mikeprichard

Yeah, I think something else might be going on with your setup. With my method (still with only 4 of the 7 files done - I'd frankly prefer to wait on your coded solution if you still plan to try that, since my method is excruciatingly tedious), cryoas are blue, and I have shadows. I did expect that the flame/frost attacks would still be sourced from a bit above the smaller critters' heads since the game still expects them to be spat out by Godzilla-sized creations, and that's also the case with my method, but I'm also nowhere near skilled enough to know how that side issue could be fixed, if it can. Hope you can manage though!

Really - please do!! Again, reducing the fyora sprites to 60% of their original size would be fantastic. I did get through 4 of the 7 files (G2500 through G2506), but as I mentioned earlier I'm very amateur at this, and ended up manually adjusting them the way I described, which so far has taken me 6 hours! Even then, since I'm manually copy-pasting each reduced critter into the original grid, the pixels don't always line up exactly, so especially for the G2500 idle animations which feature 6 idles for each of the 8 facing directions, the fyoras "wobble" a bit in game. I could actually live with the effect if I had to - having smaller fyoras is much more important to me - but if you can do this a) without this glitch and b) in a way that only takes you 5 minutes instead of me at least another 6 hours, that would be awesome! So... yes please! I'll keep an eye here, and maybe we can open a new topic with your mod files if you like once you finish. Thanks so much for this.

Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately, I've been reading the paint.net documentation, and can't find a way to remove the grid lines as the first step, since the image appears to be just a single baked-in layer including both the grid and the critters. Any ideas? OK, I think I have it! There's no need to remove the black grid lines. I just made a copy of the entire image reduced to 60%, then copy/pasted each 60%-sized lizard from within each grid box back to each original 100% grid box. I've gotten through 1 of 7 files so far and briefly tested in game, and while some of the animation changes may be a pixel off in alignment (I'm manually copy/pasting so far), this might actually work. I assume if there were encoding issues my new resized sprites wouldn't have appeared in game at all, so I guess that's not a problem. Will keep working away and see what the final first pass results look like. P.S. I don't want to hijack this mod thread, so if an admin wants to/wants me to move this into its own topic, please do or let me know! It may not go much further anyway if I can't figure this out, though.

Wow, I really like this - nice work! I'm assuming Jeff went with the green as a throwback to the original (which had a horrifying, nauseating shade of green that still haunts my dreams), but I prefer your blue scheme. I do have an art modding request for you or anyone who might see this who is capable and interested. As I and at least a few others in the Kickstarter comments and on Jeff's recent Steam demo streams have noted, the fyora sprites seem ridiculously large, especially compared to the player and other creations, and considering the fyora description calling them "small" lizards. The current Tyrannosaurus-sized fyoras are very jarring, IMO. Anyway, it seems Jeff isn't interested in addressing this (he mentioned during a stream that the huge sprites are easier on his "old eyes", ha), and although I think I've identified the relevant fyora graphics files (G2500.png through G2506.png, though it's possible I'm missing some relevant files and/or some files might be for the player's fyoras and others for enemy fyoras, the latter being a bit smaller), I have no idea where to even begin with shrinking these sprites given their format (with a large number of sprites arranged in a grid within each file). Long story short, if anyone here could reduce the size of all of the fyora sprites to about 60% of the original, or explain to me in great detail how exactly I could do this myself, I'd be hugely grateful. I don't look forward to playing through the remake with these monstrosities - I need my cute li'l lizard bros! Thanks for reading, and for any help that can be provided.

