DLC, free or not will be welcomed for the game though. It gets a bit dry after a day or two of playing, and that is a bit short for the genre. Still, the game surely has much Stremph.
Well, I think that one could have been solved if there were more active skills that interacted with monsters in a slightly unique way from each other, so that one would have to plan. As it is now you don't even need the entire skill bar to keep going, and items too are seldom used (heroism or regeneration potion for bosses, if they happen to be able to get to you, maybe some teleport scrolls alternatively). Of course, making something that would utilise that sort of thing and make items actually useful all the time without breaking the balance in a horrible way isn't the easiest thing ever, so that's another thing. Also, archers + teleport scrolls + some patience and a working brain = broken.
Grabbed this during the holiday sale, played 2 characters so far. First was a Fightermans who reached level 6 before trying an Evil Chest for the first time. Even scarier than Dredmor's! (I thankfully was pessimistic and ran back to the academy to turn in all my stuff before opening it hehe) Second was a Wizardmans who died to a bandit chief at level 3. My Alchemy lab is maxed already, Blacksmith has 2/1/1/1 upgrades, museum has a smattering of statues, Library has 3 books which as far as I can tell does nothing whatsoever. 9 stat point Strempth token things, which seem to be the most important by far (although the max alchemy lab is kinda nice because it's wide enough the NPC doesn't block your path as often when trying to walk to the blacksmith...). I won't complain (much) about the hidden information since as a Roguelike that's typically intentional, but some things that have jumped out thus far: *Barrels can only be melee'd, not killed with arrows or AOE fire spells. ~_~ *Dodge tooltip always says 0% regardless of dodge amount. Not sure if that's a tooltip glitch, a secret formula glitch, a weird design decision, or a lie. *Mana costs increase as you level up, but it appears mana regen does not? So you kinda go 1click555551click555551click555551click55555etc for the first dozen rats, then1click55555555551click55555555551click55555555551click55555555551click5555555555 for the next couple dozen because you still oneshot them but by getting "stronger" you have to wait longer for your suddenly-double-cost-spell to refill? And the only mana regen anythings I saw was one ring out of 15-ish that gave 75%, plus the secret birthtrait, plus potions. Hm. *Town prosperity just kinda seems like busywork. Have to walk to the farther towns for higher caps/discounts, turn in 1 crate to each one you care about per character, leave town+enter dungeon+leave dungeon+enter town for the inventory to change. Walking around the tables and armor racks and stuff to reach the shopkeeper is slow when you do it in 5 buildings in 3 towns after the dungeon refresh etc. There was also an upvoted suggestion on the Steam forums to add a little "4/5 Prosperity" or whatnot icon to the overworld map to speed things up slightly. *According to the Steam forums, trying to upgrade an upgraded item will delete it, but there's nothing ingame that tells you if an item was upgraded or a natural drop. *While the "insta-loot a trivial dungeon" feature is interesting (and gave me a book once! That I gave to the library to do whoknowswhat), there's nothing on the map to distinguish "cleared but you can still go inside and fight stuff" from "cleared and this was a fake clear so you can't go inside". Seems worthwhile to start several dungeons while at level x.99 before that last 1% permalocks them? Seems to be patching fairly often, so hopefully it will improve in the future. Things I like: *Humor *Wide open skill tree for character variety (although as mentioned in this thread, it looks like most characters will use the same 2-3 buttons a lot, and there's not many passives) *The "improve future characters" metagame was neat in Rogue Legacy, this one has the potential to be after patches. *Have not hit an inventory limit yet!
As far as library is concerned, it works KIND of the same way as the alchemy lab, giving you access to knowledge of scrolls instead of potions. The apparent lack of inventory limit is a mixed blessing. On the positive side, it's really easy to sell or scrap everything at the same time. On the negative side, it can be tedious to figure out if there's an actual upgrade among all of the gear that you pick up (barring frequent visits to your academy or a town to sell at). I haven't played recently so I haven't seen the updates. The deletion of doubly-upgraded items was not an issue back when I was playing it. I expect that I will pick it up again after the big content update towards the end of the month to at least see how the game has progressed. It's a fun game, but I've also grown a bit tired of it, so the game and I are having a trial separation right now. We'll see if the changes are enough to renew my interest in it.
