Solasta: Crown of the Magister Summer Q&A Recap

During this year’s Steam Summer Festival, the developers behind Solasta: Crown of the Magister answered a staggering amount of community questions as part of a Discord Q&A. And thanks to this article on the game’s website, we can now check out that massive community Q&A session in an easily digestible format and learn some new information about this upcoming D&D-based CRPG.

Here are some questions to get you started:

Hey there folks!

Here is a recap of the Steam Summer Festival Community Q&A session that took place on Discord on Friday June 19th, during which anyone was free to ask us any question they had in mind – which were answered either by me (Myzzrym, Community Lead), Zaz (Gameplay Director) or Archimat (Creative Director and CEO). Enjoy your read!

• General Gameplay (#01 – #20)
• Party & Dialog (#21 – #33)
• Rules (#34 – #50)
• Campaign & Quests (#51 – #61)
• Lore (#62 – #67)
• Customization (#68 – #79)
• General Questions (#80 – #95)
• Personal / Team Questions (#96 – #104)

General Gameplay (#01 – #20)

Q01: Are there any major gameplay features planned that aren’t shown or hinted at in the demo?

Myzzrym: Hmmmm that’s hard to say, there are just so many. There are very few skill checks in the demo, verticality is mostly hinted at through spiders, there is no city, no faction system and I could go on and on….

Q02: Huge and larger enemies, are we going to see some giants or big dragons? Also with the verticality being a thing, will we be able to climb on top of these giant enemies?

Myzzrym: There will be large enemies indeed. As to climbing on their back, it would be cool wouldn’t it! Unfortunately that’s a whole lot of animations and special rules to be made just for that, and I don’t believe we’ll have the time nor the budget for it!

Q03: What portion of combat encounters are avoidable, by one mean or another?

Archimat: Reminder that this is a Tactical RPG – meaning combat is VERY important in our game. Just think of how short XCOM would be if you were able to avoid all the fights! You will be able to bypass some fights by sneaking around or talking your way out, but those are the exceptions and not the rule!

Q04: Are there going to be able battles where fleeing is the only option?

Archimat: I’m not too sure about that, but there ARE some fights where you win by surviving long enough! Of course if you go attacking some monsters that are far too powerful for you, we’d still suggest fleeing to fight another day

Q05: Does the game have random encounters? Can you grind to overcome a difficult fight (be it level, money/gear, consumables)?

Zaz: You will have random encounters, but we’re trying to find a way to avoid too much grinding – you shouldn’t be able to grind too much above what’s planned

Q06: What difficulty options are planned and what would it look like? More enemies, stronger enemies, better AI?

Archimat: We’re still designing difficulty options, but we’re leaning towards altering the AI to avoid changing the game too much. For instance, we can deactivate certain behaviours such as hitting characters that are already dying, or shoving them from high above

Q07: Will there be an in-game lorebook? What form will it take? Will it have unlockable entries on monsters, important personages, locations, historical events, etc.?

Myzzrym: That’s a secret. We’re working on something is what I can tell you.

Q08: You’ve said the campaign ends at about level 10 – is this a hard-coded limit (like in the BG games, where characters just stopped earning XP) or is it just a “there’s no efficient way of getting XP to go higher, unless you want to spend a gazillion hours farming goblin random encounters” thing?

Myzzrym: Hardcoded. We won’t have any class features / spells that get unlocked above level 10, so allowing you to level up would just be useless

Q09: Why is the level max 10 and not 20?

Myzzrym: It’s simple really, time and budget. By going up to level 20 you increase the amount of spells we need to create (FX, coding…), features to implement, and also the increase in campaign length! Unless you want to be farming mobs mindlessly for hours on end, increasing level cap also means you need more quests, a longer story, etc etc… and that means in turn more writing, more voice acting – it’s a never ending story. This is why Solasta: Crown of the Magister has a level 10 cap – but future modules may increase that cap to 15, or 20, who knows

Q10: Can spells affect the environment? Destroy a door for instance?

Myzzrym: Not sure about destroying doors, but you can definitely use spells on the environment: Lighting up an oil puddle, opening a door with Knock, etc etc…