owotrucked
Chronic lecher masquerading as a writer
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2021
- Messages
- 1,465
- Points
- 153
This game is bullshit and I can't stop playing it.
If it wasn't for the bug I encountered at the final boss, I'd rate the first chapter of Daphne an immaculate flawless perfection 10/10. During my first playthrough, it didn't feel like a gacha but a legit game (although this could change for the rest of the content, especially rank up exams).
Story
The story is incredible and exciting, at least for the first chapter. It's like peak Re:Zero but not cringe.
The writers aren't yapping as if they're paid on word count unlike other gacha games. Every story beat fulfills a purpose and is conveyed in very few words.
The main companion Lulunarde is funny and slightly psycho. I guess most adventurers become so after they stay in the abyss for so long.
The player's character feels very important. If his HP reach zero, it's a loss for the team. He's able to rez a downed ally instantly (at the cost of hp and paralysis). He retains all skills from previous classes.
The branching story system of the first chapter is well done and surprisingly not as buggy as the rest of the game.
Gameplay
Dungeon Crawlers let you delve into a labyrinth with a party of adventurers, offering you difficult choices at every opportunity.
Daphne allows you to bring 6 characters with you. At level 20/30/40, your adventurers will have to go through a rank-up exams, which makes it impossible for you to overlevel to bruteforce the challenges.
The battles are turn based, and you will have a certain numbers of approach to tackle a fight.
- Attack: Sometimes, offense is the best defense. You can hope to quickly kill the enemy before they wipe your party. But you'll quickly stack up damage, especially if you face a large group. If you're at 60% hp, do you risk getting killed in this round, or do you choose the safe bet to overheal and waste your priest mp? When facing enemies with instant kill like vorpal bunnies, it's in your best interest to blow them up before they can act.
Note that there's a 50% penalty if you attack a row that exceeds your weapon range. (Bows have no range limit)
- Items: You can switch equipments in battle without any cost. Each weapon have unique traits: Axes ignore defense (good to kill slimes). Maces do half damage on a miss. And spears allows you to attack two rows away without penalty. If you want to cheese, you can get naked and equip a dagger (which has a high action speed) before a fight to have an early first turn and switch to a greatsword. But you'll probably go insane if you do that for every battle.
You can only bring 14 items (including the equipment you wear). You will have to choose between bringing your additional equipments or potion / antitoxin / fireball scroll.
- Defend: A seemingly low-risk gamble. You bet on the enemy physically attacking the defending character. If you're correct, you will decrease the damage received, and the enemy might expose an "opening". Physical attacks against an enemy with opening are greatly enhanced between 2x and 4x. If you lose the bet, you lost the character's turn for no reward.
- Skills: This mainly concerns Knight's skills. They can stun, self-heal, cover an ally or a row, or taunt a target. Big brain strategy involve placing a knight in the backline and taunt the enemy boss, forcing them to attack with a 50% damage penalty caused by range. But cover and taunts don't have a 100% success rate.
- Spells: This is the bing chunk of decision making. Everyone can only have 3 buffs and 3 debuffs. So you will need to choose them carefully.
Sleep is a cheap and reliable option to deal with large group. Attacks or spells on sleeping targets will 2x the damage.
The first pair of spells you learn is accuracy debuff and evasion buff, unreliable but cheap.
The second pair is slow and action speed buff. The third pair is attack power debuff and defense buff.
In addition, you must consider knight's taunt and fighter's armor break as debuffs too.
- Move: Some characters need to be in the center of the backrow to cast their ult. You can move your characters around during battle at the cost of their turn.
Party customization/Gacha
Instead of recruiting adventurers at the tavern like other Wizardry, Daphne makes you pull them through gacha.
This is the annoying part, because everyone come with their own class, element weakness, and alignment. And Wizardry Daphne is VERY VERY stingy in the amount of pulls you get.
The standard party composition is:
Knight, MC, Fighter (front row)
Thief, Priest, Mage (back row)
However, like other Wizardry, late game tend to favor multiple mages. So late game parties might be more like:
Knight, MC, Thief,
Mage, Mage, Priest
The character rarity are generic, general, and legendary. Generals come with their unique passives, and legendaries have two/three unique stuff (passives and/or skill/spell).
Some characters have bonus if a row or a column have certain alignments or elements. For instance, Lanavaille increases damage of her row if they are neutral or good. Alice do the same if they are neutral or evil.
Wizardry games don't usually have the concept of skill or spell level up. But Daphne has it.
You can learn and level up some skills through 'inheritance'.
