Mortal Shell

Your 3090 took a dive? I have yet to finish this game 1 more boss to go the Earth Boss did the Fire and Ice bosses.
 
Comixbooks said:
Your 3090 took a dive? I have yet to finish this game 1 more boss to go the Earth Boss did the Fire and Ice bosses.
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Yup. Was playing GTA5 and everything just went black and the fans went to 100%. Everything was unresponsive. When I rebooted, I got the dreaded "VGA Error" light of doom on my mobo. Everything else works fine and other cards work fine. Am RMA'ing it right now. I was always afraid this might happen when it didn't like certain stress tests early on. Luckily EVGA's RMA process looks to be pretty quick. With some luck I'll have a new one next week.
 
Domingo said:
Yup. Was playing GTA5 and everything just went black and the fans went to 100%. Everything was unresponsive. When I rebooted, I got the dreaded "VGA Error" light of doom on my mobo. Everything else works fine and other cards work fine. Am RMA'ing it right now. I was always afraid this might happen when it didn't like certain stress tests early on. Luckily EVGA's RMA process looks to be pretty quick. With some luck I'll have a new one next week.
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I've been hearing reports of higher rates of EVGA 3090 failures...even EVGA 3080 cards as well to a lesser degree which worried me a bit since I have one...were you using 3 separate PCIe cables or daisy chaining one or more of them?
 
polonyc2 said:
I've been hearing reports of higher rates of EVGA 3090 failures...even EVGA 3080 cards as well to a lesser degree which worried me a bit since I have one...were you using 3 separate PCIe cables or daisy chaining one or more of them?
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3 separate cables off a Corsair HX1000. There are a pair of threads in their forums with people have very similar failure stories to me...although with Halo 3 and an older COD of all games. What's weird is that mine had been running pretty well as of late. It was temperamental when I first installed it, but following a drive format a month later it was basically fine. I chalked up my early issues to software and HZD being a work in progress at the time.
 
Domingo said:
3 separate cables off a Corsair HX1000. There are a pair of threads in their forums with people have very similar failure stories to me...although with Halo 3 and an older COD of all games. What's weird is that mine had been running pretty well as of late. It was temperamental when I first installed it, but following a drive format a month later it was basically fine. I chalked up my early issues to software and HZD being a work in progress at the time.
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what stress tests were showing issues?...3DMark?...what sort of issues- artifacts? crashes?
 
polonyc2 said:
what stress tests were showing issues?...3DMark?...what sort of issues- artifacts? crashes?
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AIDA64, Handbrake, and even the initial Precision X1 test where it looks for a good/safe overclock. AIDA would blue screen with VGA issues and PX1 would bomb and reset my PC. Handbrake would regularly bomb out at the very end of conversions (irregardless of the file) with the Nvidia instructions enabled. When I formatted, I ran all of those successfully a time or two, so that's when I assumed things were kosher. Never had any issues with 3DMark then or now. I feel like you have to be pretty aggressive with your OC's for it to fail.
 
Yay DLC!!

Mortal Shell: The Virtuous Cycle | Announcement Trailer

Coming this Summer...

 
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I'm down to play more Mortal Shell. I haven't touched it in a little while with the hope that they'd release some more content. I'll have to re-train myself how to play it. I remember the hardening mechanic taking a little while to get used to, but after a couple hours I felt really good about it.
 
I wish some of the smaller dev souls-knockoffs had more architecture and detail in the environments but mortal shell looks cool otherwise. That other space souls-like one "Hellpoint" was all flat metal environments too like a giant metal warehouse or belly of an aircraft carrier or something. Things look like they are on flat stages and ramps on some levels. I haven't played this one yet since I wanted it on steam, in the interest of transparency here, but I've seen it played on twitch when it came out originally. Speaking of steam - mortal shell was slated for a summer 2021 release on steam. Does that mean this DLC will be available on steam then too?

