February 23rd, 2011, 10:30
(This post was last modified: February 23rd, 2011, 10:52 by luddite.)
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Anyone tried this game?
http://www.qcfdesign.com/?cat=20
It's really fun. It's like a whole series of mini-RPGs, and there's a lot of different strategies you can use. It's sort of a blend of strategy, puzzle, and RPG. The dungeons are all randomly generated, so sometimes they're completely impossible. There's 18 different classes you can use and 9 deities, all quite different, and not really balanced at all (but that's not important for this game). They have some sort of online ranking system set up, but I haven't tried it- I'm just having fun unlocking the different features. However, there's no way to save the game, and it's easy to kill yourself with a misclick.
February 23rd, 2011, 18:22
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I had never heard of this until you linked it today, but I tried some games this evening and it was a fun diversion. Either I suck or the physical classes are much, MUCH easier to play than the magic ones. 
February 23rd, 2011, 19:08
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Yeah that's what I thought too. The only way I've been able to win with the wizard is to grab the healing rune, pump up the attack power with the human bonus, and make it a "poor man's paladin". Trying to use the magic deity seems like suicide.
February 23rd, 2011, 19:32
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The first two wizard games I did had no fireball or healing spells appear on the map. That was... uh... tough. That's the kind of thing that could drive you crazy, but I actually enjoy the random maps that sometimes throw out unwinnable scenarios. Modern game design generally revolves around creating scenarios that anyone can play - i.e. situations that are almost impossible to lose. I miss the old stuff from the 80s where sometimes you were totally screwed no matter what you did, and it really meant something to win out.
Anyway, probably won't be playing this for too long, but thanks for the fun diversion.
February 23rd, 2011, 19:47
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Actually the fireball spell appears on every single map. Although, sometimes it appears behind a level 9 enemy. It's really useful for a lot of different classes to supplement their attack.
February 24th, 2011, 10:55
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Yes, it must have been something like that. I also realized that the more advanced spells like Healing and Poison don't appear until after you've won a game with their respective classes. Anyway, some tips I picked up while playing last night for anyone who's curious:
- Exploring the map early on is important, to pick up some of the map freebies (potions, extra damage/health/mana, spells, etc.) and scout out which monsters you want to target. At the same time, exploring the map is also your main way to recover health and mana, so you can't explore too much of it. Striking this balance is one of the more interesting aspects to this game, IMO.
- You get bonus experience from killing monsters higher than your level. Bonus experience is extremely important, since there's a limited amount of resources on each map to exploit. The formula for bonus experience is n * (n + 1) where n is how many levels the monster is above you. More practically, you get:
2 bonus XP for monster 1 level higher
6 bonus XP for monster 2 levels higher
12 bonus XP for monster 3 levels higher
All other experience gain is simply XP = monster level. At lower levels, getting bonus XP is really key; if you kill a level 4 monster when you're level 2, then you get 4 + 6 = 10 total experience. That's quintuple the gain from fighting monsters your own level! Ideally, you almost never want to be fighting enemies your own level. Always 1 or 2 levels higher than you... more than that if you can get away with it!
- The main trick to the game is therefore coming up with ways to kill enemies higher than your level, against whom you will pretty much always lose if you straight up fight them. The fireball spell is obviously key here, as it lets you kill monsters that you would otherwise die against. You can also use Poison, Heal, and First Strike spells to do some clever stuff too. (I landed Fireball + Poison right at the start of one game, and did some crazy combos. Was fun. ) Monsters with special abilities are often good targets here, as they usually have lower base damage and health. Gorgons in particular make for easy kills, and I've taken down level 8 gorgons with level 4 characters before. Mmmm, 20 bonus XP, tasty.
- It feels to me like Human is the best race in nearly all situations. You always have to fight with all classes, even spellcasters, and it's hard to beat increased base damage from glyphs. Yes there are some exceptions, but I still won my Wizard game by ruthlessly melting down all but the Fireball glyph and then pounding the enemies into submission.
- The various gods are not even close to balanced, and some of them are infinitely better than others. One of the other (fun?) random aspects of this game. Sometimes you can get really lucky or really screwed with this.
- Normal dungeon is pretty easy with a little practice. The challenge dungeons are a lot harder, as they have two bosses at the end. You really have to conserve your resources for those fights...
Overall, it's a lot of fun as a temporary diversion, and of course it's entirely free too. I like the fact that this game has no dice rolls; everything is basic integer math, so you never have to worry about luck playing too much of a role. It really is more of a puzzle game than a true RPG. Grab a calculator and start planning the best route through the dungeon. 
