[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Whoa dang and possibly what you dudes might consider spoilers:
http://i.imgur.com/GBAZ8.png
Wish I had noticed that print screen will dump a screenshot before now.

Can anyone speak to how clones generally act? I only just discovered them on my latest and by far greatest run, a ridiculous series of close calls that ended in a total mess on D:23 (after falling a level and ending up surrounded). I only discovered they existed when I was using a wand of plenty on my invisible golem, and I managed to make two clones of myself, a situation I didn't get to enjoy in any real way due to the sheer amount of hateful monstrosity that was raining down on me.

It's possible I could have extricated myself sometime in those last 100 turns (out of 21370, it seems), and I'm tempted to see if a comparison between some save files from other runs and the recording will yield some Frankenstein file I would only feel quasi-ashamed of scumming, but that little adventure burnt me out on the game for a bit.

Wow, the system for watching recordings is pretty sweet. Too bad the only rewind is manually selecting a turn.

btw, Mauve, thanks for the tip on equipping weapons above my strength level. It's seriously made combat a lot easier (aside from poor decisions, of course).

[Oh God Spiders No]

I think if it stored what happened in every turn the files would be huge. I think it just stores what your actions are and then iteratively figures out how the dungeon would behave around you.

1333840716 <-- Pretty friendly seed, if anyone's interested. Tons of food and healing potions and a good weapon and armor pretty early on.
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[Tulpa]

oh yeah the official brogue forum has demystified how weapons, accuracy and damage are calculated.

http://brogue.createforumhosting.com/combat-mechanics-spoilers-t312.html
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[Oh God Spiders No]

Whoa, apparently most gases (not just swamp gas) are ignitable! So you can chuck a potion of confusion or paralysis at someone and then explode it with an incendiary dart or fire staff!

I'll have to try this going forward.

[Tulpa]

you can also throw a potion containing a gas straight into lava near whatever you're trying to quickly destroy and it'll explode.
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[Broco]

I ascended too! I got most everything I wanted (except my armor was a somewhat lame runic scale mail), and I kept a troll ally from floor 12 who by the end could cast haste and firebolt (the latter was hazardous around gas, but he was able to kill like 4 tentacle horrors from a distance). Still wasn't easy though, I had to use my items very aggressively in the deeper floors, and as you can see my disposables were mostly depleted by the end.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

1.6.3 has been released.
I haven't played it yet myself but here's the major highlights from the changelog:

[Broco]

Looks like nice improvements, it addresses a lot of problems I had. For me this is the biggest deal:

[mauve]

Finally.

I'd actually stopped playing because I'd gotten tired of spending several tries just to get past the first few floors without the fear of spontaneous death by RNG.

And yeah the paralysis trap fix is also nice, that was a great way to die in a horrible way with no warning - Made enchanted rings of awareness essential.
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twit

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

1.6.4 bugfix release:

[Broco]

[mauve]

Paralysis traps were basically instant death late game and were, frankly, all over the place.

One time I used a staff of blinking to get away from some enemies so I could bolt them to death, and foolishly pointed it at the far wall where I hadn't been before.

Click.

That was the end of that character!

That being said, they may have gotten over-nerfed.
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twit

[Broco]

I'm fine with the over-nerfing of paralysis traps. An interesting side effect of it is that they're more usable as a tool you can use to paralyze enemies now (though I haven't dared try that so far). But certainly the searching change nerfed all other traps, none of which were truly abusive.

Overall, the trap nerfing and the greater treasure room spawn rate make 1.6.4 significantly easier than 1.6.2. But within reasonable limits.

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

here's a poll for you guys: at D2, you find a treasure room with Rings of Regeneration, Transference and Wisdom. All register as positive magic. Assuming you don't want to waste at least one potential scroll of ID here (with scrolls unidentified), which would you choose?

[mauve]

Wisdom. Without a second thought.

It's just that good, really. Being able to spam support 'magic' with higher frequency is a ridiculous boost.
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twit

[Broco]

I've ascended characters with regeneration and transference but not wisdom, so I don't necessarily agree it's so much better. For a long time transference was my favorite because I also liked war axes, and that combo lets you stomp right over tough enemy groups.

It really depends on other equipment you have. For wisdom, you obviously need staves and for transference you need a high-damage weapon. For regeneration you don't need anything else but it's slightly less good because even at high levels the regen is more for between fights than in the middle of one.

[Broco]

Still playing this. Found a Dar Priestess in a treasure room on Depth 8, end result:





With 5 high-level Dar Priestess clones surrounding me, I was unstoppable. I could fight multiple dragons at a time. I probably could've gotten 12 or 15 lumenstones, but I didn't want to press my luck in my first post-game run. The confusion runic helped a lot too, obviously.

[mauve]

So I haven't touched this game in a long time, had an urge to roguelike (read: got told to stop programming and take a damn break already), so I went and looked to see if there was a new version of Brogue before playing.

