Hey hey people,
We've been keeping it secret for a long time, but today's finally the day. We are announcing Online Multiplayer Co-op for Solasta - available in all existing and future campaigns, as well as custom Campaigns created in the Dungeon Maker! But that's not all, we're also announcing our next DLC: Lost Valley, coming up April 14th - a brand new level 1 - 12 adventure with branching paths and multiple endings, with 9 new subclasses and many new monsters and locations. And, of course, the free multiplayer upgrade for everyone!
Multiplayer Dev Stream March 16th
On Wednesday March 16th at 9 am PDT / 12 pm EDT / 5 pm CET, we will be hosting a Dev Stream on our official Twitch Channel. This time it will be a little different though - as we'll be showing off Online Multiplayer Co-op with a couple of veterans from our Discord Server. Make sure to drop by to check out Solasta Multiplayer a day before the Beta starts!
Solasta Multiplayer Co-op Beta Weekend starting March 17th
From Thursday March 17th at 8 am PDT / 11 am EDT / 4 pm CET to Monday March 21st 4 am PDT / 7 am EDT / 12 pm CET, a Beta Branch will be available on Steam with Online Multiplayer mode activated.
Tell your friends, boot up the game and enjoy some quality time beating up Soraks together!
Here is what you can expect from this Beta version:
- Multiplayer works on the official Crown of the Magister Campaign and Custom Campaigns from the Dungeon Maker. However, Custom Dungeons (not campaigns) are not available in Multiplayer, but it is fairly easy to convert a dungeon into a campaign (we will put up a how-to guide to help newer dungeon creators).
- You can play with friends all over the world, however if you do not live in the same region as the host you will need to select their region when looking for the lobby room.
- All DLC content is synced with what the host owns, meaning that if they have Primal Calling all players in their game will be able to create Druids and Barbarians. However, that also means a player with Primal Calling won't be able to play a Barbarian if their host doesn't have the DLC.
- There will still be some desynchronizations - which is when something goes wrong and suddenly player A and player B no longer see the same things (for instance, player A rolls a 12 but player B sees them rolling 5 instead). When this happens, the host simply needs to save and reload that save to continue playing together.
- Note: Multiplayer will be fully released as a free update to all players on April 14th, when the Lost Valley DLC comes out.
- Note: There is no LAN mode, Multiplayer is online only.
On the day the Multiplayer Co-op Branch goes live on Steam, we will also be posting several guides on how to switch to the Beta Branch, how to Create / Join a lobby in Multiplayer, how to convert a Custom Dungeon into a Custom Campaign, and lastly what to do in case of desyncs.
Lost Valley DLC available on April 14th
Welcome to Lost Valley, a seemingly idyllic yet isolated enclave ruled by the benevolent (?) Orenetis
Available on April 14th, the Lost Valley DLC is a brand new level 1 to 12 campaign that will take your party into the lands of the Dominion. This remote place long forgotten by all is ruled with an iron fist by the tyrant Orenetis, but the arrival of your adventurers will light a fuse under this political powder keg.
This adventure features:
- A replayable non linear story, as you are the one deciding which faction to side with in order to escape the Valley
- New foes to face, with iconic monsters such as Giants, Hags and Golems who will try to turn your party into mush
- New subclasses, one for each of the nine existing classes in Solasta
- Play Lost Valley co-op with up to 4 players when it comes out, as all official campaigns are co-op compatible!
9 New Subclasses:
- The Commander, Fighters who can bolster their allies both offensively and defensively in the middle of combat.
- The Hoodlum, Rogues who rely on intimidation and brute force to get what they want.
- The Oath of Judgment, held by Paladins who seek to purge corruption and deliver justice wherever they go.
- The Mischief Domain, granted to Clerics of Misaye who always seem blessed with good luck.
- The Court Mage, elite Wizards who are masters at protecting others with their arcane powers.
- The Swift Blade, silent and deadly Rangers whose purpose is to assassinate high priority targets.
- The Haunted Soul, Sorcerers with symbiotic relationships to malevolent spirits, granting them horrifying magic.
- The Path of Claw (Primal Calling DLC required), Barbarians with powerful dragon-like abilities.
- The Circle of Balance (Primal Calling DLC required), Druids who are adept at both granting life and taking it away.
New Dungeon Maker content:
- Four new environments: Jungle (outdoor), Swamp (outdoor), Valley Palace (indoor), Valley City (outdoor)
- New monsters: Monsters from Lost Valley will be available to use in the Dungeon Maker
- [FREE] New Quest System: Add quests to your Custom Adventures to give players specific objectives and reward them with experience and items!
