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Agent Kool-Aid posted:People who play DoomRL without the tiles are weird and wrong. No way. DoomRL has the most readable and purposefully colorful tiles of any roguelike I've ever played. Every ASCII roguelike should learn from its example.
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Aug 8, 2013 19:24
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I really wish there were an adequate Caves of Qud wiki. I've never liked spoiler-based gameplay in roguelikes, I'd rather know exactly how the system works and focus on finding ways to break it than have to learn how it works by blind experimentation.
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Sep 12, 2013 21:36
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Man, I'm really sick of getting one-shot by the very first random encounter every time I go more than four world map tiles away from Joppa in Caves of Qud. I had a pretty good Marauder going, ran into a chain turret, and died before I could even decide whether to retreat or try to rush the thing.
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Sep 15, 2013 21:50
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andrew smash posted:Go into the swamps surrounding joppa (don't go to the world map) and get a few easy levels off crocs before you start the game in earnest. You won't get any loot so mutants benefit from this more than true men but extra levels of HP and skills make the early game easier. I wasn't brand new -- the character was level ~10 or so, he'd explored the tunnels connecting Red Rock and Joppa and got a decent amount of experience off the critters there. I guess the lesson here is more "don't explore ruins" which isn't much fun but whatever.
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Sep 16, 2013 00:40
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Unormal posted:... or bring an EMP grenade when exploring ruins. I hadn't been anywhere that sold EMP grenades yet. I was, in fact, traveling through the wilderness so I could get to somewhere that did sell half-decent equipment.  Anyways, I'm back to experimenting with new character builds; I tried combining Phasing with Burrowing Claws thinking I'd be able to phase into a wall, dig out a cubby, and then use it as a bolt-hole. Unfortunately it looks like phasing disables your ability to attack tiles. I might try Disintegration as a substitute, but it just doesn't have the same moleman allure. Does equipping a shield to your third or fourth arm give you the full shield bonus? Can I combine this with the ambidexterity tree to have a dual-wielding character who can also shield block? Do the ambidexterity skills affect the third and fourth arms at all?
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Sep 16, 2013 01:32
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Unormal posted:Sheild defense procs only use your best shield AV, so with generic shields wearing more than a one is typically a waste, except for unusual corner-cases. Having ambidexterity affect shield use as well is an interesting idea, though. I wasn't even thinking of equipping multiple shields, I just read something on an old forum post to the effect of "multiple arms isn't worth the points, it doesn't count shields equipped to the extra limbs." Trying to make a room in the wall using disintegration gave me a Pauli Exclusion Principle mortem, but I'll try your suggestions and see which works best! EDIT: Corrosive gas doesn't work fast enough either, although maybe it or disintegration would with more levels; I'll try debug mode in a bit. Space-time vortex seems more promising but the random trajectory and the long cooldown kind of sink it for practical purposes. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 01:50
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I actually prefer cooldown management to mana management. It gives you an reason to use sub-optimal skills from time to time, constantly mixes up the value of attacking vs. retreating -- it promotes thoughtful play in so many different ways. Although I'd like it even better if, once you're in total safety, your abilities automatically reset their cooldowns instead of making you mash "wait 100" over and over. Even a "wait until healed and all abilities reset" button would be a huge upgrade. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 02:38
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Cardiovorax posted:Well, no, there are also good games where every ability is worth using. I know it's a matter of taste, but what I meant is, I'd rather have the choice about which ability to use in an encounter rather than having to use nr. 5 every time because, well, 1-4 are already on cooldown and the guy isn't dead yet. It makes me feel like the game doesn't actually want me to make any informed decisions. This is why you take Mass Mind at character creation, use Proselytize to get semi-permanent allies to take out the chaff, and use delaying tactics to let your shorter (10-30) turn cooldown abilities come up while you're still fighting. Also in Crawl in the same scenario you'd probably just use Crystal Spear five times. Maybe a few hard fights require you to pre-buff with Haste or something and use Teleport Self to heal and channel more mana between attempts, assuming the devs haven't removed those spells or given them lethal doses of glow because tactics are OP. EDIT: Although I do understand your complaint -- it's pretty similar to the reason I refuse to play mages in ADOM, because I'm not interested in only using magic in 20-50% of my encounters and playing a really lovely fighter the rest of the time.
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Sep 16, 2013 16:02
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In Caves of Qud, does Fasting Way affect your sunlight requirements if you have photosynthetic skin?
