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a cool trick to avoid dying from decapitation in caves of qud is to grow extra heads. i recommend at least 2 extra. i've had as many as 4 at one time and having the spares is very handy for other things as well, such as wearing cool hats.
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Jun 21, 2021 20:54
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Not sure how great it is, but there is an interactive tutorial available in the workshop
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Jun 21, 2021 21:04
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Looks like roguebook devs or publisher saw the writing on the wall with all the negative steam reviews and made the DLC boss free. Seems extremely boneheaded of them to try release day game play DLC but guess they're learning their lesson. I liked the demo for roguebook but the DLC thing left a bad taste in my mouth. At this point I'll just wait a few days to see if there is a discount during the steam sale before I pick it up.
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Jun 21, 2021 22:03
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Harminoff posted:Not sure how great it is, but there is an interactive tutorial available in the workshop it's written by someone brought onto the dev team a few years back if it's the one i think it is. i haven't played it but knowing who made it i can almost guarantee that it's accurate and relevant information to help ease you into the world and the UI and what not but also not at all concerned with optimal builds or mechanical success in general lol e: yeah i just played it and it does cover "6 AV is a magic number for early game enemies" and some stuff about consumables but not much else of real substance Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jun 21, 2021 |
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Jun 21, 2021 22:27
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The One Weird Trick to early game Qud is to buy witchwood bark from the Elder of Joppa (or the village apothecary, if you’re in a random village). It’s dirt cheap and instantly heals you for 30ish hp with a chance to confuse. I spent an embarrassingly long time thinking healing items were deliberately rare and you were supposed to mostly only heal between encounters but nope, you can and should have a small stack of instant full heals while doing the early game quests.
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Jun 21, 2021 22:35
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i almost never use Witchwood Bark but it's mostly because Willpower was a borderline-useless dump stat for most of the game's lifetime, I really intensely dislike both UI fuckery as a balancing drawback and memory puzzles, and Teleportation was a guaranteed pinpoint-accurate escape from virtually any situation; why would you waste a turn healing in a situation you don't want to be in when you could just not be in that situation any more? the second point hasn't changed but the first is slightly less true and the last point is no longer true at all, so you should probably not actually follow my stubborn, irrational example here 
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Jun 21, 2021 22:39
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adebisi lives posted:Looks like roguebook devs or publisher saw the writing on the wall with all the negative steam reviews and made the DLC boss free. Seems extremely boneheaded of them to try release day game play DLC but guess they're learning their lesson. Same. The Deluxe Pack only becomes $2 or so cheaper right now anyway, and that was $5 on top of the base game price. I'm not paying £20 for Roguebook, so they'll have to wait for a sale to get my cash if I deign to give it to them again.
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Jun 21, 2021 22:50
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Has anyone aged The Last Spell? Usually I avoid early access games but this one looks right up my alley.
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Jun 22, 2021 01:26
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Your Gay Uncle posted:Has anyone aged The Last Spell? Usually I avoid early access games but this one looks right up my alley. yeah I've basically 100%'d it at this point Things to note: The game seems extremely hard at first but that's because almost everything you can build is locked behind metaprogress. You'll have all the important stuff after 3-4 runs, but those runs are essentially doomed. This is an annoying way of doing metaprogression, but getting all the stuff that matters happens quickly enough that it's not that egregious. You can win the game using any weapons you feel like but melee weapons are significantly more difficult to use than magic or ranged because enemies will actually be able to hit your guys. It's very easy to get ahead of the game's economy if you min-max setting up all your gold and material generation buildings in the first couple of days, leading to you having far more than you need of either by the mid game. The mist mechanic is essentially just a 3 worker tax every day to push it back using the Seer building, because enemies are invincible inside of it and will attack on the same turn that they move out of it. Letting the mist get close enough and enemies will be able to walk up and hit your walls before you have a chance to attack them. The most effective use of materials is to build a full wall and then just spam ballistae, which are extremely useful because they fire between enemy movement and enemy attacks and can't miss. Stunning isn't especially useful because basically every important enemy is resistant to it. Debuffs and poison, on the other hand, are extremely powerful because there is no such thing as poison or debuff resistance and they can all stack infinitely, and even missed attacks will still apply them. The same applies to enemy debuffs on your heroes. The fairly common archer enemy applies a -1 move penalty every time it attacks. Fortunately there aren't any enemies that can poison. As it stands, I think it's a lot of fun, and the core gameplay is great. It just needs work. More maps, tweaking some combat stuff, and adding some depth to building defences would all be huge improvements. It's early access and they've got a roadmap that seems to include most of that, so I'm very optimistic about it.
