I do understand. You don't want to do kingdom building content, but do want the rewards for it. There is a bag of tricks mod - you can give yourself artisan items and teleport around the map with it of you feel you deserve it. It's a single-player game, after all. You will still miss on artisan quests that way, but you don't want to do anything related to kingdom stuff, so nothing was lost there.

So your definition of "auto kingdom management" is different from Owlcats'. Fair enough. English is not the mother tongue of most of their developers, so misunderstandings happen. On the other hand, as a person who actually does share Russian as my first language with them, I would have never expected "auto management" to give me all the benefits of playing the strategy mini-game manually.

I guess we just have different expectations.

Apart from this kingdom management tangent, I'm intrigued to hear what other feedback people have when playing the game, especially as a first-time player. So please keep at it and post more here as you progress through the chapters. For better or worse, feedback like this is (or should be) important for developers.

From my perspective, also first time playing the game, I'm in chapter 7 now (I think), and it feels very empty compared to earlier chapters. The journal is practically empty, and I've been everywhere on the map. There are 127 days until the next curse hits, and I've no idea what to do. Most advisers are at level 10 too, and it doesn't look like I can promote them any more. So hit next day in the throne room about 100 times or so? :-/

What rewards? I don't even know what the rewards are. I just want it to do something, anything.

I go to the capital every time it says I need to go.

I talk to everyone that enters the throne room in kingdom management events.

I traveled to Varnhold when the baron there asked me to show up (which was mostly a waste of time).

Blah blah blah.

It's like I hired a janitor to clean the toilets, but he won't even clean the toilers. And if I complain, I'm being told that I'm lazy for not cleaning the toilets. What?

If I have to pay extra gold or something to get Auto to work, I'm okay with that. I have something like 140k gold sitting around that I don't need. The fact is that Auto doesn't do anything.

The devs wanted feedback, and I'm providing feedback. So far, Auto mode stinks. It's not about "rewards", it's about Auto actually doing something. Apparently it does nothing. It appears as though I could do normal kingdom management, neglect everything, and get the same outcomes. It's buggy. It asks me to do things I can't do because Auto is activated.
If they wanted me to lose the "benefits" of playing the strategy mini-game manually, I would happily not be a baron. I wanted Tartuccio to win so I could just be his hired thug or something. So they make me a baron - something I don't even want to be - and so I hand the reigns off to Auto mode, hoping it will just random build crap, do a half-arsed job, and prevent the shop from being blown to pieces. Like a normal-mode AI from a 4x builder game. Barely competent but able to follow a simple build-order and able to keep the house from burning down.

Auto doesn't even seem to be capable of that much.

Enough about Auto kingdom management (mostly).

Post troll-encounter, I've explored more of the map and cleared out a few areas. Some general impressions:

Many areas seem really small, and feature just one monster. Seems like a wasted opportunity for side adventures. Developers only have so much time/so many resources, which I do understand. I've seen a few maps repeated in non-random encounters (such as the half-buried skull rock). One such map in the southern swamp area had troll hounds. Another one in the mountainous region over near Varnhold just had a wyvern. There was nothing else of note.

I did the companion mini-quest from Wildcards. The new companion is okay, but I think i'm just going to shelve her/them. She doesn't seem like a great fit for my party. I suppose she could replace Regongar, but he offers more utility now than he did when I first picked him up. The quest itself was very small, and it kind of reminded me of Verdant Chambers only better-organized. Much better-organized.

It threw me off that you could target spots on the ground with spells even when there's nothing to indicate that the spot on the ground is anything but a cosmetic. Waterblasting the fires was . . . interesting. I wonder how many other sections of the game are like that? It's counter-intuitive to have something like that without any way to highlight the object (in this case, fires) via mouseover. That's generally not how games like this work. It's different, and I'll reserve judgment as to whether or not that's a good thing. I was not expecting that from the UI.

Varnhold itself felt really incomplete. It had one inn I couldn't enter, a named NPC outside that only said "Hmmmm", and Maegar Varn himself who had not much of anything to say. And I thought my barony was pathetic? Also, they're besieged by bandits, but they won't let me help kill them? I can sort of understand why not (it's not my land, might make Varn look bad, etc). But it would give me some extra adventures, potentially.

And then there's that damn amulet. Who in their right mind put THAT thing in the game? All I have to do is equip it on Linzi (with 0 stealth skill, heh), have her use Extended Invisibility on herself, and then clear an entire map without entering combat. It would work better if I put points into Stealth, which I might do eventually if I'm feeling cheeky. In some cases, I shelve the stupid amulet just so I can get back to playing the game, but it's always there, reminding me that I don't actually have to work to kill anything. It's ironic that I can't get Auto mode to manage my kingdom, but now I have an amulet that will put combat on Auto for me. Don't worry! No more strategy needed. Just 2d6 your way to victory.

