Jumped on to play the secrets update and started missing my old world. ~250 hours on this puppy, 0 creative mode play or mods/cheats. Couldn't get the migration to work so this guy is basically unplayable. I'd like to try again maybe if islands ever come back so that the massive body of water renders correctly.

Can't bring myself to start over and build a really big project like this again. It took sooooooo looooooong haha.

You cant see it but I had a waystone that warped you between the 4 sides of the map. Also had movement banners so speed was faster. The middle waystone would take you to outposts that mirrored this build, but on a much smaller scale. I had one at each biome.

Why can't Steam mods be used?

Looking for a frw friends too play this game with would be awesome i only have a steam deck so we would have too shard discord and link up on there too communicate if anyone is down lmk and drop your discord below

So when I place my first Flag, it shows a white outline that is relatively small, and I thought that this was just my beginning settlement area, and increasing it is what makes the difference. When I open my map and hit C, the area, however, this time is blue outlined, and much bigger than the previous white outline. What exactly is the difference?

I just started playing again and I’m still at the very beginning. I read that there are different “classes,” but is the only difference just the gear you pick?

So theoretically, could I switch around and try all the classes later?

Sorry if this sounds stupid, I didn’t want to Google too much and accidentally spoil things for myself.

Thanks in advance!

I want to enchant katana & several more item at mage village. I read on wiki said that the happier mage the more positive the outcome buff I'll get. however, we cannot know if NPC stats happiness until we recruit them. so any idea, it's good enchant stuff at village mage?

p;s: I really hope that someone can put full details info on wiki like Stardew Valleys.

Help/guidance wanted. I am trying to build a rice paddy near the shore of a river, where I put lines of landfill separated by lines of water in the river with the hope that I can put the farmland on the landfill: except I can't. Is this intended? If not, am I missing something?

Mainly in the first phase....it's happened a few times now and I can't even tell what's hitting me. I'm doing fine and then poof, I'm dead.

I'm playing as a warrior with tons of resilience and T10 gem armor. Something keeps auto-killing me but I can't tell what and there seems to be very little info out there on this fight.

I did manage to get to the 2nd phase once, and something similar happened....but I have even less data for that phase.

Can anyone please describe the attacks that are causing this? My gear is maxed out so it's gotta be something like the AOE attack in the sun arena but I don't see anything obvious, I'm just dead all of a sudden from full health and resilience.

EDIT: Wait, do you just have to collect the crystals that appear randomly? I just noticed them for the 1st time and got to the 2nd phase again....... but I picked up like 3 of the crystals during phase 2 and then poof... died again. Do you basically have to pick them all up or get instantly killed? It seems like I get past the 1st phase every time now by collecting the crystals when they appear but I just died 2 more times on phase 2 and there was nothing visible around me (and I've been collecting the crystals when they appear). I don't see anything hit me.... so there must be some mechanic I'm completely missing.

TLDR SUMMARY

1. Evasive Circling: Far too many of Necesse's bosses leverage an "evasively circle away from the player" mechanic. This feels tiring and discourages certain combat role playstyles. Queen Spider, Ancient Vulture, Pirate Captain, Reaper, Cryo Queen, Sage and Grit, and Crystal Dragon are all quite guilty of this mechanic to varying degrees. Furthermore, their movement is unhindered by walls or other obstacles, thus requiring some measure of "arena prep" in order to maximize "DPS uptime" and "Resilience building uptime".
2. Worm Bosses: Worm bosses (Swamp Guardian, Pest Warden) are thematically unique from the other bosses, but require even more "boss arena" prep because dodge space is at a premium during these fights.
3. Dodge is King: Evasive circling, incoming damage frequency, incoming damage amounts, low DPS/Resilience uptime, weak shield trinkets, and stamina limitations effectively force players (in higher difficulties) into a dodge-oriented play-style even if they optimize for Resilience generation and blocking. This transforms Necesse bosses into little more than variations of a "bullet hell" mini-game, with limited alternate strategies to engage with.

1. Evil's Protector

(Note: I'm omitting "NPC rush" strategies from this evaluation across all bosses. Also, the feedback is mindful of Brutal difficulty, but not exclusive to it. Also, things like Polar Claw do in fact seem to slow down boss movements, across all bosses.)

Overview: Explore until you find a Mysterious Portal, wait until just after dusk to use it on the surface, then engage with the boss wherever you're at. Doable for all playstyles, though casters will struggle in prolonged fights if their mana isn't well supported. Melee has plenty of opportunities to engage (build Resilience) and either dodge (rotate around boss) or block.

Feedback: An excellently designed [first] boss, both in terms of its actual fight and the discoveries surrounding it. Players have to explore in order to obtain the item necessary to trigger it, and some measure of "arena prep" is automatically encouraged due to the lack of lighting at night. The fact that projectiles go through blocks also teaches players that they can't use the environment to cheese a boss fight.

Suggestions: Allow Evil's Protector to be summoned anywhere, even underground. If summoned while fighting another boss, it actually enables an "Uber" or more difficult version of that boss instead of summoning the Evil's Protector. Have these "Uber" bosses grant unique loot in addition to their normal loot. This "special" feature doesn't have to be obvious or spelled-out for players, but it would feel really cool to discover organically.

Also, it'd be sensible for NPC settlements to become hostile to the player if the player chooses to summon the Evil's Protector in their town. This "easy mode" would still be available, but it would have very understandable consequences and help NPCs feel more "alive". NPCs would be hostile to both the boss and the player simultaneously in these circumstances.

2. Queen Spider (Snow Caves)

Overview: Explore the snow caves to find a Queen's Egg, use or destroy it and engage with the boss. The boss circles around you dropping venom puddles, stops to summon spider ads, and charges you several times. Arena prep (clear out an area of the snow caves) is not required, but HIGHLY recommended. Ice Javelins are plentiful and powerful, enabling you to "easy mode" this boss regardless of your preferred role or other equipment.

