bit of a rant (sorry)

[Skaliton]

so I just had my best run yet, was 9 exp shy of hitting 14 (somehow couldnt find an archer target to save my life..didn't get that heritage either of course)

finally felt like I was understanding the game/how to succeed (making sure to keep both a ghost amulet/reflector) a spare bow "just incase" along with various potions to help with specific problems etc. basically preventative against all reasonable problems

new dungeon..first level had some wierd dragon looking thing but managed to pull it off (had a bunch of animals with me to use as fodder) continuing down floor 4 no sounds for warning/cause of problem

open the door.boom cave bear right on the other side now mauling me..quick look nothing I can do double check inventory nope nothing..dead


I could swear the bear has a "rawr" for that exact reason because without charm/instant kill it seems (at least to me) completely impossible with any build/items


yes I know how this game is/plays and I've gotten accustomed to dying to stupid things and rolls that are completely unfair (why yes that silenced caster will win in melee somehow, and a grunt can in fact kill you with stones from full hp) and I probably wouldn't care nearly as much if I wasn't so close to 2 heritages (really after 56 hours I start with a blessed dagger,antidote, and leather armor..thats it)

[Morphic]

I'm plagued with stuff like that happening to me. On a normal basis I'm unlucky, in all things really, so I've grown accustomed to things like that ending my run. It could be worse, you could have just entered the dungeon and had to fight some Mega Snail that looks like an FF5 boss...only right after you kill it and loot it's shiny magical Amulet... have a Cave Bear fly outta nowhere and rip your face off. Alternatively you can run into something like this...when you still haven't found single ring/amulet or enchanted piece of gear...

http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3299196622653757891/8A65E406E9143AFB9A28E268A447E8EA3C404E7D/

Honestly the longer I play this game the more I feel it's less about skill and more about getting good stuff/rolls. Earlier I had a Blessed Platemail and matching Helmet, both with a Hallwood enchant, increasing their physical resistences by 2. I'm level 6 thinking I'm so boss, I open a door and get greeted by an Impaler's Heroic Charge in my face dealing 15 damage. I have 1 HP left ... I die. Despite ~65% of my runs ending with situations like this I keep playing. However I'm really starting to consider putting this game down and going back to Powder or Dungeon Crawl at least those seemingly rely more on skill than item drops.

[Skaliton]

that's what I mean I enjoy this game, really I like knowing that i must think constantly thinking if I need to switch something before each engagement, but when stuff like that happens or a back to back durability on your weapon (ive had triple on a blessed bow even) it really sucks the fun out of it

a 2 hour game executed "perfectly" can end immediately because the game decides it's time to die

[Mustardoish]

I would almost disagree. Sure, there are sometimes situations where you really are out of luck and especially without heritages it can be tough. But my playtime has tremendously improved and in hindsight most of my deaths are the result of me being sloppy in one way or the other. Always remember, the longer you survive, the more chance you have of finding a great item. Also use your one-time items. There is no point in being dead and having three health potions.

[Mustardoish]

Actually there is one way to get heritages (fairly) easy. Get a STR/STA hero. Then get first talent heroic charge, second talent shield bash (which is used passively). Of course try to maximize heavy gear with strength, health and maybe confuse resist. Look out for ring of fortitudes and later ring of evasion. Take a crushing weapon, best a hammer and enchant it with D6 damage asap. Try to find a divine might wizard to teach you. All of these things are fairly easily done. At a certain point, this build is quasi invincible. But if you see more than two enemies down one floor, run away. Keep always 100 gold just to be on the safe side and to be able to reset. Since you have 4 talent slots left, you can unlock any other talent combo. You can get the Hero of Hallwood heritage and all resist heritages and knowledges. Try this like ten times and you should have a run that works almost guaranteed. Also, if you wanna equip new gear, identify it first. A good run can end with a cursed piece of mail. At some point (lvl 20) you dont even need to look for traps anymore and you can dungeon run/grind to get knowledge and gear and money. (BTW Leather armour is the best of the starting equipments. You have a guaranteed uncursed set and +1 to all resistances when you need it most, at the start. It is basically like all the six +1 resis heritages combined)

[Morphic]

Originally posted by Mustardoish:

Actually there is one way to get heritages (fairly) easy. Get a STR/STA hero. Then get first talent heroic charge, second talent shield bash (which is used passively). Of course try to maximize heavy gear with strength, health and maybe confuse resist. Look out for ring of fortitudes and later ring of evasion. Take a crushing weapon, best a hammer and enchant it with D6 damage asap. Try to find a divine might wizard to teach you. All of these things are fairly easily done.