- [FREE] New Dialog System: Give your Custom Adventures more charm and lore by adding multi-choice dialogs with NPCs!
- [FREE] New Custom Loot Table System: Create your own loot tables for chests and monsters to control what the players get!
Alright folks, this is the end for today! See you tomorrow on Twitch for the Dev Stream, or on Thursday for the Multiplayer Beta weekend! Thank you for reading, and don't hesitate to drop by our Forums or our Discord Server.
Article by Tactical Myzzrym
This is incredible news. I'm so stupidly, immaturely stoked for this!!
Awesome, awesome news! I doubt I'll personally get anyone I know to play multiplayer, but great that you managed to add it. The new campaign and related content looks like just what the game needed next.
That was a big surprise : you really kept it secret ! Hehe, nice. Excited for a new campaign with new subclasses!
Steam profile : https://steamcommunity.com/id/baraz/
This sounds awesone!
Typos happen. More so on the phone.
Now I just have to convince my wife to play...
"The Commander"
Warlord Confirmed!
A couple of questions:
Will the new campaign include background quests?
Are reach weapons ever going to make it into the game?
Any chance of new Feats? Such as one that lets characters who don't have Identify on their spell list identify items?
Absolutely great! Will multiplayer be possible for GoG Owners by April 14th? And will I be able to play with my Steam friends? Thanks a lot
So if you guys kept saying 'no' on MP and now are surprising us with it, is it reasonable to expect other similar surprises in the future?
Please surprise me with level cap raised to level 20, and with multi-classing. Please?
i doubt multi-classing will be a surprise anytime soon, unless they have doubled their staff and budget in the last few months. maybe a level cap raise but since they have not keep those a secret in the past that is also doubtful. i think we would be lucky to get level 14, i mean, i've been stuck at level 14 here on the forums for over a year now
yellow flower of courage
Will you be able to export your characters between campaigns?
Will you be able to export your characters between campaigns?
I'm pretty sure you can do that now. But it would leave your characters overleveled.
So if you guys kept saying 'no' on MP and now are surprising us with it, is it reasonable to expect other similar surprises in the future?
Please surprise me with level cap raised to level 20, and with multi-classing. Please?
As much as I would love multiclassing to show up, it is very unlikely to be added. They're a small team and the game's systems don't seem to have been built with multiclassing in mind, so that's likely going to entail a lot of work. Furthermore, unlike earlier editions of D&D (mostly talking about 3rd edition), multiclassing isn't as mechanically straight forward as simply adding features from another class. The system will need to keep track of proficiency bonuses, stat prerequisites, what proficiencies you do and don't get, how spellslots from different classes stack, and, most importantly of all, making sure the different class' abilities are compatible.
I think it is a lot more likely that we'll see multiclass adjacent archetypes for the various classes being implemented instead. Greenmage, Spellblade, Shadowcaster and Battle Domain are already Wizard/Ranger/Druid, Fighter/Wizard, Rogue/Wizard and Cleric/Fighter respectively. While we don't know exactly what the new subclasses do yet, the Swift Blade archetype for Ranger seems to be a Ranger/Rogue type thing, playing into being a Ranger assassin. Mischief Domain sounds like a Cleric/Rogue thing and Hoodlum sounds like Rogue/Fighter.
I think it is a fair compromise. Archetypes are going to be a lot easier to implement than programming multiclassing and by leaning into what is possible with the archetype system, they can give us good options for multiclass adjacent characters.
Typos happen. More so on the phone.
So if you guys kept saying 'no' on MP and now are surprising us with it, is it reasonable to expect other similar surprises in the future?
Please surprise me with level cap raised to level 20, and with multi-classing. Please?
As much as I would love multiclassing to show up, it is very unlikely to be added. They're a small team and the game's systems don't seem to have been built with multiclassing in mind, so that's likely going to entail a lot of work. Furthermore, unlike earlier editions of D&D (mostly talking about 3rd edition), multiclassing isn't as mechanically straight forward as simply adding features from another class. The system will need to keep track of proficiency bonuses, stat prerequisites, what proficiencies you do and don't get, how spellslots from different classes stack, and, most importantly of all, making sure the different class' abilities are compatible.
I think it is a lot more likely that we'll see multiclass adjacent archetypes for the various classes being implemented instead. Greenmage, Spellblade, Shadowcaster and Battle Domain are already Wizard/Ranger/Druid, Fighter/Wizard, Rogue/Wizard and Cleric/Fighter respectively. While we don't know exactly what the new subclasses do yet, the Swift Blade archetype for Ranger seems to be a Ranger/Rogue type thing, playing into being a Ranger assassin. Mischief Domain sounds like a Cleric/Rogue thing and Hoodlum sounds like Rogue/Fighter.
