Undecember is a POE clone but heres things it did differently that i liked

Firstly i need to address the elephant in the room. yes its a p2w game. it is tragic and i really hate p2w at its core but with how i personally have felt poe becoming "unfun", i decided to give it a go for my arpg fix.

I'll touch p2w later and focus on what i liked. boy oh boy. as a TLDR, i can summarize it up by saying, underneath the p2w, is an awesome game. a really, really awesome game that i enjoy playing immensely.

similar to my other post, being torchlight infinite being a poe clone, undecember too is a poe clone. i would also add, they are actually POE 2 clones in the sense of how they are using how ggg announced poe2's skill gem linking system would be, where the links are on the skill gems instead of on the gear.

1. skills and aura allocation
- in order for skills to be usable and any aura/buffs to be active, they need to eat up a slot on the skill bar. there are 12 slots that can be slotted in. spells that are supported by cast on crit equivalent have to occupy a slot in order to work.
- personally i feel this is cosmetic as 12 slots is a huge number of slots. you only have access to half that amount and need to switch to an alternate skill bar similar to poe's alternate skill bar function, and i really feel its more than required for the player.
- i do like this because i always like the ideas of having limits. it also prevents snapshotting exploits as you need the skill in the bar in order to use it. removing a skill or reallocating it requires you to rebind the skill into the skillbar.
- in poe the amount of skills you can use is bonkers and can be vulnerable to snapshotting. i may be wrong on this.

2. aura and reservations
- auras are decent, but very rare. only available at end game and not normally available to newer players. i found this surprising but coming from poe i know how powerful auras can be.
- you can only have ONE aura that buffs. thats it. i find it so simple and braindead but i love it. no messing around with balancing aura reservations and total mana to "squeeze in one more aura". this also makes auras more impactful however these auras only affect yourself.
- despite that, there are other non aura skills that work similar to heralds. how the game balances out this is interesting.
- THERE IS NO MANA RESERVATION COST. instead they have a MANA MULTIPLIER. you want to run a few heralds, ok. you want to run a lot? also ok, but the more persistent skills you run, you increase a mana multiplier. this is felt quite prominently when it is added up with your skill's own mana costs/multipliers. similar to poe, adding supports will increase the skills total mana cost. so mana IS an issue.

3. attack speed meta
- poe has an attack speed meta/problem. UND has a potential to achieve high attackspeeds but nowhere as near poe. first and foremost, they are very stingy with attack speed bonuses. then the next point.
- they're balanced by the fact that mana sustain is an issue. unlike poe where you technically can leech back all the mana you use for an infinite loop. in UND you're expected to rely on mana potions and mana on kill mechanics. you wanna attack superfast with a 6L? you can do that.. but for a short burst where even your mana potion would struggle to keep it up.
- its still possible to balance out mana potion reliance with your mana consumption but it requires a lot of work.
- the dps between slower attacks can be comparable to faster attacks but the fact that you consume mana at a slower rate gives players a reason to purposefully avoid dumping all points into attackspeed. these slower attacks have more weight to them as a result.
- GGG allowed speed meta to go unchecked for so long i doubt anything can be done with the game unless GGG is willing to upset a large amount of the player base. it would also require them to rebalance way too many things. its good to see newer games quickly curbing attack speed metas. in UND there are ways to burst enemies down with fast attackspeed, but it could leave the player out of mana real quick real fast.

4. minion balance
- minions do not require corpses. i find this refreshing as i personally find that corpses are an archaic mechanic that exists for lore or thematic reasons. in poe and even d3, necromancers have access to corpse generation.
- minions are on a timer. they have a cooldown so you cant spam too frequently that you really want to keep them alive and even when they are alive they are on a timer and will expire when the time runs out.
- this is a debatable point as some "gamerdads" prefer a more passive playstyle where setting up their minions once and maintaining them is their prefered style. i personally feel that arpg's should be more about active engagement. having minions on a timer forces the player to be more active instead of running around with an unkillable ball of death.
- also, while the minions are alive, you're subjected to mana multipliers.

4. Damage type/conversions
- interestingly you only deal ONE type of damage depending on the skill gem of choice. weapons usually have generic "attack/spell damage" and are converted appropriately. if you use for example fireball, and you have 1000000 lightning damage from anywhere, you will lose out all that lightning damage.
- i find the simplicity quite... interesting. the game is more easy to balance when you dont have ways to gain extra ele damage from phys and then extra chaos damage from ele like in poe. when you're optimizing your gear/build having 100 damage in a different damage type can be small in the grand scheme of things where your build could be emphasizing one particular damage type to begin with.