All of that is "in theory". You act as if it is guaranteed. What if you don't find a Campfire or Training Dummy? What if you don't find a Hammer? What if ... This is the problem and why I very much dislike people who talk like this. If you find a Blessed Ring of Familar it's easy peasy! Good luck finding one. I've gone 3 floors without ever finding armor, just as I've gone a whole dungeon without ever finding a weapon worthy of trading your starting Dagger for.(Clubs, broken weapons were all I found) Is this my fault? Did I not use what the game gave me in a "skillful" manner? When the game decides to give you lemons...you can't exactly make lemonade. I won't even get into how making a STR/STA character means you are Melee and therefore the risk of death is significantly higher.

Originally posted by Mustardoish:

At a certain point, this build is quasi invincible. But if you see more than two enemies down one floor, run away.

Well that certainly is irony and contradiction at it's finest. "You are practically invincible! but if you see 2 guys, run away!" Then I'm not invincible then lol. Typically you'll win in 1v1 fights but it always depends on what you have versus what the enemy is and what it has.

Originally posted by Mustardoish:

Keep always 100 gold just to be on the safe side and to be able to reset. Since you have 4 talent slots left, you can unlock any other talent combo. You can get the Hero of Hallwood heritage and all resist heritages and knowledges. Try this like ten times and you should have a run that works almost guaranteed. Also, if you wanna equip new gear, identify it first. A good run can end with a cursed piece of mail. At some point (lvl 20) you dont even need to look for traps anymore and you can dungeon run/grind to get knowledge and gear and money. (BTW Leather armour is the best of the starting equipments. You have a guaranteed uncursed set and +1 to all resistances when you need it most, at the start. It is basically like all the six +1 resis heritages combined)

Okay so wait, you want people to always save 100 gold but then also need to identify any new stuff they find? You hear that other players, stay in your Shirt and Hood with your Shiv until you have 120 gold, that way you can identify 1 piece of equipment and hope it isn't cursed!

You do realize all you've done is essentially go "Okay well all you need is X, Y and Z in order to win the game." When X, Y and Z are all random things and may or may not show up. Furthermore you do realize to get the "Heroes of Hallwood" Heritage you need to read 10 special unique Gravestones in a single run right? I've counted that there is at least 20 different non achievement related Gravestone...meaning you have a 1-30 chance of finding ONE required grave per Gravestone. You'd have to be incredibly lucky or live through at least 10 dungeons that had 3 graves....and this is all going off of what I've seen, what if there are more non achievement graves? It's the same thing with getting the other Resistence related Heritages. You need to either get lucky or live a very long time.

Like I said, everything you stated is strictly tied in with the RNG. You'd have to look at each run as if everything will go wrong and you will roll low on everything. I could easily be rocking in Enchanted Platemail with a Blessed enchanted Hammer... only to open a door and die thanks to 2 Devourer immediately casting Soul Release using Black Soul Gems. You could make theoretical comments like "Oh, well you should have used Silent Move or an invisiblity scroll before opening the door" ... What if I never found an Altar to read? I'm a STR/STA character that followed your instructions and got Heroic Charge, Shield Bash and Crushing Blow, how am I supposed to get that too?

The fact of the matter is; your runs are tied directly to RNG. There is skill in gauging what to use, how to use it, or when to use it. However at the end of the day, there is only so much you can do when the game throws you lemons. Most times the game decides "It's time for you to die" and you die.

[Mysterio28]

I agree totally. While there is some skill involved, there's a more luck involved as in what you will get to drop and what you'll encounter in the dungeon, which usually isn't very good. He might make it sound as if it's easy to get all that stuff, but I've been playing this for a few hours today trying to work on one of the achievements for the leather armor and while I can usually find 3 campfires for 3 of the skills, afterwards they just stop showing up even though I do got that one skill point that i can spend in it. Even surviving another 6 floors and still nadda and eventually I die all because the game decided I had my fun and kills me off. And as of yet I haven't found anything really all that helpful and only once found the cleric npc who teaches that divine spell which was handy the one time I did get it. I guess it's easy to speak if you've managed to get a lot of the heritages and got all the bonuses from them which makes things easier, but for people like us who only got 1 or 2, it's a struggle.

[Morphic]

Originally posted by Mysterio28:

I guess it's easy to speak if you've managed to get a lot of the heritages and got all the bonuses from them which makes things easier, but for people like us who only got 1 or 2, it's a struggle.

Honestly some of the Heritages just make the early game eaiser. However it's ones like the Resistence Heritages and "One Strange Trip" that really make an impact overall.

With that said, the only reasuring thing is statistics. In the end it will all balance out, for every run you die there will be one where you win. For every time you feel "cheated" you'll get lucky. The problem lies in when it happens. It could be your very next run...or it could be months from now after you clocked in another 100 hours. Personally I went from playing regularly to treating Rogue's Tale as a "casual" game. I'll boot it up, do a couple of runs, then play something else. At times it's to frustrating to do otherwise.