For instance, if you want to level up katino (sleep), you need to pull the mage Asha from the gacha and feed her into your mage. The higher level, the more dupes you must feed it (and it increases quickly). I assume that we're supposed to be able to clear the game with level 1 skills/spells, because of the insane costs.
But if that's not the case, can you guess the pricing of skill experience in the shop? It's 69$ for 100 exp (equivalent to a dupe character) + 10 character pulls.
There's another use for duplicate characters. For instance, if you have two Asha, instead of leveling katino, you can increase her hp, mp, attack, evasion, etc. by feeding her the dupe through 'discipline'.
F2P players
Playing F2P is the optimal way of playing, unless you want to be swept in macrotransaction.
Monthly pack: 40.99$ - you get 21 pulls LOL
There are limited sales with more interesting rates to bait your first purchase, but man, don't spend money in it unless you just want to give it away to devs.
Buying equipments with real money is also stupid, as they have random quality/rarity. What are you gonna do if you end up with lowest quality item?
Rerolling
Wizardry Daphne is so ungenerous, you will regret not rerolling.
The game has been riddled with so many game breaking bugs that new accounts are filled with apologems, so you can get many pulls just from 20 min of game time.
You might want to reroll until you get those characters:
- Alice (priest): Bonus damage for her row if filled with evil/neutral. Extends all her buff one more turn. Can cast Labadios once per battle if she's at the center of the backrow.
- Yekatarina (mage): Lower chances of ambush. Increases damage against undead. Can cast Laerlik once per battle if she's at the center of the backrow.
- Adam (mage): Receive less damage from his weakness element. Some mage spells get -1 mp cost. Can cast Laforos once...
- Debra (thief): Some thief skills cost -1sp. She gets 4sp each time she last hit an enemy. No unique skill.
- Lanavaille Wanderer (Knight): Everyone restore 12hp at the end of battle. Bonus damage for her row if they are good/neutral. Bonus action speed when wearing light armor and one handed sword (not implemented in game yet because devs are potatoes). No unique skill
During your rerolls, you will encounter the bone picker who will offer you a legendary adventurer for 100 gold (only once). You can refuse him and he'll show up in town with a [...] bubble to offer you the legendary bone, so you can do all your pulls before using this joker.
When you're satisfied with your pulls, NOTE YOUR ID AND PASSWORD (issue it only once), because you will lose your account otherwise (see next).
Bugfest
I encountered a bug at the final boss while using the cover skill (like this guy), and I reinstalled the game, naively thinking that the game was automatically linked to google play account.
But no, you need to issue your ID and password. And that's how I lost my account with lvl 20 characters on chapter 1 ng+
The first time you'll enter the game, you'll be drowned in a series of notices, mixing character banner announcements and a dizzying list of "game breaking bugs that locks story progress" and procedures to follow when encountering them. But to be honest, I wasn't the only one to ignore them, as many rage reviews on google play are testimonies of people who bought stuffs and lost their account in the same way LOL
Defeat
When a party member dies, you have the opportunity to insta rez them. They'll lose fortitude whenever you fail, but it won't cause them to permadie in battle.
When your MC dies, you will have three chances to reload the game right before the battle that triggered your death at no fortitude cost (items and fortitude are also restored). Those three chances (flame of resurgence) recharge with time.
When you run out of resurgence, you have to "accept death" which reload you to the last floor I think and everyone lose 20 fortitude.
Corpse above 50 fortitude have no chance to permadie in church. Corpses also restore fortitude while dead, so you never need to risk a resurection at low fortitude.
As such, Daphne is actually the most lenient of all Wizardry games, transforming the permadeath gimmick into a time gating mechanic.
Bullshit stuff
Instakill effects are a staple of Wizardry. Vorpal bunnies are the first instance you encounter them. Later on, you encounter instant kills in mausoleums (F2P sources of generic bones), and in chapter 2. The helm of malice from the events increase instakill tolerance, so try to buy them.
There are weapons that deal bonus damage against undead. They have a red skull icon and their name has "of undead bane" suffix. But for some godforsaken trolling reasons, the dev actually put a spear of undead bane that is actually a normal spear without bonus damage to undead. Fuck them.
Do not add bondmate to your character that increase HP or MP before the bondmate is at lvl 5.
How to play the game on pc
The steam version isn't out yet, and considering that the devs are swamped in bug reports, you might wait a long time until it releases. Therefore, I suggest you to use a phone emulator.