[Tulpa]

that's pretty interesting! I haven't kept up with the development of this but man I guess that means strength potions are more important than ever before.
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[Mikey]

[Broco]

Maybe you're confused by the double negative, but the point is to allow escape-artist builds that weren't feasible before.

Pender wrote on the official forums:

[mauve]

I played some last night afterwards and noted that it wasn't really that much different. Still, not exactly the change I was expecting.

Charms are an interesting concept and help take some of the randomness out of the early game. Haste charm quickly became a favorite when I realized how multipurpose it was.

Staffs seem to be less frequent though. No more fireball/lightning everything to death 80% of the time.
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twit

[Mikey]

[Oh God Spiders No]

Have to share perhaps the stupidest death I've ever had in any roguelike ever.

I was pretty deep down, like floor 16 perhaps, with one of the best builds ever. Great melee gear - but best of all, two ifrits (!!!), two wraiths, and a wand of plenty that I'd enchant to replenish the ranks if ever need be.

I find a rosewood staff, and I figure it's safe to use-id on one of my guys. Either it'll help them or it won't really hurt them. The only real danger would be if it was, say, discord, right? But I'm on level 16, I certainly would have already seen one of those in a vault by now, right? No need to waste time checking the ID list to see if there was even the remotest chance that I hadn't seen a discord staff yet, right!?

The discord beams hits half my party and they tear themselves to shreds, and then the last one turns on me and in a further show of stupidity I let him kill me thinking that the discord would run out before my health.

Bafflingly stupid. Don't play while confident/bored.

::facepalm::
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[misadventurous]

hubris, the most dangerous monster

[mauve]

I played this again a few weeks ago and I still don't really like it very much, but at least I better understand why now that experience levels are out of the way.

One death from a pack of centaurs running up, having _them_ step on a net trap, getting all of us stuck and then getting pincushioned to death by arrows in about three turns. I have to admit, I can't get too mad about this one.

One death from running out of food; I explored thoroughly but got nothing for 6 floors. I am pretty mad about this one. (honest answer is that I'm suspecting an explosion in a swampy area burned at least one of them up?)

An issue I have with this game is that everything is essentially single purpose. Want food? Only way to get it is if it drops. Get an item but it's of no use for you? Too bad throw it out, nothing else you can do with it. I get that the treasure rooms are meant to be a buffer against this, but they're pretty specific. The entirety of inventory interaction comes down to various forms of identification and enchantment, the latter of which is tightly controlled. A more complex inventory system would probably make this game more interesting and less prone to disaster. (Even Shiren's got more going on with its items!)
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twit

[Oh God Spiders No]

I do really like it's simplicity, though. Extremely simple rules from which great complexity arises.

My favorite is how clear and purposeful almost every monster is, and even though they're all just little letters their unique behaviors make them spring to life. Bloats being buffeted about by the wind as they move toward you is perhaps the best example of this, or stone guardians coming to life when you step on their runes.

I do wish potion and scroll ID'ing were a little harder or more perilous. Every potion/scroll will auto-id if used under any circumstance, and it's pretty easy to mitigate risk. If you're at full health on an empty floor with no negatable allies or gear around you're pretty good to start quaffing and reading.
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[Broco]

[Oh God Spiders No]

Food is easy to overlook, too. The food colon can look like the empty floor period if you aren't paying attention.
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[mauve]

yeah I have no idea where the food was. I probably should have saved the replay so I could facepalm at myself.

as far as the weapons go, i'm aware of how runics are paced out, but i'm also aware that a single cursed item can ruin my day and there are limited chances to identify and cure them before they can be used. if you're after the first 8-10 floors, and you still haven't decided on your item plan, you've probably already screwed up thanks to the way enchantment works. (the best weapon is a +10 lightning staff anyway)

that's really the thing for me. the entire game is paced not by the item choices available; they are largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things as long as you are aware of how to use them. it's paced by food and enchantment scrolls. everything else is just acquire and dispose, and hope the enemy doesn't step on a paralysis trap that you couldn't have possibly known about. to me that's kinda not very interesting.
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twit

[Oh God Spiders No]

Had my best run ever. Got to level 25!

By the end I was running with an upgraded dar priestess (lightning, protect, blink, haste), a troll, a tentacle horror, and a Unicorn. Everybody hasted/protected all the time, unicorn hanging in back healing everybody. Just unstoppable. The fact that I didn't have any armor better than scale or any rings at all didn't matter.

Then on level 23 I ran into a dar battlemage that cast discord and ripped the team apart. I teleported out of there and reunited with the lone survivor, the Tentacle Horror. That might have still been enough to get us through, but unfortunately the dummy had decided to learn firebolt during the scuffle, so instead of being the irresistible horrifying melee beast he was born to be, this chucklehead was happy to flee from everybody and fling dinky little fire pellets at them. If only I had anything to negate him with I think I could have turned it around, but alas, all my good luck seemed to have gone into building the team to begin with.

