Roguelikes: I never met@progression I didn't like

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Roguelikes: I never met@progression I didn't like

Shadow Ninja 64: May 21, 2007; "I stood there, wondering why the puck was getting bigger...

and then it hit me."

I managed to unlock a couple of the characters, including the violinist. Her default shot is pretty nuts (spoilered for people who like discovering things themselves):

Each of the directions of the cross does something different when it lands on her.

Stay in place: Inflicts Fragile on herself (enables her Frostbite spell and powers up her starting artifact, probably other stuff I haven't found)
Move backward: 30 Shield
Move forward: a 60 damage shot straight forward
Move up: Generate 1 Trinity, enabling lots of cards much more easily than usual
Move down: Edit: This one fills your mana (at least to the base max of 3).

With enough mana regen, you can play a real patient game in a lot of fights and just generate a massive amount of shield while dodging things safely. It didn't save me against Terra though.

Shadow Ninja 64 fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Mar 29, 2020

# ? Mar 29, 2020 00:48

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 27, 2024 11:16

nrook: Jun 25, 2009; Just let yourself become a worthless person!

OSFE mechanics: What�s with the dark zones? On my last run, one of the three routes in several zones was dark red, and when I went on it it was labeled as a �dark� zone. It didn�t seem much different. The shopkeeper was out for blood, too, by which I mean she wanted me to pay for items in health instead of money.

Also gently caress the elite monster that wakes up after 10 seconds and spews lasers randomly everywhere. My run ended fast in zone 4 when those showed up.

I might throw together a thread for this game if no one else does. I don�t actually know anything about it though, so if someone else does, feel free to preempt me.

# ? Mar 29, 2020 01:01

Shadow Ninja 64: May 21, 2007; "I stood there, wondering why the puck was getting bigger...

and then it hit me."

The Reva fight on later floors (3 or further) makes me sad because it starts so easy and then she starts doing horizontal and diagonal bouncing purple things constantly and I die.

# ? Mar 29, 2020 01:23

goferchan: Feb 8, 2004; It's 2006. I am taking 276 yeti furs from the goodies hoard.

dis astranagant posted:

I haven't played since the demo but usually you want to be very picky about what cards you allow in your deck in this sort of game.

The real-time nature of this game makes this a much more interesting puzzle. When you've run through all of your cards, there's a delay while you "shuffle" where you can't play anything for a few seconds. There are passive items and spells that can provide beneficial effects when shuffling, but generally it's downside (it also reduces any shields you've built up). Also, I haven't quite figured out how much it's worth it, but as your deck size increases so does your mana regen rate and your shuffling speed (you can see the milestones for this on the right side of the deck building view) -- so there's definitely some advantages to sacrificing consistency.

I've given some more of the characters a solid shake and I think my favorite so far is Selicy. Her starting Ice Needle spell is really powerful, her default dash attack can do a ton of damage combined with frost stacks and occasionally get you out of a tight spot, and frost in general just has soooo many items that synergize with it. I usually take Zenith out the deck with the starting removal though, I just can't consistently nail the timing with that and the dash.

# ? Mar 29, 2020 15:23

Ciaphas: Nov 20, 2005; > BEWARE, COWARD

goferchan posted:

The real-time nature of this game makes this a much more interesting puzzle. When you've run through all of your cards, there's a delay while you "shuffle" where you can't play anything for a few seconds. There are passive items and spells that can provide beneficial effects when shuffling, but generally it's downside (it also reduces any shields you've built up). Also, I haven't quite figured out how much it's worth it, but as your deck size increases so does your mana regen rate and your shuffling speed (you can see the milestones for this on the right side of the deck building view) -- so there's definitely some advantages to sacrificing consistency.

I've given some more of the characters a solid shake and I think my favorite so far is Selicy. Her starting Ice Needle spell is really powerful, her default dash attack can do a ton of damage combined with frost stacks and occasionally get you out of a tight spot, and frost in general just has soooo many items that synergize with it. I usually take Zenith out the deck with the starting removal though, I just can't consistently nail the timing with that and the dash.

That first paragraph was what I was struggling with. I tried a deck of 4 to 5 yesterday, and it sort of worked but only because I got an artifact to buff my weapon shots. I spent so much time shuffling.