The village scenario around the Scary Box quest was overall pretty good. Only things that bothered me about it were: a). even if I found the book recounting the death of the children early, I couldn't talk to the father about it when I met him and b). the village had no inn where I could rest. Plopping down my campsite kit in the middle of the village was a tad ridiculous, and nobody complained about it much.

Also I reached the first milestone of Tenebrous Depths. It was a good fight! Those devas were actually tougher than the boss himself. I guess they have the lower sections cordoned off to prevent adventurers from going there too early and getting themselves destroyed (or getting good loot too early in the game). Only issues I have is that some levels had really funky encounter balance. Like there was a water level with giant spiders that were pathetic, but the level above it had cyclops clerics that were pretty tough. Granted I did not have the "you win the game" amulet at the time.

Now I'm just searching for things to do until they next update of the curse quest (which I will also probably fail, just like I failed last time). I've run into really nasty fire elementals in the western reaches of the map twice now, and I actually won an encounter with them the second time, so I may go there and grind XP after I have explored every last part of the map available by this point in the game. Sadly, I may not be able to lean on the amulet exclusively in those fights unless I can use Vanish to end combat. Which does work sometimes.

edit: forgot the companion quests.

Jaethal's companion quest was . . . okay. I am not bothered much that they recycled Old Sycamore, but I was disappointed that the new area I found was small and only had one encounter with a band of forgettable elves. Normally I don't use Jaethal so I did not much enjoy shelving Tristian to make room for her. I did learn that it's nearly impossible to get her killed, which is hilarious. I marched her straight into the enemy's camp with no armor and no weapons, and she kept getting knocked down to -30 hp (or so) without permadeath or Death's Door or anything. She's invincible! Predictably, the half-elf merchant that started the whole mess fled, so I'll probably hear more later.

Harrim's was tied to main-quest areas, so I can't really complain that his sidequest was too short/too easy since completing it requires you to complete main story elements (trolls). From a story/background perspective, it's actually pretty good! But I found a bunch of books telling me why the place is abandoned, and I couldn't even communicate that to Harrim during the quest.

Valerie's was straightforward and simple. I have no complaints, though getting rid of her former Paladin order was a bit too easy, I guess. Maybe they'll show up later?

Linzi's printing press was really short and seemed a bit pointless. I mean, it tells me straightaway exactly where the printing press is on a fairly-large map, and all I had to do was pass one low Intimidate check to win. At least now I have a book merchant.

Top kek. I'd be amazed if they look at gog forums once a month. Probably not.

Game still buggy : need patchs

This thread becomes very Steam-like.

Nothing I can do about that.
Yeah, it does. Every now and then I get something goofy, like . . . one of the arrows on the world map started dancing around. I got the weird blackout screen problem doing the Wildcards quest for Kalikke/Kanerah (had to quit, reboot, and reload to get that to stop). I've had funny pathing issues in the throne room trying to run between the storyteller and the stash chest (I get stuck trying to run half-circles around a pillar).

Auto mode is more strange than I thought.

Apparently Auto isn't really Auto. It still expects you to "wait for the next event" in your throneroom before it will do anything. And I mean anything.

I was I guess in Chapter 3, looking for new things to do now that the troll threat is gone, and I ran out. No more companion quests, no more little missions for people who had previously shown up at the throne room, etc. There was a curse coming up in ~40 days, so I figured I would finally try waiting in the throne room (something I had never done before).

BAM Auto mode kicks in.

All of a sudden, I've gained territory, I've appointed advisors, I'm finally building that temple that Jhod wanted, I'm building a trade road to Varnhold, all kinds of stuff. And then the plot advanced in an unexpected way as magical beasts hit my kingdom with 5 negative status updates in a row, driving my people into open riot. Yay!

So.

Now know how to make Auto work.

it's counter-intuitive. You would think that using the Kingdom Management widget would be the LAST thing you'd do with Auto mode. Who knew? I only tried it due to running out of other things to do elsewhere.

Season of Bloom was overall very good. It was easily stronger story and action-wise than Chapter 1 or 2 (though the troll bit was pretty good). The only problem I had with it was that I had to liberate my capital twice, and I have no idea how that happened. I chose to defend my capitol first (instead of going straight for the cave), killed the giant owlbear, and got no quest status update. The guard captain told me they'd clean up here, etc. I checked every street of the capitol looking for lingering baddies, found none, and moved on. I guess I was supposed to be looking for Jhod? I dunno what happened.

Anyway I left the capitol, went to the cave, and found Kesten having "just arrived" (what?). I saved him from an owlbear, killed the flower, etc. Once I get back to the capitol, I found that it was repopulated with monsters, and the giant owlbear spawns a second time. So I get to kill him all over again. And he drops a second set of +5 Bracers of Armor (yay!). Jhod is dead, but Kesten is juuuuust fine. That wasn't even what I chose but oh well! Bugs be bugs yo.

