vidmagnuson wrote:
The second level has the feel of difficulty that the first level should have, and the first level feels like the difficulty the second should have.

It is my impression that the first level can be unfairly hard if you are unlucky (which I am quite often as well). The second level gets easier as by surviving the first, you will have gotten a few more tricks up your sleave and be in a better position to progress. Still I have been in a situation where I finished level 1 with 6 spare food as I never got the dust to light more than 3 rooms and the exit was not just 3 rooms away from the start, causing waves to spawn in the path to the exit. That didn't make the start of level 2 any easier.

Level 3 so far seems to be the easiest. Level 2 will have given you the time to overcome any handicap an unlucky first level brought with it.

Then comes level 4 and the huge waves. That can turn truly nasty regardless of how well prepared you are.

PraetorianVanguard wrote:
Little late to this discussion but regardless. The difficulty as been smashing me. No turret modules or buff modules drop. Enemies tear my heroes apart. Also the guns seem to shoot too slow to be useful, not the machine guns though. Past couple games Ive been able to tell how long I will last with

in a couple rooms.

It's very random. I've gone through stages where I couldn't find any dust or modules at all, and others where I was able to power every room I found until nearly the end. My experience has been that the luck of the draw on the first level of the dungeon is pretty crucial to how well you'll do for the rest (but fortunately, if you quit in the first stage, you've lost very little time)

I think that guy is called FlyingNecro (if it isn't it's FlyingNecro2 ) in the xtml. That mob has Attack Power 35 and a Cooldown 1 (Range 8). The other mob has Attack Power 48 and a Cooldown 1,2 (Range 5).

The Merchant has 200 Hit Points and a Defense of 5.

So I think Mob1 deals 30 damage/sec and would kill a merchant on its own in 7 secs. Mob2 I think would deal 35 damage/sec and kill him in 6 secs. So whichever one it is it doesn't really matter. If there are two mobs attacking the merchant he will be dead in ~3secs.



The funny thing is that the Merchant actually has a movement speed of 16. So he could outrun Mob2 with its movement 14 (mob1 has 21).

In fact, there's only 1 kind of mob that goes for the NPC :



THIS GUY







Also refered as : "the guy who steals the goodies from you"



There are 2 kind so far : the blue ones that just go for the heroes, and the brown ones, that goes for the NPC. I tried once to lure one of them in another room, but if the NPC is in the room next to it, he will go for it.



So yeah, i guess it's quite hard to maintain him. But sometime, if your setup is really nice and comfy, you can "sacrifice" power for soem weapons and else.

Also, i find that mobs (all kinds) that pass near him and don't kill him is weird. I mean, if you were a mob like that, NPC are the bomb ! they don't run, they stand still and don't fight back. So in a way, i'm ok with that.



The scarcity of dust is the problem for players. Still, the dust collected in floor 3 is provided by the mobs (not only, but mainly). The more you get waves, the more you will drop some. Having the NPC inside you setup is a plus, but when he is way off, sometimes it's better to sacrifice power to get that nice widowmaker or the soletaker. But in any case, i don't say it's easy !

I'd like to add one more things to the issues talked here: the merchant life. Since 0.1.14, if you got a wave spam in the same room of the merchant, or in an adjacent room, that mean the merchant is dead meat. Before the patch, I was able to do an heroic run with Sara or Troe to his room and save him from near death. Now, its impossible. Three monster hits and he's gone. After the patch and the HUGE scarcity of dust, merchants became even more valuable to the game. I'm feeling the way the things are going, the next step will be deny players any dust after a wave. ¬¬ Pretty unbalanced stuff.

melkathi wrote:
Yup had them waiting to keep those rooms from spawning waves. First wave that spawned the two of them actually took out very quickly as it consisted only of tiny enemies. And then all hell broke loose: multiple big crystal golems, spider thingies adn those hero-hunting ones... It seriously was as if I wasn't on level 1. Never seen such a monster rush in the first level.

