Other Roguelikes You Enjoy?

[Gravenous]

Hey guys I was curious, we're all Crawl players here, obviously, but there have to be other roguelikes we play, right? Well, this is a thread to discuss which roguelikes we enjoy, and most importantly - why we enjoy them. What mechanics, visuals or other thingies in those games make us go back to them again and again. It could be a single ability or enemy, or place, even.

I just started playing Tome 4. I had heard of Tome before, and only bad things - it was boring, an Angband variant, not really interesting, a mess of mechanics, and most importantly - boring. So when a forum I frequent had a really quickly growing thread on Tome 4 I got suspicious. Had everyone lost their minds?

Then I tried it. It's slow, runs choppy, it's very long as a whole - 20 or 30 hours start to finish, crashes a lot because it's still beta, the endgame has a lot of stupid instagib deaths; but I'll be damned if the combat isn't the most enjoyable roguelike combat I have seen.

Tome 4 takes a hint from MMOs - each class (and there are some insane classes - like Wyrmic, a fighter who mimics dragons and can spit sand to blind enemies, cause miniature earthquakes which rearrange the terrain, or just outright swallow enemies alive, or several classes built around time buggery) has a number of open and hidden talent trees, which give you different abilities to use in combat. There are a number of resources classes use for these abilities - mana, stamina, equilibrium, hate, paradox - to name a few, and each ability has a cooldown.

The result is you can mix and match abilities within your class to make it as suited to your playstile as possible. There are other things about it which I like (like adventure mode, which gives you more than one life up to a limit so you're not endlessly respawning, which is the mode you should be playing if you're trying it out as I mentioned stupid instagib deaths), but the only reason I go back to that thing is the combat. As someone who had played mainly Crawl for his roguelike fix, having a basic melee class which can rush an enemy crowd to get near, stun one guy, knock the most dangerous target away and then just go berserk and murder everyone around me with AOE is just way too fun. And that's not even mentioning the advanced classes and races which you can unlock.

Your turn Oh, and please don't turn this into "XXX game is just plain better than YYY". I'm more interested in why YOU prefer a game, rather than absolute preferences.

[Jeremiah]

I don't play that many other roguelike or RPG type games, mainly because I think "character classes" are silly. It's like saying to someone: "You're a Lawyer so you can only learn Lawyer abilities, you can't learn to fire a gun."

One I did play quite a lot, and still sometimes do, is Sangband. Basically, it's an Angband variant that replaces classes with a system of skills and Oaths that let you build your character in a much more flexible way - a bit similar to Crawl but with maybe less depth (there are only 4 magic schools for example.)

What I like about it, aside from the character development, is the item creation system - with the right skills player character can make weapons, ammo, armour, potions and scrolls from components found in the dungeon (and at high skill levels can make items as good as the best artifacts.)

The reason why I now play Crawl more is that as an Angband variant, it suffers many of the same flaws as vanilla Angband - the dungeon is unlimited so you can grind/stairscum to train up your character and search for more gear/components, and also the early game can be a bit slow/boring. There are some startup options that help mitigate this, like disconnected stairs and Ironman (which AFAIK has never been won,) but overall Crawl is better designed.

[rebthor]

I've played Brogue off and on myself. If you love tiles and hate ascii, this might be the game that turns that around. It is probably the most beautiful ascii game you've ever seen. On top of that, the mechanics are inherently interesting too. Basically, the scroll of enchantment is one of the most powerful items in the game since you don't have spells, only things like rods in crawl. By enchanting them, you give them more power. At the same time, enchanting armor, weapons, and wands makes them more effective too so it raises many interesting strategic decisions about character path.

I downloaded TOME 4 recently after hearing a lot of good things about it. I only played 1 game and haven't really gotten the hang of it yet.

Incursion is another that I've tried and can tell there's a meaty game there, but I'd rather just play another game of Crawl to be honest.

If your looking for a tough, tough, tough one that will make you think that Trog's wrath + XOM's wackiness together are tame, there's always IVAN.

[Kate]

DoomRL is a lot of fun, yeah. The gameplay sort of revolves around heavily abusing the ability to kill things by shooting around corners or out of your LOS with no fear of retaliation (made even worse by an easily-accessible trait that gives you free, reliable passive monster detection), but it manages to be fun and pretty deep regardless. Maybe because it's fairly short, and has some cool built-in challenges that make it even shorter.

And I've been playing quite a bit of ToME recently as well - I think I'd basically agree with Gravenous about it. Building a character and playing with all the combat talents is great, and the only thing that keeps me playing it. The balance is frequently absurd (accidentally blunder into an encounter on the world map? you're probably dead within two turns, because NPC adventurers get to use all the same crazy skills as you but with no skill level cap!), it's slow and often buggy, and it has some holdovers from its Angband past (for example, selling junk to shops - although there's an item that automatically turns dungeon junk into gold without making you carry it back to the shops, and once you find it once you get to begin every game with it). But despite all that, the combat is fun and the design seems to be moving in the right direction. Also it has a story apparently, if you care about that kind of thing in your roguelikes!

I keep hearing nice things about Brogue so I should probably give that a go sometime.

[eeviac]

I've played a lot of roguelikes (even finished some of them!) but they were all ruined after Crawl truly hooked me. The only similar game that interests me now is Dwarf Fortress' adventure mode. Though it's not a roguelike per se as there's no win condition - you just explore until you die. I can't wait for the next release, so much cool stuff has been added. Any day now

I still play a bit of Slash'EM on my phone, if only because it's easier to play as a droid port than to mess with CAO through Connectbot. (FR: proper droid port of Crawl please thank you)

[Gravenous]

No career IVAN players? What a shame That game's materials system is something else entirely. Really makes me wish it would be adopted by an actual game. If someone doesn't know what I'm talking about, it's a notoriously harsh roguelike which I think can not be won without cheating (at least some of the win conditions), and which has a system of materials through which you can turn your limbs into stuff like iron, steel, adamantine (or whatever the resident strongest metal evar was)... banana flesh... Yeah.