Having just completed all three vassal quests on Normal difficulty, I can summarize a very basic and effective strategy which will have you breaking even or earning a surplus in all resources even after building the portal. I'm surprised this hasn't been clearly discussed before, at least not that I could find. If you do a completionist playthrough (by clearing every bandit/monster encounter from the world map and clearing every dungeon), make the Ukat your vassal as required (tested by siding with the Brokk, though I'm fairly certain siding with the Borgen would provide the same result) which silently awards +1 to wood and +1 to iron regular income in the Ukat ledger line, and complete the Ukatish prisoners quest then triggered at Fort Haven (to rescue Ukat prisoners from the Palace of Atonement) which silently awards another +1 to iron regular income in the Ukat ledger line, you will then be able to build all buildings/improvements in all 7 forts, including all fort upgrades and guard towers and the home portal, with the sole exception of 4 barracks (I recommend placing your 3 allowed barracks in one fort in each of the three vassal regions). You will at that point - even after building the home portal - break even on wood, have a +1 income surplus of iron, and have a +2 income surplus each of stone and quicksilver. Unfortunately, you will have an unavoidable 20% theft chance in the Vol after making the Vol your vassal as required (tested by siding with the Owen, though I'm fairly certain siding with the Mascha would provide the same result) and with the "Diplomatic Visions" Nisse dream perk active, which I believe becomes 25% after the Calamity quest starts, but even that - which could be lowered to 15%-20% by building the second barracks in the Vol and still breaking even on iron income - will only be a minor inconvenience. Even if you somehow ran out of a resource due to theft (unlikely, though with all the above completed and 20% theft in the Vol, each turn when theft does occur would result in losses of -4 wood and -7 stone instead of maintenance/gain of 0 wood and +2 stone respectively), you would have just over 250 gold regular income to automatically cover any temporary resource shortage. After all my theorycrafting before starting this playthrough and reading through the many discussions on the forums, this was surprisingly easy to pull off, and even on higher difficulties, the above will hold true (with the possible exception of slightly higher theft rates). I also didn't have any problems in the early or mid-game, as long as I kept an occasional eye on iron and to a lesser extent wood, and didn't build all the apothecaries until mostly completing Ahriel. So, not sure what all the fuss was about! SHORT VERSION 1) Clear all bandit/monster encounters on the world map and all dungeons 2) Get "Diplomatic Visions" Nisse dream perk 3) Make Ukat your vassal (tested with Brokk alliance) (gives +1 wood and +1 iron in Ukat region) 4) Complete "Ukatish Prisoners" quest triggered by Miranda at Fort Haven by helping prisoners escape (gives +1 iron in Ukat region) 5) Make Vol and Ahriel your vassals (tested with Owen and Trench Town alliances) 6) Build all buildings/improvements in all seven forts including all fort upgrades, guard towers, and the portal, EXCEPT 4 of the 7 possible barracks, placing 1 barracks each in one of the forts in each vassal region 7) Other than a 20% theft chance in the Vol which will affect your wood and stone stockpiles during unlucky turns, you'll have per-turn maintenance/income of 0 wood, +2 stone, +1 iron, and +2 quicksilver (note the theft chances may be slightly higher on difficulties above Normal)

Now that I'm much nearer the endgame (I just completed all three vassal quests - yeah, I've been playing a LOT the past couple days), it turns out I only saw this message while still clearing the Haven colony region early in the game and for the first couple hours in the first vassal region. I have a very completionist playstyle such that I first clear every encounter on the world map in each region, then clear each interior zone (town/dungeon) one by one; I assume this is what frequently triggered these messages in the first few hours, as I hadn't yet had much more than one fort built and a couple dungeons cleared for some time. However, I never again saw that message after the initial few hours - probably around building the second fort - despite completing zones at the same pace as before, so it seems my fears of constantly feeling pressured to quickly rush through dungeons at a regular pace just to avoid crippling resource shortages later in the game were unfounded. Apparently, once you've reached a "critical mass" of completed areas, you pass a threshold and no longer need to worry about the "uninspired" message again. At least, those were my practical findings as well. Thanks once more for the additional input!

As I'm getting further into the game (I'm halfway through my first vassal state exploration in the Ukat), I'd really like to get a better sense of what exactly triggers this message and the resulting "freezing" of your resources and funds. One guess would be that if you don't "clear" a new dungeon after a period of X days, you get the message. However, this trigger would be grossly imbalanced, as it would disproportionately punish a player who quickly clears a series of dungeons in a few short days and then takes a rest of X days and finds his/her assets "frozen", vs. a player who exploits the system by only clearing each dungeon just often enough to maintain a steady stream of uninterrupted income. I hope this isn't how this works, as it would result in vastly smaller amounts of total resources available to players during the course of the game when they move through the game more decisively - the precise opposite of what should be intended by the mechanic in the first place - but I don't know if anyone has any evidence to support either this or another mechanic. I have a feeling nobody really has any idea, but thought I'd make one more attempt at seeing if this can finally be clarified. Thanks again!

