YMMV / Soda Dungeon

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Although this game provides a plenty of classes to work with for party combinations, several party combinations are particularly prized:
  • In the first Soda Dungeon, initially a good party early on (pre-Warrior's Dimension) is a Healer, a Knight, and 3 Thieves. The healer keeps the party HP restored, the Knight prevents random ambushes from killing the run, and the Thieves increase loot gain. Later on in the Warrior's Dimension, a Shifter is frequently used to combine both the Knight and Thief skills while the team is also backed up with four Darkmages, who can do a lot of AOE damage with a certain skill (Noxin).
  • Almost every team for auto farming in the second game will involve a Mystic and a Nurse. As for the other four party members, it can vary from either a quartet of Carpenters or Darkmages for pushing, Thieves for item farming, or Miners for ore/crystal farming.
• Contested Sequel: Soda Dungeon 2 is appreciated over the original for adding Soda Scripts which can customize AI to prevent the typical Artificial Stupidity on Auto runs, however, it also removes the Knight class from the original and replaces with Huntress, which makes enemy ambushes no longer possible to prevent (though, only one enemy attacks first instead of all of them). In addition, characters are less balanced in 2, compared to 1 - although this also opens up new, interesting team compositions such as Miners for farming ores.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Knight in the first game, which prevents the otherwise random-based and potentially run-killing ambushes. And he can also protect party members who might get defeated by an enemy attack, and also has a built-in skill that hits an enemy group that scales with his ATK (though it does less damage on targets other than the main target).
  • The Darkmage, in both games, is a strong powerhouse that sweeps through many levels with the Noxin skill to defeat multiple enemies at once. It also can inflict poison, that can occasionally drain the HP of bosses faster, as well. In the second game, they can also have their MP refilled by the Mystic as in below...
  • In the second game, the Mystic's Energize skill, although it takes a while to get them to Mastery level 25, along with the Nurse's Group Heal, along with the proper Soda Scripts for both of them and the other party members, allowing for infinite healing, making a party cannot be wiped out unless an enemy can one-shot them. This works well for early game (before reaching floor 10000 in Warrior's Dimension).
  • The Primal Lands update of Soda Dungeon 2 introduces a new stat that makes dungeon progressing way easier: Withering. It decreases the HP and ATK of enemies by a percentage based on the party's total Withering percent. Although hard-capped at 90% for obvious reasons, it makes a huge difference in reducing the HP needed to avoid getting one-hit killed and be able to one-hit kill enemies in return. Speaking of which, the Lizard Sword, one of the earliest weapons to provide this stat, is a Rare rarity (rather than Legendary) that you can start getting as early as after floor 300 in Primal Lands.
  • Soda Stein, while already having it's permanent relic level increase chance in the first game, becomes particularly exploitable in 2, with setups involving bashing it on an ore node, over and over. It just happens that a Miner can turn a normal enemy into an ore, allowing more chances to farm the extra relic levels. That, and the Soda Stein having all stats bonus and item find bonus makes it just even more appealing.
  • Plating items can also particularly produce impressive results. Plating all items equipped by your party with Gold will allow you to rack increasingly larger amounts of gold gained, while plating them with Labradorite earns an additional Battle Credit (used to quick run, one floor per each credit)per every Labradorite-plated equipment, allowing to earn lots of Battle Credits, which effectively invalidates the otherwise need to do the Boss Rush mode in the arena. Plating items with Uraniums, on the other hand, grants all stat boosts that further increases the pushing power of the party.
  • Although more of a Bragging Rights Reward otherwise because you basically need to reach Level 900000, the Sword of Space and Time (+1 level to the next warp, per crit) combined with Goggles of Gaan (which grants 100% crit chance) results in a humongous amounts of floors per hour (FPH).
• Goddamned Boss: The Dimension 4 boss of the first game, Garrik, can heal himself and use an attack that hits all party members. The healing might make defeating him seems impossible without enough damage, however, poisoning him negates all of that said advantage. If you don't have a Darkmage however, he can definitely count as this, as you'll be struggling trying to kill him while trying to keep your party members healthy.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Ambushes, in both games:
  • In the first Soda Dungeon, if the enemy ambushes you, all of them get to attack first (and yes, they can choose to gang up and ensure a party member is defeated before they can even take a turn), although this is prevented by having a Knight in the party. However, if the Knight is defeated by being continuously targeted by attacks, it's a good sign the run is about to hit a dead end soon.