Creature design and combat are key in these types of games and they look cool but a lot of these smaller devs seem to be missing a big facet in the world itself being designed to the same level, at least from what I saw of those two games. Still good to see more souls-like games and cool creature design and combat. I wish that trailer showed more gameplay and gameworld. I'll probably bounce back someday and comment more after I've played it but I've seen it played some.
 
polonyc2 said:
Mortal Shell: The Virtuous Cycle | Release Date Trailer

Coming August 18th...👍👍

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That looks great. Not just an additional level, but a major expansion of the existing game mechanics and enemies. Seems like a great opportunity to start another playthrough. Hopefully the final boss isn't such a slog this time.
 
Domingo said:
That looks great. Not just an additional level, but a major expansion of the existing game mechanics and enemies. Seems like a great opportunity to start another playthrough. Hopefully the final boss isn't such a slog this time.
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I still need to kill the Earth Boss I never bothered to seek him out. They can do away with that Lute guy.
 
Domingo said:
That looks great. Not just an additional level, but a major expansion of the existing game mechanics and enemies. Seems like a great opportunity to start another playthrough. Hopefully the final boss isn't such a slog this time.
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only thing slightly disappointing is that it seems like the environment is exactly the same as the base game...I was hoping for some new areas to explore
 
for the Epic Store haters, the game is also finally coming to Steam on August 18th

Here’s a rundown of The Virtuous Cycle’s new features:

New Mode
Carve through an ever-changing world where no two playthroughs are the same. Craft your own combat style by combining more than 100 unique upgrades.

New Shell
Possess a familiar and formidable foe, Hadern. Unearth his true potential and demand perfection from this once-elusive Shell.

New Weapon
Fallgrim’s most venerable weapon has been cast. Transform your combat with the Axatana, a manipulable hilt of two blades

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1110910/view/2963916814338856660

 
I fired it up for the first time in a little while. I remember HDR being wonky when they first added it, and it still is. I find the colors to be especially dull and the various menu screens are washed out. That's been on two different TV's with HDR-specific settings. It looks good without, though. If you're playing on PC, just skip HDR.
 
Domingo said:
I fired it up for the first time in a little while. I remember HDR being wonky when they first added it, and it still is. I find the colors to be especially dull and the various menu screens are washed out. That's been on two different TV's with HDR-specific settings. It looks good without, though. If you're playing on PC, just skip HDR.
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does ray-tracing offer any noticeable improvements?
 
nice that they're making the new DLC free for all current owners (on all platforms)...for a second I thought that it was only free for Steam owners which would have been a terrible move
 
I tried this game on both a VA monitor and IPS IPS was good looking but way too Dark so I played on my VA monitor. It was a good IPS Alienware too. Stopped buying monitors since then because hard to get rid of them. I gave 4 of them to my brothers kids so his kids but unless I sell them for a huge loss on shipping.
 
Domingo said:
I fired it up for the first time in a little while. I remember HDR being wonky when they first added it, and it still is. I find the colors to be especially dull and the various menu screens are washed out. That's been on two different TV's with HDR-specific settings. It looks good without, though. If you're playing on PC, just skip HDR.
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I did read that the PC HDR was screwed up and admitted to from replies by the devs back when it was released on pc. Not all HDR screens are the same though. Were you using a HDR 400 one? edge lit or an actual FALD or OLED HDR screen? Just asking. I'm not making excuses for the devs, the HDR is probably still crap on pc.

It's annoying when a game has good HDR on consoles and the devs just give up on PC. Some devs have great HDR titles on pc though, I've played a few and have a few other long ones to play ahead of me so I'll skip on this game for awhile longer. I realize this is a very small team on this game but I think they do have HDR working on both console versions so I still find it annoying. The devs of darksiders3 removed HDR capability from their game on PC because it was making things look bad too. It sounds similar to what is happening in this game. I ended up using Reshade with fakeHDR and light room filters to at least make darksiders3 (that I scored in a humble bundle package) look like SDR "plus" on my oled.

