Current Version: 1.0
Maps: 10 + 2. This is the abyss campaign. Your only objective here is to descend, below forgotten kingdoms, beyond points of no return. Has multiple paths and endings dependent on player choices.
Author's Notes
- This campaign is build ontop of a custom creature balance
- Some keeper power buffs charge higher than usual, but so does the duration
- If you feel stuck, try actually reading the objective and information given
- For those who are really stuck on a puzzle map, there is a short walkthrough somewhere among the files
- A small chance persists to get softlocked when imps drop key items at the worst possible places, best to use them directly
- Campaign takes around 12k sprite slots out of the 14k free available, your fxdata folder shouldn't have too much custom stuff stored as it may break certain graphics
- The difficulty is similar to RotL on balanced and notably easier on low
Art: cultists and dk2 models by ErminioLucente, extended assets and creature spells by Shinthoras0815, additional traps and minions by ben_lp, more level decoration by dragoonlich
Just finished Abyss Guardians on easy difficulty. Yeah I know I suck so I played on easy :D
This campaign is very unique amongst all I played so far and I played a lot of maps. Design, art style, music and custom stuff made by author create together very immersive experience. Maps are very well crafted, its honestly masterpiece and amount of time author must have invested into this is probably crazy. Sadly not everyone will enjoy it full because of difficulty spikes and one map which takes way too long to finish. Generaly speaking I dont like replaying maps and in this campaign I had to do it multiple times to actualy understand what I was suposed to do. I was reading tips in maps, but that didnt help much in some cases. Or i am too dumb, idk :) I will say few things about some maps.
Irynthabl - I struggled here in some moments, but I still love the map. Puzzle maps are my favourites. Honestly really great puzzles but not easy to figure out.
Old Dwemer Kingdom - Oh boy.... :D. This map is probably hard stop for many people who tried this campaign. Very long one but I dont think it needs to be that long. I dont think slow gold digging and not able to see blocks was good choice here as its quite frustrating. Main enemy keeper was very hard to deal with and so was Dwemer King. I was almost losing my hope as I could not kill him but eventualy I did it. I really liked the blocked parts of map with wind trap but I didnt like that I could open them all at once too late in game. I killed main Keeper before the Dwemer king. Was that actualy intended?
Crater - I was kind of lost on this map initialy, but it has really great concept which I liked. It just took me few attempts to finish it as its not easy unless you know what to do already.
Great Hollow - Cant say I am big fan of paths you cannot claim. I struggled on this map and it took me 3 attempts to finish it. Mostly my issue was to find ways where I can progress. I didnt like this map that much but its still very well made and has very cool stuff in it.
Secret and moon levels are great, but tower defense style Secret was too hard for me honestly and I could not finish it. Made it to last wave but then i lost. I simply didnt have energy to try one more time after multiple attempts. Moon leve is very cool, but creates for some reason struggled to find on forest tiles which sucked. I dont know if its intended or bug?
This campaign struggle with something few others struggle too. It introduces a lot of changes to creatures and their skill, adding new one but its hard to learn all of it in 10 level campaign. I would probably prefer to have one level with introduction with all new creatures and their abilities as I didbnt have time to do that when in some levels you are under constant pressure.
Not a beginner campaign for sure. This is my personal archetype, 100% trendwhore resistant!
New things being confusing is a relative part of skill expression, since the difficulty here stems to 90% from macro. If i were to explain just how much cheese potential there is in certain creature spells, most levels would turn into a cakewalk. And if you think 10 maps is not enough to understand the custom stuff, than how about packing 10 dwemer kingdom style maps in a row? Not like it will be any longer this way, even the good campaign is still larger at 11 maps after all.
And i know well my mapping preferences are autistic. You either gotta love it or hate it.
Loving the campaign so far. However I'm stuck on the puzzle level. I have followed the guide but for some reason the green shrine is not activating. Any ideas why not?
At least the functionality has not changed in this level, maybe actionpoint reading is kind of garbo and doing some gymnastics at the activation stones or the gate altar would help to trigger it.
Otherwise following a YT playthrough will probably help identify the faultline. -RedRiot -Dofi
This campaign was very cool, bit hard but manageable.
I'm stuck at Level 4 as well. Jeez, somehow i fended off all attacks, took care of enemy Keeper, but got another problem. I have to capture Portals in order to powerup a Slipgate - claimed all 5 Portals, but gate doesn't work. I did something wrong, didn't i? Or i softlocked myself? I play on Normal difficulty.
There should be 6 portals in level 4, look for a reveal box in orange keeper library.
Yup, i got all 6, including this one you mentioned - still it doesn't work. Or maybe i played in wrong order - i should wipe out Keeper first, then powerup Slipgate, then enter the impact site. Too bad i can't add screenshots (in order to avoid spoilers, i think), i would show that i control all 6 portals.