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Jun 22, 2021 02:53
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cock hero flux posted:It's very easy to get ahead of the game's economy if you min-max setting up all your gold and material generation buildings in the first couple of days, leading to you having far more than you need of either by the mid game. I started a run where I did this, and oh my god does it make a huge difference. The first few nights are easy to perfect with just 3 characters, and if you can get 10+ workers and 3 gold mines it's easy to max our your roster quick enough that you're able to stay at 0 panic for the first ~6 nights, which gives you this enormous amount of gold and materials. Between this and going full ballista over walls, it's really a night and day difference between this run and any I've done so far I'm still not sure if I'll win, since I still have a fair bit of stuff not unlocked (no Seer, which seems like it might cause problems), but there's definitely an income curve that you absolutely have to stay in front of if you don't want to death spiral
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Jun 22, 2021 04:50
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Your Gay Uncle posted:Has anyone aged The Last Spell? Usually I avoid early access games but this one looks right up my alley. Extremely good game, desperately needs more time in the oven because it has some (definitely fixable) issues that might ruin the experience entirely if you hate games wasting your time.
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Jun 22, 2021 04:53
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OtspIII posted:(no Seer, which seems like it might cause problems), Seer is very important because without it you will eventually end up with the mist close enough to your walls that every enemy will be able to attack on the turn that they exit it. This means that your walls will take continuous, unavoidable damage. Ballistae are nice but even a wall of them can't take down everything fast enough. You can slow them down a bit with a load of barricades but generally this is an unbelievably bad scenario to be in. Apocalypse 4 actually puts a much, much bigger dent in your economy since in it the mist advances at the same speed that it gets repelled, so you have to put the Seer up day 1 or accept it being right at your door for the entire game.
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Jun 22, 2021 06:35
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Just wanted to give a hearty recommendation to Vivid Knight: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1569090/Vivid_Knight/ It's a roguelike party builder, dungeon explorer, resource manager, gacha game. It's a really interesting mix of a bunch of different genres with a roguelike start from scratch every time system. There's some metaprogression as well, but it mostly just adds more stuff to the game, and is paced to be fairly quick. I've almost got everything unlocked at this stage. Game starts out pretty simple and the first few dungeons are a cake-walk as they introduce concepts, but then it ramps up difficulty significantly, and you really have to start using the different systems to their fullest in order to beat the bosses. It never felt unfair to me, although sometimes the RNG does bite you in the rear end with a run of favorable enemy luck or unfavorable player luck. All in all I've spent ~20hrs in the game and have enjoyed all of it. I've completed the final dungeons for both characters as well as some of the challenge dungeons that open up once you beat the final boss. There's still more challenge dungeons to complete (think of the challenge dungeons as StS ascension ranks) and I'll probably come back to them in the future. The game gets patched often as well with buffs/nerfs and small bug fixes (none of which have been game breaking btw). Anyway, would definitely suggest goons give it a look.
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Jun 22, 2021 07:32
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PotatoManJack posted:Just wanted to give a hearty recommendation to Vivid Knight: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1569090/Vivid_Knight/  This is all my experience as well. It's very fun and addictive.
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Jun 22, 2021 07:53
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I've had the Melee % prowess at 48/50 since like my fourth run or something in The Last Spell and just now completed it  I always wondered why there were no melee weapons with propagation and it just turns out I've been missing 2 of the weapon types for a long rear end time.
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Jun 22, 2021 08:01
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wait drat it has a gacha? gachas in non gacha games are a love of mine...
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Jun 22, 2021 08:51
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Snooze Cruise posted:wait drat it has a gacha? Kinda - there's different dudes that sell the game's equivalent of units / equipment in the dungeon, and when you refresh their inventory with regards to the units sellers, or when you buy from the equipment sellers, it's a roll in terms of what you can get so like mini gachas. You have to balance rolling for the unit/equipment you want with the amount of currency you have.
