I had originally written out a huge thread and explained a lot of my points in detail but I didnt copy it down some where else and I hit submit and lost it all because I wasnt logged in.



So now I just have to sum it up.



The many times I've died in this game was because the RNG would hate on me so hard I couldnt find a major node in the first 2-3 doors I opened on level 2 or 3.

The game is so much easier when you have the medium turret blueprints and heavy damage turrets are never a viable option because theyre too expensive late game when you need them most but they dont shoot fast enough to handle the massive #s of monsters that spawn late. Without medium turrets the game gets incredibly hard stage 3+

Items are blah because many times I would start with 2 gunners and find only swords, or I'd have a mix of heroes and I would only find repair toolbelts and rarely enough items to make a difference.

I never ever want to buy anything from the merchant because the dust to power a room during crystal transfer is worth infinitely more than any item he could ever sell.

Your other heroes feel useless and pointless during crystal transfer. Because the # of monsters that spawn causes you to never use them to battle or defend the runner except to buy time in the rarest of cases (only MAYBE if you have the spare food). If you want any chance of escaping at all, you should set it up so only monsters would spawn behind the direction you have to run to with the crystal. But the crystal turns off rooms and heroes are clearly made to stand in choke points with turrets because even with 3 max heroes you cannot survive the waves that spawn.

Crystal transfer feels like unless you created a perfect path of lit rooms to the escape, you have no input or control over what happens.

Losing a hero during crystal transfer usually 80% of the time means dying on the next level pretty much immediately.

There is pretty much only one dominate strategy (create a choke point and plant 3 heroes there with medium turrets and use the 4th hero to open doors and lure the waves back) that loses only to bad RNG so it feels like the game is either too easy or the game screwed you over completely on chance.



I love rogue likes, ive sunk a lot of hours (1000+) into them but if this game becomes as indepth as say dredmor with as many options as endless space has, id probably make this one of my all time favorite roguelikes.

I can understand some of these thoughts to be confused as "unnecessary" but personally some of these are meant to be for a reason. The Development Team can't really do a lot on the problem of the player not finding enough Generator Slots in rooms, since it is a Dungeon that is randomly generated, they can't just make it so that each room has one slot, if that was the case, then the game would be too easy. This also applies to the issue of Item finding, it is randomly generated, so finding items for your selected classes, will be scarce, and well, think about it, you are in a desolated planet with large hostile creatures hunting you down for your one source of power, a good player will toss these out, but a better player would keep them just in case, maybe you can find a Merchant to sell them to for Dust, or maybe you will find a Hero in that Dungeon that can use that specific weapon. As to the Crystal transfer, that is the one part of the Dungeon that is mostly made up of strategy and resource safety. If you have a large amount of Dust (Which will probably happen if you opened a lot of doors just to get to the exit) you can light up a good path from the Crystal, all the way to the exit, or at least close enough to make it safe for it. This will also allow your other Heroes to stay alive longer, and save your precious resources.

Totally disagree, I routinely protect the merchant at half the doors in a level and buy up anything useful just before doing the crystal run. I regularly beat the game with very few turrets, and with barely any rooms powered up during crystal runs.



It sounds like you over-invest in industry and turrets.



Also, the balance of the game is still evolving.

Yeah, I agree. The point of of a Merchant is to add some risk, will you risk lighting up more rooms for more security and less hostiles? Or will you get better equipment to fend off the creatures that lurk in the dark? It's all about balance. Personally, I usually open every door in the dungeon to get the most of it, meaning that I try to get every bit of dust, items, and blueprints. and from it I try to save my resources for the end of the game.

Im not a hardcore player that digs deep into the core mechanics from a game, but i found the game to easy. But its an alpha, so things will change alot till its done. I do a run almost every day. Right now im at 4 runs done 4 runs won. I did way more runs but i started to count, after i read posts from alot of people complaining that the game is too hard and to random . I try to do a run everyday live on my stream. So noone can say i prerecorded and deleted all my fail runs. You can ask me questions while im streaming if you want to. The link to my stream is in my signature.



There are a lot of myths about what you need to win the game.

Before the last patch alot of people said, that you need to have Gork in your party to win. Nope. Did almost the complete 4th level with deena and tons of turrets.

You say, that the tesla turrest are required to win. Nope, you can do it with a small amount of laser turrets. In one of my last runs i found no turrets till level 4.

It said you need a tank in you party. I say that it doesnt matter who you have in your party right now. Every hero can be usefull. You only need to know how to use them.

Many players complain about not enough dust. Sure, there are moments when i wish that i had 10 more dust to power another room, but where is the challenge if i had all the dust i need to power all the rooms i want?



Im not saying, that the game cant screw you over, because the RNG decides to give you nothing except 5 waves of creeps that are running straight to your crystal. Things like that happen from time to time. But if you know what you are doing you can win almost every run. I wrote some tipps in the steam forum and people saying they are doing better after using some of them.



If you (or someone else who is reading this) want, feel free to join my channel and ask me questions about whatever im doing and why. Im happy about anyone who watches the stream and chats with me.

I will try more runs in the next days. My next goal is 10 runs and we will see if i manage to win them. I hope i can start the next run in 2 - 3 hours. Depends when i get home from work.