Unless you are a penny-pincher, just get low-grade mana potions. The lowest ones give quite enough mana to keep on using them well after better ones become available, but their costs remain really low at 15 silver coins for a regeneration-type potion (“Flickering Mana Tincture”), at the point where one dungeon run that would cost you just a few of those (for convenience, pretty much) gives you many gold coins. On that note, it's the same with stamina. So an important part of not running out of it is knowing what monsters can be dangerous to you and thus require you to spend mana/stamina on them and what monsters can simply be whacked on the head with something heavy and then forgotten. Also, mana regeneration scales directly or near-directly with your mana capacity. So you can increase your mana regeneration if you stack mana capacity upgrades. I'll be blunt, don't bother with the 1-prosperity towns unless you have nothing to do with the inventories and just can't bear wasting them. In general, upgrading towns from 0 to 1 prosperity means that you'll still get better equipment drops in the very first dungeon, and depending on your luck the town may instead stop selling cheap potions and scrolls that you will want to have; seriously, outside of fighting champion monsters, for which you either spam everything and use teleport scrolls, or alternatively use champion potions (all of which are still low-grade stuff), you don't really need higher-tier consumables until much later. Instead, go for the 3-prosperity or higher towns and upgrade those. The jump to a value that high should make it so that they sell items that actually can be useful, and you won't have to jump all around the map like a scared chicken to get some minimal upgrade that might not even help you the way it happens with 1-prosperity towns. There is a chance, I don't know how high (but it raises gradually) for an item that had been upgraded with a hammer to get destroyed if you use another hammer on it. From my experience it is generally safe enough to first use scrolls and then a hammer or even two. The point is, the more enchantments an item has, the higher the chance of failure, but I don't know whether it counts total enchantments or only those you added ... then again, I'd also played it safe at no more than 2 hammers per item and I never really had an item destroyed that way. Worthwhile for supposed experience, but generally fairly boring in comparison because it's a slog. So it's a matter of personal preference and if you always do it the same way you shouldn't need markers to know. But yes, would be nice to get those. Me, I generally like the feature. To be honest, I'd rather go ahead, fight something challenging, and have another character die, than spend that time going through dungeons when nothing can hurt me and I don't even have to use special skills. Sure, I guess it might be useful for farming proofs of whatever-it-was, especially if you have the increased champion spawn perk, but for me there's no other point in doing runs in dungeons that are below my power level. Oh, and while I'm at it ... The chance to dodge depends on how high your dodge rating is compared to your level. I don't know about you and your build, but my dodge rating never got to 0%, and most of the time (that is, from the time when I actually get some usable armour to equip) is actually quite high.
Updates! Third character is a Rangermans, his dodge chance is higher than 0. Apparently you can only get it with multiple pieces of medium armor or something. (oh and do you know offhand what happens if you have a Medium and a Real piece equipped? Does that enable both actives, or shut both down since you're not "pure" etc?) Found weapons from my two dead characters. The mage's "sword" (he had a staff when he died...) came out of a random Trivial instaloot dungeon *near* the Bandit camp where he died, gave +1 to all stats and a little xp. The fighter's axe was on the exact floor of the exact dungeon he died in, gave a bunch of xp, +2 stats, and is Vault-able! Also found a 9 Prosp town that finally had some 3 star gear. It's pretty far from the academy, as in there's usually several Dangerous random encounters while walking to it, but maybe once it rerolls a few times I might get a new bow! (Been using the same one since level 1...nothing has dropped, 5 prosp towns have nothing,etc). The ranger AOEs interact oddly with Barricades; the Multishot stance will waste arrows on them (but also allow you to shoot a barricade and "bonus shot" a real enemy that's out of normal arrow range), while the 5x5 square volley thing ignores them (but if multishot is active, a single bonus arrow might hit one). Also the Banners don't seem to effect Barricades at all...but they will add a line to the combat log, for each one, EACH TURN. XD Edit: Oh also Library upgraded at 5 and 7 books, but not at 9. *shrug* Love the librarian's dialog ^_^
For what its worth, this is based on past experience, not on the most current version of the game. But I remember it was kind of odd. It seemed to depend on which armor was 'real' and which was 'medium' as to what was active. There was no way that I saw where both actives were available -- it was either just one or neither. I don't recall what combination caused neither to be available, but you could do an experiment. Nothing is really lost by creating a sub-optimal character then purposefully killing him off. It was probably something like 'one piece of X, and you can still have actives for Y, 2 or more pieces and you can't do either'. But I can't actually recall for sure how it worked. As I said, I DO know that it was never possible for me, at least with everything I tried, to get it so that I could use both actives. I know what you are talking about with regards to Barricades, and yes, they are quite annoying.
