Do people consider No Time To Grind to be harder?

Been playing the game for a while, but offline. I don't really know the community's opinions. I was wondering if people considered No Time To Grind option to be easier, as you have to fight less monsters to level, or harder as you get less loot and shops.
Or does it depend completely (or maybe only somewhat) on the build you were going? I play almost only NTTG now because i think the first few floors tend to be just that, a grind. Its usually, for me, survive until the first level up, then crush Floor 1. Crush 2, and see if your build works on 3. Or for some builds, be unstoppable by then till the last few floors.

 

NTTG is harder. But only due to lacking resources and experience.

 

"No Time To Grind" is harder. Full stop. But it is only harder because the progression is faster and thus you might be missing some resources (crafting becomes really unlikely without Perception to supplement it, though it still is doable) and you will need to adapt to things more quickly. But other than that, it's not really that hard - your level is the same, your equipment will be similar, and the enemies have no boost or anything of the sort.

 

NTTG is slightly harder.

*As mentioned, less crafting ingredients.

*Also less equipment overall. You'll reach floor 15 at about the same level as normal mode (and in much faster time), but you'll have seen about half as many items from artifact rooms and quests and such (and half as many Anvils to upgrade them). If you happen to find what you need, great! But it's a greater risk of getting 3 awesome pants and zero awesome gloves (or the wrong weapon type if you chose a weapon skill, or no crossbows til floor 7, etc). Even if you only *need* two shields/weapons, seeing twice as many will increase the chances of finding ones with bonuses that fit your build. Also if you Museum, consider the fact that if you find say 80 artifacts in normal and wear 10 of them, you can Museum 70 of them. NTTG you'll find about 40, wear 10 (maybe 8 or 9 if you failed to find a specific slot) leaving you with only 30-32 to Museum; even with the double XP that's less overall.

*Overkill experience. It's much easier to waste a couple hundred XP off of a Statue, miniboss, or Museum when it's doubled. So if a floor is worth say 7392 xp for both modes, the NTTG may get slightly less because he got cornered by a 1200 XP boss (normally 600) when he was only 350 from leveling. When XP comes in smaller chunks it's much easier to "Tetris" them into an exact fit. And as mentioned above, Archeologists have less Museums to throw around, so you might carry a big artifact around for a while until you level up normally and then it's finally safe to get the big chunk.

That said,

*It's faster. Kinda the point of the mode, it lets you try a bunch of new characters in one afternoon rather than slogging through twice as many rooms for the same-ish total reward.

*Ironically grinding is slightly improved. If both of you clear a floor, you'll both get the same XP. If you walk back through the floor to kill a couple of respawns to hit a new level before next floor, the "extra" monsters are worth twice as much. And if you have loot drops available (Perception, BGH meat, Vegan fruit, Clockwork scraps, Fungal Arts, or specific monsters like Diggle Chefs) you already have a reason to repeat a floor since you encountered half as many the first run (but then there's half as many "required" monsters to kill so in theory you should need half as many food/drink/shrooms/potions; but Dredmor will take the same number, and crafting recipes will take the same number, as the mode with twice as many).

...that was kinda convoluted but yeah. NTTG is slightly harder, moreso for crafters, but not by a whole lot, and it takes you half as long to die and try again so hey. If you're trying out builds and/or don't mind the extra challenge it's nice. If you've found a build you like and still don't have the GRPD achievement, it might be worth trying normal mode once; it will take longer, but you'll reach Dredmor with a better arsenal of artifacts, bolts, potions and other goodies.

...buuut if you keep dying by walking onto traps while you're half asleep, might stick to NTTG so you only lose 4 hours of progress instead of 8.

 

So.. Turbo's logic is that 1/4 of the map is 1/2 of the items. Seems legit.

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If in normal, your map looks like this:

####
##_#
#>##
##-#

In No Time To Grind, your map looks like this:

#>
_#

Because corridors etc don't spawn in a great manner, there's a chance that there are 1/6 of the rooms in No Time To Grind, if you're really unlucky with room generation. This also crushes the chance to find Inconsequentia, Krong Anvils and Lutefisk Statues.

You also can't craft a thing, since there's like 30 materials. If you can find 15 materials on one floor in No Time To Grind, the chance is really small that it's 6 gunpowder, or like 5 plastic ingots. Therefore, your best bet to get arrows and thrown weaponry is by taking Archery and spam the thrown dispenser drop. This also means it's pretty hard to craft armour and the like without Tech Scavenger (Clockwork Knight) or a similar skill (Lucky Drop).

Other than that, it's way faster progression for wizard builds. Your chance to die on the first floor is pretty much four times smaller.

 

Yeah. NTTG is great as long as you're not relying on equipment for the majority of your power. Crafters should avoid it, Rogues should avoid it. A straightforward warrior that doesn't choose any weapon skills (and thus uses anything he can find equally) often won't notice much different, and a caster that has all of his bases covered (i.e. can heal/mana replen/escape/and kill) will love NTTG for the faster leveling. Just watch for the 'XP overkill' that Turbo mentioned. It's great to reach level 2 by hacking 2 Diggles and performing a Heroic Vandalism, but it sucks to reach level 2 by killing The Baron and wasting 1,450/1600 XP from the kill.

 

Ranged rogues using Ninjutsu or Circus Freak as one of their skill trees are encouraged to ignore this advice.

 

Thanks for the responces, fellow Heros.

Also, there is quite a high chance that shops will not spawn on a level. Not sure if thats intended, but it does happen. Its mostly annoying because you have to back track to sell, i dont really mind the lower chance of being able to buy loot.

 

The worst thing is that I always get Brax spawned in line with a gargoyle.

 

overall it is a bit harder, but the early game climb is easier due to increased monster xp and especially dredmor statue xp.