5. trigger skills omfg amazeballs JIMP
- pretty early in game around act 2, you're given a trigger skill, cast on hit/spell hit. and omfg is it so damn good.
- similar to poe, you need to support this to your skill of choice. but unlike poe, the supported skill can in turn have it's on links independant of the main skill. so the optimal setup would be mainskill 6L, minus one for the trigger support, then linked with secondary spell 6L minus one for the trigger support. in poe terms its practically having a 13 link (2 active gems, 1 trigger support, 5 supports for each active gems).
- ITS FREAKING AMAZING
- how its balanced out you may ask? mana multipliers. as mentioned attack speed is scarce as it is, therefore there is NO COOLDOWNS. it triggers EVERYTIME. it's so damn satisfying even for a low level scrub to run a cast on hit setup on a 3L its damn impactful enough that you immediately have fun.
- its quite powerful where cast on "spell" synergizes extremely well where both skills benefits from spell damage passives. cast on hit (attacks) and cast on channelling have an added benefit where the benefits the main skill's attack increases/more damage/crit chance/crit damage also apply to the spell so that you're not forced to branch out too much. this benefit can be 100% or 50% depending on the trigger support which is then balanced out with a reduced spell damage on the "activated spell".
- also balanced via manacosts

6. life gain/ mana gain
- this game makes you rely on potions to the point that investing passives in potion related passives becomes a serious consideration rather than a passing thought.
- it actually is similar to poe where life leech has a life gain via leech per second cap, and the game is particularly stingy handing out life leech, mana leech as well as regens.
- why would i like this? i should hate it! but no, i like it as it gives weight to my encounters. i can facetank a lot of shit, but in a boss battle, it would be better if i actively got out of the way. running around waiting for your potions to go off cooldown or sneaking a hit to get some life leech is.... EXHILARATING. i m playing the game, rather than just face tanking everything. there's an argument to be had where if you geared up to the max, you can face tank anyway, but to me thats the entire point of gearing up. the process before you get there is where you actually play the game.
- as mentioned a lot on how mana multipliers work, MANY players face mana issues. even if you P2W and buy a 5/6L, it's still balanced around the fact that the player may not be able to sustain their mana usage. even me playing using their default 3L skills can find myself running out of mana. mana recovery is not too common. but for the purpose of grinding mana on kill helps immensely if you're doing enough dps.

7. melee
- similar to torchlight infinite, melee skills all have a decent sized AOE. with the exception of daggers which i really think are severely underpowered in UND, melee in general is a pleasant experience.
- remember once upon a time when ggg introduced melee reworks showing us that we could dodge hillock's clumsy arm swings? that's how boss encounters feel like in UND. sure there are fast hits that you practically cant avoid, but there are also some fast hits that CAN be avoided if you react or have enough movespeed. boss battles in UND are exactly that. its a beautiful dance of death where u take turns hitting each other while getting out of the way. that said, the boss attacks are sometimes cheap and can 1hko the unprepared. but in general i find that i m actually engaging with the boss more often than not.
- its interesting to see how modern games like TLI and UND deal with "solving" melee by making it a midrange skill, where players are also expected to kite like ranged character but at a closer extent.
- i would still say there's a lot of bullshittery against melee but overall, i really dig this melee combat. in poe for example, if i play heavy strike and i cant reach the boss, i have to swallow my tears. in UND, theres a moderate chance that my melee skill can hit him from a distance. that said, i ll mention it again. that for most melee skills, dagger melee skills specifically are in a very bad spot similar to poe's strike skills where the attack range is directly by the side of the enemy.
- did i tell you that i love melee in this game? i didn't? oh i dont exactly love it tho but its a hundred steps in the right direction compared to poe.

8. auction house
- trading uses p2w currency. it uses a traditional auction house that you can only buy stuff using premium currency. the game taxes you by 10-30% of the transaction (cant recall). it's detrimental to playing with friends as there is no way to trade items other wise.
- is this 100% bad? it really depends on where you're standing. believe it or not there are many players that buy stash/convenience qol stuff and refuse to participate in the p2w aspect of UND. to an extent this discourages price manipulation. i've sold a couple of things and earned a small amount of premium currency. i m going to be EXTRA careful how i spend it. do i really NEED that item that one guy is selling?
- it's interesting where theres a possibility of the prices to inflate but it will become a tug of war between "free" players vs the whales.
- ultimately, i found myself not relying on trade at all. its quite ironic. GGG made it difficult to trade with the intention of making players actually play the game rather than spend time trading. UND gave players a bloody AH but the currency/droprates at end game are decent enough that i, the person who has not touched SSF in POE for almost 10 years (and also found SSF in a game that's balanced around trade as dumb), am technically playing SSF in UND and loving it.
- sheer irony that having an AH but also having decent drops make me not rely on AH. who knew?

