Where's the Icy Secret Rooms?

[Jade Kitsune]

I get that the sparkle to find secret rooms is the same for every floor. Consistancy and you can use the same sprite and animations the whole time.

But looking for that WHITE sparkle on WHITE walls with no other tells is straight up infuriating.
Am I missing another tell that can make looking for the secret rooms just as easy as the rest of the floors?

SHOULD there be another tell? (I say there should be, since I can find every other secret room at a glance, the sparkle is very easy to see on the darker walls of every other theme)

[Remmy]

The Revealer spell, with the eyeball icon, shows the location of the secret room on the minimap. It's a very helpful spell that is worth getting.

[Jade Kitsune]

I will admit the Revealer spell is practically designed to hunt secret rooms, as well as weak enemy formations. However, not every person (myself included) has Revealer.

I had built my character to be able to take zero damage for a majority of the game: rush Defense ups, then Transmute, and then all the Enchantment effect boots. Now, at end game, levels are few and far between, and getting Revealer will take two entire levels, or several million gold in skill gems. Not too crazy, with some grinding, but what about lower level characters?

Every skill point is precious before you unlock skill gems, which become available AFTER the ice levels. Not every character will have access to Revealer, depending on how each player builds their character. And no, I will not accept "then you're just playing this wrong" as a valid response, because it's stupid to think that someone HAS to pick a very SPECIFIC build in order to have ANY chance of success. That's not the point of skill trees, that's a meta thing and I'd rather not get into that.

To compound all this, before you get access to end-game gear and copious amounts of Mortimus Iron, mana can be a little tight, when you get into Transmutation. You COULD use Revealer on every single floor just in case it has a secret room, or you could transmute some Berries for that quest, heal yourself, have enough mana for one more [element]strike. Yes, MP potions exist, but they can run out quickly if you have to use one or two every floor.

Putting all this together, coupled with the fact that the visual tell for this particular theme is still much more difficult to see than all the other floors, and I'm left here wondering if the developer could tweak the ice level's Fake Walls to be a touch easier on the eyes.

[Davrick]

As you probably already know, you always get a secret level in the range of floors ending in 1-4, and another in the range ending in 5-9 (e.g., on the ice levels, 41-44 and again in 45-49). If it hasn't spawned before the last floor in a given range, it's guaranteed to do so on the last one. For me, the tedium of finding the secret levels in the ice portion isn't searching every wall for a sparkle, it's searching every wall for a sparkle that might not even be there because the secret room didn't spawn.

So, with all that in mind, fun fact: if a secret room spawns on a level and you don't unlock it, the game treats it like it didn't appear on that level at all, and creates the subsequent levels accordingly. Let's say the secret room spawns on level 41, but you don't find it. It will have a chance to spawn again on 42, and if it doesn't, on 43, and if it doesn't, it's guaranteed to spawn on 44. Even if it does spawn on 42 or 43, if you don't unlock it, it will again spawn on 44. I've tested this repeatedly.

So when you're playing the ice levels -- or any levels really -- if you happen to spot the secret room, great. If you don't, don't stress about it. Just keep going until you get to the floors ending in 4 or 9, then search those because you know it has to be there.

[Remmy]

XK, good points for that play style. That said, secret rooms are not essential. Maybe the secret rooms on the other floors are too easy to find. (Just playing devil's advocate, don't get upset.)

For the regular game, rerunning the player's 10 highest cave levels to pick up stat gems will slowly melt away any fighting or resource issues. In fact, for the base game before NG+, it can actually make equipment, potions, money, spells and skills non-essential for getting to and killing the end boss.

(edit) And Davrick's advice to not stress about the secret rooms is spot on!!!

[Jade Kitsune]

Remmy, perhaps they are too easy, but that would come down to a choice in how the sprite is made. Perhaps in some future update, each theme will get its own sparkle. Grey to start, maybe black for the temple, brown jungle, so on. I hope not, personally.

Davrick, while I have figured out the 1-4 and 5-9 though personal testing, I did not know about the secret room following you if you don't unlock it. I thought I was just straight up missing the room entirely, which is part of what frustrated me about the ice levels.

This is all compounded by the fact that I'm currently in the process of making an in-depth item guide, from floor 1-100, through grinding and trial/error. It's tedious, but anything that would help me find items more efficiently is helpful. Thank you, both of you, for your contributions~

[Remmy]

XK, an up-to-date item guide is something that is sorely needed. That would be very time intensive to put together. Thank you for the effort.

If you have a character that is at least NG+5 (or close enough to push to it), then 100% insta-kill combined with 100% item drop could make information gathering quicker. Something to think about.

[Jade Kitsune]

100% insta-kill would make my job a hundred times easier, but I only recently took down the final boss. I've opt'd for a more "brute force and BS" strategy instead, just running each floor, 10 floors at a time, 10-20 times each, and recording what I find, highs and lows. It works, for what I want it to do, despite taking forever. That's alright, though. I have time. (Plus, whenever I can get this guide online, others can quickly add to it by commenting whenever they find an item outside of the range I found.)

[Remmy]

Even at high NG+ levels, the monsters drop the same items. Rat drops Tiny Tooth; Angry Shroom drops White Morels or Small Health Potion. In the early 90's, Dark Wyvern drops Health Potion or Large Health Potion; Emerald Dragon drops Magic Pickaxe or Dragon Scale Mail (for the Agony Stone!). Then there are all the different chests and what they drop and at what cave level.

I can see why it would take many iterations of the same cave levels to get this information. For example, on level 92 the small brown chest may start dropping Frightened Spirit but it could take 10 or 20 tries before getting one to drop on that level.

If you're going to be repeating a set of 10 levels that many times, might as well move on to NG+ and be picking up stat gems. Your character would become very powerful for NG+ by the time you were done. Just a suggestion.