Right, I thought there was a hard cap - it's on skill points, as you say. I appreciate all the feedback and clarifications.

Oh, so there isn't a hard level cap? Not sure where I read there was. Good to know!

Thanks for the advice, osnola. I thought the level cap (another thing I dislike, ha) is 20, though?

Well... darn. Thanks for the further info, all, though it's not what I wanted to hear.

Thanks for the quick reply, Randomizer! It's odd that more than one Steam poster in that topic seemed to specifically describe this alleged "scaling", but I wasn't ready to trust some random claims over there. Time to finally get into the new trilogy!

I'm finally about to start my playthrough, but just happened upon a Steam discussion topic (https://steamcommunity.com/app/1058130/discussions/0/2564160288803102582/?ctp=3#c1628538644183441771) indicating that most enemy encounters are scaled to be just under or over your current level. I absolutely despise level scaling in single-player RPGs in all its forms, though I don't want to rehash a pointless argument about it here - I'd just appreciate confirmation/clarification from anyone experienced with the game as to whether this is in fact the case. Thanks!

Jeff did kindly reply to an email I sent asking him for more info on this (as well as transmitting other issues) - I had to chuckle at his response, which I didn't find surprising. The man is endlessly patient with his fans! "The message is pretty unambiguous and even the guy on the YouTube video says the right answer. If you just lay in bed for the week, the game won't hand you stuff. Finish missions to make your colony strong. I'm not going to dig up the actual algebra here. Just, you know, leave your quarters and play the game!"

Good deal - thanks for pointing this out!

Great info! I'm still waiting for what's likely to be the final patch (1.0.4) before I pull QW from my backlog of games for my first playthrough, but is this information accurately shown in the skill tree tooltips - i.e. does the "+1" change to "+2" at level 6 in that display? If not, would you please ask Jeff to fix the display? (I've already emailed him my third set of suggestions in as many months based on my observations of forum discussions and playthrough videos, and though he's always patient and takes them on board, he's probably getting a little tired of seeing me pop up in his inbox by now!)

OK, that would make sense. Still not sure what exactly constitutes "completing a mission" and how often such needs to be done to prevent this outcome, but Jeff does like to keep his game mechanics vague!

Interesting strategy! I get the feeling the only person who could shed more light on this would be Jeff, but I appreciate the input.

Ah, OK - thanks for the info. It seems that what actually causes this message is still unclear (how are "missions" defined, how many must be completed, in which timeframe(s) must they be completed), though from what you said, it may somehow be related to the overuse of "teleporting"/fast travel (?). But on my last specific question (does this affect lands outside the Haven lands), you indicated it does affect non-Haven land forts in your experience. Can you please share a screenshot of what the message says in that case (I assume the "your colony" language is replaced by "vassal" or similar language)?

Hmm, if it's in fact the case that no resources at all are collected in any of your forts, the message is very misleading/inaccurate - it indicates resources are in fact collected, but only enough to cover your forts' maintenance costs. I'm still confused!

As seen in the playthrough video at https://youtu.be/3khm7hfJObg?t=704. What exactly causes this message (i.e. how are "missions" defined, how many must be completed, in which timeframe(s) must they be completed, does this affect lands outside the Haven lands, etc.), and what are the specific consequences as compared to a situation where your colony is "inspired"? The explanatory text may have been clarified in the recent updates, but I can't find any detailed explanations for this.

The complete available v1.0.3 changelog per GOG.com game download data, Steam at https://steamcommunity.com/app/1058130/discussions/0/2564160288804562021/, and Jeff's own site at http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/queenswish/support.html: -There will be fewer delays between turns in combat. -Pauses in combat are shorter. -Radiance no longer helps your enemies. -A few exploits have been fixed. Sorry! -A number of other minor tweaks.

Thanks for the details and tips, Ess-Eschas! I may very well get back into BoA generally and these two scenarios specifically over the next few months as time allows!

Yes.

Welcome! Glad you're enjoying QW, but note that enemies not awarding XP is one of the major changes in this new series compared to Jeff's other titles, so you didn't miss out on any XP by being a yellowbel - I mean pacifist (though it's possible you missed out on some likely minor loot). In QW, you generally only get XP for discovering locations and completing quests. See http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/25023-jeffs-blog-post-explaining-game-changes/ for details.