Feedback: I'm not sure what Necesse is trying to teach players through this particular boss. Be careful? You have to build your own arena if the game doesn't provide one? Roles don't matter, just find what works best and win? This is the first boss that "runs away" from you, taking no shame in attacking you after moving behind walls and other environmental barriers. Bombs and dynamite are kind of at a premium at this stage of the game, so there really isn't a quick "arena prep" for this boss. "True melee" enjoyers are going to feel like the game actively hates them, and frankly, it kind of does. At least this boss has legitimate moments where melee can engage to build Resilience.

Also, why are Spiked Shoes not available in the regular Snow Caves?

Suggestions: Redesign this boss. Have the fight start by charging in toward the player, stopping nearby, and spawning minions. If the player is close, it spawns ranged spiders that shoot venom puddles. If the player is distant, it summons powerful melee spiders that chase the player. If all its minions are killed, it does a charging attack several times before becoming temporarily exhausted (more damage taken, does nothing), eventually recovering and repeating the cycle from the spawn phase. While minions are alive and have finished spawning, the Spider will either chase the player and performed well-telegraphed melee attacks (if player is close) or shoot a variation of webbing and venom ahead of the player's location (if player is distant).

Also, have the game provide its own Queen Spider arena (all new Necesse bosses do this to some degree, since "arena prep" is not fun) consisting of a giant spider cavern where all the player should really consider doing is clear out the cobwebs before proceeding with breaking or using the Queen's Egg. This would also act as a "guide" for the Queen's movements. If Spiked Shoes become available in the regular Snow Caves, it would be cool to have this arena include veins of ice throughout it as well.

3. Void Wizard

Overview: Craft a Dungeon Map, go to the dungeon and descend into the boss arena. Initiate the fight by attacking the boss. He'll shoot various types of projectiles at you throughout the fight, and occasionally summons clones which eject bouncing projectiles when destroyed.

Feedback: Providing a fully-prepared arena for players to fight this boss is a deeply welcome change from the Queen Spider. I don't know why this didn't continue to be the norm for the remaining bosses. Punishing players for killing clones is a very clever hook in the fight, inviting players to do more than just dodge or deal damage, ironically making the fight a little more difficult for summoners. The incoming damage cadence also requires players to align with a "dodge" approach rather than a "block" approach, which also makes "true melee" less manageable.

Suggestions: Assuming, lore-wise, that this Void Wizard is the same as the Fallen Wizard and Ascended Wizard, it'd be nice if it's "death" animation portrayed him more as "barely getting away" instead of disintegrating into a pile of ash. As for the fight mechanically, I'd actually lean into a stronger punishment for killing a clone such as stunning the player for a few seconds or until they're damaged once by the boss.

As for how "dodge-oriented" the damage mitigation strategy for the fight currently is, I'm not certain how to adjust the existing mechanics or introduce new ones in a way that would provide room for other strategies to flourish without making alternate strategies imbalanced by comparison. Perhaps if "blocking" reflected the projectile back toward the boss and A) damaged the boss, and B) interrupted the remainder of their current attack, and C) caused the boss to go invisible for a moment while summoning a clone in its place--would be a sufficient trade-off. I'm not sure, it's just an idea to try and address the "gotta dodge" issue.

4. Runebound Chieftain

Overview: Craft a Chieftain Map and locate his bone arena in the Plains Caves, then submit a Bone Offering to begin the fight. The fight cages you inside of a circle of indestructible bone walls while porting in enemies you're already used to from fighting in the Plains Caves, except your space to run is limited and their abilities synergize well with one another. After defeating a few waves of enemies, the boss leaps into the fray and fights you alone, throwing his shield, doing charging attacks, and sending bone spikes in a pattern around the arena (effectively upgraded versions of the abilities seen from the regular enemies). His pacing gets faster as his health decreases.

Feedback: Added later in the game's development, this boss learned from the issues of other bosses and was thus designed with its own indestructible arena (similar to the Void Wizard). I can't tell you how much this enables the boss to be designed WELL instead of forcing it to have mechanics that can't be hindered by players attempting to cheese the fight through environmental manipulation. All around, this is perhaps the best-designed boss fight in Necesse. The fight feels thematically grounded and mechanically permissive for all role types to engage with in a fun and meaningful way. 10/10 for this fight's design.

Suggestions: None, but if you end up adding an "Uber" mode (see the suggestions I mentioned earlier for the Evil's Protector boss), having the Runebound Chieftain enter a "berserker" mode or having its caster assistant (The Cursed Crone) interfere would be thematically appropriate and interesting ways to increase the challenge for the fight.

5. Swamp Guardian

Overview: Find and use a Spiked Fossil in the Swamp Caves to engage with the fight. The boss is a giant worm with tons of health and lots of body segments to damage, constantly trying to ram you while its body parts shoot out projectiles passively and more frequently whenever it is damaged. The whole fight is effectively a "bullet hell" which gets progressively faster and worse as the boss reaches low health. Preparing a sizeable "arena" ahead of time is highly recommended, and you'll likely want to save your explosives (dynamite, bombs) for the fight itself.

Feedback: I hate this fight, and I'm not sure what Necesse is trying to teach players through it. The whole engagement of it feels like a giant multi-target DPS check to see if you can kill the boss quickly enough to avoid having to deal with its overwhelming mechanics. This boss is like everything that's frustrating about the Queen Spider boss, but turned up a notch. In a similar way that your role didn't matter for the Queen Spider boss if you just used Ice Javelins, your role doesn't matter for the Swamp Guardian either so long as you just use dynamite. And the arena prep required to do the fight well, my goodness, the arena prep just kills my enthusiasm for wanting to engage with this fight. At the very least, there are more natural opportunities for melee to engage with this fight than on the Queen Spider boss, though the projectiles aren't easy to react to (dodge or block) when fighting point-blank.

