Frayed Knights - Released and Available For Download

I've been looking forward to this game. Downloaded the demo last night. Tried playing it but it crashed my system twice. Never got past the first room. Computer would lock up and require a hard reboot. Try the demo before buying...

Win7, i7, 64-bit, GeForce GTX 295
 
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I've got Win7 64, AMD x4 3.40 GHz, Geforce GTX 560 Ti and never crashed once the whole time even in the early betas.

You're right though, try out the demo first just in case.
 
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There are very few ability increases outside of leveling and certainly ONE of the party can use it.

To be specific, I found the Luck enhancer machine and was wondering if there are similar things for Might, Brains, Reflexes or Charm, or I can bump them to 10 without wasting points :)

Or opportunities where you get specific free feats.

Thanks,
Weron.
 
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First, congratulations to Jay on the game release! Kudos!

Tried the demo yesterday evening (to ensure the game runs on my new rig) and was surprised about how well I remembered the "tutorial temple" from the old pilot (the old brain cells, both two of them, are still kicking!). I was also surprised (pleasantly) how the game holds no punches from the start, contrary to many modern games which are really easy in the beginning parts. My party was in pretty dire straights by the time I got to the main hall of the temple (with the icky pool) and that was just the first floor of the temple. Without the bonus Drama Star for having a PC incapacitated for the first time, I think would've been toast (those damn priests were rolling really good, crits left and right, grr!).

The Endurance mechanic is something I'm not quite sure if I'll come to like it or hate it. On paper, I really love it, but in practice it seems to be a bit, er, iffy. Granted, I've only played the demo part, but based on that, it seems the Endurance/Stamina/Mana/Whatever-it-was-called is a bit too slow to recharge and the Exhaustion mark will bite you in the backside quite fast if you tend to use your casters a lot. Even with my casters taking (R)ests every now and then in battles, they were still running quite low on the "casting juice" quite fast (and I did retreat to the entry chamber several times to fully rest). The first level-up helped a bit, I took the "perk" for less Endurance loss with casting, but it's still quite hard to get to grips on how to use your casters most efficiently (they were popping liquid naps like there was no tomorrow).

I feel the camera is set oddly low. I feel like I'm leading a party of halflings around. To wit, it's quite hard to spot anything in the niches of rooms when you're barely at their height. Maybe that's intended, but I'd really like the camera to be a bit higher.

Other than that, I'm enjoying Frayed Knights a lot and am looking forward to getting to play the whole game.
 
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The endurance mechanic is my favorite part. It adds a tactical level to the game that simple potions could not replace.

One word of advice is to get some feats that either enhance how much endurance you recover or slow down how much you use. It makes a big difference.
 
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The endurance mechanic is my favorite part. It adds a tactical level to the game that simple potions could not replace.

Yes, as I said above, I love the idea in theory; I'm just not 100% sure I like the implementation (how it is in practice). I've got way too little experience in the game to be able to form an educated opinion now, but my first impression of it was that it was so finely tuned and delicately balanced, that it seems to be quite easy to dig yourself in such a deep hole with endurance use/exhaustion that you cannot get yourself out anymore (at least in the demo where you're sorta locked in the temple). Note that I don't mean you should be able to cast spells with complete abandon, like a spell machinegun. No. I only meant, that it seems a bit too easy to cripple your party by using your casters actively.

However, I do like the tactical level this endurance mechanism adds and I like that potions cannot be used to replace actual resting (etc).

One word of advice is to get some feats that either enhance how much endurance you recover or slow down how much you use. It makes a big difference.

Indeed. The very first feats I took for both of my casters were the ones that lessen the Endurance required to cast spells. It helped, but it's still a juggling act with the casters and their Endurance. That's not a bad thing, in and of itself, but if it becomes a tedious über min-maxing exercise, then I'm afraid I won't like it as much as I thought I would (when I read about it in Jay's blog). With some more gameplay under my belt, I'll be able to say whether I'll like it or not. We'll see.
 
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One thing I'm starting to wonder about now is the process involved in detecting traps and other things. I have chloe with 10 brains and the awareness feat and I'm still almost never given the opportunity to disarm a trap. Is there something that I am missing?
 
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@fadedc - Depends. Are you having traps go off on you a lot with no chance to disarm them? A high brains + awareness should do the trick. The only exception might be if you managed to sneak off to a higher-level dungeon than you are ready for.

One option - if you think there may be a trap - is to perform a 'search' check nearby. It uses a turn to do that, but it gives you an extra chance to detect a possible trap. Once you move into the trap or click on the trapped object, you have only once chance to detect it, otherwise it goes off.
 
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@LurkingGrue - It's a little tough in the first dungeon w/ the exhaustion mechanic... thus all the potions you start with, and the bonus drama points, and the fact that you are already half-way to leveling. But it does serve pretty well as a tutorial.

