Can't. Stop. Playing.

Are we talking FTL-levels of addiction here?

Love this game. I've played 4 hours so far - 2 bosses down and I'm at about level 37 or so. Quick question for those playing: is vampirism equipment really worth losing that much base health? I'm assuming you get HP back per hit - how much HP?

I think I need to grind for a lot more gold, but I've mostly just concentrated on beating the bosses so far. Only complaint I have (and this may just be a personal problem) is that none of the classes except for barbarian or paladin seem worth playing. Those two are the most plain, but they have the highest base health by far. Miner is intriguing but doesn't bring in enough extra gold to make the risk of low health/damage worthwhile. Shinobi is also all right, I love the extra damage, but again they just feel too vulnerable.

If I may step in, yes. I played for three hours as well without noticing how much time had gone by.

Ok. I will be purchasing this game then.

Yeah this is a great addictive little game. If y'all are into roguelikes I'd also recommend Rogue's Tale. It's more of a traditional roguelike but it also has a heritage system. The game is probably the hardest and most unforgiving roguelike I've played, but the heritages make it so rewarding when you actually succeed in doing something.

I'm really looking forward to the expansion of the roguelike genre, seems like people are getting more n more into it as the formula is renewed for a modern age.

@tonic7 said:

From what I'm reading, you just aren't far enough in yet (or perhaps your upgrades aren't in the right places yet) for the other classes to be viable.

As far as the gear with Vampirism goes, if it's the same as the rune (I haven't tried the gear myself), it's 2 health per enemy killed.

@ben_h: A lot more addictive than FTL I find, which was plenty addictive enough on its own; I sunk 20 hours of the last 32 into it; and there doesn't seem to be any escape on the horizon.

@tonic7: The lower level you are when you beat the game the harder NG+ is going to be with no way back.

Question does the Litch class stop gaining health at some point? Because I can't seem to get past 101 hp (with blood gear on)

If that's the case that would be a real bummer.

Yeah it seems to be capped around 100 with all blood gear (so maybe 250 HP without -HP from blood?). Also just played as a Lich King with blood gear and had to convert HP to MP whenever I got to around 95-100 HP. I guess it has to be capped somewhere otherwise you'd have a ridiculous amount of HP just from clearing the first area or two.

2 bosses down, any consensus on what the third zone is supposed to be (difficulty wise, since forrest is clearly the second). Both the top and the bottom ones seem equally hard, I might have to start dumping gold into dmg and not just survivability (at least I got 5/5 in the gold talent now)

@rhaknar: The journal entries imply the top area is next.

@rhaknar: The map in the first room actually numerates the difficulty of the areas. I believe the tower is #3

I totally suck at this game. I beat the first boss with level 32 and now I have a hard time getting money because I did not upgrade Miner fast enough and now he wants me to pay 2300 Gold for this upgrade...

@nubikal: I see, thanks.

Does the miner light do anything besides drain mana?

@tennmuerti: It might do something underground, not sure; the class upgrade gives you a compass though.

Vampirism ceases being overpowered in NG+ since you'll die if you don't play almost perfect anyway. Paladin appears to be the best physical damage class given enough stats, though the Barbarian's shout is extremely useful against the last boss. Spellsword with empowered fire shield is pretty insane too.

@nubikal said:

Quoting both of you so I only have to quote once: it is capped, based on your level.

It gives you slightly more vision in the dungeon (the fourth area).

I prefer Barbarian just for the outrageous amount of health they have. I roll around with two siphon runes, one vault, one dash, one bounty. It's pretty good getting like 4 health back on every dude I kill with a max of over 350hp and like 60 from chicken wing pickups.

I'm 20 hours deep in 2 days. Beat the first boss of NG+.

wtf, there's NG+ ?! This game just keeps on giving =)

Once I found out there was a cap, it took me a while to figure out why you would ever play as the lich, but now I see the appeal. My strategy is to convert the max HP to MP once you hit the cap and are at low health (so you don't lose a bunch of it in the conversion). This way you get a huge boost to your MP and you still have the vampirism boost.