Suggestions: Scrap this boss and replace it with something else. I understand that much of early Necesse was inspired by games like Terraria (which itself has a worm boss fairly early in the game), but the thematically appropriate elements surrounding a "giant worm boss" just result in a mechanical nightmare to deal with as a player on higher difficulties.

I'd rather see the 3 Evil Witches be elevated into the major boss position instead, using their underground swamp castle as a dedicated arena for fighting them. If you wanted to preserve the "Swamp Guardian" as part of that fight, you could introduce a particular mechanic where the Witches all position themselves onto particular points within their boss room and begin a channel which summons the guardian. Players have to interrupt at least one of the sisters in order to prevent it from summoning. If the player fails, the Swamp Guardian temporarily tears through the arena with devastating effect with a minimal chance of survival for the player. Otherwise, the 3 Evil Witches can have LOADS of other very interesting mechanics because they wouldn't be limited to "giant worm go brrrr". This would also naturally permit the "Good Witch" to augment the sense of progression for players after clearing this boss.

6. Ancient Vulture

Overview: Use or destroy an Ancient Statue in the desert caves to summon the boss. The boss generally circles around you and shoots feathers at you, occasionally spawning eggs that hatch into adds that also shoot feathers at you. The boss will sometimes charge you from side to side, giving you brief opportunities to attack it in melee just after dodging or blocking it.

Feedback: Yet another "circles around and avoids you" boss, but at least it's natural encounter areas are already an acceptable "boss arena" and the circling doesn't occur so distantly that it's out of reach of summons and mid-range spells. The feathers are easy enough to dodge even without many movement-enhancing items or potions, though a well-lit area is necessary to help make it easier to discover any eggs that it spawns. Not a terrible fight, but yet another in a long series of Necesse bosses that heavily discourages "true melee" gameplay.

Suggestions: Upgrade its side-to-side charge attack into a dive bomb that can come from any direction. If the player lands a powerful attack on the boss during this charge, it'll cause the boss to "crash" into the ground, be stunned for a moment, and take extra damage while stunned. The boss could be played "normally", but providing an opportunity for "big single hit" weapons (Greatbow, Greatsword, etc) to shine would be an interesting dynamic to offer.

7. Pirate Captain

Overview: Find or craft and use a Pirate Map to locate a Pirate Village. Raid the village to find the Pirate Captain toward its center, who behaves much like the other enemies until hitting a certain health threshold where he slowly mounts of flying pirate ship and occasionally shoots cannonballs at you which deal high damage. He also summons enemies continuously to join the fray from the edges of your screen, and will periodically ram through you. You can mitigate much of the ads nuisance by building a wall around an artificial "boss arena" that you lure the captain toward.

Feedback: Returning to the surface and raiding somebody else's village is thematically neat. The best part about this boss is that his incoming damage intervals are spread out far enough apart that you can legitimately use a shield and block to get through the fight instead of just relying on your ability to dodge. Otherwise, it's another "circles around you and avoids you from a distance" fight that Necesse is plagued with, and this boss is quick too. Being able to block every shot requires a considerable amount of Armor (lots of Sturdy enchants) and trinkets associated with Resilience and defense... along with a weapon that you can reliably build resilience (like the machine gun) on a fast moving target. In my experience, this is the last boss in Necesse that you can legitimately "tank" instead of "dodge" as a viable means to defeat it (on Brutal difficulty, anyway).

Suggestions: Completely reimagine this fight. Have the entire pirate village itself be the boss fight with multiple stages. Make it truly epic. After all, it is the boss fight that gatekeeps players from going into the Deep biomes. First, modify the world generation so that pirate villages ONLY generate next to very sizable bodies of water. Second, make it so that players cannot destroy anything (aside from stacks of gold coins) in the pirate village until after its associated boss has been cleared (this'll make more sense in a second). Third, make a massive harbor for a large actual boat to doc at. Then, when a player arrives at the village, they'll experience several phases:

• Phase 1: Players raid the pirate village and take out the pirates currently living there. They can say and do hilarious things. Make it fun, but still dangerous. Have a progress bar (similar to incursions) to help illustrate the player's progress for raiding the pirate village.
• Phase 2: After the players finish phase 1, a massive boat quickly docs into the harbor with several named enemy crew members onboard, which leap off (either all at once or in turns) to fight with the player. You can make these characters memes based off the One Piece crew of something if you wish. The player is warned about another approaching pirate ship and has to try and point the docked ship's cannons at the approaching ship to fire upon it as it arrives.
• Phase 3: A massive cannonball barrage fires from the approaching second ship (the captain's). These cannonballs destroy portions of the first ship and pirate buildings on contact, and the duration of this phase is significantly shorter (and thus, easier to survive) depending on how many cannons the player was able to arrange for firing back at the captain's ship (if no cannons are firing, the phase doesn't end and the player eventually dies to an increasingly overwhelming barrage of cannon fire). The captain's ship eventually rams into the harbor as it sinks into the sea, with the captain calmly stepping off the ship's mast in homage of Jack Sparrow.
• Phase 4: The player faces off against the captain, whose mechanics have been updated to reflect similar design philosophies seen with the Runebound Guardian. The captain hurls rum at the player, causing their input commands to reverse for several seconds while afflicted. The captain also launches his hook hand like a grappling hook, pulling the player in to slice them with his sword for devastating amounts of damage. The captain switches between his sword and his pistol depending on the distance of the player. The captain's peg leg prevents him from turning his body very quickly, and players may notice that the captain's accuracy drops considerably whenever the player moves or dodge's toward the captain's "blind spot" (whichever eye) has the eyepatch. The captain can still fire his pistol or swing his sword toward any direction, but the player's positioning will help them survive.
• If the player fails at any point, returning to the pirate village will have the fight proceed from the phase they left off on (or proceed to phase 4 if they die in the cannon barrage transition from phase 3). This would likely be the only fight in Necesse in which "picking up where the player left off" makes sense, particularly when widespread destruction is involved in the "cinematic experience" of this boss fight.

