pennomi, yes the cave is meant to be quite harder than everything else.

If I were to arrange the zones linearly by difficulty:

• Goblin Warrens
• Averguard Atrium
• Averguard Prison
• Averguard Temple
• Averguard Library
• Averguard Complex
• Cave Level 1

I recommend going into the cave at level 4 or 5.

CyberTroll: glad you enjoyed!  pennomi did a great job with the Cave events.

Here's a rough roadmap to Flare Beta: http://clintbellanger.net/rpg/todo.php

The enemies are definitely configured towards the hard side right now.  I'm guessing that most people who would bother playing are already fans of the genre so I don't mind if it trends a bit hard.

Right now the game is very hard for melee characters -- they have to deal with range disadvantage, and they don't get a multi-target attack until much later (and have to invest in Offense to get it).  I plan on fixing this by having interesting varieties of melee weapons with special powers -- e.g. +lifedrain swords, +bleed axes, +stun hammers.  Also I'll probably rearrange the power tree, possibly putting Cleave in the Physical Defense 5 slot among other things.

Currently wands only increase your magic power.

I have an idea though: I will probably remove Lore and put a power there to shoot wands/rods/staffs for no mana.  Then make Shock a chain-lightning style spell as originally intended, with mana cost.

I might even move Block to where Return is, for lack of a better place for now.  And put better, more interesting powers everywhere else.  I don't like having one tree that is both bows and swords.  Most players will choose staff OR sword OR bow and stick with that weapon the whole game.  And the Physical Defense tree is boring as is.  So I might make Physical Defense the tree for Sword powers (or sword + shield combos) and Physical Offense the Bows powers (or bows + sword combos, if I can think of any).  Obviously this whole thing could be solved by using Talent Points but I don't plan on implementing that for a while.

Anonymous, sounds like it's just bad luck.

The next big feature I'm working on is Vendors for this very reason!

I do some balancing tweaks each major release.  So much is changing at this early stage that I don't expect there to be any real balance yet.

For instance, it's very hard for a player to survive if they don't have Heal.  But in the next release there will be vendors with potions for sale.  This might eliminate the need for a required point in Defense or Magic.

Anonymous, I'll take that into consideration.  There's several ways it could be balanced:

• Heal potions could restore a fixed amount instead of 100% health
• Heal potions could restore health gradually instead of instantly
• Heal potions could be incredibly expensive

Healing Orbs are a decent idea because they can't be hoarded.  I could also add map features for one-time health regains (e.g. Diablo style Wells or Altars).

Sxill,

I lowered the leveling curve this release, but only slightly.  It might be faster than before because of the zero-mana Shock.  In general, I like fast.  But the early levels might be too fast and the later levels might be too slow.  Expect the XP needed to reach each level to be tweaked a bit each release.  Some day when there are several large areas of level 2 or 3 creatures, it will make sense for the hero to level more slowly in the beginning.  In other words: the leveling speed will change to fit the amount of content.

I removed the mana cost for Shock in this release.  I did not find it fun being constantly OOM and unable to attack as a magic-user.  Once mana potions are on vendors, I might add the mana cost back to Shock.  Originally, Shock was supposed to be a chain-lightning spell (and still may be one day) to make it worth the mana cost, instead of just being a basic attack.  I'm thinking of adding a new "wand/staff shoot" power in the slot where Lore is, and have that be the magician zero-mana basic attack -- maybe with the drawback of having a short range, or less damage, etc.

I experimented with various ways of being able to see the character behind the walls in the cave.  I think some day I'll add "half-walls" to the cave, sorta like what the Dungeon has.  It seems to be the best-looking method in my opinion.  For now, though, I like hiding antlions behind walls *evil grin*.

Here's More Than You Wanted To Know About Damage

Powers that do damage depend on the equipped weapon.

Melee attacks (Swing, Bleed, Cleave, Vengeance) deal melee weapon damage (swords).  If you don't have a sword, the default damage is 1-4.

Bow attacks (Shoot, MultiShot, Piercing Shot) deal ranged weapon damage (bows).  If you don't have a bow you can't use these powers.

Magic attacks (Shock, Quake, Freeze, Burn) deal magic weapon damage (staffs).  If you don't have a staff, the default damage is 1-4.

Heal restores based on your magic weapon damage.  If you're holding a sword or nothing instead, you heal yourself for 1-4.

Shield creates a barrier that absorbs your MAX magical weapon damage.  So if you're holding a plain Wand, Shield will absorb up to 6 damage until it disappears.  If you have no magic weapon, Shield absorbs 4 damage.

Creatures can have Absorb just like the hero.  Absorb is flat damage reduction.  So if you deal 4 damage to a creature wearing leather armor (1 absorb), you only deal 3 damage.  The minimum damage is always 1 on hit, UNLESS the creature or hero is Blocking (I haven't added Block AI to creatures).  Higher level creatures tend to have more natural absorb.

Crit, in a recent update (not an official release yet) now does a regular damage roll and adds max weapon damage on top of that.  So, say you swing a Longsword (4-10) and roll an 8.  If it's a crit, that is 18 damage.  This means crits are always worth more damage than regular attacks (before I was just doing x2 on the roll, which could still result in low damage crits).

At some point I will allow powers to deal a % of weapon damage, e.g. 150% or 200%.  If I add Talent Points, they might be spent to pump up the % damage for a particular spell or power.

The new patch by Cheshire helps show weapon damage indirectly, by showing an enemy life bar.  I recommend checking out the latest code, or if you're a Windows user I created a download for r247.  I might add optional floating combat text at some point, or optional combat logging as well.