Succumbed to a revenant on 25 while attempting to dive madly for the amulet.

[Broco]

Yeah, Dar Priestess can dominate everything if it lives long enough. My best run (9 lumenstones), I rescued a rare floor 10 Dar Priestess -- so it couldn't die soon after I got it and had a huge ramp to acquire levels -- and eventually cloned it four times. So I had five Dar Priestesses with around 7 skills running around healing, hasting and protecting each other every turn and with enough health to absorb a single blow from a dragon without dying. I probably could've done a 25-lumenstone sweep since nothing could touch me and I didn't need any other items, but I stopped at 9 since it was already a personal best and I didn't want to push my luck.

In 1.7.3 the ally XP system was replaced with a weaker one to avoid this kind of steamrolling, so that game couldn't happen anymore though.

But certainly Dar Battlemages can make you lose the game almost regardless of your situation. I always try to take them out as soon as I spot them without giving them any turns to mess with me.

[Oh God Spiders No]

I just got this incredibly satisfying seed with a +3 ring of stealth, +3 poison staff and +1 ring of clairvoyance early on, yielding a really strong, viable poison-stealth build. Then I fucked it up because I was moving up and to the left (y key) and when I was suddenly prompted with "really plunge downward into the depths" and I hit "y" again because that's the direction I was moving in.

Landed right in the middle of a group of ogres, teleport scroll put me in the thick of another group, and then desperation move of another descent potion put me in ANOTHER group of ogres. Just rotten fucking luck. I'm really pissed because the death felt really cheap and undeserved, and seeds like that don't come up very often.
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[Oh God Spiders No]

Just checked the seed catalog and 104 has the same gear so I'm rebooting with that one.
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[Broco]

The manual seed is auto-populated with the last one you played so that's another way to retry seeds.

[Oh God Spiders No]

This seed is pretty great in 1.7.3:

24638339

If you handle your vaults properly you can simultaneously have
ring of stealth
ring of claivoyance
ring of wisdom
staff of poison
staff of blinking
staff of tunneling
staff of obstruction

Pretty unkillable, but I died of starvation on 13

This build is crazy good against tough monsters but goblin/totem parties take way too much time to kill.
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[Oh God Spiders No]

I just partook in this week's Sunday Seed Challenge and got my first ascension ever!

Thread:http://brogue.createforumhosting.com/sunday-seed-24-t1106.html
Seed: 9413705

54071, no lumenstones

I'll upload my recording if anyone can explain to me how to find it on a mac

EDIT: Here's my recording https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9ODe_bDmVgQclhBcy1XeEV5QU0

The rest is spoilers:


Took the wand of empowerment from the first vault instead of the poison staff

Enchant strategy was was:
Broadsword to +5
Plate Armor to +4
Staff of Tunneling 4/4
Two into wand of empowerment
One into health charm
One into teleport charm
Two into teleport wand

My allies were awesome in this (first goblin [fire immunity, blink, protection] + naga) then a dar priestess [healing, negation, haste, lightning], but I never found anything to deal with battlemages or pixies so I couldn't really count on them too much. Goblin and Naga got discorded and killed. Dar Priestess actually survived being discorded once, but ultimately succumbed to a paralytic gas explosion. I blasted her with the protection staff beforehand but it wasn't enough.

Started diving around 20, saved telepathy potions and detect magics until the end so I could avoid the monsters. I killed revenants with traps, and did my best to avoid horrors and dragons entirely. I think one horror may have died due to a combination of burning, poison, and discord, but I'm not really sure. Never fought one directly.

26 was just me tunneling straight to the amulet; thank god for those tunneling staves and the detect magic potion I saved.

Nearly died at the end because I was running back up naked to improve my stealth range, when I was suddenly attacked by a phantom. Wasn't sure where to aim the wand, knew that he could one shot me even if I used the health charm, but fortunately my teleport charm brought me to safety. I wore the plate from there on out, no longer trying to hide but being more aggressive with my use of the wands and descent potions I had.

Close to the top I ran into a pack of 6 monkeys and freaked out - what if they stole the amulet, the tunneling staves, and food and that somehow led to me losing? I still had no way to attack from afar and might have had a hard time getting the gear back before starving to death. I went overkill and used a potion of paralysis to take out the whole group even though I probably could have just dropped the amulet and attacked them one at at time.

EDIT: I nearly died because of reading a scroll of summon monsters too! For some reason I thought I had labelled the bad ones already so I was sure it was a protect armor/weapon or at worst shattering. Read it when there was a pack of acid jellies around and found myself surrounded by mystics and spiders. Could have been a lot worse, the spiders actually kept the mystics pinned down making them easier to kill, and I had a life potion to deal with the poison after killing the spiders. My naga dealt with the acid jellies on its own.