Don't need full armour but I don't know how much it actually requires as it's been some time since I played a medium/real armour dungeonman (the last few were either pure medium or cloth quickly reclassified as medium). I think it's the chest piece that's counted, but other armour pieces might be counted too and I wouldn't know right now. Actually, it's the act of finding the death place that gives you the stat bonuses, not picking the weapon up. Same result in the end, but yeah. And in general, characters' death places are found on the exact floor of the exact dungeon where they died ... which sucks for me because my last 2 characters died in the hall of champions. Oh well ... Also, the weapon isn't actually any weapon the character ever had, but just a random drop with some added flags ... but you probably figured that out already. Yeah, that sucks then. But then again, for rangermans bows aren't all that important in most cases. If anything, they are the boss-killing and champion-killing weapon (so any bow with the “chance to freeze in place” bonus or the “+2d6 starlight damage” does the job, for the most part, since you have skills) and normal monsters can be killed in melee (just spend 1 point on dual wielding, it's really useful). Also, the second skill of the damage-centred bow ones scales with your level so it's a good option if your bow is sub-par. To be honest, though, the starting bow is good enough to last you for a few levels if you upgraded the starter weapons sufficiently-well. I mean, 1d5-1+3 or 1d5-1+4 doesn't look all that great, but that's either 3–7 or 4–8 damage (plus one free enchantment from a basic weapon scroll, the tier ones drop aplenty for the most part) and the second-tier bow deals, if I remember correctly, 2d5 which is 2–10 and thus similar. So a good-enough starter weapon means you essentially have a weapon equivalent to a tier-2 one. Yeah, the log is weird. And as for the skills, different targeting. The AoE one targets “every monster in area” whereas the other one gives a free attack on “a random target”. No idea why exactly is it that way, but I guess for balance purposes as cleaning a whole barricade at once might feel a bit broken. That doesn't make it make any more sense, of course, but whatever.
Rangermans lasted til level 8, found a Monster Party portal. Went back to the academy, relic'd/melted/etc, went to the party, died horribly as expected That and Evil/Exiled chests seem like you need to be pretty overleveled for. Character 4 is a Dungeonmans with Real Armor, archery, dual weild, banner. As of level 5, I have found FIVE books for cloth/leather armor...I don't know if there's any bonus for turning in books to a maxed library, but at least the number keeps going up (unlike the Alchemy lab). If I was trying to beat the game with this character I would probably be better off selling them and using the cash on books I *do* want...but I'm still focusing on learning how the game works and (maybe?) improving the academy.
If by “Monster Party” you mean “Hall of Champions” then yes, it's a terrible terrible place that will most likely kill you. Going there at all pretty much means you have to waste high-tier potions (champion, stamina/mana, and any other buff ones you can get) and some scrolls (teleportation and pin to win ones being essential). Mind you, with enough scrolls and potions and just some luck it isn't that hard to isolate the enemies and kill the only one that is really ranged first and then just play killer tag with the rest, but you need some appropriate resistances and it's a waste of resources really. As for books, the more books you have in the library, the better your “dungeon sense” is. So unless you are hard-pressed for coinage, donating books you don't need is always the better option. With enough books, you won't need to invest in the skill branch that gives you this, and you'll be getting “feelings” about items that will make automatic identification not really necessary (because any great items that you'd want to use will make you “feel” that they are splendid stuff when you pick them up). That one's why the first few characters suck at finding hidden passages, in fact. No books means no dungeon sense.
Ah cool, I'm up to 18 books now I think. I don't remember if the map said "hall of champions" or not, but it was a Secret Passage to a little 3x3 room with a blue portal that said "Would you like to be transported to a Super Fun Monster Party" or something, with options of "Yes I love parties" and "No I'm too afraid" or something. Found a second one on this character and said hellno, although another portal took me to the Hall of Savings (though the map still said "Minerva's Pit floor 3") with 8 Bee shopkeepers with a bunch of (full price) Lesser Healing potions. Exiting the shop spawned a random nonboss monster, heh. Another Secret Passage had my first Blueprint! I assume they're permanently in the Blacksmith's options like the Upgrade Hammers, correct? Do some monsters not have lore books? I Gold-ed some of the common ones on my second character, but there's a lot of common ones that are still at rank 0 on my 4th. Also had my first real bug. Killed the boss of a dungeon, he did the slowmo explodey animation....aaaand then he stood there. Without dropping loot or triggering the "trash mob" dialog. But he did spawn a portal. When I tried attacking him, it kept spamming "Warning: Ghost Actor bandit in tile. Auto-killing it." After doing this about 20 times, I tried the Skirmish "teleport and shoot homing arrow" skill, and it triggered a SECOND explodey animation, with loot and "trash mob" dialog! 0_o Also found several 3 star armors (still no weapons) at a 5 prosp town, and an upgrade scroll added 1 Stamina per turn which I had never seen spawn before, super happy with that. Also...some of the items I sold on previous characters seem to be in the shops. I've seen new items appear if I raise prosperity, do a dungeon, and come back...but I guess the base inventory only changes if you Reroll Map at the Headmaster or something?