I am prioritizing good HDR implementations in any games I am dumping money on now since I got a LG CX oled. There are enough existing (I played jedi:fallen order, nioh2, and am playing Fenyx Rising, and later AC : odyssey). They all have great HDR. I think sekiro and rez evil also have PC HDR among others. There are a bunch of upcoming titles that should have it on PC too, including of course, elden ring I think.

Comixbooks said:
I tried this game on both a VA monitor and IPS IPS was good looking but way too Dark so I played on my VA monitor. It was a good IPS Alienware too. Stopped buying monitors since then because hard to get rid of them. I gave 4 of them to my brothers kids so his kids but unless I sell them for a huge loss on shipping.
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I recommend using reshade with the lightroom filter. There are other filters but you can edit most things with that ( contrast, white point, black level curve, gamma, saturation, individual colors etc. etc.). It's pretty easy to use. You don't have to go nuts adjusting every single thing. Just altering a few simple settings sliders makes a big difference.

 
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elvn said:
I did read that the PC HDR was screwed up and admitted to from replies by the devs back when it was released on pc. Not all HDR screens are the same though. Were you using a HDR 400 one? edge lit or an actual FALD or OLED HDR screen? Just asking. I'm not making excuses for the devs, the HDR is probably still crap on pc.
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Two HDR10 televisions - a Samsung KS8000 and (more recently) an LG C1. Both have the same issues. Colors are noticeably more dull than the normal non-HDR color scheme and some menus and load screens are overly bright. Like the gamma setting for them was different. Oddly, going between DX11 and DX12 changes things even more. DX11 looks better, but is still not quite right. DX12 is bordering on broken, though. It isn't as extreme as games where HDR is totally borked and non-functional, a la The Medium and later patches of ME: Andromeda. It just looks off. It's also one of the few games that has its own implementation of HDR and doesn't use the Windows 10 HDR toggle.
 
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the DLC is now available on the Epic Store...so you can download it for free for the next 5 days (although the listing on the Epic Store says the promo will last until August 25th)
 
I'm running some Mortal Shell Twitch streams to claim some exclusive rewards (weapon skins, glimpses etc)...I'm just going to leave them running in the background with the audio muted
 
Hopefully I'll have some time to play this tonight. I'm pretty pumped to revisit this game.
 
polonyc2 said:
I'm running some Mortal Shell Twitch streams to claim some exclusive rewards (weapon skins, glimpses etc)...I'm just going to leave them running in the background with the audio muted
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I got 4 of the rewards from the Twitch streams thus far...1 more to go...first time I've ever done one of these Twitch drops...seems painless enough, I don't even watch the streams...I just leave it running in an open tab of my browser with the audio muted

Mortal.png
 
How does the new DLC work exactly? I see that you have to unlock the Virtuous Cycle via a conversation...but is that just the roguelike portion of the game or something else? If I just play through the game normally, is the new content normally accessible?
 
Domingo said:
How does the new DLC work exactly? I see that you have to unlock the Virtuous Cycle via a conversation...but is that just the roguelike portion of the game or something else? If I just play through the game normally, is the new content normally accessible?
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sounds like the DLC is basically a sort of NG+ mode...same exact areas with more enemies and new powerups...
 
Have kicked off a new playthough this morning. I almost forgot how challenging the first main boss is. He's really simplistic, but you don't have a lot of room to work with.
It took a few minutes to get used to how quickly you can dodge/shell, but I think I have the timing again.

Was curious about the the weird HDR in the game and came across this: https://www.reddit.com/r/MortalShell/comments/o685wq/hdr_not_working_correctly_on_pc/
Not really a shock considering it didn't work at all for months and how janky it looks now. I'm actually a little surprised they didn't just pull it. The game looks way, way worse and you'd never know if you enabled it by default like in most other games.
 