Thank you for your replies guys!



Heroes max at level 6, to get there, its sensible to have at least 1 industry production and 2 food generators or else you simply never have enough resource. I dont know about you but I havent been able to keep a 4 man alive in a room without turrets without having to waste A LOT of food manually healing them but I will try to play with less "safe" strategies I suppose to see how it balances out that way.



In regards to "devs unable to do much with rng"

I am not asking them to fix the RNG but give more usability and options when it comes to the RNG. Rather than rewarding extreme luck or punishing players punitively, RNG should encourage the player to explore additional options given the circumstances or make due. In my opinion as of right now the RNG causes you to either immediately die or cause the game to become easy mode, thus limiting options right now. Items do not feel like they can change your strategy in a meaningful way. Example, lets say I did over invest in industry, whats the bad about that? I get a higher success chance to beat the game and continue and when the game has more than 5 levels, I can see this strategy becoming VERY powerful because you can continue to carry industry over. When research comes out, how will you not invest in industry to build turrets and defend your buildings for researching better weapons etc for your heroes?



Maybe invent a hero that uses both melee and ranged weapons but changes his attacks based on what hes equipped? Like if he has a ceremonial sword equipped he fights like Troe, but if he has a gun he fights like Max. He could start out default without any weapon but above average stats. This would give me an incentive to look for a merchant and maybe actually spend dust to equip him because if he was my starting hero, I'd want him to be useful as fast as possible since this game is all about first investments.



Which leads me to the door and nodes situation. All my runs where I could not find a major node by turn 2-3 on level 2 or level 3 ended in me being severely under resourced. I dont know how you can ever get a hero to level 6 without early investment like that. Let alone have enough resource to get past floor 5 if you blew it all up leveling heroes. Which is why it still leads me to believe heroes are severely useless. I also hate Grok. Absolutely hate him, he has incredibly low damage starting, low speed, and low attack speed. He is QUITE the investment but your early game sucks far too much to make him worthwhile because it is such a huge gamble.



I simply cannot concede to that argument @glutamate.

You can routinely protect the merchant all you want every run but that does not make it a viable strategy in the long term if you are using heroes only. Conviently sometimes the merchant spawns in a room i could setup a defense but so far I have never seen anything worth buying for 30+ dust that would change my strategy. It just does not seem worth it. Period. Not even at all viable because I've seen what happens after door 15+ to a band of max heroes with every slot equipped, they struggle and require manual healing.



I wish I didnt lose my original posting because I explained a lot of initial rationale for the reasons I am giving.



Currently heroes feel absolutely useless in the crystal transfer stage. On top of that, I feel absolutely useless as a player during this stage as well because the games dynamics changes in a very bad way IMO.



1. One of your heroes is dedicated to run the crystal, if he isnt moving, theres no point.

2. Your three other heroes cannot run defense against the massive waves that come at you.

3. If you did spend all your dust to equip your heroes better, you do not have the resource to light the entire way to the exit causing monsters to spawn from the direction you need to carry the crystal and that makes the run INFINITELY more difficult.



Since the sole point of the game is to make that crystal survive at all times, I dont see why you would ever want to take a risk where your game could end vs having 100% chance to not have monsters spawn on your path to the exit. Its a rogue, its meant to be hard, youre supposed to pick a strategy and see how far you can get. If endless dungeon is truely to become "Endless" why risk that death? why trade off valuable resources which is arguably the whole point of a rogue like (Resource management) for items that do not form its own viable strategy that later the game could just GIVE YOU for free anyways?



Im thinking further ahead when the game comes together. You have things to manage, research, industry, food. Theres going to be sweet spots of what you want depending on the strategy you are going for. Maybe you want to play safe like me and want to guarantee you have the medium damage towers, you'd need industry to protect your buildings as you open doors to further progress on research. Maybe you want to 4 heroes and max them, well you'll need a ton of food consider you need roughly over 175 food a hero to level 6.



Maybe after all of this my strategy is the type of player to take all the RNG i am given and minimize it with best strategies but I feel its really important here for this game because the dungeon is supposed to be endless, unlike binding of isaac or dungeons of dredmor, where there is a foreseeable end.

I see that you have a lot of good points and great ideas, I actually like the idea of a Hero who can manage to use both long range, and short range combat, though I am not sure how it would work. I mean, I could see this new Hero starting out sorta like Goldy, with no weapon and attacking with physical attacks, then after equipping said Hero with a sword, a spear, a hand gun, or a heavy gun would affect it's attack style. Now about the Crystal transfer, well to me it seems like you are not really good at managing your resources, personally, transferring the Crystal is too easy really, if I don't have a lot of Dust, I light up what I can, f I have enough Dust to light up the entire path ahead, then I do so. I then select the fastest Hero to carry the Crystal, the slowest or weakest Hero stays in the Exit, the other Heroes follow along the Crystal carrier to slow down the waves to give the carrier more of a chance to do it's job. It's not that the Heroes are useless, you just aren't really using them to their full potential, and with that said, do you use the mechanics that the game gives you? You can pause the game at any time, this can give you a great advantage.