Long overdue do to personal stuff, the first gameplay video in high quality is here.
Some of you may know me from Sins of a Solar Empire (be sure to check them out here) where i did the same thing and i hope people will like these videos as well
All settings were set to highest possible on resolution 1680x1050
Each part will be 5-15min long and have a size of 200MB
High quality download here
See low quality on Youtube
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA_kS20NLd4
Part 14 of 14 released
Special thanks to
Thunderborn, Kitkun & Lost_WLd
Hey, As lordkosc were so nice to tell, im using my own recording software, nothing in the game allows recording videos. But a replay system is in the works.
And where are you? You were the one who made me buy it
By the time you start playing i will have ascended to a GOD or devil..
I will be around the next 3 days, its raining finally, so I dont have to go out and do yard work
You're very welcome to join our Demigod video sharing site
lol, You shall feel the wrath of my hammer
Thank you very much, the quality isnt on the high side, but it will do just fine for some is there a limitation to how big a video file may be? what kind of formats do you accept? is there anything else i should know about? as there is no FAQ to answer those question
Sorry for the slow reply Been sitting at work hehe
The max size is atm like 200 mb i believe, but if you have request for higher, I can adjust up to 500mb - hosting center wont allow for bigger conversion.. All standard formats accepted - I've been uploading as .wmv because there's a fair quality for small filesizes.
FAQ isn't up because there are no FAQ's yet, site is brand new
Best Regards
200mb will do fine, will have to reencode some down to 200mb anyway since gametrailers.com only allows 200mb
I will properly do some upload while i goto sleep since it takes quite some time with only 1mbit upload
Do you mind me asking? are you Danish? since the dk after your name
Very Dansk
Actually there are replays recorded by the game (!) as .DGreplay files, even an automatic recording of your last game gets saved.... there just doesn't seem to be a way to play them.
Video 1 commentary:
Ok, starting the game, all is well. Prison is a fairly unique map out of the bunch to choose from, as it has a lot of wide open space so you can’t easily draw your opponents to your towers for that advantage, and retreat is tough for the same reason.
All the Demigods have their advantages and disadvantages of course; the opposing team has chosen Sedna and Regulus. Sedna is going to give their team a lot of staying power, so the high burst damage that TB can dish out will be quite useful. The rook will also be able to stay in the fray for a long time, an interesting matchup… as are they all.
On first choices:
Abilities: You may start out with a plan for where you want to take your DG, in which case this is moot, but if you’re not sure, go with something that will take out some creeps to get you to level 2 in your first flag encounter when possible. Skills like fireball and snipe can certainly be useful even this early on, but the chance that an opportunity will arise to make good use of them before you reach lvl2 are slim; leave it for your lvl2 skill.
Items: The Scaled Helm is very useful to any ability centric DG, but it’s a shame to let half your gold just sit there. A small health potion and a teleport scroll can save your live and keep you fighting much longer, or you could wait the extra couple of second for your gold to reach 550 to buy the +health armor piece, which early on adds a significant chunk to your healthpool. For generals, spending 900 on the Monk idol may be the best gold you can spend.
I’ll not comment on favour items as they aren’t working yet anyway and you didn’t have much to choose from.
As the game gets into its first couple of minutes we can see Sedna traveling very quickly, quite possibly she used her gold to purchase the boots of speed, or she use the Swift Anklet favour item. There is lots of early action, and unfortunately your opponents managed to gang up on the Rook before you could come near to distract them causing an early loss. This happens, but when you see that they’re able to take down a Rook, don’t let the rather squishier TB hang around. Trying to fight them 1vs2 is a mistake even if you think they’re low on mana after the fight… they’ll still outdamage you significantly.
Your opponents have a long period of you being dead in which to creep in peace, leveling up with little interference. Luckily the enemy creeps make it to your base area just in time for you to reap the XP from them dying. More action follows in the center of the map, with that flag changing hands. Unfortunately again there is another death, due to following a retreating enemy (which you could not catch up to) while not paying close enough attention to your own health bar. When you see your enemy is getting away from you in hairy situations like that more often consider buying the Boots of Speed, one of the most useful items and available very early, as is the Swift Anklet favour item: Speed keeps you alive, and stops your enemies from getting away, as the Sedna player will display throughout the game.
The first segment concludes with a close escape and everyone at roughly level 3 bordering on 4. Things are shaping up to look a little uneven, but not significantly out of ballance as yet.
