My main idea behind this was an introduction to the crafting system.
Because I personally know at least a few dozen new players that did not touch crafting once, because they feel overwhelmed.
I personally don’t find it overwhelming, but I think there is no proper introduction for crafting (the current crafting quest is insufficient in explaining how crafting works.)
They just need to elaborate on that quest a bit. Make it more informative.
OP: Teach us stuff
Everyone: Game Guide !
Also Everyone: No one reads the Game Guide.
Solution: Pop up key sections of the game guide in the first chapter?
I’m not sure that is the best solution to be honest. As others have said, it would be better to teach some basic crafting/resistances through a quest/NPC.
Are those the same quests that nobody ever reads?
People generally do on the first playthough don’t they?
At least the information would be there, whether they choose to read it or not is up to them.
This is the problem though, those who need it the most don’t read the Game Guide.
That was the point about putting the information in a quest though mate. Players generally have to read quests to progress in the campaign. They don’t have to read the game guide at all if they don’t want to.
I think Heavy’s suggestions would work well as an introduction for players that can’t be arsed reading a game guide.
I know, but you’re never going to catch everyone. Also, all you need to do is click the button to progress through a quest, reading is optional (& requires a decent standard of English).
That’s me out then.
Yes it is. You should ask the devs if they’re willing to add “West Country” onto their list of translations.
This discussion about the game guide reminds me of a quote from a David Bowie song:
“I don’t want knowledge; I want certainty.”
A lot of people won’t read anything, and as soon as there’s a % sign the eyes just glaze over. I’d wager a lot of players don’t even look much at the character sheet.
I follow a forum for another game and it’s like every 5th post is “why do I keep dying?”, and the answer is always “your resists are low and you have no defense.” Why this is not obvious to some players is a complete mystery. It seems a lot of players just pick up gear that gives more damage and ignore everything else.
If you put something in the game to get players to pay attention to defense, it needs to be something really, really, really memorable. An NPC quest that says “hey, you should make some better gear or you’re going to get killed” is going to get ignored. We have one of those already; it’s way too vague. The NPC needs to be funny or rude or both and very specific. Maybe not as annoying as Claptrap… Maybe have the NPC pick a fight, script them down to 1 HP, tell the player their resists are laughable, then send them to the forge to make an item that has more than 30% phys resist. I don’t know the answer. It would be amazing if some genius on your team could figure something out.
For me, having actually read most of the game guide, the hard part about defense is guessing which ones to spec for a certain character class and specialty. The game guide is good, but insufficient IMO. Resists are obvious. There’s this other long list of defenses and it’s like “cheap, good, fast” pick any two because you just can’t get everything.
For me, personally, it would be helpful to get a “beginner suggestion” of which defenses to prioritize when picking a specialty. It’s probably asking a lot, maybe it’s just more complex than I realize.
I like to make my own builds and try stuff out, but I could sure use a nudge in a viable direction. Right now, it’s spend eons poring through the skill tree to figure something out, then maybe we start to play the game. Fortunately, the game is very forgiving for about 40 levels. A lot of players follow build guides, but I get less than no joy from doing that. Some of the classes look impossible without a build guide.
So far I have a fun sorcerer stacking ward, armor, dodge and crit that i can make work, but is basically a glass cannon. I have a spellblade with block, speed, stacked flame ward, and armor that is level 78 that seems pretty good. I started a pet build 2-handed beastmaster with speed and endurance and TBD, just to see how that works. The beastmaster class seems fairly straightforward. I wanted to try the lich, but was entirely overwhelmed and gave up. I made a minion necromancer instead, and honestly am still fairly confused. I’m guessing just stack health, healing and minion bonuses, hope for the best and see what happens.
Hopefully, you all get a laugh at my expense. 
IMO there’s already one of those:
It’s not perfect since that last hit isn’t usually what kills you, it’ll be whatever took the 80-90% of your HP before that.
There needs to be a difference between teaching mechanics - no matter if offensive or defensive, and giving hints for beginners.
When I start playing new games, I get bored when the game wants to teach mechanics in detail. In my first few hours I don’t want to dive into the details of the game mechanics. I want to play and discover.
The sources of information are already there. It’s the game guide, the forum and build guides on the web. So if I want to dive in, I could.
There should be a popup hint for the game guide and a popup hint for the character sheet tooltips.
These pop ups should be skip able for experienced players.
If people want to learn, they also will read that stuff.
It’s absolutely inevitable that new players cannot build the super mighty imba endgame character. They are not supposed to. This ability only comes with game experience. You get this experience by actively playing the game, trying things and read hints, tooltips and the manual (game guide).
You can take a shortcut by following a build guide. This way you make use of the experience of other people that went through that “gain experience” progress. They invested hours and hours to test stuff and interactions and now provide these infos for you so you don’t need to go through that process on your own.
This can be a time saver if people just want to play a very specific playstyle/theme and don’t want to put in the 100 hours of obtaining the knowledge to become able to create a build by their own. But when people do so they miss alot of knowledge. They may not learn why or how things work. Jus that they work. For some people following guides can help to understand the mechanics better/faster - if they are interested. For others it will do nothing but create the feeling that “I’m absolutely not knowing what I’m doing here…”.
It’s hard for me to understand what people expect. Sometimes expectations sound inconsistent with each other.
People want to know all about the game’s mechanics. But they don’t want to read.
People want to build endgame viable characters on their first playthrough. But they don’t want to follow build guides.
Build guides also provide another problem:
People want to follow build guides to be able to instantly build endgame viable characters. But they refuse to accept that this is a playing experience the devs did not build around. If you are taking a shortcut you cannot complain that your journey is over too fast.
So if you decide to use a build guide you have to be aware of the following:
We had an example of somebody that joined our discord community this year. He wanted to know everything as fast as possible and go into the game full throttle. He spent 1.5 days with @Heavy in the voice chat. He also followed the Nova Boy build guide. I don’t know if he ever slept, but after 4 days after creating his character he pushed arena to over 400 with his very first character. No idea if this was all legit (I have my doubts). But he never ever touched the game again. He said it was all too easy and boring. Shortly after he left the server again.
I’m not against using guides and making use if knowledge others have gathered. Humans do that all the day.
But for playing games there has to be a way to not take away all the need of commitment to obtain skills. Don’t hand all the availible information to everybody. Make it somehow accessible. But don’t do too much hand holding. It’s ok that people that really dive in and explore, experiment and learn stuff have an advantage over people that don’t do that. External guides already give people the opportunity to shorten stuff. But it’s their own will. They also need to commit to that. They need to search for good guides and builds they like. They don’t get a list of possible builds with step by step guidelines ingame when they join a game.
Same with mechanics, imho. Don’t implement indepth tutorials. Let people have the opportunity to discover stuff on their own.
Let people read long and difficult texts if they want to learn. This us how learning works. This is the price of knowledge. You need to 8invest some time to obtain it.
Cheers! 
I strongly agree with all that.
My initial post was about introducing us to basic defenses. “introducing” and “basic”. Not a comprehensive information, very far from this!
All what you wrote here, I totally agree and I’ve experimented it.
I come from Diablo 3, where I’ve been “badly educated”: I always followed build guides. In Wolcen, I did the same because my own builds were not good at all. It’s only in Last Epoch that I learned to create my own builds. Are they all good? Far from that! But they’re mine and they feel more fun than pre-made ones.
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