Yup, pretty sure that was a "Hall of Champions". Half a dozen or so boss mobs or a lot of standard ones, and one even stronger than those. Honestly, I've no idea as I hadn't tried to make anything from blueprints yet (I have one, and it's an item I doubt I'll have any use for). As far as I know, all monsters have lore books. It's just that it takes quite some monsters to get a lore book and the more common types have more than one subtype and are seen in the dozens whereas the rarer ones are singular units. Hence the discrepancy in the speed at which you gain lore books. As far as I know, rerolling the map means everything goes to nowhere and you get a brand new map with all the towns getting zeroed. So if you want to waste the inventories, go ahead, though obviously I don't recommend that. Also, either some of the inventory for shopkeepers is unchanging or they restock based on something random. No clue which it is, but the point remains the same, that one should only really care about high-prosperity-limit towns and check the stock every so often.
In the tower where my Rangermans died, I found "his" axe, and there was a portal to a Hall of Champions; so apparently it's a different name from the Monster Party but similar deathtrap. Did not enter this one, nor did I tell the golden Grim Reaper statue that I was "feeling lucky." O_O Graveyard level had a chest throw loot outside the exit area...now that I think about it maybe it would let me Teleport out there? Walking kept stopping for the "are you sure you want to leave" dialog. A few Armor mods have been melted that aren't available on hammers; Warm (but the lower Cold resists do) and Indigo (but the lower Purple, and lower/same/HIGHER Starlight do). Bandit fire mages have 80 hp, Brigands have 50. Methinks those values are swapped, since all of the knife/bow users are about double in the other direction...but maybe they made the higher level fire mage squishier because he does triple damage or something? Dunno. Having fun though! A few tense fights, lotsa fun slaughter, funny dialog, unusual monsters (some may make it to my DnD campaign as otherworldly aberrations ^_^ ), 19 books, several 3 star Relics (but still no 3 star bows aaaargh; found like 20 shields, 10 armor, two 2h melee, 1 ring, 8 zillion doorspikes...) Still fun!
That one's actually good. You pay 100 gold and you get to choose one of three chests. I'm not sure if there are any without monsters, but in every case where I got a monster it was quite defeatable and dropped items worth more than 100 gold. So unless you are really bad at it, you are feeling lucky. The last time I tried, I got a shard, the usual proof of stremf, an axe worth 200 gold, and a few lesser items. And the fight was over in 5 turns, without any potions used. Unless it got thrown completely out of the map, it should still let you walk there. Maybe I'm a unique case but I can move normally without dismissing the map leave prompt and it doesn't stop me or anything. You need to melt more than a few items. I believe it is chance-based for every item of some sort with the given mod, but I may or may not be wrong there. But yeah, I feel the pain. I have like +120% purple damage and I can't get the mod that adds that sort of damage to weapons. I'm not sure, but I have to say that mages are easier to defeat if you invest in resistances at all, assuming the same health. Also, with some scrolls of fortify weapon (available for 10 gold each, in towns with 3+ or 4+ prosperity if I'm not wrong) it's pretty much 1 or 2 attacks anyway. But then again, maybe I'm just broken like that. Oh, and do be aware that the scrolls don't seem to be able to destroy the weapon and they can layer ... I don't know, 6 or more enchantments total, so try until you get the message that the weapon can't be enchanted any more and the scroll did not get used (because sometimes it randomly fails and just wastes the scroll). Yeah, and you never use those doorspikes. Not like they are necessary because if you ever get into a situation where they would be, you either can spam movement skills to flee to Siberia or just use a scroll of Pin to Win. Well, that or be me and have a bow with a triple freeze-in-place enchantment (and two melee weapons that deal 2x the damage + some more stuff). Also, I think (just a random guess, though) that the towns restock every time you enter those. You might want to check that. If the town has any tier-3 equipment then it's just a matter of trying, and if it doesn't then you need to get a more prosperous town.