Video 2 commentary:
A quick visit to the item shop to see what’s available shows that the +health armor is still just out of reach. Again it’s probably worthwhile to wait the extra few seconds to have enough gold to buy it, and this time you appear to do so, but get a major health potion instead. A valid choice, but I suspect the permanent +health and regen would have been better. If you do go for potions, mana heavy characters, especially ones with lower base health, almost always get better utility out of the purple Regeneration potions. These can be used as either a mana or a health potion in a pinch, or as a complete rejuvinator after you've been in a tough battle. With a 3s use time potions arn't very practical in combat to anyone but those with the highest health and armor values, such as the Rook.
Back to the game: The Rook is happily killing creeps, and taking out the creeps on the other side is certainly a good idea, but don’t neglect the flags! Flags give significant bonuses, 10-20% on things like health, experience and cooldowns.
The next battle between the Demigods sees a victory for the home team, in no small part due to the increased speed of the Rook, who’s independent weapons keep the pressure on Sedna as she tries to get away, and a fireball finishes it off nicely. Now is the time to farm what creeps you can to level up, and importantly grab those flags!
With level 4 come the second tier of the starting skills, and fireball is a good choice here: your opponents have show themselves to be escape artists, the extra bursts of damage can make a big difference.
With over 2000 gold now due to the Sedna kill, another trip to the shop is in order. Here we must be careful though: more expensive doesn’t always mean better! The Hauberk of Life is a fine armor, but as you’re not a general with Minions the Nimoth Chest Armor, for 250 gold less, is actually a better piece of kit. Indeed, you have enough gold for the Nimoth and the Banded Armor, at 300 gold more than the Hauberk, but the two together outclass the Hauberk by an order of magnitude.
Back out on the field flag capping is good, and there’s a lovely clump of creeps just screaming ‘let me give you another level’ an opportunity well taken advantage of. With the fifth level comes Fire Nova, a good burst AoE spell. Still, it’s worth looking at the second tier of Circle of Fire, as the extra spell will drain your mana very quickly, while CoF functions perfectly adequately for the same purposes. Still, getting fire nova increases your short term damage output more, which will help in battles vs the opposing DGs.
Another battle concludes this segment, but as you used the mana-heavy Fire Nova on the creeps you’re left with no usable abilities. Getting the Vlemish Faceguard or the Battlecrown should now a top priority. Despite the mana woes you manage to bring Sedna down to low health, but being faster the player lures both you and the Rook past Regulus and the two forward enemy towers, reducing your health to a sliver in moments, while healing herself back up… It was a trap.
Cool, there more im around, the more danish people i seem to come across
atm someone made this small bat file so you can view them for now http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index.php?showtopic=405375
Video 3 commentary:
Well that trap from the end of segment 2 did end up killing you, but it presents is with a bit of time to look at the stats. With a flag advantage the home team is clawing up some war-score, but it’s still far behind. We see that Kitkun as Sedna has managed to collect a bit of gold with her three kills, so that’s something to take into account.
As you come back to life the map is firmly in the hands of the Light side. Quickly another fight starts, and this time Sedna follows you in to the towers hoping for a kill, a wish which is quickly thwarted due to that health potion working just in time. She gets away, but they’re forced to retreat for now. Again the mana-woes show themselves, but at least now you have enough gold for the Plenor Battlecrown, which would fix a good portion of that.
More fighting follows, and the Rook’s high health and armor let him stay in for a long time, even pushing Sedna into a half retreat, but Sednas healing and her priest minions are more effective.
I’m up in the air about the Faceguard vs the Battlecrown. I don’t see how you can tell what your mana/s is, so is 70% more mana/s more than 15m/s? On a mana-heavy character like TB I believe it is, also the Battlecrown is cheaper and gives a bigger manapool boost, but as TB it’s not unusual to end up buying both. In any event, either will make a big difference to your effectiveness at this point.
Happily your opponents have bought priests early, giving you nice gold and XP rewards while making it much harder for them to level due to the creeps fighting near your towers most of the time.
In the last battle of this segment, something happens that has caused the death of many a new DG player: levelup just before a fight. Thankfully you didn’t let it distract you, as comparing different ability upgrades as half your health melts away is a surprisingly common cause of death. Something else that I suspect played a role here though is the ‘new item = invulnerable’ feeling. When someone buys an item that ups their effectiveness significantly (most often an artifact, but the Faceguard in this case) they often feel they can stay in battle for longer, even take on 2v1 odds. We see you were able to for the first time use all your spells in quick succession and still have some mana left… but unfortunately the health bar wasn’t quite so full. This happens to me all the time, it’s quickly cured by just playing your Demigod of choice with the various items and learning their capabilities.