# ? Mar 29, 2020 16:01

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

I keep trying to fast-reload the shuffle by pulling LT when the shuffle bar hits that gap between the two card slots. (It doesn't work)

# ? Mar 29, 2020 16:10

Ciaphas: Nov 20, 2005; > BEWARE, COWARD

SKULL.GIF posted:

I keep trying to fast-reload the shuffle by pulling LT when the shuffle bar hits that gap between the two card slots. (It doesn't work)

lol loving same :hfive:

# ? Mar 29, 2020 16:10

Shadow Ninja 64: May 21, 2007; "I stood there, wondering why the puck was getting bigger...

and then it hit me."

I have yet to put together a successful full run, but I have unlocked everyone except for the Shopkeeper now, and I really appreciate how different they all feel based on their starting loadouts. So far I really like using the main character whose name escapes me, Violette, and Hazel. Gunner and Reva are pretty ok, too. I didn't like Selicy or Shiso much the time I tried them, and I need to give Terra another shot to decide if I like her emphasis on tile breaking.

# ? Mar 29, 2020 19:04

nrook: Jun 25, 2009; Just let yourself become a worthless person!

I beat One Step From Eden :smug:

I used Reva's default loadout, got the Shield Gen card early, and just built the Reva deck with 800 shields and shield throw. Game is good.

The Saffron boss fight is pretty funny. She just uses random spells against you, so the fight went wildly out of control early and I face tanked a bunch of cards. I'm not sure it's great game design but it was certainly memorable.

# ? Mar 29, 2020 20:41

Arzaac: Jan 2, 2020

The Saffron fight seems to be mostly Anima cards alongside Ragnarok, of all things.

I like it, it definitely reminds me of DarkMegaman from MMBN.

# ? Mar 29, 2020 20:45

goferchan: Feb 8, 2004; It's 2006. I am taking 276 yeti furs from the goodies hoard.

nrook posted:

I beat One Step From Eden

I used Reva's default loadout, got the Shield Gen card early, and just built the Reva deck with 800 shields and shield throw. Game is good.

The Saffron boss fight is pretty funny. She just uses random spells against you, so the fight went wildly out of control early and I face tanked a bunch of cards. I'm not sure it's great game design but it was certainly memorable.

Yeah, and I'm not sure if it happens every time but the one time I got killed by her, she spared me lol. Got a heal for 400 but otherwise no rewards -- pretty cute!

# ? Mar 29, 2020 20:53

Mithross: Apr 27, 2011; Intelligent and bright, they explored a world that was new and strange to them. They liked it, they thought - a whole world just for them! They were dimly aware that a God had created them, was watching them; they called out to him, thanking him in a chittering language, before running off.

goferchan posted:

Yeah, and I'm not sure if it happens every time but the one time I got killed by her, she spared me lol. Got a heal for 400 but otherwise no rewards -- pretty cute!

I've had the same thing happen with Reva, one time I lost to her and she just tossed a heal at me and said "Do the same to the next one you fight."

# ? Mar 29, 2020 21:08

Stanos: Sep 22, 2009; The best 57 in hockey.

Later saffron fights are kinda funny because there's so much poo poo going on and I've had multiple fights where she ends up doing a poo poo load of damage to herself because she makes dolls and accidentally nukes them or pushes them to where they'll get hit by her stuff repeatedly.

# ? Mar 29, 2020 21:20

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Do we have a Risk of Rain 2 thread cause man did adding a third dimension to that gameplay ever gently caress me up

# ? Mar 29, 2020 23:46

ConfusedPig: Mar 27, 2013

DACK FAYDEN posted:

Do we have a Risk of Rain 2 thread cause man did adding a third dimension to that gameplay ever gently caress me up

Here ya go: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3885847

# ? Mar 30, 2020 00:04

No Wave: Sep 18, 2005; HA! HA! NICE! WHAT A TOOL!