Just beat the fourth boss and the last boss with the same character on NG+ thanks to the luckiest Heir roll ever; granted the last boss was higher level than me and this is less than an hour after dying 5 or 6 times within a couple of minutes on the castle since that seems to be the hardest area in NG+; so now I'm almost certainly even more fucked. Couldn't pass up the Heir roll though. Start your Legacy+2!

Assassin is very much the Rogue from FF1 in the sense that he could potentially be the most powerful character if you go through an incredibly laborious process; really all the characters have their FF1 analogues. The Spellsword is probably the most fun to play and is basically a Red Mage. Maxed out Critical % and Critical Damage %

@fredchuckdave:

Sweet, thanks for the help.

Another one i've been puzzling over. There are some rooms that require you to kill everything to unlock the chest, and a certain subset of those i can't even reach with the fire wheel spell or scythes through the wall, what's the way to get those. So far they are the only chest objectives i couldn't do.

Also some of the gear only NG+ right? Because it seems to go a tier per area.

Oh my god, i just realized i listened to the latest Bombcats 4 times in a row because it was on loop while playing.

@tennmuerti: The crow spell should do the trick. It's pretty rare though, think maybe only Lich King can get it(?)

@tennmuerti: I assume higher level blueprints don't drop in NG (4th and 5th columns), regardless it would take a fair amount of equipment leveling and gold income isn't necessarily great pre NG+; still cheaper than level upgrades at 150+ though. For rune chests you can farm every one prior to going to NG+ I imagine, though I'm still 4 or 5 short in NG+2 (and there are some fucking insane kill all enemies rune chests). Every "kill all enemies" through walls can be doable with a specific spell or multiple; but if you don't have that spell the Lich King/Queen's crow spell hits all enemies on the room and is kind of a cure-all in the same way flying is for platforming and dwarfism is for certain areas.

Protip: Hit escape in a room with a lot of enemies on screen

NG+2 castle is somewhat more difficult than NG+ castle, but the tower has T3 enemies fucking everywhere. Also 5 or 6 rooms can = 12k gold, always nice. Holy christ every room is a gauntlet.

I just stand direclty next to each of the Four Kings and beat the shit out of them, as they deal no damage due to a hit box problem for them.

@jakob187: Yar it's not hard just can be nigh impossible if your gear is bad enough; same thing here except it is actually hard too.

NG is hard, NG+ is very hard, NG+2 is "Haha, fuck you"

The statues have a small chance of getting you a compass that appears on your UI and points... somewhere, I wasn't able to get there the one time I got it and I'm sure as hell not getting there in NG+2 so I'm curious if anyone's figured out what that is. Rune chests turn into stats after you get all the runes.

Is that why I'm unboxing a ton of stat-ups now? I wonder if I can get a leg up on NG+ by farming a bunch of ups in NG.

@fredchuckdave said:

Well, I'm definitely getting it Monday, and I should be moved into the new apartment by the end of the day. Therefore, I should have my computer up and running as well, giving me all night (since I don't go to work until 6pm Tuesday) to play it.

@ravenlight: For NG+ it could be worth it (play with a Spelunker to find the chests faster), for NG+2 you make such a ridiculous amount of gold that it's difficult to not profit at least somewhat; almost every NG+2 run I've had has gone less than 5 minutes and I've had several 20k+ runs in that timespan; one in 8 rooms.

Edit: Just had my best run, 10 rooms for 30,000; Sir Useless V, didn't even leave the castle.

i just spent some money on endless space, please don't make me buy this

I think the cap of the linch depends on how many points you have put into the hp upgrade?

Holy shit...this game just blew my mind. Beat the final boss on normal roughly an hour ago, screwing around on NG+, killed Castle and North zone bosses, then died.

Back at the keep, while not being able to decide what to upgrade I was just randomly pressing direction keys...and holy shit, the thing north of the flag.

I am superrrrrrrrrrrr excited to try this out.

Finally had a "normal" run in NG+2, good for 56000. No clue what happens when you run out of stuff to upgrade. If your damage is high enough then Barbarian becomes a pretty solid class in all situations.