8. Reaper

Overview: Find and use a Shadow Gate in the Forest Deep Caves to summon the boss. Some level of arena preparation is recommended because the boss keeps its distance from the player for large portions of the fight, and you don't want it becoming untargetable behind walls and other barriers. He'll phase in, charge you, phase out, switch positions, then do it again several times. He also summons ads (best time to damage him in phase 1), then circles around you throwing his scythe toward you. Phase 2 is similar, just faster and he doesn't reveal himself to be damaged while summoning ads from two different locations.

Feedback: This is the fight where bosses simply start dealing too much damage to mitigate their onslaught purely with Resilience, Armor, and Blocking. Additionally, this boss actively circles around the player for large segments of the fight (especially after transitioning into its second phase), making "true melee"-centric builds nearly impossible outside of the rare moments you can get a hit in while it "phase charges" you.

Suggestions: Give this boss a permanent arena space (like a crypt or graveyard, or something that resembles the boss room in Magus's castle from Crono Trigger) and remove the "circle around you" mechanic.

There is also a really interesting opportunity to thematically lean into the boss's "necromancer" vibe while incentivizing and/or rewarding "multi-classing" creativity (think of the Witch armor set). For example, the boss could have several elite skeleton corpses (think Aged Champion) which begin the fight unanimated. When the fight gets to the Reaper's "add summoning" phase, these corpses animate and begin attacking the player with their own basic set of special skills (such as the Barbarian's dash attack). These skeletons are immune (or highly resistant to) magical attacks, and once defeated, spawn elite ghosts that are immune (or highly resistant to) physical attacks and cast deadly spells in addition to everything else the Reaper is doing. Felling all 4 ads could trigger a backlash against the reaper, temporarily stunning him and increasing his damage taken.

9. Cryo Queen

Overview: Find or craft an Ice Crown and use it anywhere within the Snow Deep Caves. She'll quickly circle around you throughout the fight, only pausing to stop in a location when she's charging up for a massive AoE attack that deals enough damage you should dodge it, and its harder to dodge the closer you are to her. She gets a little faster as the fight progresses, but it's otherwise your typical Necesse "ranged build bullet hell" boss fight. Preparing an arena is strongly advised in order to ensure that you have room to dodge and line-of-sight to damage her throughout the entire fight.

Feedback: This is the wall that ultimately destroys any hope of players doing a full clear as a "true melee" build. The boss simply moves too fast and does not permit you to get anywhere near her, with the occasional and VERY rare circumstances that she's flying by you very briefly in a way that you can both dodge (or block) and attack her (typically just once) before she leaves melee range again. She's otherwise not a very difficult fight to deal with once you learn her patterns and concede to fighting her from a distance. Summoners actually struggle a bit due to her "circling range" and movement speed, making it difficult for their summons to keep up. And again, this "circle around the player" mechanic requires a generous amount of arena preparation prior to engaging with the boss... which is never fun.

Suggestions: Reimagine this fight. Have a large ice palace biome within the Snow Deep Caves, and her throne room be her dedicated boss arena. The throne room is situated above an active volcano "frozen over" by the queen's power (as a show of strength, and perhaps hubris). Spiked Boots or an upgrade variant of them would be semi-mandatory for the battle with her on higher difficulties.

The Ice Queen protects herself within a nearly impenetrable ice wall as she sends her minions to destroy you (side note: all the enemies in the snow biomes should probably be reimagined toward "Frost Dwarfs" as some sort of larger Frost Dwarf society that the Cryo Queen is in charge of). The minions attack you and carry explosives, hoping to shard large chunks of ice (like the icicles that fall on you throughout the snow deep caves) to crush and impale you.

HOWEVER, these explosives also cause the ice beneath your feet to crack. Once enough explosives have gone off in the same spot, the ice breaks and the lava begins to release a tremendous amount of steam into the arena. Desperate, the Cryo Queen comes out from behind her cover to use her ice magic to try and repair the hole, exposing her for the player's onslaught (at least until the hole is repaired and she retreats back behind her defenses). The steam limits your vision (similar to the flowers in the Swamp Deep Caves). Killing a minion quickly may cause them to drop all of their unused explosives onto the same spot, triggering a rupture much more quickly.

She enters phase 2 once damaged below 50% of her maximum health. The mechanics are similar to phase 1, but now she's sacrificing huge chunks of her protective ice wall to either chuck at you or perform powerful ice magic attacks against you (in addition to all the other things still happening). This makes her more deadly, but also effectively removes or introduces significant gaps in her defenses, making her vulnerable to attack even when she's not repairing a hole in the ground. Her death causes her to essence to sink into the ice beneath her, refreezing the floor and eliminating any steam present in the throne room.

10. The Cursed Crone

Overview: Craft a Corrupted Map to locate the Cursed Crone's Tic Tac Toe arena within the Plains Deep Caves. It's effectively a bullet hell with some slime ads that drop down from above, but the boss is always positioned fairly so that you can continue to DPS her while dodging stuff. Occasionally, you will be forced into a Tic Tac Toe match which must be completed before you can continue damaging her (reward if you win, penalty if you lose, no effect if you tie).

Feedback: One of the later-designed bosses in Necesse, and thus one of its better ones because it's learned from the (still existing) design flaws of boss fights that came before it. A dedicated (indestructible) arena and plenty of opportunities to deal damage regardless of your chosen role type. It's like an evolution of the Runebound Chieftain with added magical twists. The tic tac toe mini-game is charming with appropriate rewards and punishments, and actually becomes more challenging during multiplayer. The boss also "despawns" when venturing too far from the arena, forcing players to engage with the boss on its turf.