Euh that is strange, does the gate have no visual feedback and creatures other than imps cannot get through?
Sounds like another anomaly, if you join the keeperklan discord you could drop a savegame there, maybe it is worth investigating.
I didn't check portal with imps, i tried with Cultist Imp (read: Slave), he didn't go through. I'll try it soon. Update: i tried entering with Imp, but i didn't work as intended. I sent a problem to Discord (with around 50 seconds video as proof), maybe it will be a solution to this. Update: it worked, and i'm in level 7 now. I'm a bit scared about difficulty of this mod.
Hugely impressive campaign, really high quality map design, but in the end, I had to quit out. I'm not the greatest player in the world, and especially the last few levels just completely obliterated me, even on low difficulty.
Good stuff here though.
(For reference, I did use cheat mode to see the last few maps, but I just didn't manage without just using 'kill player' :P )
This campaign starts with a bang, the first level has gorgeous visuals and a great idea behind it. The enemy Horny was so OP I couldn't make progress as he was back to full health after each assault, so I tried to raid his hatchery instead. I finally managed to kill it thanks to witches but boy was that a long struggle.
Second level makes you feel like you're playing roaming heroes for the first part. After that, it's kind of tough to push against the relentless enemy waves but doable. Invading the last fort was hard, I had to use possession to clear the area before going in.
Third level was the best so far, with insane use of keeperfx mechanics such as the patrolling hellhounds and the final part was awesome. Invading the last enemy fortress and what follows was a great experience, even though I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do for the last part.
Fourth level was...extremely frustrating. Fighting hordes of weak creatures that slaughter your imps all over the map and flee against your own creatures wasn't a fun experience. I tried and pushed as hard as I could to clear the lairs, but some parts still spawned parties since there were no lair to capture. Gold starvation eventually made me try to cheese the enemy Keeper but between that and the relentless insect invasions, I gave up before finishing him off.
I cheated to see the next level and barely started it (lots of traps!), but I'm not sure this campaign is for me in the end. All the creatures are also very fragile save for a few exceptions, which is not unlike the Necromancer campaign that uses the cultist faction too. On top of that, everything is bloody expensive and workshop economy is not something you want to do considering how slow it is.
I don't want to end on a negative note. This campaign is obviously extremely well designed and you can see how much heart has been put into it. Just looking at the minimaps show how well everything has been designed, and each map is so different from the rest. The altars mechanics force you to be on the move and not stay behind your walls, which I like even if I'm a turtly player. You have valid reasons to go on the offensive.
It's just not for players like me, so I won't rate it. People who like agressive, APM heavy playstyles will love this for sure. I'll try the other maps some day and will edit this comment should the need arise.
The perceived difficulty in map 4 is mostly caused by mechanical obscurity, after obtaining an overview on faction specific skills it becomes objectively easier than RotL or twinkeeper. Could be useful setting difficulty to low since it makes maps less stressful.
I'll try and do that for a second run. I was playing on "normal". I couldn't finish the last map of twinkeeper either back then, and RotL I had to stop at the insect map (again :O) so I'm a filthy casual. However I don't think it was caused by mechanical obscurity, it's just that there are enemies everywhere all the time and imps being imps, they get slaughtered. Also they flee your stronger minions which is frustrating.
That being said, the campaign is probably one of the most well designed here and me being bad doesn't lower its value in any way shape or form. I did find some typos though (thread instead of threat)!
I think this campaign is an absolute masterpiece! Hats off to the creator. Must have been alot of work. I really enjoyed playing it.
Sadly i couldn't implement everything i wanted to because fx is still limiting, maybe i will be able to do that with lua when it is finished in 2037
Updated to match function changes of 4277 alpha, older alphas no longer fully functional. Works now without partitioned download, thx yani!
Hmm. Crash on launch of 2nd map. Patch 1 2 0 4223 aplha :(
Fixed in alpha 4232, thank you for the report.
Sorry, will hopefully have this fixed soon. It is a problem with the game and you could go back to 4218 for now to play it (or wait for an alpha that fixes it).
Yes, it started in version 4218. But I can't take a single unit in my hand. Is this how it should be, or is it a bug? 4232 I do not put, because in keeperfx.exe both "virustotal" and Windows protection show the presence of a Trojan.
I don't know why some virusscanners have started reporting a virus in KeeperFX, but they are mistaken. We are virus free. On virustotal I scanned 4232 and it did show a few virusscanners reporting it as a problematic file, but the large majority still knows it to be ok.
Thank you for the answer.
Update 16/11: fixed creature spells that recently broke due to property changes in the latest alpha
Update 11/11: changes to balance, fixed some issues
Had some really mixed opinions about this campaign. The custom slabs were beautiful, especially on the first level, and it was exciting seeing the new ideas implemented, but I just found it ended up not being very fun at all.
