Solasta: Crown of the Magister D&D game. SRD 5.1 ruleset.

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This D&D game is in early access on Steam. I bought it, and yes, it is an other isometric D&D game, Baldur's gate style.

So far, so good. Look good, character building is as we know it. Did the tutorial and liked it.

Anybody else got a go?

 

I played through it a couple of times and quite enjoyed it, although I'm generally not difficult to please. The conversations are a bit stilted and the overland map travel can get a bit tedious, but many of the 3D battles are a lot of fun and some areas are quite challenging. I'm holding off on Lost Valley until it's fully patched. Rumor has it that a few of the player built modules are quite good, so I'll probably give those a go first.

This is the first time I've played with the 5e ruleset, but I was able to pick it up fairly quickly. There's a lot of nice little details in the implementation of the engine. I've purchased the Primal Calling add-on, but haven't played any of those classes yet. They are apparently working on adding the Monk, Bard, and Warlock classes next, although I'm not really a fan of those.

 

I'm giving the Caer Falcorn user dungeon a try. Thus far it's been very dungeon crawly. But at least there seems to be a plot.

 

Well I didn't manage my resources well and ran out of rations at around fourth level, so I'm not able to recuperate. There's plenty of loot but nowhere to trade for goods and services so the junk is useless. Definitely a dungeon crawl.

 

That reminds me of Ultima or Exile/Avernum where food is a serious consideration and enemies that steal food are major threats.

 

Yes, food management and the resulting encumbrance was an issue in the original campaign. At least up until you can cast a 3rd level Create Food spell.

 

Create Food is a third level spell, so it's not available for my 4th level Druid.

 

I started playing "Haunted Keep of the Slavers" and I'm liking it so far. It's part of a series.

 

Well, except the druid can't rest and memorize new spells because there is no food. But good suggestion; I'll have to give it a try and see how it is implemented.

 

I finished up the first module. It was a pretty decent adventure based on an old sample module I believe. Definitely had a legacy D&D dungeon crawl feel to it. The next in the series is "Assault on the Slave Lords", but it has a dependency on the "Lost Valley" expansion so I'll have to grab that first.

 

Just as long as there isn't a "Tome of Horrors" module...
You know, the legendary player-killer dungeon supposedly designed for mid level characters but can chew up epic level characters through unfair traps and outright rule breaking via Rule 0.

 

Some of the custom traps in ToH would probably be difficult to create in Solasta. But a few people actually seem to enjoy that module (for reasons that escape me), so somebody is probably working on it already.

 

I picked up "The Lost Valley" supplement so I could satisfy some of the user built module dependencies. It's a pretty decent expansion in its own right with plenty of challenges. My party is a paladin, ranger, druid, and wizard; currently at eighth level. The one thing I wish the game would allow is five character parties, so I could have a little more tactical variety. But at least some of the sub-classes allow an animal companion. Summoning spells are pretty scarce, but available with fourth level spell casting and later.

 

I finished Lost Valley. It was decently entertaining, and left me wanting to replay it later to explore a different outcome. Now on to the next episode in the Slavers series.

 

I finally gave up on the "Slave Lords" series with "In Pursuit of the Slave Lords". That boss monster fight against Tshar and his horde of minions was just insane at the level I was playing (8th-9th level). I tried it five times but couldn't ever get the upper hand, even after maneuvering to a bottleneck. *sigh* I'm well and truly tired of boss monster fights.

 

I think my interest in playing the user mods for Solasta has finally waned. It has made me better appreciate the efforts of professional game builders though.