Also I played some DoomRL, even got a win on the easiest difficulty some time ago, but god damn can I not wrap my head around the LOS in that game. I just... can't. It's a great game, and the incoming tiles are gorgeous, but... no.

Dwarf Fortress's adventure mode is weird, in that it has a great combat system and ... nothing else. I'm not sure what Toady's plans are, I think he's focusing on towns and trade? But yeah, gouging out eyes and tearing off teeth can be amusing only so long. DF itself is, however, great. I love it to death, with all it's flaws and impenetrable interface.

And all I know about Brogue is that it has some beautiful ASCII. Should really give the thing a try soon, as I've heard it's not very hard to get into.

[TehDruid]

Just started playing IVAN because of this topic.

I expected some sort of Russian situation (military-themed horror survival with zombies/mutants or something) but that's not the case.

Anyway, the game is very interesting! Plus the graphics make it way easier on the eye for me. Too bad I almost have no idea of what to do and what to not do. Nevertheless I'm definitely going to be getting into it more in the next days. A definite suggestion from me.

And I have to say, DoomRL sure is something to try. It might just be the game for you. I don't really like the theme, that's all.

[ekolis]

There's a new Angband variant out called Sil, and I've been enjoying it (though it is rather difficult)! It does away with character classes, and there are only a few races to choose from, but what I really like about it is the skill system (you can spend XP on skills in 8 or so different categories, with some skills requiring others within the category) and the combat system (to-hit bonuses increase the chance of a critical hit, and armor reduces damage by using dice - e.g. a leather armor gives 1d4 damage reduction).

[eharper256]

I'm rather impressed by ToME4 myself, seems rather well done, even if it does have long-ish load times for what it is. Different feel to Crawl with its tiered skill system; but I like it.

Couldn't ever get into Dwarf Fortress. Kept tripping over the interface...

[spacewolf009]

Crawl is by far the roguelike I've played the most but I enjoyed playing DoomRL but haven't played for quite a while (I'll have another look when the tiles version is released). I also enjoy playing Brogue occasionally because it feels a lot like the original Rogue but looks much better. I used to play an Angband variant called TinyAngband becse I was rubbish at the larger *bands and this one has smaller levels, less levels and is somewhat easier in general cutting down on a lot of the boring bits in Angband.
On my iPod I play 100 Rogues - quite fun and it suits the platform well but a very simple game among roguelikes

[Mychaelh]

My Angband variant of choice is OAngband:
http://www.thangorodrim.net/oangband.html

IVAN, Incursion was already mentioned in this thread, ADOM also should. Lost Labyrinth is good too (there are two different versions of it).

About "Demise - Rise of the Ku'tan" I made a whole 'Oubliettelike'-thread some days ago.
This long review explains in detail, why Demise is so remarkable 'cool':

Demise: Rise of the Kutan is, in my opinion, the best first-person "old-school" style computer RPG ever made. It is also probably the most underrated, misunderstood and one of the most obscure games in the genre. This game deserves far more than it has been given credit for and, in my opinion, deserves a place among the classics such as Daggerfall, Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Diablo, and others.

more: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=77962.0

I would not go as far as to say Demise is the 'best' in it's genre, that goes to the late Wizardry games. But Demise is something 'special' for sure.
"An ingenious 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' among the Dungeon Crawlers" actually suits quite well.
Most, who just give a short look, will be bored or even hate it. But Demise really has a 'discrete brilliance' in its game system code under the 'trash-cult' surface.

...But you need to invest a LOT of time (years!) to see 'all the beauty' of this one, ...of course.

Best way to get 'the most' out of Demise in my opinion:
Play it as a long-time '3-d maze exploring' - roguelike !!!

Means:
-> Switch off over-head map and really explore without map in 3d,... with the option to get lost...

And don't just pay the 'computer research team' for recovering your dead characters. If you die, you have to make a new build, to recover your lost one.
Played this style, this game equals DCSS for me!

[Gravenous]

I finally managed to get a Dwarf Cursed to level 16 in Tome 4, and since I've been playing for the awestriking period of two whole days, lost him to the Minotaur in the Maze. Sigh. I'll never get to the tier 3 dungeons I really like the Cursed from a lore perspective, too - you hate everything so much every item you touch is cursed, your hatred literally makes people around you sick and dying, and fuels your powerful attacks - but getting one started is ball-bustingly hard. And worst of all, since I'm so new at this I'm not even sure why it's so much harder than say a Berserker! Blasted roguelikes and their varying mechanics.

Also Desktop Dungeons is (was? Haven't played the paid version) a very nice coffee-break roguelike, with a very interesting gimmick - the unexplored tiles are the most valuable resource since they are the only thing apart from potions and levelling up that restores your health - but also that of your enemies. You have a ton of classes and levels to unlock and a game takes what, 10 minutes? Something like that. It's much more of a puzzle than a normal roguelike but it's also incredibly addictive. I gave up on it a while ago, because I couldn't unlock the classes I wanted most to play, but y'all should really give it a try if you haven't, there's a paid version with new stuff and prettier graphics and a free version which is the one almost everyone has tried or seen.