Download bluestacks android 11 64bits on: https://www.bluestacks.com/download.html
In the settings
- Graphics > Graphics renderer: Vulkan
- Phone > Device profile: Asus ROG 2
- Preference > language: english
For your convenience: deactivate In-app Notifications
If it wasn't for the bug I encountered at the final boss, I'd rate the first chapter of Daphne an immaculate flawless perfection 10/10. During my first playthrough, it didn't feel like a gacha but a legit game (although this could change for the rest of the content, especially rank up exams).
Story
The story is incredible and exciting, at least for the first chapter. It's like peak Re:Zero but not cringe.
The writers aren't yapping as if they're paid on word count unlike other gacha games. Every story beat fulfills a purpose and is conveyed in very few words.
The main companion Lulunarde is funny and slightly psycho. I guess most adventurers become so after they stay in the abyss for so long.
The player's character feels very important. If his HP reach zero, it's a loss for the team. He's able to rez a downed ally instantly (at the cost of hp and paralysis). He retains all skills from previous classes.
The branching story system of the first chapter is well done and surprisingly not as buggy as the rest of the game.
Gameplay
Dungeon Crawlers let you delve into a labyrinth with a party of adventurers, offering you difficult choices at every opportunity.
Daphne allows you to bring 6 characters with you. At level 20/30/40, your adventurers will have to go through a rank-up exams, which makes it impossible for you to overlevel to bruteforce the challenges.
The battles are turn based, and you will have a certain numbers of approach to tackle a fight.
- Attack: Sometimes, offense is the best defense. You can hope to quickly kill the enemy before they wipe your party. But you'll quickly stack up damage, especially if you face a large group. If you're at 60% hp, do you risk getting killed in this round, or do you choose the safe bet to overheal and waste your priest mp? When facing enemies with instant kill like vorpal bunnies, it's in your best interest to blow them up before they can act.
Note that there's a 50% penalty if you attack a row that exceeds your weapon range. (Bows have no range limit)
- Items: You can switch equipments in battle without any cost. Each weapon have unique traits: Axes ignore defense (good to kill slimes). Maces do half damage on a miss. And spears allows you to attack two rows away without penalty. If you want to cheese, you can get naked and equip a dagger (which has a high action speed) before a fight to have an early first turn and switch to a greatsword. But you'll probably go insane if you do that for every battle.
You can only bring 14 items (including the equipment you wear). You will have to choose between bringing your additional equipments or potion / antitoxin / fireball scroll.
- Defend: A seemingly low-risk gamble. You bet on the enemy physically attacking the defending character. If you're correct, you will decrease the damage received, and the enemy might expose an "opening". Physical attacks against an enemy with opening are greatly enhanced between 2x and 4x. If you lose the bet, you lost the character's turn for no reward.
- Skills: This mainly concerns Knight's skills. They can stun, self-heal, cover an ally or a row, or taunt a target. Big brain strategy involve placing a knight in the backline and taunt the enemy boss, forcing them to attack with a 50% damage penalty caused by range. But cover and taunts don't have a 100% success rate.
- Spells: This is the bing chunk of decision making. Everyone can only have 3 buffs and 3 debuffs. So you will need to choose them carefully.
Sleep is a cheap and reliable option to deal with large group. Attacks or spells on sleeping targets will 2x the damage.
The first pair of spells you learn is accuracy debuff and evasion buff, unreliable but cheap.
The second pair is slow and action speed buff. The third pair is attack power debuff and defense buff.
In addition, you must consider knight's taunt and fighter's armor break as debuffs too.
- Move: Some characters need to be in the center of the backrow to cast their ult. You can move your characters around during battle at the cost of their turn.
Party customization/Gacha
Instead of recruiting adventurers at the tavern like other Wizardry, Daphne makes you pull them through gacha.
This is the annoying part, because everyone come with their own class, element weakness, and alignment. And Wizardry Daphne is VERY VERY stingy in the amount of pulls you get.
The standard party composition is:
Knight, MC, Fighter (front row)
Thief, Priest, Mage (back row)
However, like other Wizardry, late game tend to favor multiple mages. So late game parties might be more like:
Knight, MC, Thief,
Mage, Mage, Priest
The character rarity are generic, general, and legendary. Generals come with their unique passives, and legendaries have two/three unique stuff (passives and/or skill/spell).
Some characters have bonus if a row or a column have certain alignments or elements. For instance, Lanavaille increases damage of her row if they are neutral or good. Alice do the same if they are neutral or evil.
Wizardry games don't usually have the concept of skill or spell level up. But Daphne has it.
You can learn and level up some skills through 'inheritance'.