LOL this game man, this game...

Third boss on my first try, such a "WHAT? WHATS UP? YEAH THATS RIGHT" feeling (was actually just a farming run too but after completing the castle and the forrest I went for the tower and when I got to the boss I thought "meh I already have 12k gold lets take a look at him" and didnt even clear the tower). Luckily I was using a barbarian king (one of my go to classes) and the shout is awesome for the fire blobs.

I actually still feel slightly underpowered (like I said it was just a farming run) so I might grind a bit before tackling the dungeon. This game man...

edit: also I died 2 rooms after the boss too :p I barely had any life after him anyway. Havent spent the 20k or so I got in the run, might dump it all in health and STR this time, especially STR

Does running this in1920x1200 always have letterboxing? I swear I played it without letterboxing yesterday and now my game doesn't fill up my screen. Or am I just crazy?

NG+3 every enemy is Tier 3; so it's gone from 20 minute runs in NG to 15 minute runs in NG+ to 5 minute runs in NG+2 to 1 minute runs in NG+3

Does anybody have any tips for making the final class useful? I have been upgrading mana but I keep finding the hokage to be my go to class. Also what does the blessings do? I know Hermes protects against spikes and Charon gives a free pass to the next heir, what does Helios do and are there other?

I just tested this out. A Lich starts with 35% base HP. They gain HP until they reach the 100% base (i.e. the HP of a Paladin) at which point it stops increasing. Edit: To clarify, yes increasing your HP from the manor will increase the potential of the Lich.

The mana is a little more complicated. I started with a base of 120 (50% of Paladin) and it wouldn't let me increase my mana any more once I reached 350, which depending on how you read it is either 145% of base, or 290% of the Lich's starting pool. Edit again: The cap might be even lower, come to think of it, as I only did a conversion once I was full, so I got the full 50% of max HP (230 specifically) added to my pool. Would require more testing to see if there's a lower-cap for it.

@philantrophy: It's useful if you have a spellcaster build, fighting one of the bosses, and getting fairy chests; most people won't have that build though. Caster tree is right hand side of the castle, physical tree is left; though Lich doesn't fit the bill.

Lich gets increasingly useless past NG+ since you're not going to kill hundreds of enemies anymore.

How is it to play with a keyboard?

@philantrophy: Helios seems to make it so that enemies drop 2-4x the number of gold when killed. There is also another one called Hedgehog's Curse (I think) as a reference to Sonic the Hedgehog. This makes it so that every time you are hit, your gold flies out from you and you have to collect it up again.

This game is amazing, I've had my best runs with the Archmage so far, almost managed to clear the forest, but I'm still in serious need of more upgrading!

edit: and for people asking how it controls with the keyboard, it gets a little cumbersome once you get the dash runes because they are mapped to 2 separate keys, so you basically have 5 actions on 5 different keys you're performing with your left hand only, but you eventually get used to it.

I've had no problems playing with the keyboard; granted I don't use dash runes at all.

The compass points you to a random spot (mine was in the dungeon) that allows you to enter a secret passage with (at least in my case) 2 chests. One had a recipe (which was a tier 4 even though I'm still only on first playthrough) and the other had a stat upgrade. Edit: got it a second time and it was 2 chests again, both with recipes

It's sorta poorly implemented. Basically you're not allowed to convert to mana if your mana would end up higher than cap, so you have to convert at just the right spot to maximize it. I would suggest that if you just wanna find the cap you should first get an estimate, then sac a run by just converting over and over at low hp.

also, lich with crows when overlevelled is just stupid good. I just cleared the entire map by entering a room, doing 2 crows and regenning back everything from siphon runes.

I can see nights disappearing to this, weeks and months. it's that search for a perfect run full of faerie chests and money.

I wasted a grand on the stupid 6% buy back from Charon too, what a mistake.

Here's my tip for the Land of Darkness boss: P.A.D.

Having the second phase of a certain boss spawn directly on you before you have control of your character given back isn't a fun way to die.