[Zicher]

DoomRL is certainly a fun and quick roguelikes. The lack of food clock and resting for HP is nice for me, strategy is deeply involved (although you may not notice on a first glance) and the challenges, badges, medals and ranks create a good deal of replayability. The general swiftness of game is a plus to me as well - a game can be won within an hour (but speedruns taking less than _five minutes_ were done as well). A friend of mine once called Crawl "an FPS among roguelikes" exactly for these factors - guess he never heard of DoomRL .
Best plays so far for me were Angel of Max Carnage and Angel of Shotgunnery on Ultra-Violence difficulty.

ToME 4 is something I'm trying to get into. The design is complicated, but not that much not to get into. Best I've done so far was a level 18 Dwarf Bulwark.

And, for some nostalgia factor, I'll probably take another shot at ADOM again. I have yet to beat this game, the Mana Temple was so far my maximum.

[Pteriforever]

ToME used to be really fun. I got -THIS- close to winning on two occasions with level 50 Cornac Beserkers who died on the final goddamn fight. I quit when they started demanding money for game features. I liked its lack of a food clock, though, and melee combat was actually interesting. Controls weren't too good, you really needed three hands to play comfortably. hit "1" on far left of keyboard to cast a spell, then target spell with mouse, then continue moving with number pad.

I liked how you were fighting legions of things, it really made you feel badass. Escapes were WAY too cheap -- for instance, a pure melee character could get a teleport about every 10 turns on average. A caster would get about twice as many escapes again. And then pretty much everyone got an extra panic button ability or two by the end -- berserkers had unstoppable, which is basically Death's Door with the added bonus of being healed to full at the end. What really broke it was that a lot of the later bosses -- such as the orc warlord of Grushak and Elandar the Sorceror, have such powerful healing that it's nigh impossible to overcome. But then, with the right build, so do you. Crud. Every battle with these guys becomes a nil-all draw.

I liked b21, when movement infusions were broken and insanely OP, and b25, when the exploration portal was newly added and would allow reaching negative levels of dungeon branches -- At one point I remember going to (insert name of randomised branch here): -17. Also, you could have like, a bear being the leader of a city of undead and other silliness. If you left the level with the way out the stairs would be lost forever and if you died in there the game would freak out and crash.

Good times.


Other games... There's Adventurer, where you can eat EVERYTHING -- at least until it crashes on D:2 which it will without fail, Numbers, where the entire game can be trivialised with 10th-grade maths, Sil, which has fewer winners than impossible mode of IWBTG, Anquestria, which is just like Angband but with nicer character descriptions, Lair of Xar, where you can move about five times faster than anything else in the game, Avendesora, which I've never played but am including here for completeness, POWDER, which is NH taken ten steps in the wrong direction, ADoM, which was designed by monkeys, Triangle Wizard, which is an unholy RL hybrid that never should've happened, Gates of Hell Spelunky, the greatest variant of anything ever, SLASH-EM, which is equal to NH + bunnies, need I go on?

[Kate]

You do know ToME is open source, right? If it offends you that much for independent developers to ask for entirely optional donations to help support all the time they pour into making a free game, it's like a 1-line patch to just enable the donator stuff anyway.

[inkydood]

I've only sampled other roguelikes, but I do have definite impressions based on what little time I've spent with them:

Nethack- It doesn't really bother me that they've included everything and the kitchen sink, but I can't get used to the interface. It just seems so archaic. Even with the improved Curses interface, there's just something odd. I might as well mention this here, but it applies to virtually all the others-- compared to Crawl, the dungeons just feel very sparsely populated with enemies, items, and other features. In Crawl you can line your pockets fairly quickly with daggers, darts, stones, potions, and scrolls, and you have to use them all to survive those early levels. The other Rogues seem to reflect this by letting you carry less in general. Maybe this changes as you play more-- like I said, these are just impressions.

Angband- For some reason, this game evokes a stronger mood for me than the other majors, including ADOM. Perhaps it's the stronger Tolkein influence, but if there's a rogue that really feels like you're descending down a giant dark dungeon, this is it. But the constantly-resetting dungeon floors and overall structure of the game...not a fan. Also, kudos to those keeping development going after so long.

Lost Labyrinth- Maybe it's just me, but this runs terribly on my computer. I can't even judge it fairly because it's nearly unplayable.

Rogue Survivor- There doesn't seem to be an objective beyond survival, and frankly I need something to work towards.

ADOM- The amount of care and attention Thomas Biskup put into this game really shows, but again I find the interface outright obstructive, and in general it seems nearly impenetrable. And while Nethack openly and shamelessly has featuritis, I kind of question the inclusion of things here like wiping your face or cleaning your ears. Still-- wow.

Incursion- Provided people start paying attention, this is going to be the next Major Roguelike. I know there's been a recent flood of coffee table rogues and variants of the other majors, but this game shows a level of complexity and depth comparable to ADOM, being influenced by the major roguelikes without being derivative. If I take up a roguelike other than Crawl, it will be this or ADOM. Note that it has unfortunately adopted Omega's unintuitive inventory system.

ToMe- I don't like it. The tiles are ugly (honestly, Crawl is the only rogue I prefer tiles with-- they're brilliant), I don't like the -Band format, and the combat has more options, but is much slower. I admire what the project is doing, however.

Dwarf Fortress- I wish I had a PC with a more powerful CPU, but alas, I do not. I know I complained about Rogue Survivor's lack of a goal, but here I think it's excusable because of the sheer depth, and the control the player has.

[varsovie]

Dwarf Fortress- I wish I had a PC with a more powerful CPU

Yeah, this it THE game that makes me overclocking my CPU.

There is too many roguelike I like to list them. I mostly like 7drl, but nothing can get my attention like Crawl. There it is always a broken mechanic or an interface problem or the lack of auto-explore that makes me come back to Crawl.

