First of all...amazing game. I love the Roguelike RPG sub genre and this game included many of the elements I love and some new ones. I do have a few suggestions formed during the trip to Lord D: There appear to be some randomization issues on the lower levels...Finding the same staff for example over 30 times between level 11 and 15. Not enough variety of items sans using mods again on the lower levels. You start to see the same core group of items way too often. My first encounter with Lord D was a bit anticlimactic...I had read zero spoilers or strat guides and my plan worked on the first go thanks to point 1 above providing me with about a dozen 50 spell reflect mirrors that I dual wielded while keeping a distance and using xbow...fight was over after about 20 to 30 turns. I should have had a penalty using a Xbow without proficiency against Lord D see 2nd to last point below. Skills don't scale as well as the items do...maxing a skill provides great benefit for the first few levels but seems to scale down the deeper you go. Mostly the static stat portion of the skillups...they should scale a bit. The portal zones should always have the possibility of scaling up to 5 levels higher than you so they can provide a challenge...while deadly on level 1 to 5 the portals are too easy after you hit lvl 20+ Not having a skill for a weapon type still provides you with enough benefit to get use out of a weapon type you aren't proficient in...maybe having 1 weapon skill should work as it does currentlybut having zero proficiency in weapon skills should penalize you more. Money becomes pretty meaningless after a while..having potions and food with more benefit at lower levels and at increased costs would help. Or some artifacts at the store but at expensive prices. Again LOVE the game...just some observations...the things I like would have been a list 10 times longer!
I'm glad you like it. That being said, since I feel like creating walls of text, I'll try replying to your message point by point. Yes, it is a known problem, and it stems from there not being enough items to guarantee that you won't see duplicates every corner. I reckon they are working on fixing it in the third expansion, but you can alleviate the problem somewhat by installing a few item-adding mods. Just as above, that's because there aren't that many high-level item. They are fairly powerful, so it's difficult to add more because you need to get an idea with an easy-to-get reference (it's not an absolute rule, but something that is still very common). It depends on the RNG (Random Number Generator/God). If it feels like raping you, then Dredmor will just turn you into a glowing skeleton by spamming his thunder spell, which hurts a lot; on the other hand, if you get a crossbow with high righteous or aethereal damage bonuses, then you can hit him for a noticeable damage with pretty much anything that counts as a crossbow bolt. And the difficulty of facing that guy depends on your game's version - Dredmor was buffed in the last versions, so if you defeated him a long time ago, then the next time might not be as easy. Right now it's impossible to scale these bonuses, and I don't think they'll ever make it possible. That being said, I don't think the bonuses are that bad; in fact, normally you don't want to choose skills purely for their bonuses, but rather for the abilities they give you. And besides, with everything being percent-based in this game, a +5 point bonus isn't going to become less valuable at later levels, as it will always mean that your chance to succeed is 5 percentage points higher. The problem there is that the monsters that spawn in mysterious portals are static, "up to 3 levels out of depth", and there aren't any monsters that would appear after the last level, so nothing you could possibly face in these portals when nearing the end of the game is really out of depth. I do agree that it would be nice if the monsters you faced in mysterious portals got some small buffs dependent on the floor you got there from; even small buffs would suffice because that way they'd still have an edge in something, instead of your character being slightly better than them. There was a penalty for that earlier on, but it was taken out because it wasn't as good as it seemed at the time (honestly, it made weapon-using warriors into cripples if you got unlucky). That being said, you can double the benefits by taking Dual Wielding (which I think should decrease EDR as it is rather good compared to other warrior skills right now, but I'm just complaining), and the skills you get are somewhat useful. In the 3rd expansion, it'll become possible to have skills that require money/zorkmids to work, so you'll have something to do with it. And playing on higher difficulty helps with getting less money; the real problem is lack of diversity of high-level items, and the situation there is improving with every new version and can be improved further if you get some mods as they add more stuff.
Hi, welcome and glad you like the game. -Item variety, you're correct. There's a lack of high level items right now. -Skills scaling, this is being worked on with pretty much every update. When the game launched, you could only scale things to magic power. Then they fixed that and usually change a couple skills with every patch. -Portal zone spawns enemies from all floors, not scaled. At the same time, if you've gotten to the point where they're easy, usually you won't find much better items than you have. It's a risk-reward thing. Could certainly be tweaked though. -Weapon penalties actually existed! They were similar to the dual wield penalty. The problem is that you could be screwed and never find swords, for example. The cons outweighed the pros. That said, it's one of the much discussed balanced subjects. Making weapon skills more attractive. -I still want an artifact vending machine edit: ^^^*shakefist @ Kazeto*