[Mysterio28]

This is just my opinion, but what I think they should do is sorta make the game easier for newer people with next to no heritages to at least give them a chance. And as you get more heritages, every new game will get harder and harder because with the way it is now, it can easily discourage new people who might get the game from wanting to play for too long. More than once I've considered just giving it up, but for some reason I stick around in hopes of getting lucky. And I'm not talking about making it easy to where people can take advantage of it by getting as many heritages on the first go as they can get, just the first couple floors.

[Morphic]

Well I disagree with "making it easier" it's a Rogue-like afterall it's supposed to be hard. However this game has the same kind of problem most other Rogue-likes do...RNG plays a very large role. I don't see a way of "making it easier" other than a complete overhaul of the game.

IMO, it should be that the first dungeon you get upon creating a new character doesn't have humanoid enemies. Well specifically, no Daemons but the last floor can have Orcs or other Humans. To me that would skew the inital odds towards the player's favor without being to easy. Once you do a reset, it's fair game. I think this would at least mitigate newcomers from being overwhelmed.

[Mustardoish]

Well, you did not understand it. What if you don't find a hammer? Use an axe. Found only broken ones? Repair them. Find none? Look in the shop. Found no rings? Check the shop. Blaming only the RNG is the wrong way. For instance, at some point all my heritages got reset to 0. Still I got back fairly quickly. I believe many people aim for builds that can One-shot the enemy, which is fun to play. But if that means that it comes at the expense of being one-shottable, then it is only a matter of time that "the game decides to kill me".
And obviously the 100g pocket money only applies after having some basic equipment, duh.
I admit, I wrote quite poorly. Of course, once you are invincible you can kill at your leisure. But up to that point don't take unnecessary risks.
So instead of flaming me, just try it. It doesn't work just in theory, it actually works quite nicely in practice.

[Morphic]

Originally posted by Mustardoish:

Well, you did not understand it. What if you don't find a hammer? Use an axe. Found only broken ones? Repair them. Find none? Look in the shop. Found no rings? Check the shop. Blaming only the RNG is the wrong way. For instance, at some point all my heritages got reset to 0. Still I got back fairly quickly. I believe many people aim for builds that can One-shot the enemy, which is fun to play. But if that means that it comes at the expense of being one-shottable, then it is only a matter of time that "the game decides to kill me".
And obviously the 100g pocket money only applies after having some basic equipment, duh.
I admit, I wrote quite poorly. Of course, once you are invincible you can kill at your leisure. But up to that point don't take unnecessary risks.
So instead of flaming me, just try it. It doesn't work just in theory, it actually works quite nicely in practice.

I wasn't flaming you, did I ever insult you? No. I did however play Devil's Advocate and counter your so called help. As I said before, it comes down to RNG. Want me to repair broken weapons? How can I if I don't find gold and can only sell identified stuff? Want me to use a Hammer/Axe? How can I if I don't find one? I'm stuck with using other stuff, which you inferred wasn't optimal. Buy rings from the shop? What if they only sell "crap ones" like Ring of Clarity or Ring of Searching? I've encountered that many times, the Shop will have 3 of the same type of Ring.

Also I think you are assuming way to much if you think people are "aiming for one-shot builds". You can't even really make one due to how the skills and weapons work. I could see a dual wielding build being able to one-shot with Blade Furry, however in order for your damage to be that high you'd need heavily enchanted weapons. Not only that, you'd need to get at least a +4 or higher Modifier to the skill as well for most enemies, which level up with you. That point is kinda moot.

As for the pocket money...you didn't say that though. My primary point was that people with your attitude act as if it's the easiest thing in the world and essentially give "don't be stupid" advice. However you never acknowledge the fact that RNG is intrinsically tied to how well you do. Sure you can mitigate the overall effect it has on you, but in the end it plays a major roll. I mean the perfect example is, unless you are a caster, you need good items/enchantments in order to get far once you hit level 12. If you don't have solid accessories like Ring of Brutality for melee or an Amulet of Ghost Form for Bears... you kinda get screwed in the upper levels. This is because the enemies scale(which they should) and thus become harder as you level. However they "overlevel" you and are very much capable of one-shotting you despite your level or "normal" gear. That's why you need skills and gear/enchantments to make up for this... but if you don't have it, you lose. Again, is it my fault I died to a Cave Bear that appeared 1 turn after killing a Mega Snail? How could I have done anything different if literally right after I killed the thing and took a turn to Rest a Bear charged me? This is what I and Mysterio are talking about. Things like this happen frequently, at least for me.