Kanos posted:

OFSE character rundown after a win and a bunch of runs to the end:

Saffron is your Megaman.exe and she's perfectly fine but I don't think she's actually that easy to play. She has no real focus, which means she can do any build you want, but not having a focus or a gameplan can actually make things harder, especially when you're new and don't know what everything does already so your brain will overload and you'll start loving up.
Reva is probably the best character to actually learn how to survive instead of flailing blindly - her heavy focus on shield generation means making mistakes with her is very forgiving, and her reactive playstyle means that you generally need to take a breath and pay attention to what enemies are doing, which means you slowly start learning how enemies behave instead of constantly being trapped in a state of sensory overload. She's my favorite character because she makes me feel like I have a big brain when I pretty much parry a boss to death.
Gunner is also a great character to play if you don't want to think while playing because his playstyle basically boils down to "hold down attack while shuffling your deck a lot". He got me my first win, which felt entirely unearned because I just leaned into doing 2549054009 attack DPS while frantically dodging and barely interacted with spells at all.
Selicey is a weird character. She's naturally set up to exploit the frost condition(unsurprisingly) and her attack lets her do some cheeky dodging that no one else can do if you time it well. I don't really have a handle on her yet.
Hazel is the TF2 engineer. You drop turrets and smack them with their wrench to make them godly. She's very intuitive to play and very powerful, and having the ability to make ultra durable deployables means you can cheese past a ton of dangerous enemy patterns by simply hiding behind your turret and wrenching away. My second favorite character to play and also not too hard to pick up. Her only real weakness is that she is loving terrible against enemies who break tiles or sit on your side of the map a lot, so try to get Terra and Selicey out of the way early before they become too much of a problem.
Terra is entirely married to the "break tiles" gimmick. She has a great but awkward to use attack, but her starting deck is really weirdly unfocused so it feels like she needs some luck putting together some of the better "break tiles" cards to really flex. Because she's so based on tile breaking she also requires a lot of forethought to play to avoid screwing yourself over, which can be overwhelming in later stages when you're trying to dodge bullet hell while also attacking. I like her a lot but she's super loving hard.
Shiso is gamebreakingly, disgustingly overpowered and is stupidly easy to win with. Literally all you need to do is play the game normally for the first couple areas until you build a nest egg, then you can start snowballing because his gun's damage is based on amount of money you have and you gain more money if you kill with it. You can easily end up with your pistol shooting for four digits per shot by the final zone if you play it right and get a little lucky, which means you can just DPS race everything down with no real dodging.
Violette is bizarre. Her main gimmick is that her attack plays a note, which deploys green tiles(of which you can pick one) on each side of her: forward shoots a 60 damage shot forward, up gives you a stack of trinity, down gives you a stack of fragile, and left gives you some shield. As for why you would want fragile, she starts with frostbite(gets turboboosted by fragile) and her artifact gives you half your fragile stacks as spellpower. She seems really goddamn good if you get into the flow of using her buffs and not getting hit, but she's definitely complex and is the character I've messed with the least.
Shopkeeper: I don't loving know because holy poo poo she is a hard boss that I haven't been able to beat.

Thanks for this write up. The gunner section made me try it out and I got a time slow in my first picks - it looks like gunner with time slow should be an instant clear for anyone if they're having trouble. You just have a deck of spells that you don't care much about targeting (+shield and +40 defense for 3 seconds are really good here) with timeslow then you mash Q and W while refilling mana with your laser. Everything melted with no effort, the only sketchy part was when I somehow had a dozen jams out of nowhere in my deck during the Shiso fight (I still don't know what happened).

That was the first time I'd gotten past world 4 too. I think making Saffron the default character was a bit of a mistake because she has too many options.

The game is really cool, it's a very fun take but it really seems designed for five card decks while everything about the game invites you to make big decks.

No Wave fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Mar 30, 2020

# ? Mar 30, 2020 01:15

Batigh: Dec 21, 2009

OSFE:

My first clear was with Saffron's first alternate loadout, specifically going for about the largest deck I could. The extra mana regen was extremely helpful; I don't know if that bonus is enough to make large decks as valid a choice as small ones, but it can work.

Final fight spoilers: Well, 'clear' as in I busted down the gate and then got wrecked in under a second by some angel hitting the whole field for a million damage. I think that counts.

# ? Mar 30, 2020 01:29

Shadow Ninja 64: May 21, 2007; "I stood there, wondering why the puck was getting bigger...

and then it hit me."

