Roguelikes, Bands, Etc

I honestly don't mind that the game is racist instead of classist; it really doesn't change much except for flavor.

And it isn't so much that Int is the One Stat to Rule Them All as much as it is Strength being the Dump Stat. Even melee characters only need enough strength to offset their armor penalties, and the rest goes in to Dex. Dex is a perfectly serviceable stat.

Anywho, have you guys been keeping up with the roguelikelikes (or coffebreak roguelikes or roguelites or whatever you want to call them) that are coming out soon? We've got cool stuff like C-Wars, Chasm, and Risk of Rain!

Although, personally, I think that Rogue Legacy really takes the cake here. It's looking like a damn good game, even if the whole "characters get stronger as you die" thing seems to not be in the spirit of roguelikes that much. Here's a video.

Considering most Roguelikes are played in ASCII flavor is incredibly important. Playing around a bit more with the game I find that Fire Spells are a lot of fun. I blocked off corridors with conjure flame, set up living grenades with living flame and used throw flame on water tiles to throw up a curtain of steam to hide from projectile attacks. Love having all those options. Still didn't stop my guy from getting annihilated by a gas spore because he was too busy attacking a fire-immune imp in melee to notice approaching death.

ADOM is getting a Tileset◊ and it looks adorable. Demonic Spiders never looked so great.

Latest death: Alferd the Gnomish Wizard, ADOM. Misapplying alchemy.

Dude, conjure flame is such a great spell

All of my best characters so far have been Draconian Wizards. Gotta love both Conjure Flame and Mephitic Cloud.

My Draconians don't last long, and perhaps due to the influence of Xom they always find enchanted scale mail lying around uselessly. It's a shame since I'm really partial to dragonborn-ish races like Drakelings and... Dragonborn. I want to try a stealthy Naga, since stabbing people in their slumber isn't something that you get to do on a regular basis without a wand of sleep.

Latest death: Porkins the orc barbarian. Slash'EM. Food poisoning.

Hey Shirow, you ever play TOME?

It's a pretty good roguelike, though it differs in quite a number of ways. No potions, scrolls, curses or blessings. A lot of the tactical decisions come from determining what skill trees to invest in and when to use skills. Equipment drops often and usually with an enchantment. In a lot of ways it plays like a turn based Diablo, except...you know. Actually strategical instead of a hack n slash.

Also, the class variety is quite excellent. Wyrmics mix the power of dragons with melee abilities, Paradox Mages fuck around with the time stream, Alchemists throw bombs everywhere and hide behind their meatshield of a golem...fun stuff.

I've been playing Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead a lot. Like Rogue Survivor it's about zombies, but you can go out of the cities and into the wilderness; and find out that the zombies may be the least of you're problems....

How is Cataclysm DDA different from original Cataclysm?

Some fans of the game continued development, IIRC with Whales' permission, after Whales decided he wanted to work on another project.

There are more types of buildings, such as farms and cabins. Some of the numbers have changed (lots of clothes have less invetory space, but some items don't take up any volume). The most game changing (and controversial) change is "static spawn", which causes the zombies to all spawn at the start rather than continuously over time. Fortunately it also came with a reduction in their vision, so the don't go right for you when you first see them.

I've never played TOME, but that description makes me think I need to rectify that.

Speaking of Rogue Survivor, is it not the best simulation of a zombie apocalypse ever? The scavenging for supplies, the roving bandits, the need to barricade and hide for nights, the deadly combat, the fact survivors will turn on you if they see you have food and they're starving, the leveling from survival instead of combat... Seriously, it just nails the setting and approaches it in a way that makes sense in both a flavor and crunch way.

Are there any other Roguelikes that have a focus on larger-scale combat? And by that I mean you regularly have allies, or at least two factions to fight. It would be nice if in ADOM I occasionally ran into friendly adventurers or something.

Latest death: Mindy the Flame Mage, Slash'em. Walked into a teleport trap and got attacked by a werejackal before she could meet up with her backup.

edited 12th May '13 8:51:31 AM by ShirowShirow

Dwarf Fortress adventurer mode might become like that in the next update, but I can't think of any that exist right now :/.

For my own request, are there any other good fantasy roguelikes that aren't centered around Dungeon Crawling? I've played a few but they seem pretty rare.

edited 12th May '13 9:10:38 AM by Novis

^^ The ridiculous food expiration date is a big dent...

