Chapter 7 of Book 2. They are now only available on Easy mode.

Chitinstrike appears in only one level in Book 3. He's still available in every difficulty since he actually performs a function on the level he appears on, although I probably should consider removing him on Hard mode. On the other hand, the level was designed with having him in mind.

Bannon, similar to Chitinstrike.

[Davzz]

Nooooo, Bannon! We'll miss you!

Was that guy... um, that thing ever meant to be more in the storyline than... well, his short stint in Book 3? Sazabi saying "I feel he isn't gone yet" gives me the impression, but I guess he was completely written out of the story and I wonder what was supposed to be planned for that guy.

[RazorclawX]

Actually Bannon is staying. The stage he's featured in was also designed with him in mind. Strangely enough, it's actually one of the few levels I'm happy with in Book 3, and it has very little changes to it.

His short stint in the storyline really was meant to be that short, although I don't think him being in it was all that important in the storyline. I tend to look at it as a sort of personal experiment of strange design choices (Book 3 is pretty much filled with those and is probably the biggest reason I don't like it so much).

Him 'not being gone' is just a lead-in to being able to use him for Sazabi's Soul Recall ability. That was just one of those abilities that didn't pan out the way I wanted it to since you get it so late in the game and Sazabi is only playable with it for maybe 3-4 stages. The intent behind it was Bannon's abilities gained levels according to the levels of Sazabi himself-- the problem was Sazabi gained levels very fast and it wasn't all that noticeable. If I was happy with the way Book 3 went it probably would've worked out the way it was supposed to.

[RazorclawX]

The Power of Friendship (TM)

It gets hammered all over the place that everyone needs friends. The Hero relies on his friends to get through thick and thin.

One of the funny things that happened in WoS is Hikaru, the nominal traditional Hero, is constantly betrayed by or ditches his friends and allies, while Shizuka, the nominal antagonistic Hero, does everything in her power to make sure they stay out of her way. Of the two, Shizuka is the most like the "Power of Friendship" Hero-type (deliberately so considering who she was based off of), and her second Ultimate (and the level which introduced it) reflect that.

Both of them ended up leading armies, too, but what they ended up with turned out wildly different. Hikaru ended up with the traditional Alliance of Good Guys (TM) while Shizuka ended up with the Alliance of Evil Guys (patent pending, this normally doesn't happen). Ultimately what both of those factions wanted turned out to be the same thing, but familial stubbornness and general headstrong behavior prevented the two from seeing eye-to-eye. it took Kurumi to get them to see something in common long enough to get the job done-- both like her and were more willing to listen to her than to Hokuto. Kurumi was kept close to the heart and was warm and happy rainbows while Hokuto was cold and distant, even though they were both pretty selfish characters (not to mention seemingly harem Anime girl archetypes fawning over the same guy).

In a more subtle fashion the "Power of Friendship" is once again upheld. It's still better than being an overt beat-stick, I suppose ("blah-blah My Friends! blah-blah" and the like).

[RazorclawX]

SUMMONED BEASTS

This isn't a quest per se, but along with the improvements made to the Summoner Duels in Book 3, all six of Shizuka's summoned beasts can be made even stronger by defeating the soul of the summoned beast out in the wild. The six beasts are placed here and there throughout Books 2 through 5 (they do not appear in 1 or 6), where some are not that difficult to find (Death Revenant's soul, for instance, is very easy to find), while others are in out-of-the-way locations.

While this is entirely optional, it's also there for fun if you want it. There's simply no indication when the summoned beast soul is around, although this may change if I so feel it's necessary.

[RazorclawX]

SOUL POWERS

Massive revamp went into them over the weekend; I changed the code so they are not hero specific (except in very few cases where it simply didn't matter-- Sypha and Cinder, for instance, are still shackled to the old system, and so is Jarek).

Shizuka's Soul Power damage is no longer reliant on the presence of the Dragon Horn. It just plain does the damage it does when you have the Horn in your possession.

Zule's Soul Power is a lot stronger than before. Not that it was weak before, mind, but it really hurts now.

Also fixed a graphical error in Johan's Soul Power that persisted for years-- graphically it only showed one Flame Bit when it was supposed to be two (functionally it worked fine, though).



Other misc. updates:

Sorana uses Chains of Frost in every stage instead of Carrion Swarm.

Chain Mana Burn deprioritizes targets it already hit. In Book 6 the functionality remains the same as before simply because that's just how some of the fights were designed with in mind.

Firewall uses the newer version that uses Flame Strike-style flames instead of bomb-style.

Kazgaroth no longer has Mass Animation. The ability used to work a long time ago, but now it just plain doesn't. Instead, he has the much more useful Greater Animate Dead (which functionally does mostly the same thing). Not that this matters that much, since he's only playable in one level.

ED:
Six no longer has Ray of Disruption, and has the offensive spell Drench instead, which is used by the Murloc Heroes in Book 4.

Sorana's Disruption Web has two extra functions in the levels she's featured in-- if she kills a unit with it, she creates a minion. The second function simply drags the ensnared unit to her.