Kanos posted:

OFSE character rundown after a win and a bunch of runs to the end:

[*]Violette is bizarre. Her main gimmick is that her attack plays a note, which deploys green tiles(of which you can pick one) on each side of her: forward shoots a 60 damage shot forward, up gives you a stack of trinity, down gives you a stack of fragile, and left gives you some shield. As for why you would want fragile, she starts with frostbite(gets turboboosted by fragile) and her artifact gives you half your fragile stacks as spellpower. She seems really goddamn good if you get into the flow of using her buffs and not getting hit, but she's definitely complex and is the character I've messed with the least.[/list]

Great list, but a correction on Violette: She gets the self-Fragile from staying put after firing her weapon, and down fills her mana completely. I'm not super great with her yet, but two things that have felt good with her are going for Trinity cards since she can build that with her weapon and also going for lots of mana regen so you can just shield dance a billion times a fight.

# ? Mar 30, 2020 01:43

Mithross: Apr 27, 2011; Intelligent and bright, they explored a world that was new and strange to them. They liked it, they thought - a whole world just for them! They were dimly aware that a God had created them, was watching them; they called out to him, thanking him in a chittering language, before running off.

No Wave posted:

Everything melted with no effort, the only sketchy part was when I somehow had a dozen jams out of nowhere in my deck during the Shiso fight (I still don't know what happened).

Shiso's attack where he charges in and does a swipe will add jams to the bottom of your deck if it connects. At least I'm pretty sure it's that attack.

# ? Mar 30, 2020 01:47

No Wave: Sep 18, 2005; HA! HA! NICE! WHAT A TOOL!

Mithross posted:

Shiso's attack where he charges in and does a swipe will add jams to the bottom of your deck if it connects. At least I'm pretty sure it's that attack.

That makes sense. I got hit by that a dozen times somehow.

Just won using saffron for the first time, a generic flow deck with chrono... I got that op hostage spell power boost item at the start of the run and I was at like +13 spell power from it and I had other buffers too. My trinity cannon was firing for 25 damage per tick. It seems like you can use your spells tactically at the start of runs, but at the end you just have to have a deck where you can mash Q and W because you'll never bring the wall down in time otherwise.

No Wave fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Mar 30, 2020

# ? Mar 30, 2020 01:58

Artelier: Jan 23, 2015

Quick questions about One Step From Eden:

- How long is the average run?
- Can you save mid run? At least at the start of an encounter?
- How many characters per run?
- Is it really Battle Network plus Slay the Spire??????

# ? Mar 30, 2020 10:03

Mithross: Apr 27, 2011; Intelligent and bright, they explored a world that was new and strange to them. They liked it, they thought - a whole world just for them! They were dimly aware that a God had created them, was watching them; they called out to him, thanking him in a chittering language, before running off.

Artelier posted:

Quick questions about One Step From Eden:

- How long is the average run?
- Can you save mid run? At least at the start of an encounter?
- How many characters per run?
- Is it really Battle Network plus Slay the Spire??????

30-50 minutes is a good rough estimate
AFAIK it autosaves between encounters
Not sure what you mean here
it is, more or less

# ? Mar 30, 2020 10:20

Artelier: Jan 23, 2015

Good enough for me and am grabbing it now, thank you!

(Also I meant how many characters in the game overall, my bad)

# ? Mar 30, 2020 10:46

cock hero flux: Apr 17, 2011

got a combination of the 7 seconds of starting invincibility, bonus damage from fragile, and 2 copies of all enemies start fragile artifacts on shiso

went through the remaining 70% of the game without casting a spell, don't actually know what the final boss is like because they died during their monologue

gun

# ? Mar 30, 2020 12:43

Mithross: Apr 27, 2011; Intelligent and bright, they explored a world that was new and strange to them. They liked it, they thought - a whole world just for them! They were dimly aware that a God had created them, was watching them; they called out to him, thanking him in a chittering language, before running off.

Artelier posted:

Good enough for me and am grabbing it now, thank you!

