by Jaxzar on Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:36 am
I must agree with MeVII. For a seasoned vet of the alpha (I'm probably a little under-seasoned compared to MeVII and some of the other gamers here) this game is very, very similar strategy wise. I mean, at the moment it's mostly the same game from a strategy point of view (of course, I haven't unlocked/reached any of the gods yet and it seems that's where a great deal of the strategy has changed).
Here's a good description of the general phases of a dungeon which I picked up on from playing the alpha a lot, and reading through the wiki. Of course, you can play how you want, but this seems to be a natural trend:
A. Exploration Phase
Levels 1 to 3 should be spent trying to make less-risky decisions and exploring without wasting too much undiscovered dungeon. As a rule potions should not be necessary, leveling up and exploring should be the only ways you are healing yourself. Try to make do on as little as possible, especially early on.
B. Rapid Leveling/Grinding Phase
Levels 4 to 6 should be spent killing only monsters of a higher level than you, as much as possible (as described by the above post). If you are at level 4 and you kill only level 4 monsters, you're not going to get anywhere. On the other hand, if you kill a level 7 monster at level 4, you've just earned tons of bonus experience, and you have that many more monsters left to kill. Think of unexplored dungeon, potions, and monsters all as resources, and you are constantly trying to get by using as few of these resources as possible. If you were a good little explorer in phase A, you should have 1) a lot of different options to choose carefully from as to the best level-up path, and 2) a lot of unexplored dungeon to heal yourself with.
C. Boss Battle Phase
By level 7 you should be strong enough to at least survive a few whacks at the boss. The idea is to use up all the health and mana you possibly can, then kill a low-level mob to heal yourself. This should begin, as was said before, pretty darn close to leveling up. That way you can use your level up heal to its full potential (the wiki refers to this as a level-up steamroll). It's a fairly necessary strategy if you want to do well. Otherwise you won't be able to level up, or you'll waste too many resources on leveling up and not enough on killing the boss. This is where your early and mid game either comes back to haunt or help you. If you killed off every other monster but the boss, you don't have a lot of options at level 7. However, if you have saved plenty of low level monster "resources" (and potions) for yourself, killing the boss is pretty straightforward.
As MeVII pointed out, some insane things are actually possible when you really think ahead. In a recent dungeon, I began attacking the boss at level 6 and finished it off at level 7. Part of it is luck, but it plays a lot smaller role here than it did in the alpha (where you could easily get walled in by high level monsters - without a PISORF or WEYTWUT nearby that's pretty much a dead end, as you don't have much leverage in the early levels).
Hope this helps!
Jaxzar, Dwarf Rogue