So I'm not really sure what exactly it is that I'm complaining about here, or whether this is really a complaint or not. That having been said... I haven't won a game of DotE since back when the game was still only 4 Floors long and had only about six different mobs in it. Don't get me wrong, I love the challenge, I'm just setting the stage. Anyway, today I won my first game since that time, and I did it with a build that was so crazily overpowered that it seemed frankly rather gamy.



The heroes were Professor Josh 'Ntello, Max O'Kane, Skroig, and Lady Joleri Tulak. I can't remember how the run began exactly, because it took a while to finish and it didn't seem particularly extraordinary until a few Floors in. Somewhere about Floor 4 or 5 (somewhere in the Necrophage nest environments, if I remember correctly), I started snowballing over of all meaningful impedance.



I'd begin every Floor by building an Industry module and I'd surround it with as many Mechanical Pals as I could, then I'd stick Josh on it as the operator. This would then pay for me to lay down the same configuration of modules (Industry + Mechanical Pals) in the next major module room I came across. By the time I had about 3 rooms filled up with these configurations, I was automatically pumping out more than 60 Industry per door breach. This would then pay for me to start laying down similar configurations except with, say, Food or Science rather than Industry (and all Mechanical Pals, of course) in further rooms.



Moreover, the amount of Industry I made per door would be more than enough to allow me to plant a Generator + defence configuration in every major room I didn't have enough Dust to reach yet. As soon as I found the Merchant, I'd scrap whichever room had the most minor slots and put up a Shop + Mechanical Pals configuration, and stick Josh on it as the permanent operator, which would then earn me about 6 Dust per door breach. This would allow me to activate almost every single room in the Floor. When Max got his ability to increase Dust finds from rooms, this only made it easier for me to power the vast majority of the Floor even sooner. Whatever rooms I couldn't power and couldn't stick a Generator in, I'd simply occupy with Max, Skroig, or Lady Joleri, with Max in whichever room he needed to be in to be closest to the next door. Any of the few times when I really didn't have enough Dust or enough heroes to make a particular area safe (such as before I'd found the Merchant), I'd just dump a bunch of infinitely renewable Industry to pack every nearby room with defences, which I could afford effectively limitless quantities of at 7 Industry a pop.



By the end of each Floor, I'd have opened all doors and powered all rooms, sometimes with the exception of a single room which I would leave open and unpowered as far away from the exit as I could manage. After a few Floors of playing like this, I'd gotten all of my heroes beyond level 10, and I was getting to the point where I'd enter each new floor with more than 400 each of Food, Industry, and Science stockpiled. Even in the later Floors where you start off with much less Dust, and find much less in the rooms, I was already to the point where I simply had enough stockpiled Industry that I could pack every major room with a Generator + defences config until I got enough Dust to activate it properly.



Around about the time I was on Floor 9 I had finished researching Level IV of everything (all Endless artefacts showed no available research, at least), I had levelled all my heroes up to 13, and had bought them all the best gear I could find. I finished the final Floor with over 1000 Science, 700 Food, and 500 Industry stockpiled. On the final Floor I had opened all doors and powered every room except for one. I lost no heroes over the entire run, and took almost no severe damage (which I define as requiring an emergency heal) after Floor 7 or 8.



Basically, I had mechanised the process of exploration and reclamation of the Floors, such that I never had much more than two or three rooms unpowered. I don't know how repeatable this is, as I only recently finished the run and haven't tried to recreate it yet (too busy messing with the Infirmary and the Drill before posting here). Perhaps I just got stupendously lucky with Dust/Merchant finds and room layouts? Has anyone else created an situation like this? If this is a recreatable strategy, it seems like it should be fixed, though I'm not sure what exactly would be the best thing to change about it to ensure it remained difficult.



Coincidentally, I unlocked Skroig, Josh, and Lady Joleri on that run, having begun with Opbot DV8 and traded it for Josh upon finding him in the labs.



--edit: it didn't occur to me, but this was played on Easy difficulty, rather than Too Easy, as the title might have suggested; I have not played Too Easy yet

The difficulty curve has gone down tremendously since before the update, it used to feel like it was almost impossible for me to beat an "easy" game and now it takes me much less time and it's much easier to complete a play through. With Max and pilfer +2 I can complete floors with every single room lit up:





"Right click and select 'view image' to see fullscreen."



This is something I dreamed of achieving before the update and now I can do it on pretty much every floor once I get pilfer 2.



My guess is that normal and hard modes will be on the way soon and those modes will pick up the difficulty level to what we have been used to, all the while balancing very easy and easy. This is purely speculation on my part I haven't read anything solid but it just seems like a logical thing to do from this point.

This is mostly due to the Emergency Generators, the lack of dust in a floor (especially later ones) made the game quite difficult, and made heroes like Max O'Kane with dust bonus skills one of the best choices for an easier win. That doesn't matter a pip now so long as you manage to get Emergency Generators going, they bypass most of the difficulty previously in the game caused by lack of dust, and obsolete a lot of heroes abilities.

You can now focus even heavier on industry than before and it will solve pretty much the whole game now, as industry funds : Defences, resource gathering, operating things you find in rooms, and now also overcomes lack of dust. Industry now surpasses dust in value even more than it used to.



Also new tech aside, the early floors feel much much much easier than they did pre-patch.