(Also I meant how many characters in the game overall, my bad)

This post is a full list, so 9

Kanos posted:

OFSE character rundown after a win and a bunch of runs to the end:

Saffron is your Megaman.exe and she's perfectly fine but I don't think she's actually that easy to play. She has no real focus, which means she can do any build you want, but not having a focus or a gameplan can actually make things harder, especially when you're new and don't know what everything does already so your brain will overload and you'll start loving up.
Reva is probably the best character to actually learn how to survive instead of flailing blindly - her heavy focus on shield generation means making mistakes with her is very forgiving, and her reactive playstyle means that you generally need to take a breath and pay attention to what enemies are doing, which means you slowly start learning how enemies behave instead of constantly being trapped in a state of sensory overload. She's my favorite character because she makes me feel like I have a big brain when I pretty much parry a boss to death.
Gunner is also a great character to play if you don't want to think while playing because his playstyle basically boils down to "hold down attack while shuffling your deck a lot". He got me my first win, which felt entirely unearned because I just leaned into doing 2549054009 attack DPS while frantically dodging and barely interacted with spells at all.
Selicey is a weird character. She's naturally set up to exploit the frost condition(unsurprisingly) and her attack lets her do some cheeky dodging that no one else can do if you time it well. I don't really have a handle on her yet.
Hazel is the TF2 engineer. You drop turrets and smack them with their wrench to make them godly. She's very intuitive to play and very powerful, and having the ability to make ultra durable deployables means you can cheese past a ton of dangerous enemy patterns by simply hiding behind your turret and wrenching away. My second favorite character to play and also not too hard to pick up. Her only real weakness is that she is loving terrible against enemies who break tiles or sit on your side of the map a lot, so try to get Terra and Selicey out of the way early before they become too much of a problem.
Terra is entirely married to the "break tiles" gimmick. She has a great but awkward to use attack, but her starting deck is really weirdly unfocused so it feels like she needs some luck putting together some of the better "break tiles" cards to really flex. Because she's so based on tile breaking she also requires a lot of forethought to play to avoid screwing yourself over, which can be overwhelming in later stages when you're trying to dodge bullet hell while also attacking. I like her a lot but she's super loving hard.
Shiso is gamebreakingly, disgustingly overpowered and is stupidly easy to win with. Literally all you need to do is play the game normally for the first couple areas until you build a nest egg, then you can start snowballing because his gun's damage is based on amount of money you have and you gain more money if you kill with it. You can easily end up with your pistol shooting for four digits per shot by the final zone if you play it right and get a little lucky, which means you can just DPS race everything down with no real dodging.
Violette is bizarre. Her main gimmick is that her attack plays a note, which deploys green tiles(of which you can pick one) on each side of her: forward shoots a 60 damage shot forward, up gives you a stack of trinity, down gives you a stack of fragile, and left gives you some shield. As for why you would want fragile, she starts with frostbite(gets turboboosted by fragile) and her artifact gives you half your fragile stacks as spellpower. She seems really goddamn good if you get into the flow of using her buffs and not getting hit, but she's definitely complex and is the character I've messed with the least.
Shopkeeper: I don't loving know because holy poo poo she is a hard boss that I haven't been able to beat.

# ? Mar 30, 2020 12:48

Helical Nightmares: Apr 30, 2009

Found a roguelike that is new to me. Free.

Caverns of Xaskazien II

https://virtua-sinner.itch.io/caverns-of-xaskazien-ii

quote:

Game Features:
- A rich, graphical game, with loads of animation and dynamic, coloured per pixel lighting.
- An exclusive orchestral soundtrack created for the game by professional film scorer, Dave Coleman.
- A full sound environment with close to 1000 unique sound effects, volume keyed to the source�s distance from your character.
- An intuitive keyboard and mouse interface.
- An easy to understand UI that ensures all information any player could want on any topic is only a mouse hover away.
- 300 visually distinct monsters, each with a dozen+ variants (including named boss types), and robust AI that differs by monster intelligence level. Summoning and Charm methods allow you to raise your own monstrous army to fight for you, too.
- Merchants and NPCs to deal with, as well, each of which can run afoul of the monsters, just like you.
- More than a hundred unique booby traps for the unwary, most of which may be set by players to ensnare monsters, too.
- 125 base weapons and 75 base armour pieces, each with thousands of possible enchantment combinations and legendary variants.
- Hundreds of unique magic items, mundane items, potions, scrolls, staves, wands, rods, food items, etc.
- More than 200 unique spells.
- Play as either sex in any combination of 38 Classes and 13 Races, and customize your character as you see fit through the upgrading of both Attributes and Skills.
- A new Religion system in which you vie for the affections of dozens of gods and goddesses, and where you can devote yourself exclusively to one of 13 different religions.
- Procedurally generated dungeons utilizing multiple methods of generation to create caves, structured areas, labyrinths and even forests, supplemented by occasional pre-generated dungeons called Legendary Lands.
- Hundreds of unique environmental features to interact with and use to your tactical advantage (or detriment).
- Both random and scheduled special Events to mix up gameplay.
- A comprehensive user's manual in the docs folder.
- All for the low, low price of free

