Make combat more accessible

Even though this release, one of the major features is combat, it took me quite a while to get to the point where I could actually fight things. The main reason was the lack of weapons.

Here's what I did:
-Run up to the first creature I can fight and try to fist-fight it; am I even hurting it? It isn't reacting, there's no indication of it losing health, and I've been doing this for a while...
-Loot a chest that has an AXE in it (axe of prosperity). Now, this is a gathering tool, but surely can do some damage, right? So, I went and found some bandits. They all sort of just stood around awkwardly, so I double clicked one to initiate combat. Quite a while of whacking each other later, neither of us seemed to be effected. Does this axe not do damage?
-Run into every town, looking through chests to find a weapon. Ask people in town for weapons. Try to buy a weapon. Nothing.
-I read through all of the instructions and noticed there's a recipe for making a longsword. It's, like, a 10 step process and I don't know where to get all of the ingredients, and frankly I find crafting extremely tedious and cumbersome with the current UI, so I consider just not playing further.
-Finally I just decide to explore the last couple of dungeons, find the lich dungeon, run past enemies (I died a few times), finally finding a chest with an axe, bow, and polearm in it.
-I show my friend where the chest is, we team up, make our way through the dungeon and take down the lich.

I'm sure there are other ways of getting weapons (crafting being one). But seriously, I couldn't find them, and had to explore every other area and ultimately just run past a bunch of enemies to get to weapons.

Other minor gripes with combat in this release which I assume will be fixed, but which made getting into combat more awkward and confusing for this release:
-make it clear what types of equipables don't do damage. I would assume a big heavy axe like the axe of prosperity would do damage. This was weird and confusing that it didn't (and I just had to assume that the problem was what I was equipping, even though I had no real indication)
-you double click to attack, but if you leave swinging range, you have to double-click again; this is really annoying and confusing, I didn't know if I had stepped out of range and was waiting for the animation, or if I was even fighting anymore
-enemies don't react when you hit them. Was I doing damage with my fists? I had (and still have) no idea.
-do bows work? Do I need arrows? If I do, maybe tell me that I do.
-What does "SDD" on a weapon mean? Thinking of it now, I assume it means distance you can do damage from, since I noticed the ranged fire staff had a much higher value than the melee weapons. When I was playing last night my friends and I were referring to it as "Super Damage Dudes" and had no concept of if it was important or not.

 

Go loot the guard barracks. They have a weapon rack. Do it in single player if you have to. That's where I got my weapons.

 

That's great, and I'll tell any of my friends who get a chance to play that they can do that, but... how was I supposed to know that? I eventually found weapons, so actually obtaining one isn't an issue for me anymore. It's more that I'm concerned about how long it took me to get to the point where I could test out the main feature I was interested in testing (combat). I understand this is a test and not a full game, so some frustration is warranted, but I was ready to just give up before testing the new features because I couldn't figure out how to get my hands on a weapon. Testing isn't open for long, and I don't have infinite free time or patience. For testing purposes, it seems like it would be more efficient to make it easy to obtain weapons so people can engage in combat right away, instead of going on an awkward scavenger hunt, not knowing if there even are any weapons laying around.

 

I totally agree with you. I just wanted to help make it easier this time around, since any fix along these lines won't be done for this release.

I only knew from wandering around in previous releases.

I think this is an issue with a very simple fix that should be addressed before R5.