How to play?

[PotemkinParticipant]

I am a little lost in Highrisers, so I thought I’d share my problems. Maybe it’s just l2p, but maybe you guys are having the same problems. Please feel free to expand, comment etc.

• How is the food economy supposed to work aka How do I not starve in night 2? I find some food in the fridge on the upper levels, but after that: Nothing. I understand I can water and harvest plants, but that in itself is a pretty tough task and then I get very little out of strawberries.
• Can I revive a withered plant? I can surely water it, but does that help anything?
• Can I revive a downed char? I found a bandage once, but didn’t get to use it.
• When do my chars level up? I did not find any indicator of XP or progress.
• How am I supposed to survive when I pulled aggro? I always run away to the top, but the aggro dreamers follow me and kill me, as I can only handle 2-3 dreamers with the noob weapons. Also, the barricade is quickly destroyed. This is especially frustrating when I open a door that has dreamers behind it – it’s effectively mean death, only with a little delay.
• When I drop items, will they remain? As I cannot get through the second night, I dunno if dropping stuff is a viable strategy of item management (“the roof dump”) or whether the items will be deleted after a while.
• to be continued

• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Potemkin.

[PotemkinParticipant]

• Why do dreamers retreat so slowly? Rather a suggestion than a question: It takes a lot of time for the dreamers to retreat when the new day arrives. It’s actually half over before I can send out my chars again. I’d rather have them retreat way quicker so I can continue playing.
• What am I supposed to do at night? For me, the night simply means waiting, which is boooring. Maybe I didn’t find out what to do and I am stuck with the first 2 nights, but even if I get stuff to do later in the game I’d prefer to continue playing in the first nights as well. Also, I cannot do any browsing etc. while waiting for the next day, as the game immediately pauses when I open another application. So I need to actually stare at the screen…

[Solar Powered GamesKeymaster]

Short answers:
How to not starve: You must get to the floors with plants faster. This is a bit demo-specific, as in the final game, the level setting will be randomly generated, and there will be more sources of food, but for the demo, that’s the way to go.
Withered plants: You cannot revive withered plants, but you can remove them from the pot and plant a new plant by drag’n dropping a fruit into a soiled pot. That way, you can grow new plants.
Watering & Withering: Plants will grow as long as their pot is moist enough. You can hover over a plant to see the moisture level of the pot. Should it ever reach 0, then all plants in that pot will wither. Try to avoid that! Plants have different water requirements – while tomatoes drink a lot, the kumquats are quite frugal. They also offer different values on hunger and healing. Try growing wheat instead of strawberries if you are starving!
Downed Chars: Can be revived by sending other players there. No item needed.
Level Up: Deactivated in this demo.
Aggro: When a char has drawn only a little aggro by standing too close to a dreamer, you can simply leave the floor and he will soon stop chasing you. If you get a real dedicated group, and you don’t have any burst damage weapons yet, and hiding behind the barricade isn’t an option either, you could try and run around while other chars attack the zombies. Either that will kill them or at least draw the aggro of them.
Dropped items: Will remain. The only things that “spoil” at the moment are the plants if not watered.
Dreamer behaviour: We’re not happy with that yet, either. Our original idea was that of a large horde crawling up in the evening, a harsh and merciless fight during the night and a retreat at the first rays of dawn. But during the day, you don’t have to be so afraid of the dreamers on the other side – you can easily bypass them or sometimes even work on a floor they’re passing through.
What to do during the night: That issue never occured to us. There was always enough to do – disassemble some of the pesky furniture you didn’t have time to during the day; go on a plant-watering-raid… I think the confusion comes from the fact that you just hide up on the landing platform; a move which was never intended.
I’m not saying “You’re playing our game wrong!!”; we just never thought of that. Let’s see how we can adress that. Much sturdier barricades? Giving the spear pierce damage, so you can harm several zombies at the same time? Make destroyed barricades repairable? Maybe an auto-attack feature might also help here…
You must stand your ground during the night, not cower like sheep in under the rotors of your helicopter! 😀

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Solar Powered Games.

[AzuvectorParticipant]

@repairing barricades
Repairing barricades was one of the first things I wanted to do.
Placing new barricades was the second.

@reviving downed characters
Seems like there should be something more involved with reviving someone? The “nearby auto revive” may also be responsible for the bug I saw here: http://solarpoweredgames.com/forums/topic/alpha-demo-v-0-3-7-bug-reports/#post-232
*edit*
Cancel that, just had Ike die to a Sleeper and had to revive him with the progress bar, after selecting his corpse. That seems fine to me, though it wasn’t what happened on the helipad in my bug report.

@dropped items
Personally, I’d prefer dropped items remain persistent unless there was a good reason for them not to be. Hate games that clean up dropped items that you might need later. I’d imagine there’s no plans to change that though, so good to hear! 🙂

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Azuvector.