That sounds really weird for floor 1. For the first time yesterday, I finished floor 1 with only 2 major modules and 3 powered rooms. Somehow got Sara, OpBot and Scary Sword Dude to the exit. with about 100 health between all of them.

ZumboPrime wrote:
Did you have the other two waiting in unpowered rooms to buy you time? Sometimes you can just send them through one room all at once to split the damage a bit.

Yup had them waiting to keep those rooms from spawning waves. First wave that spawned the two of them actually took out very quickly as it consisted only of tiny enemies. And then all hell broke loose: multiple big crystal golems, spider thingies adn those hero-hunting ones... It seriously was as if I wasn't on level 1. Never seen such a monster rush in the first level.

melkathi wrote:
Died running. And there was nothing to run to. The moment Troe picked up the crystal and moved out of the starting room and it went dark, a wave spawned in there. Had 4 waves spawned before troe had moved the crystal two rooms.

Did you have the other two waiting in unpowered rooms to buy you time? Sometimes you can just send them through one room all at once to split the damage a bit.

Ail wrote:
So you died on the crystal run?

Did they die fighting or running? Usually when running you take way less damage. If they are too fast at the exit, just run them somewhere else. They don't have to be in the crystal room.

Died running. And there was nothing to run to. The moment Troe picked up the crystal and moved out of the starting room and it went dark, a wave spawned in there. Had 4 waves spawned before troe had moved the crystal two rooms.

So you died on the crystal run?

Did they die fighting or running? Usually when running you take way less damage. If they are too fast at the exit, just run them somewhere else. They don't have to be in the crystal room.

So here is my last attempt which failed with a complete wipe in level 1:



Starting heroes: Nurse Ratchet and Troe

Open first door: the guaranteed greater module slot -> built a industry module

Door two: spider monsters, no problem / minor modules / extremly large room

Door three: 7 dust /minor modules

in a straight line only minor modules (one prison uniform chest, one toothpick chest and a couple of monsters)



Door 6: minor modules but now enough dust to light a third room. 3 doors.

-> take right door

Door 9: exit

Door 10: second greater module room

...

Door 13: enough dust to light up a 5th room. Distance from start to exit: 9 rooms. Distance from start to closest second greater module room: 7 rooms.

Door 14: Hikensha -> recruit cost 32 out of 34 food

Total doors: 15



My mistake is that I recruited Hikensha. I had hoped Troe would be fast enough and not that many waves would spawn.



Without any ability to heal and half the path between start and exit dark, Troe made it through 3 rooms before Hikensha and Deena were dead.

I agree, with a poor setup, floor 4 is hard. Still, when you got a nice one and you open your doors strategically, you can had a bit more challenge. During my last game, my setup was so nice i could open like 3 doors in the same time. It ended up with 11 waves at once but still, didnt had to heal my team. So nerfing the mobs really depends on your setup. I agree that you can't play the game if you don't have a chance to fight for the win... Instead of that nerf, maybe get the player, at the beginning, the choice between 3/4 doors, with only one leading to a nice node to defend.

Plus, i guess there will be new rooms and new loots (auto-powered rooms, as i saw, or else) that could help us out in those situation.



But mainly, i think that the difficulty is ok. Sometime you are lucky and sometime, you have to change your strat.



For exemple : i the first room i find is empty like hell, i power it, but then i open another room leading to the crystal room. And when i find a nice room with minor modules (at least 3), i get my turrets there. Also, having a character in a unpowered room is nice to have if you can't aford to power a room that is poorly placed. But once i get a nice place to defend, i open doors leading to this room only. When i got enough dust, i open a room in aother area, so i can power it immediatly. And so on.

Level one can be a pain. If you have only one door leading out of the first room and the next room is only turret nodes then you won't have enough food/industry (depends on which module you build first) to do much. And you can get a crystal golem that will wreck your first module.