I find DX12 to have lots of stutter. Unsure if it's my system (only other DX12 game I play is Hitman 3 which is fine enough).
 
ghostwich said:
I find DX12 to have lots of stutter. Unsure if it's my system (only other DX12 game I play is Hitman 3 which is fine enough).
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Same. DX12 performance is a dog in this game, even without ray tracing. In DX12 there's always a little bit of a stutter/FPS-loss whenever there is lots of fog. That's like 1/2 of the game. In DX11 I can actually play this in 8K...well, at least 4K at 200% resolution render. That's with DLSS turned off, too. If I turn on DX12 and ray tracing, I can max out the other settings, but I have to set DLSS to "performance" and the resolution render to 1. Performance still dips, too. I'm not super far, but I'm wondering if ray tracing is even worth a damn in this game.
 
Yeah, after heading into the first dungeon and having my performance absolutely plummet, I'm going back to DX11 and a 200% render resolution. With DLSS "quality" - that setting is always still above 60fps and looks better than the other settings I tested out. Ray tracing just isn't that impressive and DX12 otherwise sucks.

EDIT: I'm also noticing lots of weird visual artifacts in DX12 mode and I think it might be related to DLSS. It doesn't do that in DX11 mode, even when set to "performance." Am guessing that (like HDR), some of this stuff wasn't fully baked but they put it in anyway.
 
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I found the new content. Well, at least the stuff I cared about - a new shell and new weapon.

You have to collect all of the other shells and weapons, which can be done relatively quickly if you know where to go. You don't have to clear the dungeons - just clear the bosses that hold the weapons at the start of each dungeon. When you do that, Hadern shows up in the Falgrim tower and you have to beat him in a 2-stage fight. He's actually somewhat challenging, so definitely be wary before just hopping into the fight with a ton of tar.

When you beat him, you get his shell and his katana/axe combo. You can swap between the katanas and axe by pressing RB and LB at the same time. The change isn't super quick, so don't try it in battle. The axe seems to be overly slow and isn't as strong as you might expect. Unless there's something I'm missing, I don't think it's all that good. The twin katanas are hell on wheels, though. They do big damage and don't use all that much stamina. You can just mash away and shred most enemies. They're really strong and my 2nd favorite weapon behind the normal 'ol sword...which I still love. Hadern's shell is a little bit like a "greatest hits" shell. The different abilities are pulled from your other shells and you can actually mix and match them. Stat-wise, it has a good mix of stamina and health, too. The only real catch is that it takes a shitload of tar and glimpses to maximize it.

I started tinkering with the roguelike stuff and I'm not a fan. All your gear is stock strength, so you're basically fighting random enemies with weak gear while trying to get better gear. I don't really get it. It's the same (small) map with powerful enemies and your gear sucks. I'd rather just play the normal game?

EDIT: I've completed a pass of the core game and it's basically identical to how it was, but with the new weapon and shell. I didn't really notice anything else major. I *do* really like the new weapon/shell, although I think they basically made them a little overpowered on purpose.
 
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Figured I'd try one last thing with this game before moving on. I tried the Exploit Protection/Flow Control fix that helps with stuttering in some other DX12 games. It seems to help with this game, too. Weird hitches don't seem to occur anymore. Performance isn't good, but it's at least steady.
However DX12 + RayTracing still has awful performance whenever you're in an area with fog and torches. It's mostly okay in the overworld, though. Even with a 3090, DLSS performance mode on, vsync off, and resolution render set to 100% I get around 45fps in the first cave. That doesn't factor in things like poison clouds and other effects, either. Plus, the blowing snow still looks weird and artifacted on the title screen. Taking DLSS to balanced or quality doesn't totally fix that, but they do look better. They also kill my FPS by about 25-30%. My conclusion is that DX12 + Ray Tracing doesn't fly at 4K unless you're shooting for 30fps. Plus, I think Ray Tracing might be what's causing the artifacting, too. Go with DX11 and feel free to crank the resolution render up, too.
 
This is free via the Epic store today. Even though it's pretty short, I'd still consider it to be one of the better Souls-like games...and it's tough to argue with a price tag of "free."
 
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