But there is few roguelike I can't stand, Dungeon of Dredmor being the last. Seriously, what were they thinking when they draw the walls so high (isometric tiles) that sometime you just can not see the monster/item? O_o

[Grimm]

Here are some unusual quasi-roguelikes:

http://boingboing.net/rob/tinyhack/ - The smallest roguelike in the world.
http://www.hojamaka.com/game/mamono_sweeper_h/en.html - The bastard love child of Rogue and Minesweeper. Has driven men blind.
http://www.scorpion.speedxs.nl/home.php?page=venture - A remake of an arcade "dungeon" game from 1982.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/523684 - A realtime sort of roguelike with turn based combat. Ultimately aggravating but an interesting approach.
http://www.kongregate.com/games/nerdook ... -developer - Sort of a "dungeon defense" kind of thing. Very unusual.

[Gravenous]

Those are some interesting links, Grimm, did you have to post them when I have so much to do :\

Also trawling through my roguelikes folder I found another game I really loved though I was never good at : Prospector.

Wherein you are a prospector, in space. Explore planets, collect minerals and ores, fight bizarre alien monstrosities and for heaven's sake stay away from the unique planets at least till level 10.

What sets this apart from other roguelikes is that you are controlling an entire crew - it's still the usual roguelike move the "@" with the arrow keys, but there are several different types of crewmembers you can enlist - like pilot, scientist, doctor, and of course redshirts - equip individually and cry bitter tears when you accidentally order to open their visors and suffocate in the poisonous 4g environment of the frozen methany wasteland you just damaged your ship in while trying to land. Also be careful when trying to leech fuel from gas giants because... well, you'll have to find out on your own!

There are tons of newer version since I last played so no doubt there are even more lethal unique planets and random alienoids or as the bay12 forums call it, "Fun!".

[Grimm]

Prospector is great and I look forward to it improving a lot. It's still only 0.2.

There are a number of themes that call out for a roguelike treatment.

superhero
wwii
cthulhu
subatomic

To name a few.

[Grimm]

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Wild_Sh ... he-mad-god - a pixelated shooter-roguelike with chat

[ekolis]

Prospector is great and I look forward to it improving a lot. It's still only 0.2.

There are a number of themes that call out for a roguelike treatment.

superhero
wwii
cthulhu
subatomic

To name a few.

My first attempt at a 7DRL was "Rogue Battalion", inspired by Battalion Wars - the idea was that your @ was a military officer who could take command of a tank, or fight on foot. Didn't get it working, and it wasn't explicitly set in World War II, but it was a neat concept...

There are already Cthulhu roguelikes, though they haven't been updated in years: cthAngband and sCthAngband.

And I could have sworn someone made a roguelike where you're a quark or something, and you have to combine with other subatomic particles to gain new powers... can't remember what it was called, though

[Jabberwocky]

And I could have sworn someone made a roguelike where you're a quark or something, and you have to combine with other subatomic particles to gain new powers... can't remember what it was called, though

I haven't heard of a subatomic roguelike, however a couple of months back there was talk of designing one on these forums here.https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1820 Read down a little bit to find the section about quarks.

[rebthor]

For anyone with a Mac or iDevice, 100 rogues is pretty cute so far. I have no idea if there's any real depth to it though yet. It's almost enough to make me wish I had an iPhone myself.

Speaking of portable devices, does anyone know of any good roguelikes for tablets other than the iPad? Either android or even WebOS.

[Gravenous]

I've heard brief mentions of random Android roguelikes but by unanimous decision they're (or were? I'm a bit behind the times) all horrible. I don't know how helpful it is, but a brief googling lead me to this link : https://market.android.com/search?q=rog ... o=1&c=apps which apparently is a ranked list of all roguelikes for Android.

Realm of the Mad God is great fun, I've played it since it began But again, I haven't played for maybe half a year or so. It was oddly relaxing to group up with random strangers in complete silence and paintrain the entire map for an hour. I was always curious how the idea began, honestly, but it turned out great. I wish there were more team-based roguelikes out there, but then again, a turn-based strategy is great for teamplay because a turn often represents a considerable amount of time, whereas in a roguelike it's the most miniscule event possible.

Although now that I think of it I had found some bizarre sort of pixel-graphics roguelike meant for 2-player cooperative. It was a shooter and when I tried it I died to rolling rocks a ton. Does anyone know what I'm even talking about?

Also I'll share some of my Tome 4 experience, since I can't really talk about it anywhere else (p.s. also feel free and welcome to share stories and events from roguelikes you play in this thread):

I played a Dwarven Wyrmic for a while and I'm sure I gave the elves in Rhaloren Camp plenty of material for child-scaring stories. "Eat your breakfast, or I'll call the fierce dwarf lto come through our wals AND EAT YOU ALIVE like he did our Inquisitor!". Good times. Since I'm pretty horrible at Tome 4 the poor guy died an ignoble death to the Minotaur while wondering around confused and blinded, and I'm sure my build was kind of bonkers. I also had to restart twice since I died to Broseph in the starting dwarven dungeon (What do you mean I need a shield to shield bash )

I also got a Dwarf Berzerker (seriously, the dwarven racial tree is so good for melee characters it's kind of imbalanced) to level 28, dying in Dreadfell to random Dreadmasters - no idea what they are, honestly. It was the character I got farthest on - found the Dark Crypt (hate it), used the farportal and got all my 1k hp instagibbed by a dragon boss with more talents than is considered decent in polite society (hate it), attacked a few adventuring parties (hate them), unlocked the Time Warden - something I've wanted to play ever since I heard about it, and the Reaver.

Ironically the unlock came after killing an Elven Corruptor (for those who don't play Tome 4, they're both under the Corrupter archetype - mildly amusing coincidence).

But man I can't wait to play a Time Warden. No doubt I'll be horrible, but from a lore perspective it's great. Then again the other class I adore from a lore perspective is Cursed and, well.