9. Drops/progression
- the drops are especially decent when you reach "mapping". while leveling the game gives you a lot of gold and various currency via achievements, you sneezed 10 times? here have a few chaos orbs and fuses etc. it also gives skills gems that are 3Linked to begin with. before mapping the drops are acceptable i guess.
- unlike poe, i dont feel starved. sure i may get to points i need to grind to craft better gear but its quite good. one major distinction is that magic items can have up to 3 mods. this makes "alt spamming" really powerful. it reminds me of the time when i used to play diablo 2 where an item with 2 powerful mods could be better than a rare item which had 6 mods that give small mods with some even useless to my build. being able to craft a decent 3 mod item and regaling it to make it rare is fun. it really is the "close your eyes and exalt slam" experience.
you really get to enjoy this when "exalts" are not super rare. chris, if you want players to exalt slam and ENJOY it, dont make it super rare. i still remember the time i slammed a +2 mana on kill. having magic items have 3 mods is effective enough that even a regal slam feels good.
- theres an argument to be had that you will feel a squeeze later when the achievement rewards start to dry out, what i can say is that i m level 73-74? now, i m been mapping for 2-3 days and still getting random achievement rewards. even without the rewards the drops from regular mapping seem good enough.
- i m quite enjoying the progression and the end game, tho simple has a lot for me to do.
- also this game utilizes gold. gold is used in a wide variety of things but we do have a ton of gold sinks.

10. Crafting
- this comes hand in hand with drops. they practically copied poe but made it so that they have divines for magic items. people from poe will find it easy to craft, with various options, you could go for target good rolls by rolling up a solid 3 mods on a magic item and moving up from there, or you could chaos slam, or you could use an improved chaos slam which preserves one mod. many viable ways to get items.
- you are in fact INCENTIVIZED to craft. whenever you use any crafting, you gain some xp. the xp will contribute to a crafting mastery tree which you can spend points on that give you combat related bonuses. failed to craft something good? no worries bro, you spent alot so have some points to improve your character anyway.
- in regards to 6L. this game has a pity system. for your first 6L any amount of fusings used will be counted towards a pity meter. after spending 1500 fusings and not hitting a 6L the next fuse will auto 6L. the pity meter then resets back to zero. so far i have 2 6Links and now my pity meter requires 3000 fusings, but i m fine with that. i havent p2w so far but still managed to get 2 6Links, i am indeed happy.
- there's also alchemy where you can combine items to reroll/upgrade them, which can be very useful. alteration orbs can be alchemied into chaos orbs. theres a p2w aspect here where you can speed up the process or buy additional alchemy slots so you can run a few alchemy projects at once, but can be safely ignored.
- i have never been so incentivized to spend my crafting currency since last epoch. in fact if you plan to play completely f2p, it's crucial to spam crafting currency to clear your stash.
- so far i ve got a nice sword and a nice belt. i m really enjoying the crafting.

11. Simplified skill tree
- it took me a long time to realize the true meaning behind POE is path of efficiency. we actually WASTE a lot of points on stats/traveling nodes. due to traveling and different nodes located on the opposite side of the world, it can be too inefficient making certain builds work. UND simplified the entre thing by giving players stat points and traits on level up. you unlock a set of nodes centered around certain themes. upon allocating a select number of traits into those nodes you unlock a new set of nodes. the idea is to invest into a the set of nodes relevant to you, then whenever you unlock a new set of nodes, start allocating traits into these new nodes. this repeats for sometime all the way up until you unlock ascendancy nodes. no trial no lab. just look through the different choices then select what you want and continue playing.
- i enjoy the simplicity of this tree, it boiled down a huge part of poe's complexity as well as viability. as a result the build diversity is quite large.
- also i would like to add, you can reset your stats/traits for free as long as you havent completed the main campaign by killing the boss. once you have accomplished this, each point "refunded" will require a gold fee.
- really good for players who want to explore and make their own build.

12. story/cutscenes
- poe's story was cobbled together. ggg needed to have a working game first and a good story later. i cant compare UND's story to POE as it is a VERY UNFAIR comparison.
- UND's story is interesting enough and i would argue has more urgency compared to poe's any day. i still remember seeing a gruest short cutscene. then we got kitava's awakening cutscene and now barely anything else.
- I really hope poe2 has a good story. i dont expect it to have many in game cutscenes but the competition is getting strong.