Then again the very idea of Zombie Apocalypse is pretty stupid anyway...

Well, if you're gonna play TOME, I wanna mention a couple of things.

• Stun and Confusion are easily some of the worst status effects, and they're irritatingly common. Get resistance ASAP.
• You need to unlock a fair number of the classes, but don't fret, some of them are pretty easy. Archmage, Wyrmic, Cursed, and Summoner are all pretty easy to unlock. A lot of people have trouble unlocking Brawler, but I honestly didn't find it that hard.
• Weight limits might seem restrictive at first, but there's an item you can find at the end of the Old Forest dungeon that applies to all your future characters and basically makes it a non-issue.

edited 12th May '13 10:20:07 AM by Deathonabun

^ Well technically it's a separate dungeon from Old Forest...

Also get prepared for underwater fighting...

Ah, yes, I forgot about that. You pretty much need some form of water breathing or else the lake is gonna give you big trouble.

...And considering that the boss of the Lake can heal, you might wanna play a burst character or a character who can shutdown healing.

Elona+

Get's it.

It ish greater.

Oh, and

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.

Starting Cataclysm. I've barely played it and I'm having a hard time getting into its interface but I like it a lot more than Rogue Survivor simply because it doesn't have MUSIC. <_<

Here's a hint: bushes and broken windows are you're friends.

Also, why don't you like RS's music?

edited 12th May '13 12:34:12 PM by Novis

It's just generic to me and doesn't add anything to the game.

I just beat Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup for the first time like a week ago on version 0.12 with a Deep Elf Conjurer of Vehumet with 4 runes, after about 100 other characters dying before I could beat it. It was made easy with the new Orbital Death Laser (Iskenderun's Battlesphere). It's just annyoying when I start running into my ghost that have that spell as well. Guess I need to start running Minatures of Trog and start killing my Mage ghosts. Or running.

edited 12th May '13 1:52:08 PM by mega-dark

Played around with TOME. This probably has the best combat of any Roguelike I've ever played. Plenty of abilities, plenty of movement. Tough enemies. Open spaces. Allies. It's really good. More roguelikes should take the extra step to make fighting this fun.

Unfortunately, that's pretty much all it has. Items are identified as soon as you find them, and the feeling of exploration is weaker. Nothing's gotten me to go "Holy crap, no!" yet.

Latest death: Cale the healer. Slash'em. Giant bat flew out of nowhere and quickly drained his hit points faster than he could replenish them.

^ Since I hate ID game I actually like that aspect...and well, TOME 4 is designed near purely for combat...

edited 13th May '13 9:20:25 PM by onyhow

Yeah but the awesome thing about roguelikes is that they simulate an actual adventure and not merely a killing spree. Managing your food supply, tampering with arcane forces you don't fully understand, overcoming the odds with your wits, finding unconventional solutions to dealing with monsters, desperately hoping the potion you're drinking is a healing draught and not a flask of acid... I can be a titan of destruction in most games, but stuff like Nethack is the only place I feel like a Guile Hero.

No deaths since my last post! It's a miracle!

edited 13th May '13 10:27:10 PM by ShirowShirow

I have a big problem with Nethack in that it need so much metaknowledge it's not even funny...

Of all the old roguelikes only DCSS is even remotely fair to first time players...(it's even its design philosophy that you don't need that much metaknowledge to play the game properly)

Plus, I dunno, the character going into dangerous place blind without any knowledge whatsoever? That's just suicidally stupid...

Also, the whole managing adventure would actually be cool if it's not so dependent on random loot...the would-be Incursion before stopping development actually will try to simulate that correctly...or I'll just play Unreal World I think...

Oh, and shopkeeper sell you thing they don't even know what it is? Seriously? At least bandlikes are not as bad in that department...

edited 13th May '13 11:20:33 PM by onyhow

Ya know, you pretty much perfectly described a lot about why I prefer open-world roguelikes to dungeon crawling ones.

Dungeon Crawl is great about that last one, actually. The shopkeepers not only tell you what everything is, it will also tell you which items in the shop you haven't identified yet, and buying that item will auto ID all the future items of the same kind.

It's to the point where I'll buy all the negative potions in a potion shop so that I know what to avoid in the future.