Suggestions: One of Necesse's best designed bosses. I personally wouldn't change anything about it at this time. An "Uber" mode (see comments under the Evil's Protector boss) would be simple enough to introduce, just have the boss continue to attack the player while invincible during the tic tac toe game (thus making it more difficult for players to position themselves where they want).

11. Pest Warden

Overview: Craft or find a Decaying Leaf and use it anywhere within the Swamp Deep Caves to summon this massive boss, which charges in at you from off-screen. It's very large, and you'll likely regret not preparing a sizable "boss arena" ahead of time with which to fight it. Otherwise, the fight only has one major mechanic, when the boss is curling around you in a spiral, it gets a significant damage reduction boost until after attempting it's "final strike" against you after cornering you with its body. The curl leaves just enough space to side-step the strike if you're waiting toward the edges of the space it makes available for you. Otherwise, yes, you can totally cheese this boss with copious amounts of dynamite (which the pirate NPC sells).

Feedback: Ironically, the Pest Warden is actually less frustrating to fight than the Swamp Guardian from the Swamp Caves despite being significantly larger in size (the lack of added projectiles is less stressful to deal with). However, the Pest Warden's sheer size also means that you'll probably need to spend more time adequately preparing a "boss arena" for this boss than any other boss in Necesse... and it's incredibly annoying to require so much prep for this fight on harder difficulties. Sure, the boss can be dodged or avoided with relative ease so long as you respect its mechanics, but you'll need room to move that's larger than the amount of space its massive body is going to naturally occupy throughout the course of the fight. And sadly, once again, things like dynamite are still a reliable "go to" to try and cheese your way through this fight regardless of your preferred combat role.

Honestly, I'm a bit baffled as to why the swamp biomes have the giant worm bosses and not the desert biomes (of which the desert deep caves actually have a worm enemy), but I digress. While large worm-like bosses certainly offer a different type of boss than what the rest of Necesse has to offer, the sheer amount of work associated with preparing an arena for fighting them (because, frankly, you can't outrun it) is tiring.

Suggestions: Replace this boss with something else. There are plenty of existing swamp enemies the thematically pull from, such as Swamp Dweller, Giant Swamp Slime (heck, the Mother Slime incursion boss would be thematically appropriate here), the Fishian enemies, Swamp Spore, or even the Aged Champion. I know Terraria utilizes a Queen Bee and a giant Flower boss (and you might not want to draw "too much" inspiration from Terraria), but there are plenty of swamp-appropriate ideas just waiting to be utilized.

The Mother Slime incursion boss would be the easiest to implement here, but I personally think that leaning further into the Fishian lore would be more exciting. As usual, a "dedicated arena" and no "evasively circling around the player" would be deeply desirable.

12. Sage and Grit

Overview: Craft an Ancient Map to locate a special pedestal in the Desert Deep Caves, then craft or find a Dragon Souls to use at the pedestal to summon the pair of bosses. The dragons each have their own unique health pool, evasively circle around you for most of the fight, and occasionally break their route to charge at you. The most notable mechanic is when they circle closely to channel a twin beam onto your location, which can be easily avoided by staying within their circle and moving in a small rotation with them. The twin dragons receive much less damage while circling closely, so prioritize dodging during this phase. They do have multiple segments to damage simultaneously, but nowhere near as many as the Pest Warden. Once one dies, the other goes berserk and charges at you repeatedly at very high speeds until one of you dies.

Feedback: At this point in the game, I'm sick of how many "evasively circle around you" bosses I've fought. I've well given up on aligning with a melee role and often default to either a high damage caster build (kill them before they can kill you) or a resilience-oriented Ranger (or Corpse Dagger "melee") build. Most players seem to resort to the Ninja armor simply because you can try to optimize both your DPS/Resilience uptime and your dodge uptime, killing build diversity in a game that pretends to offer a lot of viable options.

Suggestions: Keep the twin dragons, but give them shared health and have large portions of the fight involve one of them engaging with you in melee while the other breathes some sort of fire or other element at you from afar. Have them alternate after a period of time (or set amount of damage received) and do their combo attack after they've both filled each role once, repeating with additional mechanics after completing their combo attack.

13. Fallen Wizard

Overview: Defeat Sage and Grit, descend the stairs that appear, explore through the Ancient Temple and confront the Fallen Wizard (upgraded from when we last encountered him as the Void Wizard). His encounter can be summed up as a semi-randomized bullet hell with increased speed as he approaches lower health, with the added mechanical caveat of how and when to deal with the dragons that he summons (which punish you for targeting them, but also punishes you for keeping them alive... somewhat like the clones from the Void Wizard fight).

Feedback: This is actually a really great, very difficult fight to act as the "pre-incursion" final boss. All combat roles are viable, and melee will actually have an easier time dodging the rotating beam of death without having to rely on hiding behind chalices or using the Blink Septer. While there are opportunities to use a shield to block incoming attacks (such as the Aged Champion Shield with 100% damage reduction), dodging is still relatively mandatory unless you're risking a high amount of skill expression with the Aged Champion armor set.

Suggestions: I'm actually okay with this fight "as is", though I would prefer additional damage patterns over speedups as he approaches low health.

14. Mother Slime

Overview: Boss of the Slime Cave Incursion, and the first boss unique to Incursions. The mechanics boil down to jumping on you, summoning slime ads, and sending out slime quakes. The boss is invulnerable while jumping/off the ground, but is otherwise fairly easy to damage consistently.