Helical Nightmares fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Mar 30, 2020

# ? Mar 30, 2020 20:19

Memnaelar: Feb 21, 2013; WHO is the goodest girl?

Is there ANY story development in OSFE? I like it but the way it just throws you into things with no context is a bit off-putting. Even Slay the Spire tries a little harder with its world-building...

# ? Mar 30, 2020 20:49

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

Helical Nightmares posted:

Found a roguelike that is new to me. Free.

Caverns of Xaskazien II

https://virtua-sinner.itch.io/caverns-of-xaskazien-ii

That looks pretty cool, I'll check it out when I'm bored with SLASH'EM again.

# ? Mar 31, 2020 00:34

DrManiac: Feb 29, 2012

lol OSFE's first patch is basically just a bunch of nerfs.

# ? Mar 31, 2020 01:58

cock hero flux: Apr 17, 2011

DrManiac posted:

lol OSFE's first patch is basically just a bunch of nerfs.

and yet somehow the power of gun remains unchecked

# ? Mar 31, 2020 02:35

SKULL.GIF: Jan 20, 2017

DrManiac posted:

lol OSFE's first patch is basically just a bunch of nerfs.

The notes mention that there's something coming soon for "helping slower players", and that they're looking at making lategame "more strategic". Looking forward to these two changes, I can barely make it past Stage 5-6 before getting overwhelmed.

# ? Mar 31, 2020 02:35

Artelier: Jan 23, 2015

So an hour in OSFE and...I feel like this game is way too fast. I know it's been a while since Battle Network, but this game FLIES. Warning signs of where shots are going seem to practically be window dressing.

One more hour before I decide to keep or not!

# ? Mar 31, 2020 03:50

No Wave: Sep 18, 2005; HA! HA! NICE! WHAT A TOOL!

I've won with every character except Shiso at this point (ok and shopkeeper, I havent unlocked her)... Shiso's starting spells are so god awful and trying to actually get execute off is not fun.

The optimal strategy, at least for beating the neutral path, is to just pick every spell that you can use without looking and then just hold down Q and W. Shield in general is a very very overpowered mechanic, as is every single 0 mana card (especially viruspell). So by world 5 you're just blowing up the entire enemy screen and gaining 150 shield every five seconds and dodging the few attacks they get off. There are a few things you just have to learn, like bosses, but you should have an ok handle on them eventually (do ice and ruins early in your runs because Selicy and Reva are monsters later on, Gunner is the perfect last boss because he's very easy and Saffron doesnt scale that much so save fire for last).

# ? Mar 31, 2020 04:07

Stanos: Sep 22, 2009; The best 57 in hockey.

Holy poo poo I got an early homing missile launcher on gunner and nothing else mattered. Who cares what cards I pick up when I'm just going to take any shuffle abuse I can get until I get slow time or anything that just coats the other side so I can keep running around like an idiot and still doing damage. The boss was a complete joke. Easiest run I've ever had.

# ? Mar 31, 2020 04:07

cock hero flux: Apr 17, 2011

No Wave posted:

I've won with every character except Shiso at this point (ok and shopkeeper, I havent unlocked her)... Shiso's starting spells are so god awful and trying to actually get execute off is not fun.

Shiso is balanced by his atrocious starting point, yes. His starting spells have basically zero synergy, are bad in a vacuum, and are completely disconnected from what he actually needs, and his gun is quite weak early on because of its big windup and poor damage.