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Sep 19, 2013 19:27
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Unormal posted:Yes; I see you're playing the classic ascetic cactus-man archetype. Pretty much. I'm play a sort of weird, mostly-physical-mutations version of an Esper. Flaming Hands, Electrical Generation, Photosynthetic Skin, Thick Fur. I didn't go pure Chimera because Narcolepsy is a million times less offensive than any of the 4-point physical drawbacks, plus I realized that Light Manipulation is completely unaffected by Willpower -- you only need a high ego to take advantage of it if it's your only mental attack. It basically plays how I wish gunslingers played -- no chance of missing, no penalty for having 2+ enemies in melee range, no ammo so you don't have to plan your entire build around Psychometry + Scavenger + Tinker or endlessly scumming the vendors. Plus with Flame Hands you can just wander out into the wilderness and torch Equimaxes for a few minutes and be level 10 before you even reach Red Rock. EDIT: I really think physical combat in general needs to be less random and deal higher/more reliable damage, but maybe there are lategame weapons or accuracy buffs I'm not taking into account.
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Sep 19, 2013 20:00
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Oh god a Madpool bit my feet off!  How do you get dismembered limbs back?
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Sep 19, 2013 22:48
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Unormal posted:There's a few ways; an Ubernostrum injector is probably the most widely available. Speaking of Ubernostrum -- my character just contracted Glotrot and Ironshanks (within seconds of each other, seriously what the hell?) -- my tongue fell out, so I used an Ubernostrum injector to regrow it. The description also makes it sound like it cures the diseases themselves, although like nearly every description in the game it's maddeningly un-specific. Anyways, when I talk to the merchant, I get the normal conversation options, but I still get the no-tongue prices. EDIT: Looks like it didn't actually cure the disease. 
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Sep 20, 2013 04:16
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Oh this is bullshit. I spend my entire fortune buying the book that tells you how to cure the disease, but even getting enough honey to delay it costs just as much, nevermind the full treatment. EDIT: And apparently you need desalinated amoeba slime, which is not just flavor text, but describes what you have to do to slime. With an item I have never even seen. Great. If the Ironshanks takes full hold I'm just going to solve this by wishing, this is possibly the worst gameplay mechanic I've seen in a roguelike outside of IVAN. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 04:26
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notwithoutmyanus posted:I think that means don't let a slug get into saltwater. when you kill a slug (in the first cave, pretty deep), they shoot out shitloads of amoeba slime if I recall correctly. Or there's an amoeba down there. OR something. Nah, I checked the wiki. Desalinated slime is called "gel" and you get it by adding a desalination pellet to amoeba slime. I deleted the character anyways -- trying to wish for the cure by name gave me a new mutation instead, and I would have felt cheaty keeping it.
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Sep 20, 2013 04:57
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S.T.C.A. posted:Wow, I've seen a desalinzation pellet exactly once, and I shopscum all the time. That sucks. I actually had no idea what it was, it showed up as an un-ID'd artifact on a vendor without ID skill so I bought it since it weighed 1 pound. If it had been either disease by itself I probably wouldn't be this annoyed. As it is, one of them puts you on a timed scavenger hunt before the game is functionally over and your character is ruined, and the other one makes it physically impossible to complete the scavenger hunt in time.
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Sep 20, 2013 05:55
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S.T.C.A. posted:One more reason regen is so good; I assume the timer resets each time your tongue grows back. Well, no, Ironshanks is the "timer" -- when the disease reaches it's full course you're immobilized. (Although apparently if you take the Jump skill you can inch forward... two tiles at a time, every 100 turns. )Plus even when your tongue grows back, the merchant price malus is unaffected as long as you have the disease. I'm not sure if that's a bug or working as intended. S.T.C.A. posted:Electrical Generation is also a great "oh poo poo" button early. It's fried several salthoppers that would've otherwise killed me (and also arced onto the aforementioned gored equimax, which I normally would not engage at 3). I'm really unimpressed with Electrical Generation. It just doesn't do enough damage for a skill that can only be used at full power every 95-100 turns. Tack on the melee-only range and it simply isn't worth 4 points. I had a lot of fun taking Phasing + Heightened Hearing on melee characters -- the former is a great escape, and both together give you a much better chance of coming out somewhere safe even if you have to do it on a relatively unexplored level. EDIT: Part of what makes Phasing so good is that, while Teleport seems to give away your location to enemies no matter how far you travel, Phasing screws up their pathing (and gives you temporary invulnerability too, although I suspect it only applies to physical attacks.) Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 07:34
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Turtlicious posted:I'd like to try Caves of Qud but it says it's a closed beta? Who should I talk to about getting in on this? I don't think it's closed beta, it's downloadable from here: http://forums.freeholdentertainment.com/showthread.php?10-Welcome-to-the-Caves-of-Qud-beta Is Regeneration percentage-based from your total HP, or is it a flat rate? I've avoided it as a crutch (because with characters who use a lot of offensive mutations plus a good escape option you should never be taking heavy damage in the first place), but my last few games I've had a lot of peripheral health issues that it apparently applies to. On an unrelated note, taking Carapance and Thick Fur on the same character feels so wrong from an aesthetic point of view, but makes so much sense from a min-maxing one. Especially if you also take "Spontaneous Combustion" as a drawback.