[TehDruid]

I've started playing ToME these days to take a break from Crawl.

Furthest I made it was today with a Cornac Alchemist with melee and all the skills for buffing my golem pal. Got to lvl 24 then died to... Not sure. I unlocked Archmage (and Storm Spec for killing the rogue Tempest), Summoner and Wyrmic plus the Infinite dungeon with him, though, so that was fun. I'm wondering how you unlock the rest of the classes/races. I like that, it reminds me of Desktop Dungeons a little. The problem is that in contrast to DD, it takes too much time to unlock something in ToME (well, except for the archmage and cursed classes which are fast and easy to do). I think it took me like 6 hours to reach lvl 24. Also, damage seems pretty overwhelming at certain points. So I've set it to adventure mode till I unlock everything because I'm gonna do lots of newbie mistakes. Any advice on how one should xp their way to 50?

[Gravenous]

Don't ask me, mate, that Berzerker I posted about above is my highest character yet. Though I can't help but feel this Temporal Warden is mental. I just killed the Minotaur without him ever hitting me. And I have so much mobility options, and I love that - I can blink myself, blink all surrounding enemies, switch places with and daze an enemy, I can blink to a point, stunning and damaging all enemies in my path... and I don't even have all my mobility abilities yet!

I really think Crawl would benefit from some more mobility options, especially for melee. I'm not really sure how to do that without imbalancing a ton of related things, but god damn zipping around, hitting dudes for a ton and then running away to heal is incredibly satisfying.

I do think the easiest classes are Bulwark, Berzerker and Alchemist, with Archmage also up there. Buy another infusion/rune slot with a cathegory point if you haven't - when you have a spare cat point just attempt to use another infusion, it should give you the prompt. Also, stun/freezing immunity is the most important stat in the beginning.

Have a walkthrough for a Cornac Bulwark which explainst a lot of things:
http://te4.org/dl/thirdparty/t4walkthrough/index.html

Also I'm gonna steal this dungeon tier list so that I may prevent people from dying 3 times to the Assassin Lord at level 8 like I did for so long :


*** Race/Class-Exclusive Starter Zones ***
Escape from Reknor: (Dwarf start) 3 floors.
Deep Bellow: (Dwarf only) 3 floors.
Blighted Ruins: (Skeleton and Ghoul start) 8 floors.
Murgol's Lair: (Yeek only) .
Ritch Tunnels: (Yeek only) .
Slazish Fens: (Sun Paladin and Anorithil class start if Human/Elven) .

*** Tier 1 ***
Norgos' Lair: 3 floors.
Trollmire: 4 floors.
Kor'Pul: 3 floors.
Heart of the Gloom: 3 floors.
Scintillating Caves: 3 floors.
Rhaloren Camp: 3 floors.

*** Tier 1 Other ***
Arena: (In Derth, Level 10 or earlier) 1 floor.
Alchemist Brotherhood: (Different versions @ Alchemist shops in Derth, Last Hope, Elveral + 1 random location on world map) Start the quests early. You won't complete them until Lvl 15+

*** Tier 2 ***
Unknown Tunnels (Lost Merchant): (Random prompt on World Map, one chance to accept quest) 2 floors. Best done Lvl 12+
Lumberjack Camp: 1 floor.
The Maze: 5 floors.
Sandworm Lair: 5 floors. Bring teleport/phase door rune.
Old Forest: 5 floors. Access to Lake Nur
Storming The City, Beginning: (In Derth, Lvl 12-20) Best done at 20. Wear lightning resist gear.
Daikara: 5 floors. Access to Temporal Rift
Golem Graveyard: 1 floor.
Hidden Compound (Ring of Blood): 3 floors.

*** Tier 3 ***
Tempest Peak (Storming The City, End): 2 floors. Available through mage city or anti-magic city.
Ruined Dungeon: (World Map) 1 floor.
Ruined Halfling Complex:
Lake Nur: 3 floors? Available through Old Forest. 1 underwater level, 1 dungeon, 1 boss fight. Unlocks your fortress.

*** Level 25+ ***
Dark Crypt (Melinda): (Random prompt on World Map starting at Lvl 24, one chance to accept quest). 5 floors. First 4 floors are very caster-heavy. Last floor has a very deadly boss fight & tough escort quest.
Temporal Rift: (Access in Daikara 4)
Ancient Elven Ruins:
Dreadfell:
Last Hope Graveyard:
Reknor:

edit : yeh, had exactly 0 deaths after doing everything up do Daikara, then I attacked an adventurer party - first death. THEN the Dark Crypt ambushed me and whoops - screw you, Temporal Warden - 3 deaths. Where's my suicide emoticon At least I unlocked Paradox Mage, but by the sound of it some of his time-travel abilities crash the game.
edit again : welp, suicided guy in Dreadfell. I just felt so disillusioned after dying three times in the god damn Crypt Tome 4 really needs to sort its defensive stats and resists out. God damn Titan Quest had less of the bloody things - this way you can be sure you're never completely ready for whatever dungeon comes ahead. I spent over 1k gold on items and barely got 40% blight resist for the Dark Crypt, and still failed the last quest because it is RETARDED.

Ah well, time to make a paradox mage and die again like a champ. But first... Spelunky!

[Mychaelh]

Played this now for hours non-stop in 'Old School'-difficulty level and can say this one is very good and evolved.
It's an 'Hack&Slay' 3-d Dungeon Crawler like Demise (think Wizardry/Bard's Tale meets Diablo).

ZoellerSoft is excited to announce the February 9th, 2012 release of DarkLight Dungeon Eternity!