13. mobile crossplay
- i read that this game was originally developed for mobile. it really plays well on mobile and i really hate that for pc users we do not have a force move button.
- this game can be linked so you can play it on an apple phone or and android one.
- that said, it really makes me feel that GGG's phone version of poe can be scrapped. UND is a light year ahead of poe when it comes to crossplaying.
- i can play UND at my pc, and if i go out and have downtime i can continue on phone. how awesome is that? its not a half assed, watered down "for phone" version like poe's mobile game is. you play the same game on mobile using the same character, all your gear and any new gear will be intact on both versions of the game as they are synced.

this post is long enough as is.

personally i am hooked on undecember. i have gone as f2p as much as possible but i buy tabs/stash and i am already in maps.

i am seriously having a blast playing this game. i used to be very bitter towards POE and it's direction.

but now? i really dont care. i want to come back to poe, but with all the emphasis ggg has, patching all the fun away, i seem to have found a game where i am really having fun.

there were many points of time when playing undecember, i would think back of poe and feel, omg, why cant poe be THIS FUN?

for the ones who hate p2w. i hear you. this game is indeed p2w, but anything you get from f2p you can get p2w. a p2w player has the advantage of getting what they want faster but thats it.

as someone who doesnt race/care about ladder speed of obtaining gear is not too important. in fact me and my friends actively avoid p2w as we would feel our characters being dirtied/corrupted for using ill gotten means for progress.

heck, i would even say playing poe in a way thought me p2w doesnt matter.

i've played poe since open beta, near 10 years. do i have a mirror? no, do i have mirror tier equipment? debatable. COULD i have RMT? perhaps. did i? nope.

can i get to maps in 1 day? no. do i have a level 100 character? no. do i need a tabula at the start of a league? can be helpful, not gonna lie, but i dont exactly NEED it.

do you need to p2w in undecember? nope. do you need to compete with other players? if you say yes then perhaps UND is not for you. but for me as a normie, i ve found great enjoyment playing this game, to the point i m considering ditching POE altogether (GGG pls make poe 2 good enough)

if you're curious and read so far. dont let all the negative steam reviews hurt your curiosity. i too dislike the fact this game is p2w but i cannot in good faith say this is a bad game.

it isnt. it is a good game.

GGG please, you were the best game but now you've got so many competitors. i really resent the fact that i am enjoying a p2w game more than a f2p game that has my name in the credits for being an early supporter.

sadly ggg seems to have gain so much foothold but somehow fell behind. i want to fall in love with poe again. i m at the point that i dont even know if poe2 will be enough for me to come back. i do not find poe fun. i have endured poe's torture for years the same way a guy is stuck in an abusive relationship not knowing how other girls are. UND is this other girl. she might not be as complex, but she doesnt need to be. i am happy with her. she showed me how much i was actually not enjoying poe.

i could not do inefficient non meta builds. i was starved of currency that i avoided crafting. melee strikes are vastly underpowered. i can build a lot of defences but for what? even quin who can tank everything maven threw at him for ages died in a splitsecond. i cant enjoy mapping as its too easy to "suddenly die". i cant enjoy a new playthrough as the drops are stingy. i cant enjoy amassing wealth on std as GGG could easily devalue my currency.

perhaps this is an eye opener for me. an epiphany? perhaps poe was never meant to be my forever game. it never was marketed as a fun game. it was marketed as a tough a nuts game where a simple mob can kill you. dying to hillock before entering town is a possibility. is it fun? no.

currently i just hope that UND doesnt do what GGG is doing where GGG patched all the fun away.

man that turned into a rant. anyway. yeah, if you're ever curious how a fun/accessible poe could have been. turn a blind eye to the p2w tag. give und a chance.

as for ggg. theres a lot you can learn from this clone. also realize this. you guys somehow have fallen behind times.

The most important thing imo is how und managed gear progression. It is the same gambling fiesta but und gives you plenty coins for slot machine. You can easily get ~100c after mapping for your dailys and ~200 alts which you can convert into target rolls 10:1 and overall odds are way better. You also get prefix/suffix target crafts, mod transfers on better bases, lucky tier rerrols, etc for endgame.

When harvest wasn't gutted gear progression was also fun in POE, good times.

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Baronello wrote:

The most important thing imo is how und managed gear progression. It is the same gambling fiesta but und gives you plenty coins for slot machine. You can easily get ~100c after mapping for your dailys and ~200 alts which you can convert into target rolls 10:1 and overall odds are way better. You also get prefix/suffix target crafts, mod transfers on better bases, lucky tier rerrols, etc for endgame.

When harvest wasn't gutted gear progression was also fun in POE, good times.

its quite ironic.

the game is heavily p2w but it doesnt make me feel like i need to p2w. the dailies are generous. the drops and vendoring system is also quite generous.

it technically has some "harvest craft" options as part of their currency. the ability to convert currency is just so awesome too.

ggg dropped a ruthless mode. i m happy for those who say they prefer poe to be a harder game. poe in its current state is what i consider unfun.

i do miss harvest league tho.

ggg is really falling behind times. undec came out of nowhere and presented itself to me as an alternative. with poe revealing that shes no longer the game i thought her to be, undec (p2w aside) revealed herself to me with open arms, giving me so much warmth comfort and fun, i even doubt poe2 will be enough to win me back over at this point.