For instance, if you want to level up katino (sleep), you need to pull the mage Asha from the gacha and feed her into your mage. The higher level, the more dupes you must feed it (and it increases quickly). I assume that we're supposed to be able to clear the game with level 1 skills/spells, because of the insane costs.
But if that's not the case, can you guess the pricing of skill experience in the shop? It's 69$ for 100 exp (equivalent to a dupe character) + 10 character pulls.
There's another use for duplicate characters. For instance, if you have two Asha, instead of leveling katino, you can increase her hp, mp, attack, evasion, etc. by feeding her the dupe through 'discipline'.
F2P players
Playing F2P is the optimal way of playing, unless you want to be swept in macrotransaction.
Monthly pack: 40.99$ - you get 21 pulls LOL
There are limited sales with more interesting rates to bait your first purchase, but man, don't spend money in it unless you just want to give it away to devs.
Buying equipments with real money is also stupid, as they have random quality/rarity. What are you gonna do if you end up with lowest quality item?
Rerolling
Wizardry Daphne is so ungenerous, you will regret not rerolling.
The game has been riddled with so many game breaking bugs that new accounts are filled with apologems, so you can get many pulls just from 20 min of game time.
You might want to reroll until you get those characters:
- Alice (priest): Bonus damage for her row if filled with evil/neutral. Extends all her buff one more turn. Can cast Labadios once per battle if she's at the center of the backrow.
- Yekatarina (mage): Lower chances of ambush. Increases damage against undead. Can cast Laerlik once per battle if she's at the center of the backrow.
- Adam (mage): Receive less damage from his weakness element. Some mage spells get -1 mp cost. Can cast Laforos once...
- Debra (thief): Some thief skills cost -1sp. She gets 4sp each time she last hit an enemy. No unique skill.
- Lanavaille Wanderer (Knight): Everyone restore 12hp at the end of battle. Bonus damage for her row if they are good/neutral. Bonus action speed when wearing light armor and one handed sword (not implemented in game yet because devs are potatoes). No unique skill
During your rerolls, you will encounter the bone picker who will offer you a legendary adventurer for 100 gold (only once). You can refuse him and he'll show up in town with a [...] bubble to offer you the legendary bone, so you can do all your pulls before using this joker.
When you're satisfied with your pulls, NOTE YOUR ID AND PASSWORD (issue it only once), because you will lose your account otherwise (see next).
Bugfest
I encountered a bug at the final boss while using the cover skill (like this guy), and I reinstalled the game, naively thinking that the game was automatically linked to google play account.
But no, you need to issue your ID and password. And that's how I lost my account with lvl 20 characters on chapter 1 ng+
The first time you'll enter the game, you'll be drowned in a series of notices, mixing character banner announcements and a dizzying list of "game breaking bugs that locks story progress" and procedures to follow when encountering them. But to be honest, I wasn't the only one to ignore them, as many rage reviews on google play are testimonies of people who bought stuffs and lost their account in the same way LOL
Defeat
When a party member dies, you have the opportunity to insta rez them. They'll lose fortitude whenever you fail, but it won't cause them to permadie in battle.
When your MC dies, you will have three chances to reload the game right before the battle that triggered your death at no fortitude cost (items and fortitude are also restored). Those three chances (flame of resurgence) recharge with time.
When you run out of resurgence, you have to "accept death" which reload you to the last floor I think and everyone lose 20 fortitude.
Corpse above 50 fortitude have no chance to permadie in church. Corpses also restore fortitude while dead, so you never need to risk a resurection at low fortitude.
As such, Daphne is actually the most lenient of all Wizardry games, transforming the permadeath gimmick into a time gating mechanic.
Bullshit stuff
Instakill effects are a staple of Wizardry. Vorpal bunnies are the first instance you encounter them. Later on, you encounter instant kills in mausoleums (F2P sources of generic bones), and in chapter 2. The helm of malice from the events increase instakill tolerance, so try to buy them.
There are weapons that deal bonus damage against undead. They have a red skull icon and their name has "of undead bane" suffix. But for some godforsaken trolling reasons, the dev actually put a spear of undead bane that is actually a normal spear without bonus damage to undead. Fuck them.
Do not add bondmate to your character that increase HP or MP before the bondmate is at lvl 5.
How to play the game on pc
The steam version isn't out yet, and considering that the devs are swamped in bug reports, you might wait a long time until it releases. Therefore, I suggest you to use a phone emulator.
Download bluestacks android 11 64bits on: https://www.bluestacks.com/download.html
In the settings
- Graphics > Graphics renderer: Vulkan
- Phone > Device profile: Asus ROG 2
- Preference > language: english
For your convenience: deactivate In-app Notifications
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