First map was really impressive and thematic, loved it. What a genius idea recreating the intro video of the game! However, I found it really hard to claim the keeper's portal due to a combination of new creatures joining and tunnellers being tunnellers.
The second map - interesting but the wizard was so slow that the first part was a bit painful - could be worth making his faster. I also destroyed one of the custom traps in possession and it crashed the game. I played again (had to restart from the beginning because of a save bug, not your fault), frameskipped a lot, had to abuse guard posts because I couldn't really fight hordes that big (and some custom creature spells like the icicle one seem REALLY strong). So didn't really know what I needed to do there, i can't train fast enough to fend the waves off properly, so I don't know if i'm supposed to just push forward, might have missed a text string somewhere.
Third map felt like a painful chore too - lots of gold I can dig out but no need to, creatures train and research glacially slow (which you implied was your intention but it didn't do anything other than make me want to frameskip even harder, especially when there was nothing else to do than train up to kill the enemies and move forward, with an army that doesn't replenish and enemies with new moves and traps that do way way way more damage than the usual. I would have enjoyed the twist that I changed colour/got possessed if it didn't make me die inside because the level kept going.
Some really mixed feelings here - some of the levels look gorgeous visually, but I just had absolutely no fun playing them. I really hope there's something that can be done to make the maps more enjoyable because it's clear you've spent so much time making them and crafting this narrative and world.
Different players have different tastes, if you prefer short maps this might not be your kind of campaign. But i will futher update the balance to flatten most difficulty spikes, the higher difficulty modes are quite unforgiving by design.
I've been playing on medium difficulty so far. I can be slightly impatient with some maps but QOL improvements are always appreciated! Thanks for updating, I might give it another go soon and see 😊
Hey dude, thanks for making this. Had a blast playing through it and can feel the effort you put in to making this. Keep up the great work!
Good to hear that the rather archetypal second half of the campaign turned out manageable, thougt it might be too hard. If you have found any technical bugs or gameplay anomalies i would be happy to solve them.
I’m finding majority of the cultist creatures appear as hellhound sprites. The witch doesn’t, all the rest do. I had to download them individually and unzip them into the config to get them to work
Don't know why, maybe you ran out of sprite slots due to other custom stuff stored in fxdata? Could also just be a bad install, wonder if anyone else has the same problem.
Maybe, but once I unzipped them individually into the config folder, they all started working. Although the new move icons aren't working.
It is impressive what has become of an almost 30-year-old game, especially if you compare what is possible now to the time when campaigns like Assmist Isle or Ancient Keeper were introduced. Gone are the days when difficult maps were basically all about fending off hordes of level 10 creatures. Instead, nowadays, there are many more puzzle-like elements that give DK a completely new feeling.
When I started Abyss Guardians, I was thinking, "Wow! What's going on here?!" And before I started to comprehend what was actually required, I had already successfully completed the very first level. Ok, good! Let's continue with the next level then. I enjoyed the very interesting plot and concept that Abyss Guardians had to offer. Especially the first part of the campaign was something I had never really seen before, despite having actively played quite a bit of DK over the last few years.
Sadly, my initial excitement didn't last too long. I'd say after the little "plot twist" that was introduced after the first few maps, the feeling of confusion was predominant throughout the rest of the maps (I decided to try the hardest difficulty but never really noticed a big difference between the other difficulty levels). I constantly asked myself if I had done something wrong: for example, in the level with the volcano, I was constantly invaded by the insects despite having removed all the nests (as suggested by the map). In the map that followed, I was constantly discovered by the enemy without having gotten a single clue of what I had done wrong. Despite that, I felt that both maps were basically about the same thing: fending off waves of enemies. This element was carried over to the map after that as well. I struggled with the overall slow pacing that made each map more or less a drag to me.
It saddens me to say that Abyss Guardians hasn't grown on me at all. I liked the story behind it. I loved the ingenuity and freshness of the gameplay, but I disliked the implementation of it. I tried those maps again and again over the past few days, but eventually, I just had to quit the campaign (and I was so looking forward to seeing the end of the story - such a shame).
I am sorry - I am not a fan, but I appreciate the amount of work and dedication that was put into it.
Levels being confusing is kinda intentional, the 2 around midgame have some puzzle mechanics. That is why a short guide was included in the text folder that explains a bit what is going on. Also if you choose hardest difficulty it really starts to take off from map 4 upwards, playing for the first time on hardest is not the best idea i guess. And sure, some levels aren't fully polished yet as this is only the first version so far.
Update 04/11: cleaned some creature spells and objects, packed 2 more tilesets
Great map design 👍