What mode do you play on?

I just resently won my first runthrough on GRPD after 78 gamehours, 20 of which were afk time cooking dinner and came to wonder what mode people play Dredmor on.

Personally after the GR run I think I prefer Dwarven Moderation because it feels more lighthearted when you arent close to death constantly. Also, Permadeath is obligatory for me because it just doesnt feel like a Roguelike without permadeath


And lastly, a screencap of my glorious 400-surplus-mushrooms victory!

 

I usually play Dwarven Moderation, usually without Permadeath because I get so mad after my char of 5-10 hours dies to my stupid mistake (traps, bad move, radiance + brax, etc).

BUT I do feel like the game is much better balanced on Going Rogue. It seems to me like that is how the game is truly intended to be played-- in DM I always have too much food/ammo/other items, way more than I actually need to get to Dredmor. In GR it is so perfectly balanced and it's always a challenge, not just a kill-fest like in DM. This challenge, however, would make me even more mad if I had permadeath on.

 

After playing a while in Dwarven, I've got stuck with the aim to finish GRPD mode. I've found a pretty decent mage build, and if don't get killed in the first two levels, I usually manage to kill everything with little effort. The problem is that I die for stupid things. Last ones where:

Died because I was half health, opened a door, and a uberunique pumpkeen critical slashed me.
Died because mousewell changed my Psi-shove to healing crystals the moment I clicked, resulting being perforated by two stealth diggles at low health.
Died because on killing a commander, his underlings spawned right on me. Of course, they where heavy hitting slimes.
Died because froda's jump got me from being cornered by robos, right in the mouth of a eel.
I don't even start to count the number of times i got killed by a trap because I get too hasty >.<

 

Bummer. A build which works great for me on GRPD is
Bloodmage for mana regain primarily and later on the phylatics
Archaeology for the Museum skill primarily
Pyromancy for summon and Tactical Fire
Mathemagics for the Recursive Curse and teleportation (could also use dodge here)
Psionics for the healing spell and psychic push
My last skill was mushroom farmer but I used it so little to be honest that I would much rather have had Golemancy for the wall summon and the Thermites which allow you to take down zoon in no time at all.

 

I use:
Pyromancy: main hitter, from dragon breath to obvious fireball. I don't use the dragon because I hate the slowiness of summoned's attacks.
Mathemagic: Mainly for the unbelievably useful teleport and for high fire-resistent baddies.
Psionics: Healing, shove, and two of my favorite spells. Nerve Staple and Pyrocinesis.
Bloodmage: Mana regen. From char level 5-6 I can already ditch all boozes.
Leywalker: Extra regen bonus and the handy Tahumaturgic tap. (I'm considering trying to ditch this in favor of Astrology, for extra res)
Archeology: Extra xp from useless items and traps.
Alchemy: Some stat boost and early good staves.

 

I play it on the dumbass mode, NTTG unselected and with Permadeath off.

 

I don't recall a Dumbass mode. Perhaps you should play on Elvish Easy instead. Seems more fair than a Dumbass mode.
I do play on Elvish Easy without Permadeath, because, I don't care what Dwarf Fortress says, dying is not fun.

Or maybe it's because I was never really good at Roguelikes without Debug/Wizard mode.

 

I would pay money for a Dumbass difficulty. It would do totally weird things, like spawn a whole room full of Mysterious Portals or create regular Diggles as named enemies on DL12. The achievement for winning on Dumbass could unlock the Donkey equipment!

 

I usually play on GRPD (Permadeath; Going Rogue), but that's just for casual gameplay.
When testing things, I play on Dwarven Moderation, and I turn Permadeath off if I'm trying to test something that triggers on death.

 

I play on Dwarvish Moderation, Permadeath, cause if I played GR, I would die within the third room, and I feel like I'm cheating without PD.

 

Quarky, it's not really cheating though. It's like playing this game normally, instead of as a Roguelike. It can do both.

I have tremendous respect for people who can beat it on Going Rogue Permadeath though.
"I usually play on GRPD (Permadeath; Going Rogue), but that's just for casual gameplay."
This is not what I would call casual at all. I'm just saying, doesn't seem like anything challenges you at all. Perhaps if you were to fight the 3rd Panzer Division, that would be a fair fight against your skills.