Here's what you need on Shiso: shields, roots, and reliable damage. Here's what you start with: a 4 range shot that has enough of a windup that things move out of the way of it all the time, a 4 range slash that likes to make you run into things that hurt you, the world's least reliable root, and align, which I have taken to removing at the start of runs because it basically doesn't do anything. And you can't go to shops because spending money removes your only advantage, the snowball potential of the revolver.

So, here's what you should do to get rolling. First, set your focus to Phalanx. This will get you the shields that you need to make up for the fact that you have no damage mitigation and a smaller health pool, and if you're lucky you'll be able to pick up Counterstrike or Shield Beam and have some damage that isn't super awkward. Second, grab anything you see that has a root effect on it. Your primary concern once you're happy with your shields is making sure things stand still so you can shoot them. As long as you can kill something with 3 shots or less, you've made a net gain, although obviously 1 is the ideal. Third, once you have shields and root, pick up something that applies Fragile to enemies. You basically don't want any spells that don't either root enemies, apply fragile, or mitigate damage, with the special exception of the money cannon for obvious reasons. If you make it to late game your spells will account for basically 0% of your DPS, and your strategy is going to boil down to forcing enemies to sit still while you shoot them and tank all of their attacks.

Artifacts are pretty much the same: you want to mitigate incoming damage and apply Fragile. Anything offensive that doesn't apply or enhance Fragile or root enemies is pointless. The best one is the one that makes you start fights with 7 seconds of invincibility because later on that's about how long fights last, bosses included. The ones that make fragile 2x and automatically apply fragile to all enemies are also very useful. And obviously anything that increases your money gain is helpful as well, and if you run into the ones that just give you 100 money in the first couple of worlds you should strongly consider just grabbing it.

cock hero flux fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Mar 31, 2020

# ? Mar 31, 2020 04:33

No Wave: Sep 18, 2005; HA! HA! NICE! WHAT A TOOL!

I just went again and did a generic anima + phalanx 30 card build and ignored his E and he's done now. why bother building around doing 1k damage with his E when I can do faster damage just spamming Q and W. Maybe I'll have to learn him in higher ascensions or something but I'll probably just stick to his alternative loadout if I get that far.

Basically in the late game I just mashed my face on my keyboard and the characters' distinctions only really came into play early on (I liked Violette a lot for this reason - her abilities are really impactful early game then don't do much late game when they no longer matter).

Gunner is just broken. Hazel was somehow really easy and I still don't understand why it worked.

No Wave fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Mar 31, 2020

# ? Mar 31, 2020 04:48

dis astranagant: Dec 14, 2006

Maybe I'm starting to get the hang of this

Made it to the 7th area as hazel after struggling to get past 3 with anyone for a good while. Shouldn't have let Selicy live that long. Did hexawan + phalanx and spammed the hell out of shields.

# ? Mar 31, 2020 10:31

cock hero flux: Apr 17, 2011

No Wave posted:

why bother building around doing 1k damage with his E when I can do faster damage just spamming Q and W.

Well, firstly because it's more like 4k if you do it right and you're almost certainly not putting out 4k every second without it. You can kill final bosses during their opening monologue. Secondly, because if you don't they you're essentially just playing a guy who has terrible starting spells and a bad weapon, and you might as well play someone else whose starting point isn't as bad.

# ? Mar 31, 2020 11:23

leper khan: Dec 28, 2010; Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.

I beat shopkeeper on my first try, but can't get closer than a mile from Eden

Game is good, but I like mmbn more. Feels like the dev fell into the trap of playing the game too much.

# ? Mar 31, 2020 12:20

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 27, 2024 11:16

A Strange Aeon: Mar 26, 2010; You are now a slimy little toad; The Great Twist

leper khan posted:

I beat shopkeeper on my first try, but can't get closer than a mile from Eden

Game is good, but I like mmbn more. Feels like the dev fell into the trap of playing the game too much.

What trap is that? Like they played it so much that they balanced it to be very difficult?

# ? Mar 31, 2020 12:50

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Roguelikes: I never met@progression I didn't like

«‹›1520 »