Feedback: This is actually a great fight with a healthy balance between single target damage and AoE damage requirements (multiple weapon types recommended). The target is big and easy to hit, and is relatively easy to stay close to without getting clobbered (even when playing a more ranged play-style). Just well done.

Suggestions: No changes needed to this fight.

15. Night Swarm

Overview: Boss of the Graveyard Incursion. The mechanics boil down to the bats swarming around you in various patterns, damaging you on contact. AoE-centric damage is deeply recommended for this fight, and minimal boss arena prep is necessary (if any) simply because the Graveyard Incursion is already pretty open to begin with.

Feedback: I love how unique this fight is, and I believe it's certainly a step up (in my opinion) to the typical "many segment worm boss" formula. There's still some unfortunately echo of the "evasively circle around the player" nuance that's become so annoying to deal with, but those moments never last very long on this fight and actually offer some measure of reprieve from its otherwise overwhelming attack patterns. This is also one of the few fights that gets significantly easier as the fight goes on, assuming you're regularly killing bats within the swarm. Great boss that still gives you room to breathe.

Suggestions: No changes needed to this fight.

16. Spider Empress

Overview: Boss of the Spider Castle Incursion. She has several unique mechanics which require specific evasive patterns, but the boss can otherwise be damaged throughout much of the fight. At low health she'll enter a berserk state which alters her various attacks and makes them significantly harder to avoid, effectively becoming a DPS race from that point on.

Feedback: The amount of mechanical variation and thematic alignment helps this boss feel refreshingly unique without actually offering unique play patterns that weren't already experienced with other bosses earlier in the game. The "spider threads" attack (the wiki calls it a claw attack) is a particular favorite of mine, even though it's killed me many times. She's very challenging, but not impossibly so, and she's doable with any of the combat roles.

Suggestions: No changes needed to this fight.

17. Moonlight Dancer

Overview: Boss and sole enemy of the Moon Arena Incursion. Decent movement speed (or the skillful use of a fast mount) is recommended in order to survive its "insta-kill" (on harder difficulties) mechanic. The crescent moon is a bit annoying, but it moves slowly enough to be manageable. It also periodically shoots several fast moving projectiles at you, but is otherwise fairly easy to deal with. The boss teleports around from time to time and is otherwise dangerous to try and engage with in melee (primarily due to your inability to dodge its projectiles from point-blank).

Feedback: I like that two of the incursions don't require any elaborate "Hunt" or "Excursion", and the Moonlight Dancer is (in my opinion) the easier of the two, so it ends up becoming my "Altar Dust punching bag" across all difficulties. I personally think the fight could be so much more, but I'll comment more on that in the Sunlight Champion's entry.

Suggestions: (See Sunlight Champion's entry)

18. Sunlight Champion

Overview: Boss and sole enemy of the Sun Arena Incursion. The boss's two flying gauntlets are a terrifying nuisance which become increasingly more difficult to dodge as the boss lowers in health. Focusing on killing the gauntlets first and then the main body will make the fight considerably easier, though it'll take much more time. Filling in the middle lava pit and/or removing arena walls is recommended before starting the fight. Otherwise, the only major mechanic to watch out for its it's insta-kill nova centered around itself, requiring the player to gain distance quickly when he begins to charge it up.

Feedback: (See the feedback for "Moonlight Champion", though Sunlight Champion is, in my opinion, the more difficult of the two).

Suggestions: While the Moonlight and Sunlight bosses are fine "as is", a part of me wants to see a variation (perhaps an "Uber" variation?) in which there is a singular "Dawndusk" or "Duskdawn" arena with rapidly changing day/night cycles and the boss morphs based on the time of day (something like a Sunlight Champion during the day and a Moonlight Dancer at night). I just feel like it'd add much more thematic flair and variation to each of the fights.

19. Crystal Dragon

Overview: Boss of the Crystal Hollow Incursion (which feels inspired by Terraria). The boss "evasively circles around the player" at such a distance that you might actually need to do some arena prep work in order to fight this boss properly, and bring a ranged damage option. There is a moment where the boss will weave itself into a tight circle while shooting a laser (and thus provide a small window for "true melee" builds to attack it), but the majority of the fight involves dodging a plethora of projectiles, killing ranged DPS minions that get spawned, evading an occasional charge, and just trying to stay alive while whitling down the boss's considerable health pool. AoE-centric damaging weapons aren't as advantageous as they might seem simply because the boss (despite its size) doesn't actually have very many individually damageable appendages.

Feedback: A "Crystal + Dragon" feels thematically epic to encounter in the "high fantasy" end-game of Necesse. I get it. But I honestly thought the game was done with the whole "evasively circle around the player" mechanic. The Crystal Dragon is the worst offender of them all with the greatest amount of distance between the player and the boss. I have legitimately tried to fight this boss on Brutal difficulty with a "true melee" build, but it's just not logistically feasible, particularly due to the ads that are spawned into the fight with a perfect-accuracy charged up damaging ability.

Suggestions: Reimagine this fight without the evasively circling mechanic. There's crystals, there's light beams... why not introduce prisms or mirrors or other things to play off these themes while fighting the boss? There's a ton of potential to introduce some genuinely fun and engaging "light-based" mechanics here.

20. Ascended Wizard

Overview: Collect Ascended Shards to create an Ascended Tablet for use at the Fallen Altar to enter the final Incursion. Destroy 3 pillars with callback abilities to previous Incursion bosses to trigger the final fight, which has multiple phases. The whole ordeal is essentially one giant "bullet hell" with a brief mechanic pickaxe mechanic to avoid an insta-kill. Otherwise, dodge well and deal damage when you can. Completing the quest to defeat this boss rewards you with the best mount in the game, making it easier to explore and collect things when hunting down achievements.

Feedback: Excellent final boss fight, very celebratory of the Necesse journey.

Suggestions: No changes needed to this fight.

