Game balance and difficulty

[Terrarius]

For those that have played this game alot, what are your thoughts on this?

I am wondering because i just beat the final ascension after 5 hours, having only died once and having not really played an autobattler before.
This is not to brag, i also started playing tales & tactics in which ascension 0 keeps killing me

It seems like while this game is quite complex in terms of what you can do, it also rather easy. Like, there 1000 paths to making an overpowered team and with how many rerolls you get and how you can tune your heroes to do whatever you want them to do you will probably get on one of these 1000 paths.

I have not even started reading what enemys do or reshuffling gear before a fight to counter the encounter.

So, perphaps this game is not supposed to be challenging roguelike, but instead a casual sandbox to make broken synergys in?

[Shapeling]

For someone who played this game a lot (over 1200 hours across the beta, the demo and the full version) Flame Master hits the sweet spot for Ascensions runs. This includes reaching and defeating the optional Act 4, which is there both for flexing and to test if your build was good enough. With enough game experience, any run is winnable here, regardless of how the dices roll for you.

There are optional higher difficulties in the challenges and also in the customized mode. Starting at Impossible difficulty, you are much more likely to hit a wall here and there. For example, the transition between Act 1 to Act 2 can be very unforgiving for average builds. The less item slots you have filled, the more likely you will start bleeding flame between fights, at least until you reach the shop. Many normal fights in Act 3 are also likely to cause the bleeding, while rewards for your bloody sacrifice are next to none. Unless your build already has it's win condition and defenses online, it is often better to skip as many normal fights in Act 3 as possible. Bosses and Elites there are fully predictable, while the normal fights are not.

There are indeed 1000 if not a lot more way to make something overpowered. The better you get at it recognizing them, the more often it will occur. For example, any time you are getting a hero who utilizes critical hit chance/damage, you have to ask yourself: 'how am I going to fill the crit chance to 100% (if possible) and what I am going to do with it this time?' You can repeat similar questions to yourself about anything; attack damage, spell power, sustain, synergy, scaling etc.

It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with what the biggest troublemakers are doing. When you know their gimmicks, you are more likely to counter them better. This can matter in case your party is not fully online yet. Many bosses, elites or even normal fights can punish wrong positioning, resulting in more Flame loss or even in defeat.

It is a bit of both. There is already a small group of players who treat the Impossible mode as their default one. It can be very challenging to keep a good winrate there, due to the reasons I mentioned earlier.

Have fun! :)

[Hotloop]

Originally posted by Terrarius:

For those that have played this game alot, what are your thoughts on this?

I am wondering because i just beat the final ascension after 5 hours, having only died once and having not really played an autobattler before.
This is not to brag, i also started playing tales & tactics in which ascension 0 keeps killing me

It seems like while this game is quite complex in terms of what you can do, it also rather easy. Like, there 1000 paths to making an overpowered team and with how many rerolls you get and how you can tune your heroes to do whatever you want them to do you will probably get on one of these 1000 paths.

I have not even started reading what enemys do or reshuffling gear before a fight to counter the encounter.

So, perphaps this game is not supposed to be challenging roguelike, but instead a casual sandbox to make broken synergys in?

I don't think not having played auto-battlers before is a big deal. It's more about if you played a lot of roguelikes before, a lot of games with stats (ARPGs, MMOs, RPGs), strategy games, and your IQ.

From data analytics, I can tell you that beating all 5 ascension difficulties in only 1 death is definitely not the norm. I think on average it would take a bit more like 10-20 deaths to beat all 5 ascensions. So that makes you way more skilled at the game than the average player. Thumbs up for that!

As @Shapeling said above. Flame Master is NOT the last difficulty.

The Impossible difficulty can be found in the challenges (you'll need 7/8 unlocks before it is available). The impossible difficulty has no additional mods like other challenges, it is simply Flame Master but a lot harder.

In Custom Game Modes (you'll need 8/8 unlocks before it is available), you can play on Impossible + ,Impossible ++, Impossible +++ and even create your own difficulties.

Cheers!

[Hotloop]

One thing that I forgot to mention, Act 4 is a lot harder than Act 3. Are you also completing Act 4 (optional act)? If you skipped through the tutorials/tips, you may have missed how to get into Act 4.

Mentioning this as many players don't realize right away that Act 4 is a thing.

[Terrarius]

Thanks for the response.
I am looking forward to impossible and in the meantime will try to consistently beat chapter4.
There is probably gonna be this age old question:
- play on the highest difficulty without the true final boss, or play on regular difficulty with true final boss?

[Hotloop]

Originally posted by Terrarius:

Thanks for the response.
I am looking forward to impossible and in the meantime will try to consistently beat chapter4.
There is probably gonna be this age old question:
- play on the highest difficulty without the true final boss, or play on regular difficulty with true final boss?

I think it depends on if for you wining and run length is fine with just beating Act 3, or if you feel fully accomplished in your run when you beat Act 4. Because TLF is an auto-battler, I feel like Act 4 can be done pretty quickly, a lot more quickly than carefully playing Act 4 in Slay the Spire for instance.

I realized that I never really answered to the first question. My thought (and I might be biased because I do know a lot about the game, for obvious reasons 😅) is that TLF has a very wide skill range a bad player can be very very bad, but a good player can be very very good. In my opinion, once the game is well understood, TLF is more easy than other roguelikes I have played. I consider Impossible to be a lot easier than A20 on Slay the Spire for instance. I think it's mainly due to the fact that, the game has a lot of options to win (a lot of synergies), and that the game has very little RNG compared to other roguelikes. You can reroll a lot in TLF and see a lot of items, swap passives between heroes, relics are more general (non sacrificial ones), and so on... In Slay the Spire, you get a random relic, and then you adapt with the relic that you get, and sometimes it won't be that impactful. In TLF, you choose all relics.

For those that want a extremely challenging experience, they can make their own difficulties in Custom!

[deathkeeper1]

And i still cant beat act 4 after 13 hours with ascension 0. So for me act 4 is impossible to beat ((( But i am on ascension 2 in tales & tactics )))))