The new patch (12/10/13) has made the game harder and more frustrating, so far.

Now, I also think it would be cool if they sort of reimplemented threat levels but just kept them as a hidden statistic of planets, and a planet's threat level could modify things like the health and damage output of monsters, as well as perhaps the types of abilities they could use

 

I agree with most of the others on here, the patch is broken. The first thing I crafted on my anvil was a starter 1 hander, and found to my dismay that I could 1 shot everything in the sector, no matter how far I would go or dig. Same with the iron bow. Pretty sure they messed up some numbers somewhere.

 

I get the impression that they were trying to just lay the groundwork for the new mechanics as quickly as they could, and then worry about tweaking numbers later

 

That is probably the best outcome there can be, because as of right now planets of the same sector seem to be somewhat way too identical in challenge and reward aspect.

 

Agreed

Yea, or better, do what everyone thought they were going to do. Each sector would have threat level 1-10 planets, and the threat level (instead of determining monster levels), would give you loose idea of potential danger factors like the ratio of easy:medium:hard monsters, the presence of acid, hostile towns, harsh temperatures, difficult dungeons, etc.

This way we can search for low threat places for simple farming and mining, and move on to harsher climates for more risk and reward.

 

It would work either way, really; there's no reason that the new combat mechanics couldn't still support having planets of different threat levels

I guess it's just that, you know, players being able take shortcuts through the game if they want to is bad or something

 

Come on guys, so the game is a little harder, are you really that disappointed by a challenge? Just get the iron sword asap and then you kill everything 1 anyway on low level planets. As for refined wood, I didn't even know you could use that as fuel, I just used coal and I usually had plenty to use anyway?

People these days, they want everything to be a walk in the park...

 

I agree. Games need to have difficulty too them or else they wont be nearly as much fun and you wouln't get much playtime out of them.

 

Just add a normal, medium, hard difficulty rating to each.

@OP the game feels like it's easier to me, I died a couple of times at the start but just get that bow crafted and it's ez

 

To be honest I am glad they ain't catering to whiney bitches like you, its people like you why games these days are such a complete fucking joke. If your newbie sword sucks, make a better one. There is ore all over the place. Though I do think they need to go back to the 100 threat levels so you can get a better estimate of what enemies you will find there.

 

learn2dodge, pretyt much every projectile is easily dodged.

 

Just wanted to note that some bird projectile attacks can be countered by hitting them with your melee weapon (works on the purplish/pink star that some birds attack with).

 

Iron swords are worse than starter sword now.

 

Them birds are vicisous bastads, Relentless too. Thankfully they have a few sec delay between shots so just use the hunting bow early game to kill em in between their salvo's.

 

I don't know what's wrong with your system setup. I'm running an MSI N560GTX Twin Frozr II (Read: An older GPU) and I've got no framerate issues. I'd recommend checking your settings, making sure you've got the latest drivers, and/or check your other system specs. A 660 won't help if you're running a Celeron with only 2GB of RAM.

As for the game's difficulty, I actually had a bit of fun last night when I got home. New character (Male Glitch, named 'Glitch Mafioso'. I'm horrible) Spawned in a clearish area. Started doing my thing, then an aggressive mob shows up. I start whacking him with my basic weapon, then another shows up. Then another. I quickly teleport back up to my ship at about 3 blocks of health. Teleport back down and I'm good. Go about doing my thing. Another mob shows up and I school him. Then another shows up and I botch it, getting down to about 2 blocks of HP. Start going about my game, and an air mob shows up and brings me to the point where I have 0 blocks of HP, but I'm still alive. Quick TP to ship. TP back. I'm good. Start making my home, doing my thing... it's all good.

I actually found it difficult, but manageable. For comparison, my first game of Terraria I made a small world, and when I spawned, the world decided I needed to deal with a mob of slimes and worms at surface level. Panic was the order of the day. I haven't explored the new systems setup, but going by what you all are saying, I'd say possibly an idea for a change to the systems is that Alpha systems could have a higher chance of having threat 1 and 2 planets, while higher difficulties are few and far between. This'd go up with systems (Betas are 2-3, Gamma's 3-4 etc). Also, you don't know what threat the planet is until you're in orbit around it. That'd make exploration more of a challenge and make more sense: Your ship's scanners would need to be in range of the planet to determine its usefulness/dangerousness. And there'd still be harder difficulty planets out there, you'd just need to find them.

 

Yeah I have to say that they must be working on something to change this. Having all the planets the same threat level is a little absurd. If they are all the same difficulty and have the difficulty increase the further you go down what then is the point of exploring all those planets. All those planets and tops people will wind up only going to maybe 2 or three.

 

Ok since no one seems to have read the actual patch post by the developers I'm going to explain it:


1. There ARE different threat levels within the current 1-10 threats. Next to the name of the planet you will see an A B C or D and these define the difficulty of said planet, though I'm not sure in which order it goes

2. The crafting has not changed at all as some people seem to think

3. The game has not become more difficult. The whole point was to ballance the game because the armour penetration system had its flaws. This system has flaws too but you can't create a perfect combat system and this one is the best for this type of game. As a side note and an opinion the flying monsters have less health and armour than the ground monsters and hit harder. Just think of it like a standard war tactic in a RTS, the front line troops have high health and don't hit so hard, what they're there for is to soak up damage for the ranged units to pelt them. The ranged units have low health low armour but can chunk you down fairly quickly. So the tactic of the offensive player is to take down the heavy hitting, squishy targets first and the whole situation becomes a lot easier. This is made EVEN EASIER by the fact that flying creatures drop to the ground breifly after being hit, so maybe use a bow for them.

4. Ah yes the fuel... Well that's a subject everyone understands but has different opinions on so ignore this next section if you don't care about my opinion.
I liked it when wood was a fuel source for the ships but it didn't make much sense but then again neither does coal, I mean a species capable of faster than light travel using wood to power a ship? Yes it's complete genius if it works but it seems almost impossible and the same goes for using coal. It was also extremely easy to get a ton of wood (insert penis joke here) and use that to jump all around the universe before the patch, but now it seems a little too difficult. Ores seem to have "accidentally" become far more accessable but coal seems to have almost dropped of the face of the earth (so to speak). I have explored the surface of 4 planets now and have found 156 coal, when I went underground not much changed. In total I spent about 6 hours on about 5 planets and found just enough to travel to the next one. Now we obviously need coal for more than just travel like steel so maybe I'm just unlucky or maybe the coal spaw rate has been lowered a bit too much.

 

Actually I think that's just to differentiate the various satellites around a planet.
For example I'm currently in-game looking at planet X 70 Vir 8054 VI, and it's two moons are appropriately labeled " --- VI a" and " --- VI b"

 

I've seen a few systems with multiple A's and B's

 

That seens nice