Level two is pretty easy if you get a good level one start. Hoarding resources works wonders.



I think levels three and four can be a unlucky death trap as well. If you get a bad node setup (not enough turret or module nodes) you might have a really hard time (it is possible to do it though). My last playthrough (and my only successful attempt to beat this version of the game) I had only two modules, but a decent turret setup (it made no sense to make more modules since they would end up being destroyed anyway). And for the most part I was pretty low on Dust.



The worst thing that can happen to you there is probably not having a module node in the first (or second) room you open that's adjacent to your crystal (not an issue on level one since it's always a room with a module node in it).



And the number of waves on level four makes you go crazy. I know you can handle it, but six waves? It makes everything so clustered. I think it made the game lag at one point (loads of monsters). It was fun to react to such a horde though. My "choking point room" was pretty literal.



All in all, this version was pretty challenging. I think I would've beaten it faster if it wasn't for my "lose a hero, restart the game" attitude. And I made a lot of blunders I shouldn't have done (mostly because I wasn't paying attention).

Though I think right now the game is a little too harsh and unforgiving. Nerfing the monsters and the number of waves on level four would be, in my opinion, the right to do.

I agree with you Melkathi : Floor 1 is a death trap if you are unlucky. I got several time 3 powered room with an exit so far i couldnt reach it coz of the waves during crystal phase.



Also, losing a hero is hard, expecially one you care about (the door opener, or maybe... Gork!). Though, this is a challenge. Now that i'm familiar with the floor's difficulty, i find that losing a hero makes you rethink your strat, getting heavier on turrets, powering room you wouldnt power before that loss... My last game was really exciting because of the lack of dust i got. Fortunatly, i found a really nice node with 4 modules on it which was for me some kind of command center. Every single wave was beaten in that room. And with the dust i found on the mobs, i powered the path to that command center, getting more turrets.

Point is : i don't think "unconscious" hero rather than "dead" is a solution. No challenge there (as it was already said earlier).



Also, a special "thank" to the slow turret, which is very usefull in big rooms with small turrets in it. Even if they get destroyed by the little crystal (which seems to like turrets a lot!), they are cost effective. Even if the mobs run through, they are far less dangerous, which is a nice advantage during 6+ waves with a choke point leading to 2 or more unpowered paths.

Ail wrote:
As I said, if you opened the third door and it happens to have Crystal-Golems in it, then don't fall back immediately but put both your heros in this room to fight them there and only fall back if the health drops too low. By then the Golems should be damaged enough to die to your defenses (which you don't build until during the fight and only if you can see you will have to fall back).

Also, Crystal golem will target the module and not your heroes. So even if you heroes are low hp, the golem will not hit them until he has destroyed the module.

vidmagnuson wrote:
I've lost on the first floor another twelve times, within the first four rooms at least half of those, and gotten to the second level once.

Wow, well, what can I say...



For me it's really hard to imagine what you experience there.



I've started only three games with the current build.

I've lost it once in level 4 where I also could clearly identify the mistakes I had done that lead to the defeat. The other two tries were successfull playthroughs.



It would be very helpful if you could upload a video of you playing the game so we could then analyze what exactly is going wrong for you all the time.



As I said, if you opened the third door and it happens to have Crystal-Golems in it, then don't fall back immediately but put both your heros in this room to fight them there and only fall back if the health drops too low. By then the Golems should be damaged enough to die to your defenses (which you don't build until during the fight and only if you can see you will have to fall back).

After few runs I finally manages to handle all 4 levels with latest version. Forst it was hard, but after finding module, that increase heroes attack everything turned out to be way too easy.

As in previous versions this module is way too good compared to others.

My strategy was basically having one room with 4-5 of those modules, and all 4 heroes had 300 average DPS (lvl 6 + average weapons), and oneshoting most incoming mobs almost without taking damage.



UI issues.