Video 4 commentary:
This segment starts with a new ability to choose, and fireball is fine. Maybe an extra level of Circle of Fire rather than the general stats upgrade would have been preferable in previous levels, as it’s an extremely powerful spell at higher levels, but not critical. Another level follows later in this segment, and there I would almost certainly have gone for another tier of CoF.
The enemy DGs are distracted chasing you while the Rook is capping flags, unintentional it seems but a good outcome. Citadel upgrades follow which are always good. Possibly the reduced death penalty could have made a difference given the long death-times in this game, but I would normally ignore it also.
Most of the fighting is inconclusive, but making sure to take advantage of any opportunities when driving off the opposing DG’s to cap flags is the best thing you can do. The creeps will make their way to your base anyway; you can reap their XP later.
hmm, good advice, back then i just saw the "health" "armor" and didnt look at the small text, thanks for the advice, i will take advantage of that
hahaha it is so true, funny that it does make one feel this way, since then ive noticed some DG's where standing still and didnt fight back for like 3-5 seconds, might be as you said they are leveling in battle. I may even do it still... will make a reminder of this, as its not best place to do so
Video 5 Commentary:
This segment starts with a trip to the shop. With over 1750 gold a lot of things are available. Mana is fine now so the Battlecrown isn’t neccesary, but the Nimoth Chest Armor is still available, and the Unbreakable Boots are a good addition to any DG’s arsnal. Ineed, those three pieces, the Crown/Faceguard, the Nimoth and the Unbreakables are almost my standard gear for all DGs, but it is up to personal preference which has priority. In the end you go for consumables, and the tele scrolls are deffinately the most useful of the bunch. Again Rejuvenation potions will serve a mana-heavy DG better than individual health and mana pots, but as you’ve got space for both that’s fine too.
The enemy priests are making sure that most creep combat takes place close to your base, and this is a good thing on the whole, but it does mean that your opponents are having a slightly easier time controlling the flags, though this is quite minor.
Killing Sedna gives some welcome gold, and the opportunity to get those flags, which unfortunately go un-taken for longer than necessary, especially as the warscore is behind it should be a priority.
As seems to quickly be becoming traditional, the game ends with a death. TB is very squishy, +health items like the Nimoth/Unbreakables are extremely useful. The damage coming in here is autoattack damage, not from abilities for the most part, so +armor will also make a big difference. 750 or so armor will reduce incoming damage by around 25%.
Adendum: In the chat there is some confusion about warscore. Warscore comes from holding those flags. I’m not sure about the exact formula, but if your opponents control the center 3 flags then they have 6 to your 3, so they’ll get pretty much double your warscore/tick.
Video 6 commentary:
With a little discussion on warscore to while away the long gray seconds, when you’re back to life you’re faced with the option of buying priests. This is one of the most important choices in any DG game, priests give you a significant advantage by healing you, and they can let your otherwise cannon-fodder reinforcements stay alive long enough to damage your opponent’s structures. Yet they’re also a big juicy target giving gold and experience to your opponents.
At the end of the previous video we saw during death-time that despite being ahead 7 kills, 7 assists to 3k / 3a – these giving a lot of cash and experience – you are still leading with level 10/11 vs 9/9. That’s pretty much entirely because your opponents bought priests too early. That mistake has kept them from dominating at this point, had they not done so this would be much less the even battle that it is.
With the first DG battle of this segment we see that with less than 3000 health, Sedna is having a lot of difficulty keeping up with the damage that the 4th tier fireball can put out, and a high tier hammerslam from the Rook proves more than she can handle. Regulus is fast and more than happy to run away though, so chasing him into his base is a mistake, even if one fireball would finish him off, you’re not going to be able to launch one. Learning to let you of an enemy that’s getting away is a close second in important to know when to run yourself.
Taking out the forward towers is a good first step for the invasion, but ideally you could have waited for Catapultasuari, though that is warscore dependent, and due to the lack of realisation that flags give warscore, the flags stay in Light side hands.
Don’t let the enemy base beat you up too badly while you kill it. Rightly you retreat to heal up while you have more than 1000 health left, anything less than that would leave you open to a quick snipe from Regulus at the back of his base. The Rook is a good base assaulter, as is Regulus due to outranging towers, the healing characters are ok at it, but TB and others have a tougher time. As Frosty you can of course use rain of ice, but as Flamey your best tactic is to rush in, activate Circle of Fire where it will damage 2/3 enemy structures, and get out again while it does its luminescent work. If you’re fine for mana, launch of a Fire Nova too, but CoF will do plenty of damage given a little time and won’t expose you for as long as using both; health recovery is a big issue for TB, though during an invasion priests will be a big help there.