Explore a vast dungeon totaling 50 floors. Defeat over 200 unique types of monsters as you solve puzzles, riddles and the mystery of DarkLight Dungeon. At your disposal is; 120 magic spells, over 600 items, 24 skills and many unique combat feats. With three difficulty levels and 60+ hours of gameplay on normal difficulty alone, there is plenty to explore in DarkLight Dungeon Eternity!

The demo (with approximately 10 hours of gameplay) and additional information, can be found at:
-> http://www.DarkLightDungeon.com

The demo-download is the full game, but you have to purchase an activation code, to explore more deeper then the first 4 dungeon floors.
Price for Full Version: 9.95 $

Short Review :
http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=3905

Interview with Creator Jesse Zoeller of ZoellerSoft:
http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=1852

Preview screenshots show what's worked on:
http://darklightdungeon.com/phpBB3/view ... f=12&t=167

[Pteriforever]

Don't ask me, mate, that Berzerker I posted about above is my highest character yet. Though I can't help but feel this Temporal Warden is mental. I just killed the Minotaur without him ever hitting me. And I have so much mobility options, and I love that - I can blink myself, blink all surrounding enemies, switch places with and daze an enemy, I can blink to a point, stunning and damaging all enemies in my path... and I don't even have all my mobility abilities yet!

I really think Crawl would benefit from some more mobility options, especially for melee. I'm not really sure how to do that without imbalancing a ton of related things, but god damn zipping around, hitting dudes for a ton and then running away to heal is incredibly satisfying.

I do think the easiest classes are Bulwark, Berzerker and Alchemist, with Archmage also up there. Buy another infusion/rune slot with a cathegory point if you haven't - when you have a spare cat point just attempt to use another infusion, it should give you the prompt. Also, stun/freezing immunity is the most important stat in the beginning.

Have a walkthrough for a Cornac Bulwark which explainst a lot of things:
http://te4.org/dl/thirdparty/t4walkthrough/index.html

Also I'm gonna steal this dungeon tier list so that I may prevent people from dying 3 times to the Assassin Lord at level 8 like I did for so long :


*** Race/Class-Exclusive Starter Zones ***
Escape from Reknor: (Dwarf start) 3 floors.
Deep Bellow: (Dwarf only) 3 floors.
Blighted Ruins: (Skeleton and Ghoul start) 8 floors.
Murgol's Lair: (Yeek only) .
Ritch Tunnels: (Yeek only) .
Slazish Fens: (Sun Paladin and Anorithil class start if Human/Elven) .

*** Tier 1 ***
Norgos' Lair: 3 floors.
Trollmire: 4 floors.
Kor'Pul: 3 floors.
Heart of the Gloom: 3 floors.
Scintillating Caves: 3 floors.
Rhaloren Camp: 3 floors.

*** Tier 1 Other ***
Arena: (In Derth, Level 10 or earlier) 1 floor.
Alchemist Brotherhood: (Different versions @ Alchemist shops in Derth, Last Hope, Elveral + 1 random location on world map) Start the quests early. You won't complete them until Lvl 15+

*** Tier 2 ***
Unknown Tunnels (Lost Merchant): (Random prompt on World Map, one chance to accept quest) 2 floors. Best done Lvl 12+
Lumberjack Camp: 1 floor.
The Maze: 5 floors.
Sandworm Lair: 5 floors. Bring teleport/phase door rune.
Old Forest: 5 floors. Access to Lake Nur
Storming The City, Beginning: (In Derth, Lvl 12-20) Best done at 20. Wear lightning resist gear.
Daikara: 5 floors. Access to Temporal Rift
Golem Graveyard: 1 floor.
Hidden Compound (Ring of Blood): 3 floors.

*** Tier 3 ***
Tempest Peak (Storming The City, End): 2 floors. Available through mage city or anti-magic city.
Ruined Dungeon: (World Map) 1 floor.
Ruined Halfling Complex:
Lake Nur: 3 floors? Available through Old Forest. 1 underwater level, 1 dungeon, 1 boss fight. Unlocks your fortress.

*** Level 25+ ***
Dark Crypt (Melinda): (Random prompt on World Map starting at Lvl 24, one chance to accept quest). 5 floors. First 4 floors are very caster-heavy. Last floor has a very deadly boss fight & tough escort quest.
Temporal Rift: (Access in Daikara 4)
Ancient Elven Ruins:
Dreadfell:
Last Hope Graveyard:
Reknor:

edit : yeh, had exactly 0 deaths after doing everything up do Daikara, then I attacked an adventurer party - first death. THEN the Dark Crypt ambushed me and whoops - screw you, Temporal Warden - 3 deaths. Where's my suicide emoticon At least I unlocked Paradox Mage, but by the sound of it some of his time-travel abilities crash the game.
edit again : welp, suicided guy in Dreadfell. I just felt so disillusioned after dying three times in the god damn Crypt Tome 4 really needs to sort its defensive stats and resists out. God damn Titan Quest had less of the bloody things - this way you can be sure you're never completely ready for whatever dungeon comes ahead. I spent over 1k gold on items and barely got 40% blight resist for the Dark Crypt, and still failed the last quest because it is RETARDED.

Ah well, time to make a paradox mage and die again like a champ. But first... Spelunky!

Yeah, I hear you man. One char I had just blew away everything up to the Orc Prides,then went through those with somewhat more caution, and by the time I reached High Peak I had 6 lives left. I lost each and every one on the final boss of the game. Some day, Elandar is going to get his/her/its head bashed into the ground with a randart greatsword.

Y'know, I never did really care about resistances -- Who would waste a ring slot on a 10% fire resist item when you could have something like +6 STR?

I guess I just blundered my way though the game through the combined overpoweredness of CoBe and movement infusions.