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 07:58 on Sep 20, 2013 |
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Sep 20, 2013 07:50
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Unormal posted:For the record, my auto-explore code is basically a humanitarian disaster. Much as I'm getting critical of Qud as I dig into it: any auto-explore code at all is a huge quality-of-life improvement.
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Sep 21, 2013 06:33
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dis astranagant posted:What determines how many hits Sunder Mind does? It seems to bounce back and forth between being hilariously, disgustingly powerful and barely doing any damage without much feedback as to how or why. I'm 95% certain it's based on the enemy's Willpower, in the same way that physical attacks interact with armor vs. penetration. You get more damage if your penetration roll overshoots by a greater degree, with the proviso that most weapons have a cap on how big a bonus you can get; I'm not sure Sunder Mind has a cap. Anyways, if you Berate or Confuse a target before you use Sunder Mind on them it should do more damage.
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Sep 23, 2013 23:54
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dis astranagant posted:About half the items change or upgrade your shots. It never stops feeling like a lovely Flash game, though. The worst part is we know the devs can do better; Super Meat Boy has some of the best platformer handling of any game I've ever played. EDIT: It's still enough fun to be worth it for one dollar, though.
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Sep 29, 2013 07:40
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That trailer is hilarious and totally in keeping with the fact that it's a roguelike based on (a rogueliked based on) an early 90's FPS.
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Oct 14, 2013 21:41
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Those sound like awesome changes, lots of utility mutations got cheaper and Light Manipulation was definitely too good for three points. Fortunately most of my builds included one or more of the discounted ones so it shouldn't interfere too much.  Also glad to see more 2-point mutations in general, I was always getting stuck with that many left over.
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Oct 28, 2013 01:23
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Never take a toughness of less than 18 unless you know exactly what you're doing.
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Oct 31, 2013 06:38
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dis astranagant posted:There really needs to be something in game pointing you toward the guaranteed sources if it's so game ending. More to the point, Nethack-style "spoiler or die" mechanics are awful in general.
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Nov 1, 2013 00:10
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lordfrikk posted:I haven't played for some time but slumberlings were diehard fuckers, better not to press your luck next time, to be honest. Slumberlings are giant packets of free experience if you can kite them, which most reasonably built Espers or physical mutation-casters can. Of course they're both harder to find and more risky than doing the same thing with Equimaxes, but when the opportunity presents itself... v  v
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Nov 1, 2013 00:27
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Bob NewSCART posted:I've found some rifles and pistols but I've never lived long enough to find any ammo. Where do you recommend grinding up some early levels? Finding the artifacts for the instant level 2 is hit or miss for me so I need some way to level without worrying about getting mauled to death by two headed boars, salt hoppers and hosed up chameleons. Ranged weapons are basically worthless as a primary attack unless you want to relentlessly scum vendors forever. Take mutations instead. The easiest way to grind levels and get a head start on the game is to take Flaming Hands or Freezing Hands and flash-fry Equimaxes in the wilderness. It'll teach you how to kite enemies that are too tough to kill directly and you'll be level 10+ in no time, at which point you can breeze through the early quest lines and start getting to the more interesting parts of the game.
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Nov 2, 2013 21:20
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andrew smash posted:Interesting to see all the mutation build chat. I haven't played CoQ heavily for a couple of years but I remember the general opinion being that true men were much stronger in the early game. What changed? I don't believe that was ever actually accurate.
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Nov 3, 2013 07:39
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In Golgotha I recommend just racing to the bottom as quickly as you can. There's at least one type of swarming enemy that (as far as I know) never stops coming, so even with grenades or esper abilities you're going to get overrun eventually. Also, pay attention to the pattern of the flame and steam bursts; those are absolutely predictable (and a really cool bit of level design.)
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Nov 5, 2013 04:18
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Greybeard just makes me sad. Sure, give the only kit in the game that starts with cudgel skills a penalty to its primary stat. 
