Any hope for a tweak patch?

[Lujo]

[Sidestepper]

I feel that dwarves are substantially weaker than the other races, but also don't think there is much to be done about it. From a design standpoint, it makes sense that the three starter races mimic the three basic powerups.

I do wish that more shop items supported them. The Fireheart is good, and that's about it. I mean, sure, the Cauldron is good for dwarves, but it's even better for halflings. Like Darvin said, resistances are good on dwarves, but can be leveraged even harder by humans and orcs.

That's what it always comes down to. The question isn't "Are dwarves better than going Hoarder?" but rather it's "Do dwarves give an advantage that justifies the opportunity cost of taking some other race?"

In the end, DTD is a non-competitive single-player game, so it doesn't matter if all options are equal, just so long as they are functional. And dwarves are functional, just less so than everything else.

[Lujo]

^ The dwarves are plenty functional, and I find them better supported by the shops than most other guys - Sigil, Keg of Health, Tower Shield, the Health Pendant kinda lets you play to your strenghts throughout the run, Fire Heart and Cauldron, Wargarble and Martyr Wraps, Vampiric Blade and probably other stuff too since they make good hybrids.

As I said a bunch of times, they could use another +1 regen thing and they're kinda starved for potions, but has the following ever been tried/discussed:

Give them some stacking gold per cp pop. Or even non-stacking. That ought to incentivize people to play them. Because I find that you're always 10 gp down on any run because you pretty much have to buy the health potion anyway (or you have to buy the Keg because it's such a no-brainer buy on them, and this just ties up their money). And you need some petty cash to buy something to help you level through the run (or at least a way to make it back so you can buy that potion).

[MTaur]

The simplest way to buff Dwarves would be to lower the CP cost per level up. Even if HP as a stat isn't quite as valuable as damage because of blackspace issues, at some point it still has to win out. There might be really weird edge cases if they're buffed too much, and they're already pretty playable well throughout the Hard level. But if it were to be decided by the powers that be that they needed a little more help, then CP cost would do it. AFAIK, the current best use of Dwarf is if you're a Rogue who needs a little help not getting one-shotted. It would also come in handy if you could ever know that the boss was going to be Bleaty...

Some maps would feel a buff more than others. For example, Naga City and its guaranteed kegs and Yendor.

[Lujo]

^ That wouldn't really solve the problem. Dwarves getting more health out of their CP isn't really necessary. They get plenty. It's just way too backloaded (which is fair enough), but they need to explore and level up without the benefits of their CP bonus. And when they do, they still have a harder time refilling it to make use of it.

One could argue that the tradeoff is that you don't have to convert early and get to use your glyphs for longer, but you're still under inventory size restrictions there. I kinda feel that the only thing they need is a bit more gold than the average person in order to be able to buy a bit more stuff for either conversion of for a phase-swap between leveling mode and bosskill mode.

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A content addition to the base I wouldn't mind would be a subdungeon or two which gives you STR potions. I'm kinda underusing them and I'm gonna see if I can use them more, they're kinda great. The old abuse with drinking one and spamming pissorff doesn't work anymore (i think?), and the way alchemist works keeps both it and schadenfraude under control, but there's a basic subdungeon which gives you a schadenfraude and a compression seal, but I'm not really aware of there being one which hands out Str potions.

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Art suggestion - I suppose art is expensive and stuff, but there's still a bunch of things in the challenges which have "?" as it's graphic, and a lot of placeholdery item icons. Courage juice etc. I'd personally love it if the devs made enough money for all of that and the rest of the pallete swaps get done right.

[MTaur]

[Tinker]

By the way, Alchemist Scroll seems to have an icon that is hard to distinguish from the Compression Seal alchemist preparation. Often enough I wondered whether I have a compressed Alchemist Scroll or a default-size Compression Seal, but maybe another hue on one of them (i.e. a shade of grey?) would make it plainer?

[Lujo]

[Lujo]

Here's a weird suggestion:

I'm tinkering with the Cauldron at the moment, and while we have discovered a few uses for it (or at least I'm aware of various Warlord and general Halfling sinergies, and at least a few Gnome ones), the standard set of monsters doesn't really give enough opportunity to keep even 2 debuffs stable. I know we haven't yet cracked it fully so it might sound (or be) a stupid and uninformed suggestion, but

Could we get some weakening into the Taurog desecration? Or some curse or something? I know desecrating TT and EM can get you Weakened or Corroded immediately for purposes of scoring a debuff. Just from my current perspective (god knows what I'm missing), some more ability to get yourself debuffed in the standard set of elements would make the Cauldron more apealing or at least usable.

Hope it's not too hilarious and that the Cauldron isn't actually overpowered somehow except we never stumbled into the tecnique.

EDIT: Being able to purchase the "Tea" from the Alchemist would be hilarious, though. Does nothing, ever, except if you have the cauldron, lol.

[Darvin]