- I was constantly misclicking heal button when wanted to see hero stats or even simply select it sometimes. I don't understand why it was moved higher and overlap hero panel. Also hero start/inventory button should be way bigger than it is now. It is incredibly small compared to all other buttons.

- It is not possible to figure if there are monsters coming or not by a quick glance and status panel. Since sometimes red fades out when looking at it I misunderstood that and thought that waves are over. UI element shouldn't require 1-2 seconds look to tell information like it is now. Easiest solution would be keep it flashing, but when it is flashing never come back to pure black colour, or even keep [art of this UI things always red when monsters are coming.



Bugs.

- Also there is bug when heroes have running animation, but not moving, when entering target room, but before reaching it's center.

- Once one of my heroes had shooting animation even though his enemy was long dead (happened when he killed leaving enemy near door). Unfortunately I found no stable way to reproduce both of those.



Sugggestions.

Oh, and one suggestion about gameplay: since in most cases death of a hero is equal to starting new game it might be a good idea to not completely kill hero, but, for example, make him unconscious until end of current wave and then revive him with few levels loss (or completely kill if it had low level).

Ail wrote:
I'm pretty sure you were referring to 0.1.3 instead of 0.1.14 since 0.1.14 was the big patch while 0.1.15 only fixes stutter-issues & 0.1.16 a possible crash. No balance-changes in these.



If you are having such a hard time, chances are you are missing something very important.



Also turn your observations into conclusions.

I didn't play the game until 0.1.14 had gone live, my experience can't possibly have been from 0.1.13, but I did notice a severe spike in difficulty after the most recent updates.

Ail wrote:
"... unless you have two heroes in a room and at least three turrets, they will destroy whatever major module you have in that room without fail."

The key to not lose major modules is: have two heroes and at least three turrets in the room before the room with the major-module inside.



Active pause usually gives you plenty time to reposition your heros and change which rooms are illuminated after opening a door.

I'm already frequently using active pause, but I'm referring to situations I am running into within the first three or four rooms on the very first floor. Because of this issue, expansion is excessively limited. Unless I luck out and come across a serious amount of industry, I only have one major module [typicallyIndustrysoIcanevenhopetobuildoneinthenextroomifI'mluckyenoughtohaveanode] and probably only enough to cover those three turrets I mentioned. Because of dust requirements, you might not have a spare room between the path of enemies and a module. If you don't want to be instantly handicapped early game, then you have to build a module in the first room. What happens if the second door you open has two Harmony?



Guess what, it only takes one to kill it, and two means you're screwed. This is a problem I have run into repeatedly.

Ail wrote:
Opening the doors in an order that results to having the fewest amount of choke-points at a time and monsters spawning in such a way that only 1 wave will arrive at a time is usually the key to success.

I'm already doing that. I'm pretty sure everyone is. But even if you have a single path that does not change that the heroes cannot take a Harmony down faster than it can take down a major module, and if there are a large number of enemies in a room when you're surprised, two heroes still might not be able to take down the whole group without either support or a heal, and early in the game those resources are very limited.

Ail wrote:
I've done 2 Let's play series of how to successfully beat the game after the patch.



Edit: In level 1 you can usually engage the monsters with both of your heros in dark rooms, so you don't even have to put your modules at risk. Most of the time this won't even cost you a heal. And even when it does: A heal is much less expensive than rebuilding a major module. (Don't try to engage them with only 1 hero though)

A heal is much less expensive, but if you're only two rooms in, you can only reliably say you've got 12-16 food by the time that door opens. I understand that the game is resource management, but right now the balance of the first level seems exceptionally out of whack. Since I've started posting in this thread, I've lost on the first floor another twelve times, within the first four rooms at least half of those, and gotten to the second level once. Once I got to the second level, everything was much easier. The second level has the feel of difficulty that the first level should have, and the first level feels like the difficulty the second should have.

I'm pretty sure you were referring to 0.1.3 instead of 0.1.14 since 0.1.14 was the big patch while 0.1.15 only fixes stutter-issues & 0.1.16 a possible crash. No balance-changes in these.