While running away, don’t be tempted to fire off a shot at your pursuer. Sure it’ll feel good if you make it back safe and they’ve taken damage, but to a Sedna or other healer it’s not going to matter at all, and it slows you down… this is a very bad thing, and here results in a death. Unfortunately the Rook also dies at this point, mostly because he didn’t run straight towards the home base, nor had he invested in escape items like a tele scroll or the wand of speed.
It’s worth noting that in DG the battle isn’t so much won by the victors as it is lost by the losers. Not dying is the most important thing, more so than killing. The XP and gold from a death helps your enemy more than any other event in a DG game, and the stats show that they’re catching up: both opponents having reached lvl 10 now, while having a large warscore advantage and enough gold to exploit it.
Nevertheless, you also have a good amount of gold, and the Groffling warplate would be a good place to spend it as the warscore won’t allow much in the way of citadel upgrades right now. The Groffling is a bit like the Nimoth on steroids, but over 3x the price for a bit less than 2x the effectiveness. That’s a feature of DG items: diminishing returns. Only rarely before the end of a match when gold flows much more freely is it worthwhile spending more than 2000 gold at a time on items, let alone one item.
Video 7 commentary:
We open with some fighting around the middle of the map, and some flags changing hands, at least for now. The fighting shows that though taking on Sedna 1v1 isn’t advisable, both teams are really quite evenly matched in battle. Why then is the light side getting so many more kills than dark?
It’s because of speed. Sedna especially is very fast, retreating when she has over half health left, she can’t be caught. Regulus already has range, and keeps it. When he decides to run you’re already behind and there’s no real chance of catching him. Items like the Boots of Speed or the Want of Speed are the main remedy to this, or you could invest ability points in cold to stun(freeze) and slow down your opponents to get the kills in. The Rook has Boulder Roll available, and though there are builds without it I can’t think of any that are better without it. Luck of the draw here that the Rook player was new and didn’t know the value of it until quite late.
It’s in this segment that we see improvement in flag-taking behaviour, but also more splitting up of the team, which is a bad idea vs these guys. They on the other hand have an easier time splitting up – mostly due to their speed again; also Regulus is quite capable of dealing damage from half the map away… indeed he does more damage the further away he is.
Video 8 commentary:
This time we start off with a fight, and you manage to drive off sedna all on your own while Regulus just stands there and shoots: the +armour and +health of the Groffling Warplate adds enough survivability that you can stand there and take the crossbow auto-attack for quite a while now, at a guess you’ve got 40% or more damage negation at this point. Remember though that armour does not protect against damage from abilities such as Snipe/Fireball/Spit… it only helps against auto-attack damage (that includes all reinforcement and minion damage though).
We see a good use of another health potion half way through, and because you now have such a high health-pool a rejuvenation potion is no longer automatically better, though it would still of course help with the mana also, but now the health pot fills the health bar further, where before its extra health was wasted due to capacity being full already.
With a lull in the battle, a quick teleport to base is quite a good idea. You can restock on health and mana potions (and get a new teleport scroll) or you can see if there are other items that might help you more. As you have over 4000 gold I would consider the Heart of Life trinket. This is effectively a mobile base-crystal, it will regenerate your health and mana pretty much fully so long as you don’t take any damage while you use it. The Platemail of the Crusader isn’t a bad choice though, increasing your automatic health regeneration by a good amount and also reducing incoming damage even further with another impressive 1000 armor points; its special ability to gain health on being hit is also a nice bonus.
Going out into the field yields another impressive kill on Sedna despite her speed and healing, so your gold supply looks to be alright for quite some time. Itemwise that last plate did fill up your inventory though, so spending it has now become a tiny bit tougher. With Sedna out of the picture for the better part of a minute it’s an excellent time to take all flags and make some more headway on clearing those towers. The creeps are helping out well with this so long as their opposing numbers are taken care of by judicious use of Fire Nova.
