Playthrough Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w1g7ecxLzA&list=PLOhx4A9z21IZbkqeua4V7MEFrBPUy2MzM&index=1



So I just finished a successful run of DotE 0.9.2, the last two floors were in 0.9.22, and I figured I'd report in.



1) Overall things were significantly harder for a couple reasons:

- Less Dust from exploration? It felt like I had less Dust from exploration which meant more unpowered rooms, more need to spend industry on chokepoints, more need to leave powered rooms with only minor modules between me and sections of unpowered rooms, and less ability to use heroes to explore.

- Very few Dust merchants. Made acquiring dust by selling items really difficult. The one level where I did find a dust merchant he helped a lot. I can see that, with the backpack allowing you to carry a lot of merchandise, Dust merchants are extremely powerful... so mixing up the merchant types helps balance the backpack's utility out.

- The new Food/Industry/Science merchants were interesting. They felt like they added some interesting opportunities. You didn't have to give up powered rooms to buy items, so you could buy them before the end of the level. However it also felt like you needed a stock of everything going into a level which is challenging but a change for the better in my opinion. Science felt like it was easiest to acquire en masse while still researching something (not necessarily optimally though) while Food was a little more painful to trade and industry was always at a premium... still none of these were as bad as trading Dust (until the end of the level when you mostly didn't care). The backpack probably made this necessary as you could probably pawn your way to victory with only Dust merchants available. All-in-all a great change, though I think the three different resources are not created equal.

- I definitely didn't end up researching nearly as many things as previous playthroughs, likely because I needed operators on everything else.



2) The Tactical Map is fantastic for a couple reasons:

- It let me watch multiple battles sans distractions... making keeping heroes alive when monsters are swarming multiple choke points much easier.

- It let me find the last door or two really easily.

- It lets you move characters around easily.

- It's awesome to look at and provides a lot of information. It could use special monster indicators though and the massive room filling tank monsters leave a monster icon permanently on the map after death.

- It lets planning your crystal escape route much easier and indicates powered/unpowered room states.



3) Randomness might be overpowering in this version. I HAD to rely on Operator bonuses to get through this. I won't claim that my play was perfect, but I kept it optimal 90% of the time and I can tell you that the only way to deal with the randomness of Dust acquisition was through careful use of Operators. I'm not sure I would have a fair chance of finishing without starting with a powerful operator. While I think you can't spell operator with OP in this game, which has been true since the last version as well, I felt like I couldn't do without two powerful operators for the last couple floors. I think this is unfortunate as it keeps more interesting parties from being as viable... I could be wrong, but you can watch the videos and see for yourself how you think I would've done with 20+ less resources of one type or another coming in every turn, for most of the game. Basically I think the game caught up with operator power levels but left everyone else behind to an extent so I'm not going to suggest nerfing operators, but buffing everyone else.



Suggestions for balancing operators.

- Add Wit based splash damage to non-operator heroes.

- Add resource generation per kill (and make it Wit enhanced) to non-operator heroes.

- Let some non-operator heroes "power" a room's minor modules just by being present. So you can have forward chokepoints without spending dust to power them, though major modules can't generate in them.



You can watch the videos, Floor 7 bugged out on me so there's not one for that, but I really enjoyed the challenge (of which there was plenty) of 9.2.



Major Occurences:

- Floor 10 with almost no resources stocks at all.

- Lost a merchant with Zone Defense and Riot Armor on Floor 7.

- Max, Professor, Gork, and Warden final team.

- Challenging play for almost every floor.

- Intriguing merchant use throughout game.



Possible bug - Keep an eye out for this in your playthroughs.

- Armory unlocked instead of Infirmary... I beat the game with an Escape Pod but didn't unlock the infirmary. Possibly I unlocked the armory pod because the crystal phase now opens every door? Or maybe the 'Win with Escape Pod' condition inappropriately unlocks the Armory instead? Or possibly it's due to the patching. Anyway, keep an eye out.

I think I reported the seemingly wrong unlock as well. So if we both noticed it, chances are we didn't just get confused

The doors opened automatically during the Crystal phase are not supposed to count for the unlock.



Dust from exploration should be the same, if I remember correctly, just that you now find larger quantities in fewer rooms (or was it the other way round?). The game calculates a total of dust you can find through exploration and splits it over X rooms. So if it decides you should find 40 dust and then splits that over 10 rooms, you'd find an average of 4 dust in each of those. If it decides to split it over 5 rooms instead, you'd be nearly able to power a room everytime you find dust, but it would take longer 'till you do find it. At least that is how I understand the system.



It does mean that I for one keep a spare major module slot for a shop, when available, inc ase I find a merchant.

Deathdealer wrote:
- Add resource generation per kill (and make it Wit enhanced) to non-operator heroes.

Gork, Skroig (and Nanor? i dont remember correctly) have a skill, wich gives 0.1 food per kill.

But i think it should be seriously buffed. Maybe 0.3-0.5 food per killed small enemy, and 1 food for each big enemy (golem, orc). Or make it Wit dependen, as you said.

Lynx_gnt wrote:
Gork, Skroig (and Nanor? i dont remember correctly) have a skill, wich gives 0.1 food per kill.

But i think it should be seriously buffed. Maybe 0.3-0.5 food per killed small enemy, and 1 food for each big enemy (golem, orc). Or make it Wit dependen, as you said.

You remember correctly



Opbot has the same skill for industry (Recycling).



They could add a fun accessory or weapon that gives the same skill for science. Some sort of alien probe :P

Ah, interesting. I almost think they should give dust in almost every room just a lower amount...



I'm also really keen on the idea of having indications that certain things are on the other sides of doors (artefacts, dust pile, machines) to give hints for some things that you need early in the level to be of use and to lure people into making greedier/riskier decisions.

Deathdealer wrote:
I almost think they should give dust in almost every room just a lower amount...

This will make Max much more OP, than he currently is (even after the nerf of Philer skill).

Starting with issues, the only issues I've had so far was the tactical map opening up and being unable to close it, and heroes spamming dialogue. The first I just saved and quit, then continued to fix, the tac map worked after. The dialogue I don't think is bug, but I think the situation where they speak was begin proced over and over again.



Beyond that I generally like all the changes so far, it DOES actually feel harder then it used to for one reason or other. And getting lucky on my first run, I unlocked the two new heroes, so I got to play around with them as well, and I really like the different feel/playstyle they offer to parties. At the very least they give newer combinations to try out.

Awesome playthrought! Hopefully I can learn somethings from it for my future runs. I've got 9 hours on steam and "Easy" is still too hard to me. =/

Wenderlly wrote:
Awesome playthrought! Hopefully I can learn somethings from it for my future runs. I've got 9 hours on steam and "Easy" is still too hard to me. =/

Don't worry mate, I've got a about 50 hours into the game and I still find "Easy" to be very challenging (which is part of the appeal, really). Haven't yet beat the game in the lastest beta, but I got to level 7 last night so I'm workin' on it!

I especially like change to trader's currency and that all doors are opening when you unplug the Power Crystal while keeping all lit rooms powered up. It makes and exploration much more important than it was before and ups the difficulty level, which is good. And backpack. You can't take too much, but you can at least keep some items just in case.

The nice thing about backpack is that it allows you to have a second loadout for your crystal carrier - swap out the third eye or a slow armour for something that boosts speed. Or you can have an Energy Bar in case you need another operator stashed away.