Spelunky is also something I can talk about. The main game's great, but all the fanmade variants are even better. My personal recommendation is Gates of Hell Spelunky http://mossmouth.com/forums/index.php?topic=930.0

[Sjohara]

Ever since I finally got fed up with Nethack once and for all a few years ago, Crawl is the only roguelike I still play. I really want to get into some others, but I just can't find one that appeals to me. None of the ones I've tried have the same balance of challenge, variety, and tactical depth that Crawl has.

I tried my damnedest to like TOME4, but it didn't happen. The game is just too...something. Overdesigned, maybe? Regulating skill by putting cooldowns on absolutely everything instead of via resource management pretty much killed it for me. I'm assuming that the intent was to allow for a wide variety of skills without some of them overpowering others, but the end result is that I feel like I'm just vomiting out all of my skills in succession as often as their cooldowns allow rather than using any real tactical planning. The total absence of strategic resource management and the lack of randomness weren't doing it any favors either.

The whole Angband side of things doesn't grab me anymore. There was a brief phase when I appreciated them for not having all of the baggage associated with Nethack (which was my first roguelike), but now that I've been exposed to Crawl they're just way too grindy. I have a teensy soft spot for Steamband--a Victorian-steampunk-themed affair notable for apparently being the only skill-based variant whose skill system doesn't suck--but it's still a 'band, and that means it's still to grindy for me to want to play it regularly.

I checked out ADOM recently, and though it initially seemed promising, the difficulty curve is completely whacked. If you don't get yourself murdered in like the first five levels, then nothing whatsoever can threaten you for the next bunch of hours (except for maybe a bad spawn in the Dwarven Halls) until you're railroaded into the Tower of Eternal Flame, where you die horribly. I also noticed a tendency for defense to scale faster than offense, resulting in frequent battles where neither side can damage the other for dozens and dozens of turns until you eventually scratch the damn thing to death. Magic isn't much of a reprieve either, due to the frustrating tendency for everyone and their mother to resist bolt spells most of the time.

Maybe I'll take another look at Incursion. I downloaded it a little bit after I first started playing Crawl, but I couldn't really get the hang of it and Crawl wound up eclipsing it.

[Pteriforever]

If you don't get yourself murdered in like the first five levels, then nothing whatsoever can threaten you for the next bunch of hours

This also applies to ToME to an extent.

[Sjohara]

Yeah, that's another problem with ToME. There are a ton of different levels for each tier of difficulty. There's some small amount of level scaling, but in general if you survive one dungeon in an early tier without difficulty, you're extremely unlikely to die in any of the other nine or whatever. You can skip them, but you're depriving yourself of guaranteed artifacts if you do, so you feel pressured to trudge through the newbie zones long after all pretense of challenge has vanished from the equation. This also makes grinding up a new character after a death really tedious, which is a big issue in a well-balanced roguelike because you should be expecting to die a lot.

[Gravenous]

I like Tome 4 especially because of its cooldown-based combat - it lets me always have something fun to do while bashing heads

Though there is resource management with all the classes, and there are like 7 or so different types of resource, not to mention you can get access to resources and skills not native to your class via escort quests and other events, so I'm not sure what Sjohara means? Are you sure you tried Tome 4 and not one of the earlier, Angband iterations? Because as far as I've heard Tome 4 is a total redesign and has almost nothing to do with Tome 1-3.

And now that I've played Tome 4's melee classes I just can not go back to Crawl's melee, it's just way too boring.

What I really, really hate about Tome 4 is the completely bonkers amount of damage types, resistances, saves, and status effects. Now that I'm used to Crawl's system of resists and status effects (except for paralysis, screw that with the force of a thousand suns) that just seems like an unnecessary bloat and completely prevents me from getting to more than level 24-28.

In other words can someone explain Tome 4's system of saves? And defense/armour/physical save? I just can never decide whether to focus on armour, defense, resistances or saves and that gets my ass killed harder every day, it seems

I also don't like how slow the game is, honestly, thought I've heard that the next version with the new interface will be a lot faster. Still, anytime I hit "Z" in tome I remember Crawl's autoexplore and weep. The way too long levels and unnecessary dungeon crawling doesn't help either. I think it's because the bosses have a guaranteed artefact drop, and some artefacts are way too important - The Rod of Annulment, for example. If that and the experience from bosses gets slightly toned down and the experience from normal mobs around your level gets increased, there will be more incentives to skip some lower-level dungeons. I think there is an addon that cuts down all dungeons to 3 levels, but I can't find it.

I do, however, long for the day someone takes Tome 4's combat and sticks it inside Crawl's much tighter game design in general.

[Pteriforever]

I do, however, long for the day someone takes Tome 4's combat and sticks it inside Crawl's much tighter game design in general.

That would be the best game evar.

[dk]

No one mentioned savescummer?

[Kate]

I think there is an addon that cuts down all dungeons to 3 levels, but I can't find it.

Heh yeah, I made those after getting fed up of the repetitive and easy early game - the addons page is here. Although the one reducing dungeons to 3 levels is buggy and you shouldn't actually install it, as it stops you from getting access to the Fortress (I forgot that it's tied to picking up pieces of lore, since I tend to just skip past that stuff without reading it). I would fix it but I'm lazy and it looks like the next beta implements some of those changes for real anyway (only cutting to 4 levels, but still an improvement).

[TehDruid]

I heard there's an isometric view mod for DC:SS. Is that true? Although what I'd really love is playing in pseudo-3d mode, like that old game Dungeon Hack. Targeting could be weird though, I guess.