The segment concludes with the announcement that the Light side have spent some of their gold on Catapultasauri, making their creep waves significantly more powerful and making it likely that the next video will bring an assault on the dark base…
Video 9 commentary:
Retreat is definitely the right choice in this situation; you’re low on manna, best to not try to slug it out with the Rook so far away. Back at base a quick restock on consumables is a good idea, though it’s worth looking at what trinkets you have available. With 5000 gold pretty much all of them are open to you, and a good number don’t require an item slot, only a consumable slot. Wand of Speed and Heart of Life are both excellent items of this kind. In the end you go for the citadel upgrade, and that’s probably a good idea.
The stats view shows that the Dark team is still ahead on levels, and with luck the catapultasauri will increase that advantage further. You’ll need it to counter their warscore and gold advantages, it wouldn’t surprise me if the giants didn’t show up sometime soon, and though Fire-spec TB can handle them, it’s going to keep you stuck at base defending.
A bit of back and forth with Sedna keeps her from gaining much XP from creeps, a field that she is at a disadvantage at having no AoE to speak of. As you have around 5000 hitpoints even a maximum damage snip isn’t going to affect you unduly, so it’s worth the risk pursuing her even at low health. Going after the creeps without at least using the healthpotion was a mistake though, as you discovered. Early on the creeps don’t really do anything, but once the catapultasauri show up you’ve really got to take their damage output into account.
When the fighting is in or near your base don’t hesitate to go back to the health crystal rather than use potions, the time saved by using pots is usually trivial, but a thousand gold to heal yourself isn’t.
As the video comes to a close we see that these creep waves are lovely for the gold and experience they give, but that trying to leave the base are can be very dangerous, as the Rook dies trying to attack the Light side base. At this stage don’t venture out past the flags: hold flags for warscore and kill the creep waves as they come to you, while doing your best to keep away the opposing team’s DGs to reduce their ease of leveling.
Video 10 commentary:
Well, we’ve reached level 15, the highest tier of abilities has opened up. Now the choices become a little harder too though… none of the new things is really hugely interesting. Inspirational Flame will solve any mana problems that still show themselves, so it’s a useful choice.
Capping flags is a good way to spend the time waiting for your ally to respawn, unfortunately the opposing time is just as quick to reap them. Firenova shows its usefulness once more as a perfect creep-clearance-cast, and then it’s time to run from getting caught in a 1v2 just in time to learn of the latest development:
The Light Giants have joined the battle.
This is getting very hairy, but it does rush you to level 16, with the final level of fire nova making it a bit easier to stem this new tide of giants. The two AoE abilities in combination are doing an excellent job holding back creeps, but while the giants live they do heavy damage… not to mention that finger of god. Nevertheless, the base structures are holding up very well, and you manage to push back the creeps more than halfway down the map.
Fighting Regulus is getting harder. His snipe does close to 1000 damage but that’s not the problem right now, his auto-attack speed is through the roof, and even with the massive amount of armor you’re wearing he’s doing ~175 damage per shot. I think we can say with confidence that he’s bought an artifact or two.
All levels are around 16 now as this episode draws to a close, and that’s the last of the video’s that have been posted as yet.
Thank you Multianna for letting me give some commentary and advice.
I hope everyone who takes the time to read these posts will find them educational, or at least a good basis for discussion and disagreement
And now, I think it's time for me to
We are attacking the enemy citadel!
Part 11 is here, check it out, as this game is soon comming to its end
Video 11 commentary:
Early on we see the ability of the Torchbearer to easily roast creeps, pushing waves of giants back to the flag line and taking the opportunity to grab a flag. When two enemy DGs approach the wisest choice is almost always to run, but firing off a fireball or two at them while they chase you is fine if you have range… just don’t get stuck in a corner or get caught by a faster DG as happens here.
The 3s activation time of the major potions is fairly easy to spot, and some DGs like Sedna and the Rook have abilities that will interrupt casting - while the cooldown will have activated - as we see happen here with Sedna’s Pounce.
Another war rank is achieved, nearly to catapultasauri of your own now. In the mean time, Trebuchets add a decent amount of damage output to your forts, but I don’t think the highest currency level is worthwhile. It costs 4200 gold to add 2g/s to your cash flow, that means divided over the two DG’s on your team it’s going to take 20 minutes just to pay itself back. There’s probably something better you can do with the money, even if it’s just saving for the next Warscore tier.
For the rest of the video there’s some good work keeping the pressure on your opponents, forcing them away from the creep waves stops them from leveling, and it lets you grab some flags again.
The fight continues...
Heres the part 12 of light vs dark
Dark Catapultasaurii have joined the battle!
Part 13 is here, check out this great battle!
Be sure to come back tomorrow as the final part shall reveal who runs off with the victory!
Enjoy
An I shall commen...tate?
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