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Nov 5, 2013 18:28
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Samopsa posted:Go play DoomRL if you want to win a roguelike, it's really easy to win on the easiest mode. It has a really smooth difficulty curve and is pretty forgiving. DoomRL is seriously the most elegantly designed roguelike out there, and it's perfect for learning the genre thanks to the combination of difficulty levels and having very few "gotchas" that you can't learn by doing. It's also got great tiles and some the most clear and readable ASCII, so you can go with whichever you prefer. Mr. Peepers posted:Stop and think is critically good advice. You don't have a time limit. If you're in a tough spot just stop pressing keys for a while while you consider your game plan. Get up and get a drink, even. Those dragons will wait patiently. As a corollary: the biggest factor in my first Crawl ascension was religiously following one rule: "No roguelikes after midnight." (Substitute whatever time you normally go to bed.)
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Nov 6, 2013 20:40
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dis astranagant posted:Aren't hobgoblins the number 1 killer? This was old old old data (I think it was collected in 0.4.something) but yeah, more deaths in Crawl occured before D:5 than anywhere else and the deadliest creature in the entire game was the lowly Hobgoblin. In fact, the entire game got progressively less challenging until about D:20 and associated branches, at which point there was a slight uptick in deathrate (but still less than early game.) Anecdotally, this wasn't just new players either; if you looked at the scoreboards of really good Crawl players (again, at the time) their records would basically go "died on D:1, died in D:3, won with 3 runes, died on D:4, won with 15 runes," etc.
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Nov 8, 2013 05:56
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Intimidate makes any creature within a 1-tile radius pass a check or run away in fear, and Berate reduces their willpower, which among other things makes Sunder Mind deal more damage (and probably makes other mental attacks more effective as well.) They're good skills and generally worth the price on an Ego-heavy character, especially Intimidate.
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Nov 10, 2013 17:43
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Are there any other high-quality, actively developed open world roguelikes like Cataclysm? Setting or flavor don't matter. I just want something with an equally realized world and scavenging/crafting, but without having to deal with all of Cataclysm's  design choices.Something that runs really snappy and preferably in a console window would be the icing on top; roguelikes shouldn't have perceptible input delay.
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Nov 11, 2013 16:19
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Gooch181 posted:I'm not sure if Project Zomboid is technically a roguelike, but if you guys haven't checked it out I suggest giving the demo on steam a try. I've yet to survive more than six days; I've died from zombie bites, burning my house down when I burned a TV dinner, and killed myself by guzzling bleach while zombies were swarming my house. Cataclysm is pretty much a picking stuff up and making other stuff out of it simulator, with zombies as an incidental obstacle between you and picking stuff up. Kind of like Minecraft if Minecraft's world were more populated and interesting and had more significant differences between regions.
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Nov 11, 2013 21:02
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TOOT BOOT posted:You know, I always thought I was terrible at roguelikes until I started hearing about other people's experiences. In the latest Crawl tournament there was a not-insignificant number of people that never got a character to level 9. When I posted YASD on ADOM's message board about dying to stupidity just past Dwarftown people talked like I had thrown away a sure winner even though I can get to Dwarftown at least pretty easily. As I understand it Nethack is a great deal more deterministic than Crawl, in that with sufficient game knowledge the point at which a win is near-guaranteed comes a lot sooner and a lot more reliably. You just have to not make any mistakes. On the other hand I don't like Nethack nearly enough to find out if this is true for myself.
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Nov 12, 2013 14:10
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Randomness is terrible in general and roguelikes as a genre are far too given to using it as a crutch, but map design and enemy placement is one of the few areas where I feel like it's really beneficial. Random initial conditions with non-random solutions is the best combination of factors for replayability. Vaults and prefab challenges might be more interesting the first time you encounter them, but then again, the two methods aren't totally exclusive either. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 10:25 on Dec 3, 2013 |
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Dec 3, 2013 10:23
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doctorfrog posted:Would X count as a roguelike? Why would you ever ask this? But since you did: turn-based, permadeath, randomly generated levels. 3/3, you've got a roguelike.
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Dec 8, 2013 09:23
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:What specifically do you find problematic about Dungeons of Dredmor? I mean, it's a drastically simplified roguelike, yes; is that all you object to? Simplification? It's slow. Seriously, adding lengthy combat and movement animations is the worst thing that could happen to graphical roguelikes.
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Dec 12, 2013 20:11
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I played the SNES Shiren rather than the DS version, but another thing that game has going for it is that it's gorgeous. I almost wish those graphics had been used for a more casual, exploration-driven game, just so you could wander idly around and appreciate them more rather than always thinking about tactics and starvation.
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Dec 12, 2013 21:55
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Corridor posted:I thought shiren was too boring and minimalist even with the npcs unlocked I can kind of see it for a veteran player, but I think they were talking about using it as an introduction to the genre. Also, even if it's simple it's not as if it isn't challenging.
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Dec 12, 2013 21:59
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