[9.15][Suggestion] Thoughts on Resoln

Just finished up a Quest win on Resoln on hard with the latest patch, and felt I should contribute my thoughts. I've previously beaten two games with Resoln, in 9.14 and 9.12.  Figured I'd share my thoughts on their current state.  All games I used the pregen character, Oracle Ceresa.

Race Bonus:  I like it, it is characterful and useful early on.  I wish it effected units more, however.  Once you get up to 5+ men it doesn't mean much.  What I would prefer to see is 3 + 1 per stack, so a 5 man unit would restore 8 health on killing.  That way it scales into late game effectively.

Summoner Specialization:  This is an alright specialization.  Primarily because it gives you the shadow warg right away.  Also turns any sand golem drops even more effective.  However, a lack of summons, especially in death, which you'll probably be maxing first, means it is almost entirely early game in it's effectiveness.

 

Strengths and Weaknesses

- Spiders:  I haven't found them very effective.  Space in your armies are limited, and spiders aren't very good at combat.  They also eat up mana to make, which is very precious early game, while not providing a very effective use of a slot later on.  I've only tried them out a bit, and just never found them worthwhile.  Next game I'm going to try and use them more, to see if I still have this opinion.

- Faction Spells:  Dirge of Ceresa and Corruption are what make  the faction, for me.  Dirge of Ceresa is your late game army eraser.  Corruption is what powers your Wither, Soulburn, Berserk, and of course Dirge of Ceresa to obscene amounts of effectiveness. Infection I've found to be awful, since it takes three activations of mages to start effecting people (channel, wait, cast another debuff).  Graveseal is an alright mid game boost to kill hard targets.  Dirge/Wither/Corruption is what makes this faction at all powerful, relative to the others, from what I've seen.  This trifecta means that you can defeat almost any other army another faction can throw at you.  Your biggest worry are counter spells, so high resistance to stop them from going through, and archers to feather enemy mages can be needed.

- Binding: Somewhat useful, very finicky.  Early game it gives an alright army without upkeep cost, and without slowing production from your cities.  Since I find I'm playing for end game hyper mage, I find these very effective.  Also, the death elementals can get up to 9 men, and with berserk+corruption, can tear apart most things mid game.  I dislike how mid-late game you have a huge number of spawning troops who are useless.  They should scale in some way, either tied to sovereign level or number of shards.  Otherwise you just have 12+ men to disband or stuff in a random city as a free, weak garrison.

- Cyndrum Demon: This is the death shard binding summon.  If you play like me, and corrupt everything to power up your death spells, you'll be seeing a lot of them.  They are a very neat unit, perhaps my favorite in concept of the unique units Resoln gets.  In execution, they require constant micromanagement to become useful, since you need to charge them up with their undying rule.  I think this unit and its abilities should be changed, to make it more dependable and less frustrating to use.  As a suggestion, change undying so that it triggers from ANY stack dying in the battle.  But also, when they lose men, it is permanent.  This means you don't have to worry about last hitting, but there is a check to their power.

- No Armor: This is a pretty huge disadvantage.  It shifts how your factions fights, in my mind.  Your troops mid-late to late game just won't stack up to other factions.  But, your unique ability to power up death spells means you have a sovereign, and hopefully a champion or two, who can wither troops who invade for your armies, and are a nuclear tipped spearhead for your assault, with dirge wiping out entire armies in a cast.  If you run into boss monsters, like Torax, or Waerog, you can soulburn and touch of entropy them to death easily.  I feel this fits the faction story perfectly.  Ceresa's armies are just weak pawns to be used to protect her as she corrupts everything with black magic.

 

5,847 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top

Great review! I haven't tried them yet. Good to see that they are developing nicely. How 'luck based' do you feel Resolin is curtently, ie:dependent on getting certain resources. How do they stack up against other factions?

Reply #2 Top

Hi, interesting I've never played this particular faction, it's always been either Karavox, Altar or Tarth. I think for the next game I'll try this.

What level was your sovereign when you did the Quest victory, I'm currently playing custom Tarth sov. and I could not beat the final Champion and does it have to be the sov?

Reply #3 Top

Yeah, Corruption -> Wither and Dirge of Ceresa make this faction. Was already my favorite faction before the latest patch and the new stuff in 9.15 (including the no armor trait) are almost irrelevant compared to the death spells. You pretty much conquer the world with just wither + dirge with your bazillion death shards.

The summons need to scale better yes but I don't like the idea of different summons depending on different shards. You ALWAYS want death shards with this faction and so the non-death / fire summons are never used. Of course, provided you haven't deliberately gimped yourself by not using corruption |-)

Should be some tech/spell or some item needed to be used if you want a particular summon, regardless of the shard.

Reply #4 Top

I quite like the summons - they're a pretty big early game advantage (free, no-upkeep units that are comparable or better to what you can build till turn 100-150ish), and I think its appropriate that they don't scale to midgame.

 

I also think there should be some late game summon options *that require multiple shards* (ie - greater fire elemental requires 3 fire shards, or perhaps require sacrificing a fire wraith and having a shard?) and the Summoner traits to use. I don't think they should just scale your early game units to mid and endgame - binding is a great early game trait, but letting it scale would be OP imo.

 

Reply #5 Top

I beat the Master Quest at level 19.  There are two different ways you can go about it, the dragon statues or opening the gate.  The statues have a horde of dragons + Waerog attack your army, opening the gate it is just a solo fight between your sovereign and Waerog.  I just blew him up with my +100% magic damage, 16 shard soul burn and a touch of entrophy.  Nearly died in the one attack he got off.  I'm not certain if it has to be the sov.

 

My desire to have the bindings scale into mid and late game isn't for balance.  I just dislike having to manage a bunch of inconsequential stuff, and make dozens of clicks with virtually no consequence.  If there was a button to shut off bindings being summoned I would like that as well.  I do like your "requiring x shards" for certain spells, though I'd rarely use that with corruption at hand for Resoln.