Rambling

[Galefury]

I played the alpha a lot. Never won the Boss Hive and the quest, but I finished everything else.

Why do you ask? Gods were completely different in the alpha.

[The Avatar]

Still, I think that makes them more approachable. You're used to them being there, and you know they can be helpful.

[Lujo]

What you're reffering to is what I'm reffering to - but it's become pretty obvious that ATM it's not only too difficult to figure it out, but that the game either misses or doesn't provide enough opportunity to start discovering those things. I'm sure I don't have the gods figured out completely - I discover new things about them all the time! Heck, really doing the puzzles instead of going through the solutions actually pointed me in several directions that I never explored before.

But if god's aren't figured out, you cant even begin to start getting better at the game in the way the game expects you to. And what you say is true - some degree of difficulty is absolutely necessary, but actual spikes are a hugely bad thing. We agree 100%.

And about figuring them out on your own, I'm not saying "force it onto people all at once" I'm saying give more opportunity, give more reason to believe there's something to find there or reasons to look there. I can ussualy tell when I've used my brain to figure stuff out, and when it was pure accident and circumstance - and ATM it seems that figuring the gods out, even that you're supposed to be exploring them is something a players brain isn't telling them to do.

In other words, if this was football, and Leo Messi was trying to learn it, he'd probably hit vicious and be really frustrated by it. And then if he sank a needlessly huge amount of time into it he could discover what he was supposed to know by accident. And even if someone was genious enough to figure it out on his own, or had whatever trait you need to (stuborness, OCD, too much free time) you can't balance for the 1% if it means it's going to drive away just about anybody else.

EDIT: Otherwise you'd end up were footbal (soccer) is - a bunch of extraordinarily talented millionaires playing, the rest of the world drinking beer and watching. And the devs aren't selling beer, they're selling footballs.

And you seem to like all the changes which went in the direction opposite of that, so I guess we agree

[booooooze]

[Lujo]

[The Avatar]

What other stuff beats vicious vicious? I've yet to see a non-assassin win.

[Lujo]

[Sidestepper]

I'm not too optimistic about Earthmother-Codex in Naga City. Earthmother really sucks in cramped environments. I tried a Vineform Healthmonster there and gave up after being trapped in the altar area three times in a row. The arena might not be so bad if you can get to it, but I wouldn't put it past Earthmother to clog up the shrine area and cut you off.

[Lujo]

True, the "bridge" is rather narrow. I'll still try it sometimes, possibly with a paladin.

EDIT: Ok, I've tried with a paladin, but no dice due to cramped map. Maybe I wasn't doing the right thing because I've played more dwarf warmonger/parched/faithless PQI paladins than any regular ones, so I switched it up with Gorgon. Wasn't half bed, scored a fire heart and made use of it and a lucky B2P and got through 5 guys (thomithy, smm, frank in first wave, wraith and goo on the second) before the iron man stopped me dead in my tracks. Should've went mysterea instead of drac after EM, in retrospect, and really saved my clearances before I descended. I also should've joined Drac before I used Yendor, for the +1 level piety boon, and then used yendor.

Not sure if it's doable, but might as well be. A crystal ball would've prompted me to save the PISSORFF for no-health-cost alternative to the iron man, ando once you're level 10 you're downing bosses in 4 hits. Might even be worth it to get to lvl 10 before you go down just because of this, allthough I'm not too sure.

Edit: I was just going to feel really good about this:



But the score screen informed me that I've forgot to pack the vicious token when I went to change my preps up a little bit instead of hitting restart. I should've known something was fishy when I managed to poison/ding kill the iron man. Still, might be doable - I had a ton of gold and didn't get too much out of the gods down below. This is still a regular vicious dungeon run with a gorgon, and I didn't even use whoopaz or convert the codex at any point... No pactmaker, bloodswells or desecrations, either, so that's a ton of unused resources to work with...

[The Avatar]

Yeah, I've done that before. For a couple levels in there you think you've found the greatest strategy ever.