Pre-destined?

[Lokaps]

I'll start off by saying, I really do love this game. I think this most recent patch was great, gives us a lot more to play around with!

However, sometimes you may want to play a good, evil, or lawful character. Mostly because there are unlockable characters for doing so, but maybe you would just want to for some other reason as well. Maybe you want to see or practice one area, I don't know.

So after I first completed the game as lawful, I avoided the evil or good gates for some time. I realized I wouldn't win that way since I didn't have as many evil or good points as I did lawful when I won. I eventually realized I had to try and probably fail to be evil or good to unlock the evil and good shops. I guess that holds up to the previous experience, but when you already have figured out that a too low stat means a fail it made me not even try for some time. I thought I could get a good enough good or evil stat if I got lucky enough, and I did not want to waste time on the gate. Playthroughs take me usually around an hour, and as far as I can tell there is no way to save during a playthrough.

That's something I would change if I were the dev. An option to save is a HUGE boon to a game. I understand it may be difficult in a largely randomized game, and if it is so difficult as to be impossible that's still ok, I would keep playing this game when I know I have a lot of time because it's a lot of fun!

Anyway, I just tried to do celestial throne with the wizard. Having unlocked the good and evil shops, I thought it would mostly be a test of my skill. The first two shops were only lawful and evil. I decided to start saving gold and souls after I saw I had no good rating, and I did pick up 2 good at the tavern. My third post boss shop also didn't offer me a good shop.

I had a strong build, but I just lost heart after I saw there was pretty much no way I would be good enough to go to heaven and attempt beating the boss, I quit.


I think you shouldn't randomize the shops after they have been unlocked. If you have unlocked lawful, good, evil, and eventually chaotic shops I think they should all be available after the boss floor they show up on.

We all love roguelikes or roguelites here, at least I think we should if we're in this game's discussions ha. I think there's a difference between having a chance at a really cool or bad build, or having a chance at being able to complete the game or not though. I would've gladly paid 60 souls for zero benefit other than my ability to continue playing.

That shouldn't happen though. Unless they're literally set up as a cost to open a gate, which could be vailid. Souls as they currently exist should offer benefit besides being allowed to continue playing the game with your current build.

So please just offer shops. I can save souls up the entire game and it won't matter if I can't use them to make progress.

I'll grant it doesn't happen often, but it does happen. And while random chance is fun, it's not fun to spend an hour or more to find that you just never could have won in the way you were trying to. Maybe I could've been lawful or evil, and maybe that's fine in the long run, but it really sucks to spend an hour or more trying to unlock a character and then realize you never had a chance.

Sorry about negative tones here. I know you're still working on the game and probably there will be more opportunities for alignment changes coming up.

I think if you're making a cut and dry win condition, there should be cut and dry win condition opportunities though. Let us have a shop. You still would have to bank souls and not spend them all at the bonfires.

And an option to save would be fantastic! You would gain so many casual players, and even those of us who are happy playing for hours would benefit a lot!

In the end though, keep up the good work! I really like what you've done here, just it could be improved. I look forward to playing whatever else you come up with!

[joseph]

just go to a soul shop room on floor 11
i noticed earlier on a wizard run that spawned no holy shops. that spending souls on a floor 11 soul shop gets you the alignment you need.
i'm not certain if its guaranteed to show up but i've found one naturally on every run since then so it might be

[pi73r]

I didn't fail a single time to get alignment I wanted. If you really don't wanna buy everything in 1 shop then pick dice.

[Lokaps]

Happened again tonight :(

I was doing a deprived run going for lawful. 0/3 shop opportunities were lawful. I did buy the dice in the tavern since that's the only way I know to get lawful besides the shop. I saved up gold to be able to refresh the tavern until I got the option and still buy it. I think I had 2 more shop spawns after I gained that one lawful, it didn't make me any more likely to get a lawful shop I guess.

I didn't get any soul shop on 11. I saved up red dice to reroll and hope I got it. I think I had 6 dice, still didn't get a soul shop.

I did buy one thing from the good shop. That may be my problem, but lawful/chaos and good/evil being seperate I didn't think it would get me.

If red dice at least allowed rerolling of alignment shop choices after a boss I think this could become a basically non-issue, like hey your fault if you didn't pick up dice. You can take dice from the beginning, so that would be a good way to guarantee you can have the right shop if you're trying to unlock a character.

I still had about 40 souls and 2 (gold?) dice to reroll shop options after I beat everything I was allowed to and was judged to be not lawful enough. If I saw a lawful shop I would have probably won, at least I could've tried.

This really is a problem. Once I have all the characters unlocked I'll probably never really think about it again, but it's pretty frustrating right now.

[THANKS OBAMA]

Eh...? This isn't really a problem I encounter at all getting the alignment I want. And I even waste souls on Law store when running for good or evil. Unless you're blowing them on getting an extra health/dodge/mana before locking in your level 4 alignment I don't see where issues can crop up.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Lokaps:

I did buy one thing from the good shop. That may be my problem, but lawful/chaos and good/evil being seperate I didn't think it would get me.

Yeah this is your issue. Don't buy things from alignment shops you don't want to see again. You told the game you wanted Good Alignment when you gained Good Alignment from the Good Shop. I'm guessing it spawned Good Shops in every shop spawn past that? If you're doing a run for the sole purpose of a character unlock, you have to prioritize doing the things that let you unlock them.

This might be something the dev could improve overall, like maybe having the game check if you need to unlock a character and spawning the corresponding shop in the 1st shop spawns if you do. Honestly it's not that big of a deal though. There's no major rush to unlock every piece of content instantly, if it takes you 3 runs to unlock a new character (which is insanely unlucky) you'll survive. It's not like doing a run on a character you unlocked is going to be a completely different game than doing the runs you unlocked them on. If you can't enjoy playing the game while you have goals and unlocks left to do, I doubt you're going to enjoy it once you finished all the unlocks.

[𝓛𝓮𝓶𝓸𝓷 🍋]

My run just right now, no good shops...

[HeraldOfOpera]

Deprived specifically does have the issue that it starts with an alignment point that doesn't match its unlock, which due to "smart" loot will bias the game against giving you what you want.

[FatAdvice]

You literally only need a Law/Good/Evil Shop to spawn once after floor 3 or 2 if you're lucky with some souls rooms or otherwise can generate some.
You then buy 3 items in that shop.
You can get the last required alignment in the Tavern by talking to the Cleric/Farmer/Gunsmith or whatever.
You also can get 1 Evil from the Black Market.
And as was already pointed out you can just buy items in any of the floor 11 shops to increase your alignment.
The only possible way that you could be struggling with this is if you're trying to game the system by buying items that change your alignment all the time.