I think it is a fair compromise. Archetypes are going to be a lot easier to implement than programming multiclassing and by leaning into what is possible with the archetype system, they can give us good options for multiclass adjacent characters.
I hear you. But isn't the stated goal of this game to be very authentic to 5e TT? And multi-classing is a core feature of 5e D&D, isn't it? I mean, it's not like it is a minor/tangential/optional part of the game. It is central to how people play D&D. If anything, multi-classing is what game development resources should have been prioritized for.
And bringing the game up to level 20 is also a basic element of the game, especially in the context of people playing user-created game modules.
And multi-classing is a core feature of 5e D&D, isn't it?
technically, mutli-classing is an option
yellow flower of courage
So if you guys kept saying 'no' on MP and now are surprising us with it, is it reasonable to expect other similar surprises in the future?
Please surprise me with level cap raised to level 20, and with multi-classing. Please?
As much as I would love multiclassing to show up, it is very unlikely to be added. They're a small team and the game's systems don't seem to have been built with multiclassing in mind, so that's likely going to entail a lot of work. Furthermore, unlike earlier editions of D&D (mostly talking about 3rd edition), multiclassing isn't as mechanically straight forward as simply adding features from another class. The system will need to keep track of proficiency bonuses, stat prerequisites, what proficiencies you do and don't get, how spellslots from different classes stack, and, most importantly of all, making sure the different class' abilities are compatible.
I think it is a lot more likely that we'll see multiclass adjacent archetypes for the various classes being implemented instead. Greenmage, Spellblade, Shadowcaster and Battle Domain are already Wizard/Ranger/Druid, Fighter/Wizard, Rogue/Wizard and Cleric/Fighter respectively. While we don't know exactly what the new subclasses do yet, the Swift Blade archetype for Ranger seems to be a Ranger/Rogue type thing, playing into being a Ranger assassin. Mischief Domain sounds like a Cleric/Rogue thing and Hoodlum sounds like Rogue/Fighter.
I think it is a fair compromise. Archetypes are going to be a lot easier to implement than programming multiclassing and by leaning into what is possible with the archetype system, they can give us good options for multiclass adjacent characters.
I hear you. But isn't the stated goal of this game to be very authentic to 5e TT? And multi-classing is a core feature of 5e D&D, isn't it? I mean, it's not like it is a minor/tangential/optional part of the game. It is central to how people play D&D. If anything, multi-classing is what game development resources should have been prioritized for.
And bringing the game up to level 20 is also a basic element of the game, especially in the context of people playing user-created game modules.
Multiclassing might be hard-coded into how a lot of people think about D&D since 3rd Edition, but it is technically an optional rule in 5e. Even without that, we're talking about a small dev team (less than 20 in total, I think) that has to carefully consider what to actually implement. Everything they add takes development time and they have to aim for things that realistically is going to pay for the time invested. If something isn't in the game, the most likely answers are either that it has to do with product liscences or with how much TA can afford to spend on developing it.
With that in mind, take a look at what multiclassing does and think about how you would implement that in a system. 3rd Edition was pretty straight forward with it, since the system was designed with it in mind, so you just added the classes on top of each other. 5th Edition is less straight forward, especially when it comes to how different classes stack spellslots and such. That is not even considering all the potential bugs and glitches mixing these features will lead to.
Multiclassing is usually either about 1) powergaming or 2) character concepts. Point 1) is largely irrelevant to this discussion, since powergamers will powergame to the extent the system allows regardless. Point 2) is important, but it doesn't require multiclassing to be achieved because Tactical Adventures can use the archetype system instead. It is simply a much smarter usage of their time, since adding 2-4 abilities on a class is going to be a lot easier to implement than coding multiclassing.
Of course, if there was a large public movement towards them adding multiclassing, it'd be different, because then it'd be a much safer investment.
As for level 20... why bother? They haven't built any story content to go that high and every new level means more work. Especially for the levels that give casters access to new spells. That's a massive programming job, especially since the high tier spells tend to get more and more complicated. Then there are class abilities on top of that. It really doesn't make sense to program the game to have levels above what they intend to create content for. Again, small studio with limited resources.
Level 12 is a pretty high ceiling and would cover most published campaigns, as well as all but one I've either led or played in. And we already had (and are getting more) archetypes that are capable of standing in for multiclassing. It seems like a fair compromise to me.
Typos happen. More so on the phone.