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Jun 22, 2021 10:16
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its like rolling for dudes in autochess
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Jun 22, 2021 14:01
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musing on why i disliked the last spell and roguebook. the trick to good metaprogression i think is to have it not count as necessary to game completion. i think binding of Isaac does a good job of this because even if the unlocks are op and ridiculous they count more as bonus whacky unlocks as you play than necessary to progress, and some of the muddy the pool as to maybe even just make it harder. hades pulls the same trick, ymmv, with linear statistical upgrades because I at least feel like I could have won at nearly any point, the runs aren't super long (especially failed ones) and honestly progress feels way more steady since it advances the narrative to lose so time never feels wasted. monster train feels the same way where the unlocks are just more ways to play the game and don't feel necessary. when you make your game about unlocking things to progress it feels a lot more like that's the entire point and anything that fails to do that sufficiently feels like wasted time. noita feels like the most straightforward roguelike experience in the modern age of them. you progress, you get better, or you die and you begin again and it's all about dealing with circumstance and making the most of what you get.
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Jun 22, 2021 14:32
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this is why I prefer objective/achievement style meta-progression of binding of isaac over Rogue Legacy style collect points every run meta-progression (frankly Rogue Legacy has a lot to answer for). one is about grind and spending points to reduce the grind the other is about getting good, exploring the game, and trying out alternative playstyles fez_machine fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 14:42
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fez_machine posted:this is why I prefer objective/achievement style meta-progression of binding of isaac over Rogue Legacy style collect points every run meta-progression (frankly Rogue Legacy has a lot to apologise for introducing). The last spell does both varieties, it has both achievement unlocks and points to spend. I don't like metaprogression generally(it's okay in the like, TOME variant where you're unlocking classes rather than features) but I can mostly tolerate it. The last spell's issue is that that a big chunk of the stuff it locks behind metaprogress is required to beat the game. Genuinely I think a fresh install run of Last Spell is impossible to win. You can't build production buildings, so you have no gold, materials, or equipment. Your heroes have terrible stats. You can't build a seer and the mist advances like it does on Apocalypse 4 so enemies will be spawning basically inside the city by night 4. You can't recruit more heroes so you're stuck with 3. You can't build traps, ballistae, watchtowers or walls that don't suck, and you start with 0 walls. It's completely hopeless. This is probably the point, but it makes the metaprogress feel like a total chore. The point of metaprogress like this is, I think, that you feel rewarded even when you lose. "I didn't make it, but oh I have these points or I got these unlocks so it wasn't a total waste of time". I don't really like that kind of system, but I understand it. This one, though, causes you to feel more like you have to unlock the ability to play the game. After a few runs you get all the necessary stuff and it becomes a more reasonable situation of unlocking small improvements or alternate equipment rather than essentials, but the bad taste sort of stays in your mouth the whole time.
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Jun 22, 2021 14:56
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Honestly what they should just do is after your hopeless first playthrough just unlock the mandatory stuff needed to win and justify it with some story thing.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:31
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I think something where you start out with the baseline, balanced game and then get extra stuff that makes you stronger is actually worse than having a long grind before getting to the real game. In the latter situation you have a bunch of tedium followed by a positive experience, which isn't good but is at least a one-time cost. In the former one you can effectively "graduate" from the challenge before you, personally, have improved, which is horrible.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:36
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Kchama posted:Honestly what they should just do is after your hopeless first playthrough just unlock the mandatory stuff needed to win and justify it with some story thing. I understand that they want the first run to be a forced loss, and that's honestly fine. But I feel like just the way the Mist works on a first run is enough to crater any new player by itself, without also requiring you to unlock the abilities to recruit more heroes, actually build defences, or have any resources whatsoever. It'd be fine for their story conceit to just have the Mist be in your face on the first run and then when you inevitably die God shows up, gives you the Seer and holds it back for you on do-overs. As is, it takes like 3 or 4 runs to get everything you need to reasonably win, which does not feel good at all.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:39
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I think something where you start out with the baseline, balanced game and then get extra stuff that makes you stronger is actually worse than having a long grind before getting to the real game. In the latter situation you have a bunch of tedium followed by a positive experience, which isn't good but is at least a one-time cost. In the former one you can effectively "graduate" from the challenge before you, personally, have improved, which is horrible. This exact thing is why I don't like metaprogress that increases player power at all. It's fine when it unlocks alternate playstyles, like classes or races or ships or whatever. But when it directly improves the power of the player then it's always either: A: your first several runs are hopeless because you are deliberately made too weak to succeed, and the path from losing to winning is mostly about bringing your power level up rather than your skill level. B: your first few runs are balanced and challenging and then your power level increases and the challenge evaporates until the game is a cakewalk without self-imposed restrictions. or both And neither is a good way of doing things.