Kuth'kullen's Necromorphosis spell was further made more useful by reducing its mana cost to a mere 50 (therefore it costs a total of 75 mana to raise something using his Raise Dead skill), the conversion takes place in 3 seconds (although this does mess with the graphical effect a bit), and the cooldown is 12 seconds instead of 30 seconds. The intention is to make it a lot more useful than just be marginally useful when you need a pocket siege unit (and you can have way more Revenants up at once). That's beside the fact his Gravity spells affect Mech units now.

Shizuka's Cone of Frost freezes units in every stage now. Rather easy to do if you have to edit every map anyway.

Scaldar's unused Crypt Lord form (which is what he was originally going to turn into in Book 6) is now a selectable class for Books 1 and 2, which replaces the crappy Geomancer class. His second class is now his regular Books 3 through 5 class.

Nekurow's second Book 1/2 class is identical to his Book 3-6 class form. The only way this could be screwed up is if I actually used the Juggernaut unit somewhere in 1/2, which I'm fairly certain I didn't.

Most of the other alternate Book 1/2 classes are altered in some way; the first classes are all the same, though, since they're the 'base' classes I designed the campaign around, and I refuse to change those no matter how stupid/useless they are. As before, all of Hikaru's classes are primarily cosmetic as the campaign was designed with some of his class abilities in mind. Nearly every Ultimate (there may be a few exceptions here and there) are identical across all classes, while characters like Kanna get entirely new ones (Annihilation Ward, for those of you who remember it from Keys of Sealing. It was a personal favorite of mine even if it was simple):

- Hikaru: Earthquake (greater)
- Shizuka: Starfall (greater)
- Johan: Avatar
- Miranda: Bladestorm
- Nekurow: Animate Dead or Juggernaut
- Kanna: Annihilation Ward
- Scaldar: Tranquility, Lurker Burrow, Locust Swarm, Meteor Strike (obviously none of his Ultimates are the same)
- Ziel: Twister Form or Tornado

[Demoneater]

I think I posted this before, but can you create infos ingame so ppl actually know about the skills before they have to decide which class they take? I mean, it's like getting a class without knowing what the differences between those two classes are atm.

[RazorclawX]

I'm more of the opinion the entire class selection system is a complete waste of time, especially since even changing one skill on a Hero is a huge hassle. I would rather scrap the system entirely than implement what you suggested.

The ever prevalent alternative is you just take whatever I decided to give you, and mind, rigging it like this isn't as hard.

Deleting all the excess Hero data would probably do wonders for Book 6's loading length.

[Larc]

wow! I hope to see the new updated content soon.
Is there a chance that you will finish Nekurow's story in some way? Maybe with a small sidequest, that character is too awesome to leave his story unfinished.

[RazorclawX]

wow! I hope to see the new updated content soon.
Is there a chance that you will finish Nekurow's story in some way? Maybe with a small sidequest, that character is too awesome to leave his story unfinished.

The only completely new content has to do with the missing Hero of Pentawa, Gina. While it doesn't exactly cover the entirety of what I originally wanted to do with her, it's enough as what it is now without spinning it off into a bigger thing it could be (and it could go off on a wild tangent). The story idea existed before I started cutting stuff away to make things more condensed and focused around the battles between Hikaru and Shizuka and the Lord of Sorceria (and of course the people around them).

Thing is while it's not hard to find the breadcrumb that leads to that level, it's also easy to miss if you make certain choices.

There is no point in the campaign where doing a similar Nekurow spin-off would fit without stepping over the end of the campaign, which I don't want to do. I actually do have an idea of what happens and it's probably not as cool as some people think it could be.

[RazorclawX]

ZANDE MATRIARCH TENDARO

Yeah, yeah... if you go by the generic Tyrande model I've used for her you'd think she's a cranky old lady. In spite of the fact I downsized her playable levels (in fact she's only playable in one story mission in Book 4 now unless you play on Easy), I couldn't get over the fact I was still using a default War3 model for a somewhat important character (okay, fine, Kosseimaru uses the Kel'thuzad model and skin still, but you can't ruin a good thing).

One day I was drawing doodles of all the female characters as Zande Witches (in fact the whole thing started with a doodle of Shizuka dressed like that) and when I finished the drawing of Chika I decided that I had to change Tendaro to look like that.

Tendaro is pretty much somewhere in-between the armored bikini-clad generic witches and the rather conservative-looking Shizuka dress, which is probably why I wanted it. She borrowed some design elements from Ina of Samurai Warriors (particularly her weapon, not depicted). Of course she also turned into a cutie instead of an old lady, which may seem somewhat strange if you thought of her like an old lady, but then I remembered that none of the Witches were old ladies, either.

ED:

Not that anyone cares, but Prince Galar was put back in for Book 6.

[RazorclawX]

One of the things that most people should've noticed is if you accept Hokuto's help on behalf of any of the three main characters she makes you wear something funny in return. Originally they were all going to be based on animals, but only Hikaru's managed to stick (Shizuka with the lobster and Kurumi with the faerie dragon). Well, no, this really hasn't changed at all. The idea behind it was to have something that was slightly on the overpowered side with the trade-off of looking ridiculous.