If you are having such a hard time, chances are you are missing something very important.



Also turn your observations into conclusions.



"... unless you have two heroes in a room and at least three turrets, they will destroy whatever major module you have in that room without fail."

The key to not lose major modules is: have two heroes and at least three turrets in the room before the room with the major-module inside.



Active pause usually gives you plenty time to reposition your heros and change which rooms are illuminated after opening a door.



Opening the doors in an order that results to having the fewest amount of choke-points at a time and monsters spawning in such a way that only 1 wave will arrive at a time is usually the key to success.



I've done 2 Let's play series of how to successfully beat the game after the patch.



Edit: In level 1 you can usually engage the monsters with both of your heros in dark rooms, so you don't even have to put your modules at risk. Most of the time this won't even cost you a heal. And even when it does: A heal is much less expensive than rebuilding a major module. (Don't try to engage them with only 1 hero though)

The first level needs some tweaking, I agree. As your heroes level up, the crystal golems becoem more manageable, but in the beginning they can be excessively devastating.

A solution may be a more organized dungeon ecology and monster hierarchy, where different types of monsters onlys pawn from level X,Y,Z onward and/or in specific minimum wave sizes. So you don't only have your two lit rooms and each door two golems waltz into your lit rooms and smash everything to bits, preventing you from ever getting the industry to build the food modules to level up and be able to handle one golem before it smashes your production.

I have to be honest, I was enjoying the game a lot. 0.1.14 was a lot of fun, and I managed to beat it several times, but since the 0.1.15, I have only gotten to the second floor once. It seems like the Harmony monsters [I'massuming,they'relargewalkingcrystals] are so difficult to kill that unless you have two heroes in a room and at least three turrets, they will destroy whatever major module you have in that room without fail. I enjoyed how difficult it was before, but now with the skills issues, what was an issue of strategy before has become both an issue of strategy and random luck. When I've gotten to the second floor it's been because I've managed to pick up enough random dust drops to prevent more than one wave coming in at a time.



Typically I'm running into a problem where I either don't have enough industry to build a solid defense, not enough food to level up my heroes, or not enough dust to power rooms to do either of those two things. I've been on the fence about rougelifes before, but I feel like something has changed in the last two updates with this one that have made it more frustrating than fun to play.



Edit:



After playing a few more rounds, it also seems like the heroes have taken a massive hit to durability. One unlucky room at the start, and there's nothing you can do to survive with some of them.

It still depends a lot on what rooms you find. If you get hardly any dust, you can't light up long corridors of death. If you get no major module slots, you will be playing catch-up with resouces. With hero active abilities, it can become more hero heavy. Last playthrough I spend a large part of level 3 defending in a dark room. Partly because I didn't want my major module to get damaged, partly because my heroes were so strong, they did not need minor modules to beat the waves. They got massacred in level 4...

That actually explains a lot. Without him combat becomes much harder. Is combat supposed to be leading a conga line of enemies down a long hallway to their death? Or is it supposed to be more hero heavy? I know it could go either way but both strategies seem to fail, for me at least, on the third floor. The increased monster strength really messes them up. However I have been taking the explore one direction route.

PraetorianVanguard wrote:
Also the guns seem to shoot too slow to be useful, not the machine guns though.

That is not the attack speed. Gork has a hidden stat called Attack Hit Count with a value of 3. So it seems that while pistols, swords and spears hit one enemy, Gork hits 3 of them with his SMG.

Little late to this discussion but regardless. The difficulty as been smashing me. No turret modules or buff modules drop. Enemies tear my heroes apart. Also the guns seem to shoot too slow to be useful, not the machine guns though. Past couple games Ive been able to tell how long I will last within a couple rooms.

