Roguelike Refinements

[booooooze]

I'm a bit amazed by how whatever gets clamoured for rarely gets proper "GJ!" from the community once it gets addressed.

That said THANK YOU for the Bloodmage Silver nerf - that map alone killed my will to play.

And also about the Rogue - I've said much on the subject, and just about anything is welcome, plus this one actually is rather in line with my whole "Rogue beats other guys for one ablity slot". Might just be enough, needs testing.

Anyway, nice job guys, I'm certanly appreciating (spelling, tired) it.

Ha!

I'm always a bit amazed at how slight differences in playstyle lead to vast differences in how hard something is.

Found previous bloodmage silver relatively straightforward. Can't get anywhere near winning fighter gold for the life of me (or plenty of others).

[Lujo]

As I explore, I kill higher level monsters and collect lower level ones. At this point I have almost half the map quietly awaiting execution. The whole thing is just so wrong. I am the real monster in this story.

Veterans are in control of the dungeons, each monster is not a foe but a potential resource awaiting harvest. We are the predators, they the prey, and WEYTWUT/WONAFYT is the equivalent of fattening them up.

Several big and important discussions about "Just how damned powerfull is X-Y supposed to be?" and "Allright you clowns what happened to the difficulty curve?" started with posts which involved statements like "I feel bad for the monsters, more than usual, and I've been thinking about it..."

They often led to nerfs, but also discovery of hitherto unexplored content, and more ofthen than not they lead to crazy ass discussions with various borderline insane vets' expiriences clashing and supporting each other all over the place. Newbies are often instrumental to starting this stuff off, tbh, and the results can be mind-boggling. This one time I wrote a legit wiki just to be able to explain to my own damned self how end boss fighting works in scientific detail.

Other times, you can have a precise report on a runaway blatant exploit you've been privately using to make a mockery out of the game, but for various reasons the discussion starts up 2 months later via a tangential derailing of a whole separate issue. I think beta testing this game has become a game of it's own at some point.

[The Avatar]

Very true. I'd been abusing Binlor for about 3 months to get a win with every class with every badge on the 4 Vicious dungeons. Then I showed it and Binlor got hammered the next update.

[Wargasm]

If Binlor is as dwarfy as I imagine him to be, he probably spends a lot of time hammered.

[Lujo]

If Binlor is as dwarfy as I imagine him to be, he probably spends a lot of time hammered.

General expirience shows is that the more unintionaly powerfull a feature, the longer it takes to get blabbed about noticed. It can be really simple to use, but regular folks don't go around looking for those, and vets ussualy don't notice at first ^^

[The Avatar]

It was a really unobtrusive feature. You had Stone Skin at level 1. An awful move normally.

[Blovski]

Hang on - says on Binlor's altar that Stone Heart only affects visible enemies? That can't be right...

Also, Orc Pisorfing Wizard of Binlor is enormously fun (Specialist, Parched, Unstoppable on Rock Garden)... I got a level 5 boss kill without potions or boons

[Sidestepper]

That change happened during the big Binlor rewrite, when the devs finally decided to stop us from grabbing all of Binlor's boons at 1st level. Personally, I think that limiting us to only using visible walls contained Binlor just fine, and that the Stoneheart change goes too far. By the time I finally find the monsters I would be interested in Stonehearting, exploration is mostly done and it's too late.

[Darvin]

Agreed; stone heart is very marginal in the current form. Unless you get really lucky, by the time you've actually revealed the monsters you want to erode resistances it's too late to leverage it effectively.

[Darvin]

We want some switchups based on level, at least. So a high-level kill is animated slower / more gloriously, and the "popcorn phase" will be represented by a series of quick chops, etc.

This doesn't seem to be working properly. It seems to only be taking the player's level into consideration, not the monster's level. As a result, killing a level 5 monster as a 1st level character is a quick shop, and slaughtering level 1 popcorn as a 10th level character is slow and glorious.