February 24th, 2011, 11:04
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Beat the Wizard class first time I played it. Used an Elf and turned glyphs into max mana. No deities either. Got fireball 2nd to last glyph. Best way to do it is beat some higher level monsters early to get leveled up faster when I was level 3 I beat a level 5 monster using some health potions. Leveled me enough to beat a level 6 from there I got Fireball and beasted. For the boss I made sure I saved some mana potions and burned him down. Fun game!
February 24th, 2011, 12:22
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Sullla Wrote:- Exploring the map early on is important, to pick up some of the map freebies (potions, extra damage/health/mana, spells, etc.) and scout out which monsters you want to target. At the same time, exploring the map is also your main way to recover health and mana, so you can't explore too much of it. Striking this balance is one of the more interesting aspects to this game, IMO. Yeah, that is really interesting. Some classes depend on that much more than others (the vampire actually loses health from exploring, for example). It's annoying when you get stuck searching half the map for a monster you can kill early on just to get to level 2.
Sullla Wrote:- The main trick to the game is therefore coming up with ways to kill enemies higher than your level, against whom you will pretty much always lose if you straight up fight them. The fireball spell is obviously key here, as it lets you kill monsters that you would otherwise die against. You can also use Poison, Heal, and First Strike spells to do some clever stuff too. (I landed Fireball + Poison right at the start of one game, and did some crazy combos. Was fun. ) Monsters with special abilities are often good targets here, as they usually have lower base damage and health. Gorgons in particular make for easy kills, and I've taken down level 8 gorgons with level 4 characters before. Mmmm, 20 bonus XP, tasty.
Agreed. It took me a while to figure out how the experience system works, and it really makes a difference. Try playing the factory level with a wizard. You can kill a level 9 Elemental Armor at level 1, and jump up to level 6 instantly .
Sullla Wrote:- It feels to me like Human is the best race in nearly all situations. You always have to fight with all classes, even spellcasters, and it's hard to beat increased base damage from glyphs. Yes there are some exceptions, but I still won my Wizard game by ruthlessly melting down all but the Fireball glyph and then pounding the enemies into submission. I think so too. The human bonus often allows you to reduce the number of attacks you need to kill a monster from 3 to 2, or 2 to 1, which really makes a big difference. Extra mana or health isn't as important for most classes, and extra potions don't matter until the boss fight. It does depend on the class, though.
Sullla Wrote:- The various gods are not even close to balanced, and some of them are infinitely better than others. One of the other (fun?) random aspects of this game. Sometimes you can get really lucky or really screwed with this. It's pretty annoying IMO that the game doesn't tell you everything the deities do. I find myself constantly checking the game wiki to look up the various effects. Got a rather nasty surprise the first time I tried using Dracul , and I still haven't managed to win a game with him. Actually I've had quite a few games where I could have won, but chose a bad deity and screwed myself completely.
The Pactmaker and The Glowing Guardian seem like by far the best deities. The Pactmaker gives you +1 XP per kill, and also has NO penalties, which is really nice. The Glowing Guardian full restores your health, and can heal you again for 50 piety, so you can save it till the end for a boss fight. All the other deities are really situational or just a fun varient. I had a really fun game using the Chaos deity- I got lucky with the "heal or die" boon and he actually healed me, but then the polymorph boon completely screwed me over .
February 24th, 2011, 12:29
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Lewwyn Wrote:Beat the Wizard class first time I played it. Used an Elf and turned glyphs into max mana. No deities either. Got fireball 2nd to last glyph. Best way to do it is beat some higher level monsters early to get leveled up faster when I was level 3 I beat a level 5 monster using some health potions. Leveled me enough to beat a level 6 from there I got Fireball and beasted. For the boss I made sure I saved some mana potions and burned him down. Fun game!
It really depends on the boss. Some bosses like the Super Meat Man or Iron Man are almost impossible to take down with just fireballs. The ones with low HP are a lot easier.
February 24th, 2011, 13:04
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About the deities totally agree. I actually won with dracul on mage class, but the polymorf killed me with the boss, went from something maybe beatable to impossible slime thingy.
The worst is the Green mother. I had to find I am a wall to gain piety and you can't kill goats or serpents so the maze gets hard. I figured out I ned to petrify evil creatures which was all well and good and then I was able to get a ton of piety at once with the plant growth, but then I was stuck behind all the dang grasses. Just trapped. I want to try it again some other time with a mage class. It looks like a fun diety if you can get it right.
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