It was kind of nice finding spots in the game where the Heart of Ira wasn't all that useful. Admittedly, I could have used it more . . . it's just boring, and my party's over-leveled by enough that I can mow down most encounters even without full buffs. Which is fine with me. Now that I have Nok-Nok, he gets to use the amulet. I have Linzi turn him invisible and away he goes! Need to get his Perception skill up though. Poor Berengar may have lost his spot in the party. To a goblin.

I also like how they threw in those spider swarms in the First World. At first I was like, uh oh! I just replaced my one offensive arcane caster with a Rogue. But then I remembered that nearly every weapon I had equipped had elemental damage on it. Those swarms went down fast. They worked soooooo much better than a torch.

Season of Bloom is still Chapter 2, fyi.

My time to rant a bit.


HUGE SPOILERS




The House.... This lantern mechanic was okay in previous chapters, but here it was total, unmitigated and unlimited BULLSHIT. I spent so much time, literally hours, just running back and forth through long corridors, up and down floors, going this way and that, with lantern on, off to switch "worlds", on again, going from room to room. Couldn't find that last key for the life of me. Eventually I gave up and looked up a guide that showed what we had to do in very precise steps. That was total bollocks, and I hope to never see that mechanic bastardised to such a degree in any game. Ever.

The epilogue has been good so far, though, so hopefully the last hours will go out with a bang and leave me with a good feeling. All these wild hunt people are crap to fight, but just about anything under the sun is better than the modern version of pixel hunting across 3 huge floors. Oh, and thankfully freedom of movement scrolls has taken care of the incessant paralysing from their OP gaze.

I completed the game. The last chapter is apparently optional, and it was better than the sort-of last chapter, but still fairly annoying. Bullshit mechanics on many of the enemies, and a bullshit last boss.

Add in skill checks for conversations after a freakin' long fight, and of course I got terrible rolls on both and failed them, which further annoyed me, but no fucking way did I want to go through that save-or-die hell again. Also had that lovely mechanic of harr-harr, all your buffs-be-gone instantly mechanic that we all have wet dreams about.

However, apart from the last 10% or so, I liked the game a lot. May give it another swirl with a different class and maybe some different choices and a different main crew. But I also have to be honest and say that the ending was horrible and I actually dread to have to re-do that thing, and even more so if I decide to play on a higher difficulty next time.

Now I can only hope that the last part of the game won't foretell what we get to see in the bulk of Wrath: hordes of health-sponge demons with bullshit mechanics.

Sorry to be negative here now, but it left a sour taste in my mouth, despite loving the game up to that point. The strengths of the game are clearly in the earlier sections and not towards the tail end.

It is. But there was nothing wrong with my king's persuasion. I was a sorcerer. An aasimar sorcerer with a cat and viper (at least one of those boosted it, maybe both). Add in the unique potion we get, level-up skill points and incredible gear, and I had something like 33 charisma by the end of the game. But those skill checks are 45. Without boosts from spells or Linzi (another horrible decision), those checks are far from gimmes. Think I needed rolls of 10+ or thereabouts to succeed, and I got 7 and 4 or something like that.

Then it sort-of didn't matter anyway, because I got some alignment choices that meant I "won" the word play, which may be because I researched tons of curses and the like. Those skill checks is a minor point ofc, but it felt terrible after such a long slog and then fail at both despite a character with maxed out persuasion (I was level 19, but lacked around half a million XP for the last level).

The challenge or difficulty in the rest of the game was fine. I did that berry cave at level 2 and it was okay. I had to exit the map once for more supplies and buy something (I forget what now), but I completed it at level 2. Rough for sure, but I'm used to proper RPGs being rough in the low levels.

However, the challenge in the House wasn't the good type of challenge. It was just a slog with largely the same enemies over and over and over again. It wasn't fun at all, and I had a deflated feeling when I finally got to the end of the game. And that despite basically one good ending slide after another -- I was neutral good after all, and largely did good things. All other companions also survived, which is probably not a sure thing when going into the game blind. Though I admit to reload a lot when I was trying to sneak Amiri over to where Nilak was held (with greater invisibility potion), because apparently those walking corpses without eyes have Superman vision. It's possible that outcome is what swayed Amiri to my cause, though I can't be sure. Also had Tristian and Jaethal in the party, and they got along well enough.

Overall I really liked the game, but I have to be honest, and that end left a sour taste in my mouth. It makes me less likely to replay it a ton of times like the game deserves, because the end was such a gigantic pain in the arse. Oh, and giving the First Crown to Shyka apparently had zero impact. I figured it wasn't the best approach to piss off another Eldest and hoped perhaps she would help me near the end. Instead the silly bint didn't know it happened because "tomorrow".

There is a lot to like about the game, but the final 1-2 chapters is not among them.