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Jun 22, 2021 15:43
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Been enjoying SNKRX today. It's kinda like snake except each of your segments is a dude that shoots at the hordes of enemies. In run progression reminds me a lot Nova Drift in that you're given a bunch of random choices and plenty of opportunity to reroll if you don't like what you're given. There's dozens of units that play off each other in interesting ways. No metaprogression, just a series of higher difficulties that unlock after beating the previous one. It's only $3 on Steam and is getting weekly updates.
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Jun 22, 2021 16:58
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I did like the way that hades made the game easier. It was a very direct promise that bad players can finish the game eventually through metaprogression instead of dumb luck like in a more traditional roguelike. Actually, most people repress the memory but Tome has one of the worst metaprogressions of all games. The most annoying part of playing an angband style game is the management of vendor trash, and if you play tome on a fresh install it is one of the worst. Traveling to town to unload takes an annoying amount of time through the overworld and the complex town layouts, and you generate truly massive amounts of gear. Vanilla angband has a startup option to disable selling items in exchange for higher gold-drops. Tome has you unlock a chest of auto-selling and infinite inventory for the trash at some point, which makes the game playable. But before that it feels terrible. The only redeeming feature is that the chest is available in the run that you unlock it in, which should be the case for all metaprogression.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:06
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VictualSquid posted:I did like the way that hades made the game easier. It was a very direct promise that bad players can finish the game eventually through metaprogression instead of dumb luck like in a more traditional roguelike. Hades, Dead Cells, Gunfire Reborn, they all use the system of 'yeah, you unlock substantially more power with metaprogression, but you also unlock new difficulties that you want to climb up'.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:28
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VictualSquid posted:Tome has you unlock a chest of auto-selling and infinite inventory for the trash at some point, which makes the game playable. But before that it feels terrible. you unlock this permanently by killing the boss of the area the game starts you in this was literally 5 minutes of gameplay the first time i tried tome
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Jun 22, 2021 17:30
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cock hero flux posted:you unlock this permanently by killing the boss of the area the game starts you in I remember it as being significantly later. Maybe I started at a different location for several tries before getting there eventually.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:36
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cock hero flux posted:you unlock this permanently by killing the boss of the area the game starts you in Not quite. It's the extra boss of one particular starting zone of like 6 possible on a fresh save. He tends to run over people who try and fight him without coming back several levels higher than you'll be if it's your starting zone.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:40
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dis astranagant posted:Been enjoying SNKRX today. It's kinda like snake except each of your segments is a dude that shoots at the hordes of enemies. In run progression reminds me a lot Nova Drift in that you're given a bunch of random choices and plenty of opportunity to reroll if you don't like what you're given. There's dozens of units that play off each other in interesting ways. No metaprogression, just a series of higher difficulties that unlock after beating the previous one. It's only $3 on Steam and is getting weekly updates. I've been playing this a ton! It's very much DOTA Autochess meets Nova Drift. You're choosing how to build your snake and manage your gold while building out synergies to beat waves. Archers and Rogues are definitely the two easiest ways to win. I'm currently on NG+3 working on the rest of the achievements. The same dev also has an asteroids like game with a skill tree that looks like Path of Exile. It's ok for a couple of rounds, but not as fun as SNKRX. I definitely followed him on steam though since he seems to enjoy making games where you have crazy amounts of customization for a playthrough.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:42
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dis astranagant posted:Been enjoying SNKRX today. It's kinda like snake except each of your segments is a dude that shoots at the hordes of enemies. In run progression reminds me a lot Nova Drift in that you're given a bunch of random choices and plenty of opportunity to reroll if you don't like what you're given. There's dozens of units that play off each other in interesting ways. No metaprogression, just a series of higher difficulties that unlock after beating the previous one. It's only $3 on Steam and is getting weekly updates. I liked that one, but didn't you find it too easy? I beat the first run. Which is fine, I guess, but it just seemed nearly unloseable if you choose a decent group of types to upgrade, and towards the end you have tons of cash so you can just reroll the shop constantly to find those last few types you need to upgrade. I didn't go in with it with a defined plan either I had a basically random collection of types, just chose whatever seemed good and then fully upgraded them. Turin Turambar posted:Hades, Dead Cells, Gunfire Reborn, they all use the system of 'yeah, you unlock substantially more power with metaprogression, but you also unlock new difficulties that you want to climb up'. Roguebook is the same. I actually started beating it when I only had about 4 or 5 out of at least 20 metaprogression items upgraded. So it's pretty crucial to start introducing it's version of Hades' HEAT, modifiers that make the game tougher so it's more of a challenge. I couldn't really say if that's a good way to do it or not. I guess I don't love it. Either way I have gotten better at the game every run independent of metaprogression, just learning all the systems to the point that I iron out any possibility of mistakes. Anyways, I'm happy because I finally unlocked the last character, once I get a handle on them I'll probably put the game down for a bit.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:50
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Play posted:I liked that one, but didn't you find it too easy? I beat the first run. Which is fine, I guess, but it just seemed nearly unloseable if you choose a decent group of types to upgrade, and towards the end you have tons of cash so you can just reroll the shop constantly to find those last few types you need to upgrade. I didn't go in with it with a defined plan either I had a basically random collection of types, just chose whatever seemed good and then fully upgraded them. The NG+ modes make it a bit tougher with more enemy life and the special types come out earlier. On the flip side, you can add more units to your snake. I think I'm capped out at 10 at the moment.