  • Soda Dungeon 2 removes the Knight class, meaning now ambushes are unavoidable. They also work around the Back Stab mechanic being reversed on the party members as well, although to compensate for both of these, only one enemy gets the first strike. This can still hurt and kill runs, however.
• That One Attack:
  • One of the most dangerous attacks in Soda Dungeon 2 is the Laser, first used by the Dimension 5 boss at floor 500. While it's a fairly simple, single-target attack, it does 2.5x ATK damage (around 153, without damage reduction effects), a huge jump compared to the previous boss being able to do 62 damage at most with one attack.
  • Although normally a relatively Breather Boss compared to the two bosses coming before and after him, Dark Dialer's "Wrong Number" might turn out to be this if the number that appears is 9, which does 9999 damage and results in a One-Hit Kill (without a really high level HP relic or a certain accessory). This only particularly happens for unlucky runs however, since most of the time he'll end with a lower number with weak attacks.
  • The Final Boss of Soda Dungeon 2 also has one in both forms: Dark Dreams can put all your party members into sleep and start a Cycle of Hurting in which he can easily wipe your party. In the second phase, he instead swaps this with Stun Bolt: it stuns 3 party members in addition to dealing twice the regular attack's damage. Worse? Dark Dreams is also used by one of the Primal Lands bosses, NIGHT (8th Primal Land boss / floor 800).
  • Speaking about Primal Lands bosses, all of the later bosses have a really dangerous attack each:
    • Lovestruck, used by LOVE (the 6th boss), which hits all party members and infilcts Delirium on all of them. This means an entire party can end up killing themselves instead of acting as usual, assisted by the boss' attack. It's without saying that Sanity Gem is even more important in the Primal Lands, since there are also other regular enemies that can already inflict Delirium. The final boss of Primal Lands also uses an attack similar to this (the only difference is it only hits up to 5 party members rather than all 6, but is still as dangerous).
    • Reap, used by DEATH (7th boss), can be possibly this. It is simply a HP to 1 attack, yet this means unless the character is healed enough in time, DEATH simply can use a regular attack on the same target (likely), to kill that party member, impairing the party and possibly leaving to a slow but certain death.
    • NIGHT, as aftermentioned above, already has the Darkest Lord's Dark Dreams, but also has Nightmare: this skill does 2.5x ATK (higher than Stun Bolt), and stuns the victims even if they survive. Unlike the Stun Bolt it is based on, Nightmare only hits 2 targets, but it's still not to be underestimated as it can bring down crucial party members.
    • Regress, used by TIME, the 9th boss of Primal Lands, is the worst, even by the higher difficulty standards compared to the main story. It hits for 3x the base ATK (at least 465 when fought the first time), hits all adventurers, and inflicts Speed Down on them (unless resisted), and yes, TIME might use the skill twice to immediately cause a TPK unless you have enough HP, damage reduction and/or status resist on all characters, or at least be able to whittle down his massive 29000 HP in a single turn - something that can't be feasibly done when your party members have enough HP to survive 4 Regresses in a row.
• That One Boss: Both games have a difficult boss that serves as a difficulty spike for a specific dimension:
  • Soda Dungeon 1: Tengen, encountered in Dimension 7, enforces Character Select Forcing during his boss battle by instantly defeating all non-fighters. Not only that, he also has a lot of HP (13000), has an attack that hits all of the Fighters and lower their attack. This is especially frustrating considering that he can do surprisingly high damage and your party won't have enough healing to counteract the damage he deals, while he can take a lot of attacks from your Fighters. It's possible to use the Merchant's 50/50 ability to half his HP before he uses Fighting Spirit to instantly defeat the Merchant(s), but it usually fails to do anything and wastes a party member slot.
  • Soda Dungeon 2 meanwhile has The Lord of Light (in Dimension 8), who has damage reduction while still having a massive pool of HP, has an attack (Smite) that hits three party members for 1.9x of his ATK, and the worst part? He heals himself for 25% of HP with Meditate every time he's on the verge of dying. While Poison and Burn can do a constant 500 damage to him every turn, he tends to resist status effects, preventing him from taking a lot of damage at once. This was worse in the earlier version where his Smite attack hitted so hard, before said That One Attack got nerfed.