Once you get more freedom and a couple of levels, it smooths out a lot more.

@Weron - you'd have to be pretty non-optimal to make it so that there's not at least ONE party member by the end of the game who could use the bump. :) There should be a bump for each stat, IIRC, though most are in "optional" dungeons.
 
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I do get a high CPU usage warning sometimes and because it's running in windowed mode and I have a large monitor there are times when the mouse cursor leaves the frayed knights window and goes to the desktop which may cause the game to lose focus. The lost focus thing does sound like the most reasonable explanation although I don't have anything running in the background. I'll try running it after a completely fresh reboot next time. It's probably an unusual interaction with my computer but I don't think I'm having machine problems….everything else runs fine.

The good news is that it's still playable, just occasionally wierd.

If you're using an Nvidia card try to enable force vsync from the Nvidia driver menu. This way frame rate fix to 60 hrz (or whatever your monitor refresh rate is). This may prevent your high CPU usage maybe. But I'm not sure, just a suggestion.
 
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@fadedc - Depends. Are you having traps go off on you a lot with no chance to disarm them? A high brains + awareness should do the trick. The only exception might be if you managed to sneak off to a higher-level dungeon than you are ready for.

One option - if you think there may be a trap - is to perform a 'search' check nearby. It uses a turn to do that, but it gives you an extra chance to detect a possible trap. Once you move into the trap or click on the trapped object, you have only once chance to detect it, otherwise it goes off.

Hmm yeah I have been having a lot of traps go off with no chance to disarm them. I've just been in the basement of the tower of almost inevitable doom, it's where the story told me to go and I've done all the side quests leading up to it so I don't think it's higher level then I'm supposed to be in. I can't remember when I last had a chance to disarm a trap, it happens once in a blue moon.
 
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Wow! Thanks for the heads-up, Foreigner. We tested it under Windows 7, but I don't know that we ever tested with Visual Themes & Desktop Composition. I should add that to the FAQ!

Glad to help, Mr Coyote! One thing I should have mentioned was my Win 7 box has a 5000 series ATI card. I'll try it out on a Win Vista nVidia machine this evening and see if something similar happens.
 
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As a follow up, going up into the first floor of the tower there was a trapped chest that I manually searched and then opened and the trap still went off without a chance to disarm. By this point Chloe had a brains of 11, plus awareness.

I almost have to wonder if it's having the wrong person do the searches for some reason. I notice that when I trigger a trap with no chance of disarming it always hits dirk.

Kind of frustrating given that I've given Dirk maxed trap disarming skills plus he's found lots of tools but he never gets a chance to use them. In the initial temple I found traps much more often (though still not always).
 
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It should be using the person with the highest total search... which under the circumstances would DEFINITELY be Chloe. You may have found a very subtle bug. Thanks! Adding that one to the list.
 
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I was wondering if the problems people are having could be an incompatibility with I7 processors. I have a Phenom II 920 X4, Geforce 260, and Windows 7 X64 and other then the problem I posted about before I don't have any other problems with the game.

PS. I was wondering if you could make it so the stars save on exit since otherwise people that can't play for long periods of time will lose out on the game mechanic.

PPS. I do one or more searches in every area and get all of the traps.
 
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Guenthar:

Already done. If you exit the game (outside of combat) and then come back and "Continue" instead of Loading a saved game, you'll get your stars back. It's good to save regularly as a matter of course (as accidents happen...), but "Continue" keeps your previous drama stars.
 
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I have a i7 processor and it works fine for me.
 
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I usually use load in games and didn't notice the continue. Thank you for telling me.

PS. It is odd that people that have similar systems can have such different experiences with the game. If it has nothing to do with the cpu then maybe it is anti-virus that is causing the problems. I use Avast so I know that isn't causing problems.

PPS. I'm going to have to quit the game until the problem with the mouse clicking on the toolbars on my desktop gets fixed. It is getting worse and almost everytime I click on something it clicks on the toolbar and causes the game to lose focus which is making the game impossible to play.
 
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I am also unable to play in fullscreen mode, because about every 2nd or 3rd mouseclick brings up the desktop and causes the game to lose focus. I'm running Windows 7.

I'm using a 19" LCD screen that is usually at 1280x1024, so playing in fullscreen mode forces the resolution to lower. I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Windowed mode works fine, and fortunately the difference in resolution isn't that great so it's perfectly playable in Windowed mode, but I can confirm this bug. There are also weird graphical behaviors when changing between Windowed and Fullscreen mode. Completely exiting out the game and restarting fixes it, but more work might be needed there (or just force people to quit and restart when changing these).

Loved the demo, bought the game today, and will hopefully get to play it this weekend!
 
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