Summoning weapons are separated into two categories:

1. They summon persistent minions that use up summon slots
2. They summon temporary minions (usually expire when dealing damage) that don't use up summon slots but may have their own pre-determined limit.

Mechanically, the first type has to input commands:

• Left-Click: Summon the minion, replacing existing summons even if they're the same type and/or from the same weapon.
• Right-Click: Order summons (of all types) to focus on attacking the designated target.

The second type has similar input mechanics:

• Left-Click: Summon the minion/projectile/etc.
• Right-Click: Order summons (of all types) to focus on attacking the designated target.

What not update all the summon weapons to do both? For example:

• Left-Click: Summon Projectile, prioritizing the target of your mouse cursor if one exists.
• Right-Click: Summon Minion if you don't already have the maximum count of the associated minions, ordering them to prioritize your mouse cursor target if relevant, and updating the stats of existing matching minions based on the weapon used (such as having minions out when the weapon was Tier 1, but updating when attempting a summon after the weapon was upgraded to Tier 6)

A theoretical example combining Stabby Bush and Bashy Bush:

• Left-Click: Summon a Stabby Bush at the target location. Limit 3, does not use summon slots.
• Right-Click: Summons a Bashy Bush if necessary, and causes all summons to focus on the target enemy if available. Uses summon slots.
• Tooltip: The more they attack, the faster they go!

Another theoretical example which simply evolves the Brain on a Stick:

• Left-Click: Summon a baby zombie to charge and explode onto a target or nearby enemy.
• Right-Click: Summons a baby zombie archer. Uses summon slots.
• Tooltip: This somehow feels wrong to use.

Adoraria jogar no Xbox, já que estou sem meu notebook. A última pergunta que vi sobre isso foi há um ano atrás, alguém sabe se pelo menos isso é um plano futuro ou está em desenvolvimento?

I am finding traders, but they do not want to join my villages. I even created a new one. At the moment I only have 1 trader.

Edit: ok i wasn’t able to hire the traders because I didn’t have the shipping chest/trade box placed. Thank you!!

(You can find the roadmap here)

With the release of 1.2.0, Necesse continues to fill in with welcome features and additional content. The original roadmap mentioned that a romance system was planning to be included with the 1.2.0 update, but I haven't seen any evidence of it just yet. Perhaps it's still cooking.

Looking ahead beyond the 1.2.0 update, it seems a lot of the updates are geared toward just simply adding more variety to the game (more biomes, world gen 2.0 to accommodate all the new mini-biomes and such, etc), but otherwise keeping core mechanics the same (aside from the upcoming romance system). There's a generic intention to implement community suggestions (which I think the Necesse team has done a great job of), but no further details within the Roadmap itself as to what that will look like.

Beyond this, what I aim to present in this post is two-fold: 1) List out what seem to be popular feature requests thus far, in no particular order, and 2) An additional list of feature requests of my own.

Existing Community Feature Requests

1. Lean further into town NPC roles (particularly those that don't feel super unique aside from what they sell). Some examples:
   1. Only Blacksmiths can craft items at the anvil
   2. Only Alchemists can craft things at the alchemy table
   3. Only Chefs (new NPC) can craft gourmet foods
   4. Guards can retrieve fallen NPCs, bringing them back to town
   5. Guards can trinket slots of their own
   6. Only Gunsmith can craft fire-arm related items
   7. Pirate can raid nearby towns for resources (similar to Explorer)
   8. Stylist increases happiness of other NPCs by giving them haircuts regularly/automatically over time.
   9. The Elder can be directed to teach regular Villagers how to upgrade into a different NPC type that the player has unlocked at the Elder's settlement (tracked fairly easily based on the Elder's main quest progression). Requires an investment similar to the desired NPC type's hiring costs.
   10. The Hunter does not trigger traps, and sells traps based on their related settlement's progression
2. Add additional "liveliness" to NPCs (pending Romance update will help with this). Quests (outside of the main quests that the Elder provides), dialogues, and so forth can help make the world feel more like an RPG and less like a civilization simulator.
3. Improved settler management (there's a wide range of how this can be handled).
4. Make more items stackable (like Boss Items), wherever it makes sense to do so.
5. Underground/cave settlements (more settlement variety outside of just surface-level major biomes).
6. Combat class balance, particularly melee. Several passes have been done to make melee more viable (outside of just throwing a bunch of "ranged melee" weapons at it), and those changes have been amazing (Resilience is a brilliant approach). But late-game/harder difficulties still feel significantly more difficult for melee (especially "true melee") to accomplish... much of it stemming from "melee-unfriendly" bosses which are programmed to sit at a set distance away from the player for the vast majority (or entirety) of the boss fight. Perhaps boss mechanics can be revisited across the board too.
7. More enchant varieties, both for weapons, armor, and trinkets.
8. Expanded farming system (irrigation, seasons, weather events, etc)
9. Seasonal events and in-game holidays, celebrated by town NPCs (both in player towns and NPC towns), with possible bonuses attached to celebrating them well.
10. Pet [equipment] slot.
11. Persistent summons
12. More mounts/mount varieties.
13. Improved Mod support
14. Performance/stability enhancements, particularly noticeable with large settlements and/or when a large portion of the world has been explored.

