[mauve]

Today is slow as hell so I played it for the first time today.

Floor 8, ran away from an ogre, tripped an unseen paralysis plate. Survived, then a nearby jelly stepped on it. Didn't survive that time.

This is pretty interesting as far as roguelikes go. I like the more puzzle-focused ones out there and this seems to lean that way rather than "learn every single possible nuance of the mechanics" like certain other entries.
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twit

[mauve]

Nethack's level generator is rubbish. Sorry. 40% boxes-with-tunnels, 40% one-tile-wide-mazes(why), and the rest are all premade maps, sometimes with variants swapped in from game to game. Elemental Planes are all static and premade, with some random item placement.
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twit

[mauve]

21st floor, killed myself by mashing too hard on combat on what I thought was only one enemy, but was instead a one + a phantom that killed me. (On reviewing the recording, it had a 13% chance of hitting me, which it did twice in a row. Ugh come on.)

I'm not liking how random the early game in this can be, it feels like sometimes you just don't get what's needed to survive later on, so it's a bit of a crapshoot. I didn't find a single scroll of remove curse or protect armor that entire game, so I'm lucky nothing was cursed!

Amusingly, on reviewing the replay, I discovered that the runic weapon I found was a +1 dagger of dar battlemage slaying. Most useful weapon ever.
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twit

[mauve]

So.

Was on floor 15 or 16 or something, saw a pack of 3 ogres. Lured them back into a hallway so I could zot all of them with my staff of lightning and start hacking them to bits.

Zombie came up out of nowhere behind me. I think, okay, yeah, that's easy to survive, my armor's good.

Behind the ogres comes a will of the wisp.

So now I'm surrounded, on fire, next to a zombie and a pack of ogres. Okay, I can actually survive this since I have a lot of healing potions.

I decide to kill the ogres and the wisp, and get out of the fire ASAP, so I use my staff of blink on the far wall.

Click.

Paralysis trap, of course.

My own fault for not going to a tile I'd already stepped on, but, seriously. Fuck this game.

(Also, the out-of-depth monsters are a new addition in 1.6.2, and they are certainly making me rage. There's no guarantee that they'll keep that feature, fortunately. The majority of my games end before floor 5 because of some random bullshit I have no sane way of dealing with. My favorite is still the bog monster 3 steps from the stairs on floor 4.)

[mauve]

If I'm past floor 7 i will almost always get to 15+ before finding a stupid, careless way to die, so yeah. ("Stepped on a paralysis trap near an arrow turret", "Stuck in spider webs while an invisible phantom runs up and kills me in two turns, how did he even get over there through the webs", "Why the hell was there no food for 7 floors????", etc)

I could live without the vampire bats on the second/third floors. If you aggro them you either fight or die trying. There is no other option.

Early ogres are pretty annoying too but at least you can run from them. Same for pink jellies.

Actually ran into goblin totems on floor _2_ the other day. Yeah trying to face a hasted goblin pack at that point is pretty futile.

I understand why they added them in but holy shit. The game does a lot right but this is really unfair.

[mauve]

Equip it, hover the mouse/cursor/whatever over an enemy. It'll tell you the damage and chance to hit. That won't account for unknown stat modifiers though.

A better weapon at -5 or -7.50 or sometimes even -10 weight penalty is usually better than the crappy garbage dagger you start off with, as long as you can hit the enemy.
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twit

[mauve]

War hammers have absurd average damage. Like "can kill ogres in a single hit" high. Think of them as the alpha strike weapon in the game: Kill them before they get a chance to do anything. On certain types of enemies this is really useful sometimes, but I don't think they're a good main weapon because against groups or some faster enemies that will make you regret it.

Even the weaker maces do at least twice as much damage as anything less than a broadsword or war axe.

If it's supplemented by, say, a staff of lightning or something, you should be pretty well set though.
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[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

[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

[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

[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.

[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

[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

[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