[Gravenous]

Tbh the only isometric mode I've tried was HawkEye or whatever for Nethack? It was pretty bad Granted, it was my first ever roguelike and I had no idea what I was doing, but the thing kept obscuring items and enemies and generally getting in the way. I really love how Crawl's vision radius on tiles is smaller than the screen since it allows you, with a minor amount of stealth, to pick your fights a lot better, not to mention make much better tactical decisions.

Contrast Tome 4's vision which extends leaps and miles beyond the screen and often gets me seriously wounded, because despite what people on the official forums might think scouting for enemies is, almost without exception, the most boring part of combat in the game. I guess I'm way too used to Crawl's system.

Marvin, so I take it you are familiar with Tome 4 a lot more than me? Can you please post a short-ish explanation of defense/armour/resistances/saves in Tome 4?

[TehDruid]

I don't know much about ToME either, my most successful character was a Cornac Alchemist with the golem clearing all the enemies and me struggling to get some melee combat up. Well, all I can say is stun/freeze resist is probably the most useful in the game and other than that you need to have appropriate resists for the area you're going to. For example the human city of Derth is attacked by a bunch of air elemental creatures whose only form of damage is lightning. If you go there without some resistance to it it's gonna hurt way more.

[varsovie]

I heard there's an isometric view mod for DC:SS. Is that true?

Yes, but I believe it's only for an extremely old version. It appears it would also take more than 10 seconds of Googling to find, so no link, sorry.

http://www.geocities.jp/ita_iluvatar/cr/index-e.html
http://rltiles.sourceforge.net/

But it's an old version of Crawl.

There is also a version (ascii only) with Hex tiles : http://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/commits/hexcrawl

[Pteriforever]

Armour cuts a set amount of damage and defence cuts a set percentage -- Neither are very effective. Resistances are capped at 70% and cut large amounts off particular damage types. They stack multiplicatively unlike everything else. Immunities give you a probability of avoiding status effects altogether and you can reach the full 100% with those.

And that's ToME's defence system as of b21.

[Gravenous]

Thanks, but I think b37 has changed a lot of things, since I believe defence is compared to enemy accuracy to determine if you take any damage at all, saves let you shrug off status effects if... something? And armour decreases damage you take in some fashion. I base this on my Temporal Wardens who tend to take absurd damage to skeleton warriors and stuff the first few turns of combat since I always have low defense/armour, and when Spin Fate gets going I get nearly untouchable in melee.

The odd thing is I'm sometimes untouchable, and sometimes I get stomped. But when I engaged a Temporal Stalker - a mob with innate Spin Fate lvl 5, I could hit him perhaps one time out of 20 attacks. And it was definitely not the same with my character That's why I'm asking for someone with more recent knowledge That stuff is absolutely overwhelming and ... I really don't have the time I had when I started learning Crawl.

That actually makes me really sad about my life now, heh.

[Kate]

The advanced tutorial goes into a fair amount of detail on defences and saves and how they work, it's probably worth a look if you want to get a vaguely better understanding of it all. I think basically defence gets compared to accuracy for things trying to hit you, and physical/spell/mental saves get compared to physical/spell/mind power for things trying to apply effects like poison and stun and confusion (so with high enough saves you can shrug off those effects completely, or just reduce their durations). Then resistances are a completely separate thing on top of those.

And yeah, enemies shooting at you from outside your LOS is a pain, having scouting spells and abilities to deal with it is pretty much just the equivalent of the long-since removed divination spells in Crawl.

[TehDruid]

If they're out of your infravision/light radius yeah you are screwed. If it's the game not fitting in your screen enough to show them just change the tile size through the in-game Escape menu.

[vintermann]

The only similar game that interests me now is Dwarf Fortress' adventure mode.

A new version (first in 11 months) of Dwarf Fortress hit the servers today. Judging by the dev updates I've been following, it's going to be interesting. Looks like you can explore tombs, and get killed by your own reanimated hands.

He did fix the bug about zombies getting suspicious about why their Necromancer overlord never seemed to grow older... but there are surely tons of more hilarious bugs to explore in DF2012 emergent gameplay bonanza.

[spillover]

I really like Dredmor, but it honestly can't pull me away from crawl very often. I do like the humor in it though; crawl by comparison has its intermittent inside jokes, but it strives I guess more toward OMG IMMERSION!11one!!. I don't dislike crawl for that, and I even see Dredmor going a bit overboard with it at times. Still, once in a while I'd like to see more moments in DCSS. I especially liked Blork the first time I saw him. There are plenty of times where I've wished for a little more levity and a little less gravity.

Still, crawl is the better game.

[Gravenous]

Well I haven't really played Dredmor, but from what I've seen it goes for the "haha so random monkey cheese" style of humour which I hate with a burning passion. If this is not so I apologise, but it seems this way from a brief glimpse. Kind of like Binding of Isaac's over-reliance on disgusting humour only having nothing in common, if you understand what I'm trying to say.

Humour in roguelikes is really hit and miss, I think. I guess it's because they're a very underground genre and attempt to include what passes for "nerdy" humour which often ends up embarassing. Though I do like Spelunky's humour!

In other news, finally got a Dwarf Bulwark to kill the Master in Tome 4.

Nothing too exciting the first 20 or so levels, had a death in the Sandworm Lair because it's utter bullshit, another when two adventurer parties managed to surround me when leaving the Lair, because that, too, is bullshit, but other than that I breezed through the lower-level dungeons, acing the Dark Crypt and finally completing the quest at its end with 1 turn left. The Master took a bit of stair and teleport-dancing, but he eventually fell - oh god I'm advancing, Doomed, here I come!

oh no, wait, we're ork patrolls, haha screw you and the afternoon you spent getting here, you aint seeing shit here buddy go back home.

I've been trying to unlock Doomed for so long and I haven't even read the description in the wiki I just want to get my hate-fuelled murder machine, is that too much to ask?