YMMV / DemonCrawl

• Game-Breaker:
  • The Spy mastery, and its Glean mechanic can allow you to blast through a number of stages. This ability is nerfed as of version 1.51.
  • Most legendaries can break games wide open but special mention goes to The Fake Mustache. It automatically gleans cells you find around a 3, making it bar none one of the best items in the game.
  • The Rabbit Foot automatically reveals a random cell for every 20 cells you open, which can end up saving you ample amounts of time in large spaces.
  • The Wand of Retribution activates when you take damage, kills all visible monsters and gives you 1 soul for each one you kill. Combined with the Detective mastery, which automatically reveals monsters upon chording, you can get an absurd amount of health very quickly.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Opening a legendary from a chest yields a sound with accompanied choir.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Shadowman quest's intro cutscene and bad ending.
• That One Boss:
  • Chronos tends to cause a Timed Mission by sapping 3 damage every minute. This is ordinarily unwinnable unless you have some strange conjunction of mods and rare items. This boss was nerfed in late 2020.
  • Bad Santa from the 2020 Christmas Event had the ability to spam Coal, which removes the ability to increase your morality and burns you every time you lose morality - and that's before factoring in other negative effects caused by having low morality.
  • Since bosses can occur with added boss mods, especially in further layers of the Endless Multiverse, any boss with the Spreading mod can rapidly duplicate out of control. Special mention goes to Automaton, who always spawns with 3 of them even in Beyond.
• That One Disadvantage: Some masteries may cause most stages to be unwinnable from the start depending on what stage mods turn up. Clever use of heirlooms (or extreme luck with items) may be able to forestall or counteract the negative effects.
  • The Disturbing stage mod makes it so if you mouse over any living object (monster or stranger) you take one damage point, and they continuously move and home in on you. On top of this, you are not able to activate the strangers.
  • The Fake stage mod makes a total of three cells in the stage have an incorrect number in them. Depending on how far in the game you are, if you've Failed a Spot Check and try chording a wrong number this could be fatal.
  • The Lofty mod takes the Fake status into overdrive - all the numbers in cells are one higher than their actual value, which can be disorienting and renders chording completely useless.
  • The Haunted mod will take the wind out of your sails if you have any familiars, Passive abilities or Legendaries that reveal monsters - for every monster revealed, you get a random omen.
  • The Active stage mod disables passive items, which are often some of the most useful utility abilities.
  • Similarly, Legendary items will be disabled on a level with the Forsaken stage mod.
  • Nightmare is one of only two stage mods with a difficulty rating of 4, and for good reason: you can't manually flag cells, which also removes chording. This can turn normal levels into slogs, and huge levels into massive timesinks.
• That One Level: There are several stage mods (or even passive effects) that when combined due to RNG may stop a run cold.
  • One Hero Trial ended up as this. For context, this trial required completion starting with 10 sawblades, 10 cankers, and all stages with the Valhallan stage mod, meaning should any of the sawblades get close to the several loot piles around the stage, you're not going to be leaving alive. Given you only start with 3 lives to work with, it's impossible to finish even the first stage without a few key items and correct manipulation of sawblades/sanctified tiles.
  • Apocalyptic stage mods can stop a run cold if there are increased stranger spawns and/or low money.
  • The 27 July 2020 Hero Trial features a ruleset that causes the player to lose one max life every 50 cells opened. Even despite the first five stages being unlocked, it is nearly impossible to accrue enough money or soul-granting items to win the DPS race.
  • The 29 July 2020 Hero Trial features instant death when you start a stage. ON ALL 10 STAGES. Better bring a Divine Halo with you, or be prepared to lose. Not even the Immortal mastery or any of the other craftable revival items can help much.
  • January 11, 2022 - Shopper's Aching Trial of Innocent Wisedeath: Every 50 cells you open up, die equal to the number of stages you completed. Unless you have the Marksman or Guardian masteries to counter the 50 cell requirement, you're screwed. At least one stage has the Immutable mod as well.
  • In general, it is always possible for a Hero Trial to include instant death conditions when criteria are made, especially common criteria (such as having no items after a stage - this could make a Melting stage unwinnable).

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