I would agree with the permadeath bit if after the new patch it didn't seem like getting new hero recruits was a crap shoot. After over a dozen playthroughs I only got a recruitable hero on the first floor twice! And one of those two times a massive 3 spawn wave arrived when I opened that door and killed both that hero and the one that I was using to explore in mere moments =/ If there was some real choices in which heroes to recruit or at least drop the randomness of the variable that allows you to find them then permadeath is fine, maybe have the level drop/unconscious heroes as part of one of the lower difficulties on release?

DaveyAlcala@live.com wrote:
Less crucial? Well personally I like the idea of Heroes dying, it makes the player care for their Heroes, leveling them up, giving them the best gear possible, and keeping them safe. So if your best Hero dies, it makes you change your current strategy, it allows the player to adapt to the new situation.

Yeah I have to agree with this. My favorite sessions have been ones in which I have come to the brink of destruction, losing all but one hero and then managed to bounce back. There is something delightfully grim about outfitting your new level 1 recruit with the gear of your fallen comrades. In games like these I find it a lot more gratifying to focus on adapting to a changing set of challenges instead of just starting fresh when something less than optimal happens. Heroes that can bounce back from death would take away from that sense of struggling to survive that I like so much about games that channel roguelike themes.

Altren wrote:
Yes, I do. The main difficulty is opening strategy and enough luck to make only few or one room leading to unpowered territory. Usually I end with two ways: going "forward" when have not enough dust and going "backward" to claim new room.



No, I'm not saying that game is too difficult or something, I like current difficulty level. It is just that option of dead heroes is not used, and it is almost as saying you lost after any of your heroes died. Why not make dying heroes slightly less crucial?

Less crucial? Well personally I like the idea of Heroes dying, it makes the player care for their Heroes, leveling them up, giving them the best gear possible, and keeping them safe. So if your best Hero dies, it makes you change your current strategy, it allows the player to adapt to the new situation.

DotBeta wrote:
Are you opening every single room on every level? I just wanna know how you increase every hero to level 6 because usually when I'm on the 4th floor i might have 2 hero's on level 6 that I've been dumping all my food into to level up.

Yes, I do. The main difficulty is opening strategy and enough luck to make only few or one room leading to unpowered territory. Usually I end with two ways: going "forward" when have not enough dust and going "backward" to claim new room.

DotBeta wrote:
Seeing as how there are no second chances and it's a roguelike I think when a hero dies it's permadeath, there shouldn't be any second chances. That's what makes the game challenging.

No, I'm not saying that game is too difficult or something, I like current difficulty level. It is just that option of dead heroes is not used, and it is almost as saying you lost after any of your heroes died. Why not make dying heroes slightly less crucial?

Personally, the difficulty seems fine with me, sometimes I win, sometimes I don't. When I did find the attack module I used 3-4 of them in one room, leaving all of my heroes in this room did make a significant difference, sometimes I even only left 1 hero there and said hero still survived a wave of enemies. I could see that being over powered a bit, but that is if you do obtain said module.



I did find one of the bugs you had though, after the 3rd wave of enemies, I tried to have all my heroes reunite in one room to fend off their enemies, 2 out of the 4 heroes made it in the room, while the other two had their running animation standing on the door. They could still take damage, but not attack. This left me with 3 heroes.

I haven't found the node that increases damage, nor did I think of spamming buff nodes to increase defense or attack to ridiculous proportions. I hope that there are changes to it and you limited to a certain amount of buff nodes per room. Are you opening every single room on every level? I just wanna know how you increase every hero to level 6 because usually when I'm on the 4th floor i might have 2 hero's on level 6 that I've been dumping all my food into to level up.



I haven't had any problems healing the healing buttons were probably moved up to make room for the skill tabs. I also haven't had problems knowing if a wave is over because I take more than a split second to look at the status, looking at it for 2 seconds usually verifies whether the waves are over or not.



Seeing as how there are no second chances and it's a roguelike I think when a hero dies it's permadeath, there shouldn't be any second chances. That's what makes the game challenging.