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Jun 22, 2021 17:52
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Hades' metaprogression and difficulty progression was extremely boring, nothing of it really changed up much how the game was played at all, especially if you just did one PoP at a time. Didn't help much that it was always the same 4 floors and the same 4 bosses either (no, I don't count the furies as distinct enough to be different bosses) There was like one modifier that actually shook things up a bit, and that was pretty much it. Edit: Regarding the Last Spell discussion earlier, I feel that one thing The Last Spell does right is that it really makes every decision count. Everything you do matters, because the game is all about outscaling and outlasting your enemies, and I think this ties into some peoples annoyance with the first run (since that run specifically doesn't matter). Broken Cog fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jun 22, 2021 |
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Jun 22, 2021 18:02
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VictualSquid posted:I did like the way that hades made the game easier. It was a very direct promise that bad players can finish the game eventually through metaprogression instead of dumb luck like in a more traditional roguelike. I really like how Hades had both a curve where the player power went up over time, but also a curve where the game got harder that was truly central to the game (rather than feeling like bonus content). Having different "wins" for different player types is really smart
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Jun 22, 2021 18:02
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poemdexter posted:The NG+ modes make it a bit tougher with more enemy life and the special types come out earlier. On the flip side, you can add more units to your snake. I think I'm capped out at 10 at the moment. Yeah, I'm stuck at like NG+3 right now just because things get way tougher the higher you go. Also the fact that the dev is updating it like, every week means if nothing else it's fun to take another look every now and then.
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Jun 22, 2021 18:08
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Broken Cog posted:Hades' metaprogression and difficulty progression was extremely boring, nothing of it really changed up much how the game was played at all, especially if you just did one PoP at a time. Didn't help much that it was always the same 4 floors and the same 4 bosses either (no, I don't count the furies as distinct enough to be different bosses) If you count the weapons as metaprogression, which is probably the case, it looks a lot better. That's the most impactful element of the metaprogression, the weapons and the weapon aspects with honorary mention to the little badge things you get from characters for giving them nectar. Rest of the upgrades are fairly mundane, although they do help. Most action rogue type games don't give you that many weapon options, especially ones that are that different and especially when you include the aspects which actually can change things up quite a bit. Arzaac posted:Yeah, I'm stuck at like NG+3 right now just because things get way tougher the higher you go. Ah, okay, maybe it's kind of designed that way, to not be too challenging. I didn't even know that there was NG+ so I'll just look at it like I beat the first level and now need to try the second level.
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Jun 22, 2021 18:16
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i personally find hades' gameplay to be pretty boring, and the upgrades are generally not interesting or gamechanging like i'd expect from that style of roguelite. nothing to hint at insane combs like i'd find in isaac or StS. having each god's upgrades overwrite the other gods' is such a huge turnoff! are there unlocks that give more interesting upgrades? because i'm not really interested in playing more if i've seen the extent of the levelups/powerups available to me. if i wasn't willing to slog through witcher 3's same-y gameplay to see more story, i sure as hell won't do it here i've played like 7 hours and haven't found any interesting combos like in binding of isaac or slay the spire on another note, i bought roguebook because i want more sts-likes and MT hasn't done it for me, here's hoping
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Jun 22, 2021 18:24
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dis astranagant posted:He tends to run over people who try and fight him without coming back several levels higher than you'll be if it's your starting zone.
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Jun 22, 2021 18:27
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