Me too. And you made me laugh.

 

I only ever play GR, but never PD nor NTTG. I like to save often and if I am not paying attention and die due to stupidity I reload rather than restart. If I die due to a fair reason that does not involve an obvious and stupid choice of mine, then I delete the save. And if the rest of you agree, this is what I will refer to as "Dumbass Mode".

I like the term. So many really stupid deaths. So many poor choices. From eating quality belts so I am stuck with the garbage one I was swapping, to walking out of a area of effect damage cloud instead of properly teleporting away. From walking onto a trap instead of casually walking around it, to melee against a Muscle Diggle as a mage... Dumbass mode saves my dumb ass every time.

(Belt eating does not kill you, but I can kill the process and reload in Dumbass mode.)

 

First game I played was on EE w/o PD because I was scared of an unfamiliar roguelike the first time in I eventually beat it and decided it was, in fact, far too easy.

Played a few more chars on various modes (all PD though), playing around with the fun things like stealing from shops with Psi Shove and dying to silly things at level 5-7.

Then played on GR;PD;RotDG and, after spending more than a dozen chars dying in, literally, the first room with an enemy, I settled on:

Archeology ("This Translation is All Wrong" is really, really, REALLY powerful, not to mention selling Dark Artifacts for 9k XP...)
Psionics (That shove is insanely useful on the first 5-6 floors, and I didn't have a healing spell from another skill)
Smithing (Pork sword + Museum is pretty awesome!)
Burglary (Good god that lockpick skill is insane! It's also pretty awesome when you grab a free bolt of Mass Destruction from a Vendo on level 3 )
Axe Mastry (Nice to start with, relatively minor in late game)
Assassination (I think I topped 75 crit and 80 sneaky in late game...)
Thrown Mastry (Whopping someone for 150 damage with a baseball is highly amusing)

And that won out.

Now I'm playing around with skills I wouldn't normally think to take and hitting random a lot. I think this build might actually work nicely (fully random set):

Archeology, Smithing, Tinkering, Big Game Hunter, Fungal Arts, Promethean Magic, and Ley Walker

I think I'm only on DM;PD this time for the achievements, though.

 

Beat Dredmor once on Dwarven Moderation with PermaDeath. Since then, I always play Going Rogue with PermaDeath, and have never made it down to the final floor again (though I've gotten very close a few times).


EDIT: The above does not include various playtest runs, where I turn on the debug mode and blitz my way to the rooms I need to test. That's still usually done with permadeath, but the difficulty is variable depending on whether or not I need to know how hard the room is, or just checking to see if it loads correctly.

 

Hrm, I find myself alternating between DM and GR. Permadeath is a must, though... that never gets turned off, ever.

Typically, I'll think of a sweet new character build, and try it out in DM. Then, once it fails (or succeeds) there - or I get bored of it and stop wanting to progress further - I'll tweak the build and try it "for real" on GR.

 

GR always. Never permadeath though. Call me lame if you want. I just find it allows for better testing if something goes wrong. If I actually die due to a critical failure of the build or the character, I delete the save manually. PD is just like that, except it is deletion on autopilot. (And autopilot hates me.)

PD does not make the game any harder at all. It is nothing more than an option like turning off the sound effects and music. (I never have sounds or music.)

 

I find that having PD turned on changes the way I think about the game. If I have a way to escape a potentially nasty situation, even if it's technically cheating (or feels like it when you do it), then I don't have the level of paranoia that's needed to play well. I compensate for crashes by save and quitting every now and then and using most every staircase I run into (to trigger autosaves). I use Carbonite Online Backup, which automatically performs backups on new files immediately and automatically (based on internet usage) and versions them, so I could retrieve one if I *really* felt I got screwed.

 

PD with a backup is otherwise known as Save-Scumming in every last Roguelike.

Not that I disapprove. I just abstain from PD and it works out even easier.

 

GRPD, for the challenge. My nemeses are slime/gelatin monsters.

 

Someone mod this please.. that sound unbelievably brilliant!