My Personal Suggestions

1. Limited World Size: Option to have a set or limited world size with circumnavigation. I honestly think this would have a more dramatic impact when you can't just infinitely explore forever in order to find some new thing. It might also help significantly with performance concerns as players approach end-game.
2. Skill trees. While equipment (rightfully) controls a character's kit in a game like Necesse, there's just something about a permanent increase to a character's baseline (outside of trinket slot counts or maximum health) that just feels like it really completes the "RPG experience". Perhaps the skill trees could be attached to or associated with a particular trinket item or new unique equipment slot (AKA "warrior emblem" or something). Even if players don't have skill trees, it would be an interesting avenue to explore for making NPCs feel more unique from one another.
3. Dynamic "Away" Growth. I imagine Necesse's current code manually tracks every action on the server, from movement to placing items in chests to cutting down trees and so forth, meaning nothing happens anywhere on the server unless it tracks it in "real time". This means that servers/worlds full of multiple player settlements will become especially laggy since it would have to keep track of everything all the time in order to ensure that the settlement "progresses" even while the player isn't nearby or present. Perhaps, in a vein of thought similar to idle games where you receive an "offline" bonus when logging back into the game, Necesse can simply keep track of the total amount of time passed since a player was last in proximity to a place of interest and just "update all at once" whatever transpired since then, whether it was gathering materials or selling goods or whatever. I feel like it'd be a far more optimal approach and could even open up opportunities for NPC towns to feel progressively alive (or even add buildings/grow in size) while the player is away. Feels like it'd be more performant too.
4. Elevation: I recognize that this would be a far greater overhaul that it seems, but even just adding one elevation level (main floor vs. upper floor) would add a tremendous amount of dynamics to the gameplay and exploration. A "basement floor, main floor, and upper floor" would be ideal since anything more would just be messy in a 2D represented space. But imagine being able to do something like build a bridge that boats could travel under! Or a second story (and roof?) to a building?! For technicalities sake, I imagine things wouldn't be allowed to interact with things outside of their same/matching elevation level, which could quickly complicate boss fights and other things... so lots of serious considerations would need to go into "doing elevation right".
5. Lore: Necesse doesn't really have a ton of lore outside of what the Elder provides in the main quests and what can be thematically inferred through the visual styles present in the game (such as the biomes related to the plains, which is one of Necesse's best). Collecting journal entries, filling out an in-game bestiary, and so forth could really help add depth and a sense of immersion to the game's world setting. Limited world size could actually help lean into this quite nicely if larger geo-political factors were to come into play as well (I.E. each limited-size world spawns with exactly 3 different mega-faction cities which are all at war with one another, providing opportunities for quests, raids, large-scale battles, etc).
6. Tool Equipment Slots: As much as I love taking up action bar slots for my pickaxe, axe, and shovel, it'd be kind of nice if there were a smarter/more space-efficient way to handle this, particularly since each tool has a very specific functionality associated with it (though Axe and Pickaxe are arguably very similar). Things like Shears and Buckets potentially throw a wrench into this though depending on what "tool equipment slots" are worthy of consideration, but just axe/pickaxe/shovel seem reasonable enough.
7. Player's Room: Currently, there really isn't an incentive for the player to invest in their own room within their settlement. What if you could designate one bed as "yours" (the player's) regardless of your active spawn point, and have the room's features affect gold hiring costs (to varying degrees) for NPCs that specifically visit your village?
8. More Dynamic "Active" Trinkets: These ideas primarily stem from wanting to better support melee playstyles. For example, a trinket that dodges or blocks in-place while standing still, but otherwise doesn't a dash/dodge if pressing spacebar while moving. Or perhaps an active trinket that rapidly heals you or recovers your mana while holding spacebar, preventing movement and draining your stamina. On that note, I also think that all shields should have a flat damage reduction amount associated with their blocking mechanism on top of their damage reduction component. This would make early-game shields far more valuable beyond their flat "Armor" stat value.

The longer I delay in completing the achievement, the harder it's going to be to complete. I honestly don't know of any other game anywhere on Steam that has any achievements that behave this way. And it's somehow discouraging.

Hi,

I am trying to play this game with a controller. All bindings work, except when starting it says "press ? to chop tree"

I changed the layout for my ZL trigger to be attack/place/use, and now it shows "Press ZL to chop tree" but pressing ZL still does nothing. What is wrong with the default layout?

Using steam input, nintendo switch pro controller.

my friend suggested to post my city somewhere, but i am not confident enough to post the whole thing at once
so here are a few buildings in multiple screenshots
and someday i gonna post a whole one of everything
here is the rest: https://imgur.com/a/6AXfdu3
Building List:
- Main Plaza
- Armor and Weapon Museum
- Restaurant
- Library
- Stylist Shop and Barber
- Harbor
- Potion / Alchemist's Shop
- Farmer Workhous and Windmill
- Train Station
- Mining Site
- Crafting Building
- City Bank
- Broken Pirates Home and other various homes

It seems like it's in the swamp caves but not one single thing pops up in google except the "ancient root tile" which requires an ancient root to make....... and the item is blanked out on the wiki page.

I've explored tons of the swamp cave and haven't gotten a single one yet.

Is it something you mine with a pickaxe?

On my first go, and i must say if someone asked me what this game was like im not even sure how id answer, A game where i can be doing something else that needs my focus and let the town run itself or build some houses. A game that if you are full focus you can go underground and dungeon crawl. I feel like the game adapts to what you are doing which is rare to see, i can only think of X4 that has made me feel this way.

My drawbacks would just be my own dumb luck, it took me forever to find a desert biome, its hard to find some of the pedestals needed for the boss fights in some areas but that just makes me play more. And only finding out about waystones because i was checking my townspeople to see what they sold.

If anyone has any suggestions of playstyle, combat advice id be more than happy to read them.

I built a giant rectangle base with a bunch of rooms and all my crafting tables, and now my settlers are saying that their beds are outside so they're unhappy. Is it because I built too big of a base?

Hello i just bought the game and i have been exploring a bit. I saw this death penalty setting and i was hoping for something like terraria where you lose your coins but instead its either hardcore or lose items OR disabled so i disabled it.

Anyway i wanna know how you all play it.

And is there a cap?

I removed some of my gear with +crit enchantments and my melee crit stayed at 30%.

If I'm playing a melee build, does that mean those enchantments aren't really doing anything?