You think I haven't read guides or advice from other players and not taken it? You think I walk into a room and see 3 enemies and figure "Pfft I can take em!"? I have tried a plethora of things and followed a bunch of advice from players here, on the official forums and even from in-game chat. Then I took it a step further and used that information as a base and tried stuff on my own to see what works and what doesn't. Some stuff works better than others. Using Two handed weapons is great for the first 6 levels but is a death sentence later on. Min maxed STR/STA has the most overall survivability thanks to high block modifiers but has relatively low damage output. Min maxed Archers are damn near invincible once they get a solid bow and don't spawn on top of enemies...but melt to any ranged casters. Again, in theory a bunch of stuff works but in practice, when things are randomly thrown at you, it doesn't always. This would be okay so long as it didn't happen frequently. However it happens fairly often.

[Mustardoish]

Fair enough, don't give up though.

[Skaliton]

Originally posted by Mustardoish:

Well, you did not understand it. What if you don't find a hammer? Use an axe. Found only broken ones? Repair them. Find none? Look in the shop. Found no rings? Check the shop. Blaming only the RNG is the wrong way. For instance, at some point all my heritages got reset to 0. Still I got back fairly quickly. I believe many people aim for builds that can One-shot the enemy, which is fun to play. But if that means that it comes at the expense of being one-shottable, then it is only a matter of time that "the game decides to kill me".
And obviously the 100g pocket money only applies after having some basic equipment, duh.
I admit, I wrote quite poorly. Of course, once you are invincible you can kill at your leisure. But up to that point don't take unnecessary risks.
So instead of flaming me, just try it. It doesn't work just in theory, it actually works quite nicely in practice.

your entire build and everything is still basically get a tank build (which if you would have read my OP at all you would have seen that the problem wasn't that I lost to something that was "dang I shouldn't have engaged the enemy, or I should have searched again...etc" it was more of paying careful attention the entire time with each step open a door (with no indication that there was a bear on the other side) and rawr boom dead

also your invincible still doesn't acknowledge casters, but yes I openly acknowledge that I have died more than 100 times from my carelessness or just "I'm sure I can take this" and it doesn't bother me when I die from something like that

I mean I like the whole "I can die on turn 2" system in this game (and that has actually happened more than once to me) but at a certain point it is less of RNG and more of unless you have the EXACT thing here you will die (for me in the example would have been full plate, ghost amulet, something to polymorph and cheese)

the whole if you have heritages thing..yes if the game decides to let you coast through and hand you them it can work well..I mean I would love a game where I pick ag/sta and it decides I need a blessed repeater, first 2 enchants give me 2d6 more damage and basically babysits me the entire way, i manage to find a potion of insight and every other potion while i have it, a dungeon with the 10 heroes tombstones while it has exactly the targets and well that I need all without starving me or giving me an insane "no way out" instant kill where as I clear the dungeon the wolf spawns and immediately falls into a spike pit and never gets out so I can easily kill it

look right there in that "totally plausible" scenario (based on RNG)

I would have unlocked
B+A
the potion heritage (this one is mostly a joke but the game could technically let it happen)
Heroes
hp pot
and dog

now obviously the game would never do that, which makes sense and is entirely fair because it would be much easier from that point on (could you imagine if this happened for a new player they would think the game is insanely easy and forgiving instead of well rogue's tale)

but generally when you have nothing the game is just to unforgiving (why yes spend 500 gold enchanting that all your going to get is immune to silence and immune to deafen)

the whole "everytime you live from luck" argument makes sense..or it would if it really mattered because I've basically changed my thoughts on the game to "if it wants you to die you will die"

I enjoy that it is immediately apparent when you did something wrong and you died for it (rather than alot of roguelikes where you could be "doomed" and not know it for 100 turns)

[Mustardoish]

Look, I totally see your point that there are situations where there is nothing you can do.
I am trying to defend my build by saying that it is not that unlikely. I didn't say you have to get this and this and this in order to get it to work. I never said you need blessed plate armor, which at low levels could even be detrimental. Sure, there are runs where you never encounter a dummy or fire, but how likely is that? My very best runs were up to level 15 or so with mediocre gear at best. And at that point is is likely that you find at least something good, be it a spell or a ring or an amulet. Also within ten runs there will be one where you find a one handed strength weapon and a fire and dummy. What are the chances that you get a good enchant on a weapon? Maybe one half. So after three or four enchants it becomes highly unlikely that there was not a single good one (you look for anything that stuns).

Also, my invincible build does acknowledge casters, because of the shield bash. That is basically the whole point, because enemy archers/casters are your worst enemies.
And yes, the longer you survive, the more likely you get the heritages that take a long breath. Which is why I got (almost) all wit0inh a single run, including sword and board, which I didnt even have before. Also I made it to the highscore without any significant heritages and the game was not showering me with presents.

[Mysterio28]

Originally posted by Setzway:

Well I disagree with "making it easier" it's a Rogue-like afterall it's supposed to be hard.

I didn't mean make it easier by giving us better drops early on, I meant as far as the enemies went. Don't see the need for those devils or dire wolves camping the first steps ya come down upon starting a new game and ending it before it starts.