[PotemkinParticipant]

Staying fed: Like I wrote, I understand the concept with the plants, but it does not work for me. The plants are really deep down, I have to water them first and then they are so little nutritious. Did you ever calculate whether walking, watering and harvesting really takes less time than it takes to “digest the nutritious outcome” of this one harvest? I feel this needs balancing.
Getting weapons: The gameplay tips state that I should try to arm my chars quickly, so out I set. However, crafting the spiked club was not possible so far because the “wooden pole” needed for the recipe is a super-rare item. I found 1 once, but given that I need wooden poles to upgrade the barricades as well they should be available in abundance.
Aggro management: I understand what you are saying, but that simply does not work for me. Trying to pull aggro with other chars does not work out because I have no weapons with which they can attack (see above). I can run, but as I never lose aggro this means running around for the rest of the game.
To dos during the night: There is no way I can use the night to disassemble furniture or craft, because the floors are full of dreamers which will eat me immediately. Your suggestions of disassembling or focusing on a single char (because watering raid etc.) only work if there is a safe zone where I can park the other chars in the meantime. And there is no such thing other than the helicopter platform (somewhat safe if no aggro). The initial barricade does little good, as I cannot defend it without spear/ranged weapons, so it simply slows the dreamers down a little bit during the first night. And then it’s gone anyway.

[PotemkinParticipant]

Ok, by quickly building a spear, defending the barricade and harvesting + watering an apple tree I survived another two nights. I will keep you updated.

[AzuvectorParticipant]

To dos during the night: There is no way I can use the night to disassemble furniture or craft, because the floors are full of dreamers which will eat me immediately. Your suggestions of disassembling or focusing on a single char (because watering raid etc.) only work if there is a safe zone where I can park the other chars in the meantime. And there is no such thing other than the helicopter platform (somewhat safe if no aggro). The initial barricade does little good, as I cannot defend it without spear/ranged weapons, so it simply slows the dreamers down a little bit during the first night. And then it’s gone anyway.

This is also my feeling and experience so far.
I’ve yet to successfully craft a weapon(or anything really), I’ve also got no real defense against dreamers as they’re through the initial barricade almost immediately, and then I’m just stuck on the helipad until morning when they wander off.

I’ve also yet to figure out where to actually obtain water to use with the plants, so I’ve yet to obtain a source of food that isn’t the two cans of soda in the fridge a couple floors down, which is basically irrelevant. Water bottles all seem empty when I find them, and seem unsustainable anyway. I have yet to find a water pipe I can drain, or a fountain or something.

I also feel that my activities at night are pretty limited by not being able to see items. I have noticed lights inside the building come on sometimes, but not always, so a flashlight item would be good to find/craft too. (and batteries I assume)

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Azuvector.

[Solar Powered GamesKeymaster]

Hello!

Thanks for your feedback; it is really invaluable to us!
Let me adress some of the points that came up:

No safe place: We have initiated some balancing changes for version 0.3.8, which will be released soon and which will hopefully mitigate those issues. During our internal playtests, we had quickly adapted to much more pressing, aggressive playstyle, with pushing towards the lower barricade AND upgrading AND defending it even before the waveof the first night began. This way, we neither had real trouble defending the barricade nor with the food supply.
However, reading your feedback, it is now quite obvious to us that this playstyle was fueled by internal knowledge and experience a new player cannot possibly have, so thanks for setting our heads straight.
Internal testers getting better and better, therefore encouraging quite tough balancing values in order for them to get any challenge at all any more is an all too common problem, for it leaves the unsuspecting beginner without a chance and prone to frustration.

Aggro management: We’ll reduce the time a dreamer will remain vengeful.

Fast Forward the night: This is not the direction we are aiming for. The vision was that the days are used for periods of crafting and exploring in the relative safety of daylight, while the nights were supposed to be crueling and dangerous defense and retreat missions against overwhelming numbers, trying to stave the dreamers off until the first rays of dawn finally grant relief to the survivors. We’re not there yet.
But skipping the “boring nights” will not be an option. We will rather see how we can make nights less boring, the battles really engaging how we can generally add more suspense; and you’ve already made several good suggestions that go in that direction.

We hope this will improve the game experience soon!

[PotemkinParticipant]

Way to go with 0.3.8! I played some rounds and it’s improved greatly methinks. What I am still struggling with:

Hunger management / staying fed
This still seems quite unforgiving. I understand how it works and there is enough food for the first 2-3 days, but then most plants will be dead because it takes too much time to water them. Then, starvation sets in and that’s a one-way road. Also, I cannot replant because I ate everything. Consider making the water consumption significantly slower.

[FfyhlkainParticipant]

Cool thread, I chime in 🙂

How to craft: Haven’t figured out yet how to craft something. I put everything apart to have as much resources as possible and reenforced the barricade, but haven’t figured out yet how to craft weapons. Haven’t survived a single night yet.

[Antikos79Participant]

I also thought I’d struggle with food, but as soon as I had three wheat plants going in a pot I had none of my survivors were ever hungry again. Takes a bit of effort to keep it well watered, but I still had plenty of time to do other things.

Now, if I only found more stainless steel, I could have fixed the engine before I had to quit the game.

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