Well it just seems to be bit more challenging then the ordinar games. Last night i failed on floor 12 just before finaly reaching surface...

I've completed it about 3 times, 1 for every basic pod (escape, armory, sanitarium)

I beaten 2 pods so far on too easy difficulty, but if u play drill pod where is as u say 999lvl does hero lvl hit the mark at lvl15,but if so doesnt it mean that each floor of drill pod makes game difficult and difficult,And I dont think lvl cap of 15 for heroes can manage beating game of 999 floors.

I will say that the mob spawns even in the base game don't always feel responsive to player / character abilities. I don't mind as my few attempts at the 999 don't go much above the 20-30 floor range. But there will be times where the first mob of a dungeon is harder than the rest, and while it provides a sort of complex dynamic with your sense of confidence. In the back of my head I notice that because I survived a wave which seemed designed to kill my party I've kind of 'broke' that levels difficulty. But other times this uber mob won't spawn until you have to move the crystal and your left with the niggling concern that if you'd opened one less door, would that have been the deciding factor on survival. It's a little too paranoid making. Unless you find it as cathartic as I do. >.>

After putting in 133 hours with 5 successful escapes I can say it's very much possible. But luck is an extremely important factor, particularly in the later levels. Too important in my opinion. It needs to be better balanced in a lot of different ways and as soon as I feel I actually know enough about the game I plan on making a fairly massive post with my recommendations or just observations to the devs. I have arrived on late level floors and opened 18 and 22 doors once and never found a single dust cache in any of those rooms. Another floor had 33 doors and the dust found (even with pilfer) was insufficient to power 3 rooms. Other times (rarely) the third door on floor 12 will have a merchant buying things for dust and then (provided you arrived with trade goods) the floor is laughably easy. Long labyrinth like structures often lead the wrong way when the right way turned out to be five doors away in the other direction from the crystal room leading to "you went left, everyone lived, you went right, everyone died" scenarios. Overpowered waves can spawn way too early, artifacts (or "artefacts") can just pump out shitty research options you don't want, silic zoners are stupidly overpowered and if you get them to spawn together with silic bulldozers it's just an automatic "gg, good night". Some heroes NEED some items to be effective and if you never get them then congratulations, deadweight. (Sara seems to be the worst culprit, absolutely amazing if you get an aftershave and a veritable food sink without one. And if she is going to be seen then good luck if her power suit or a decent sword never spawn.) Then you have occasions where a monster mysteriously makes it through your gauntlet unharmed and does something horrible where they were never expected. Let us not speak of the times when there are only two major module slots on a floor and an artifact and a Stelle are sitting on both each of them.



Skill can overcome a lot. but it can't overcome everything. Luck is always a factor.

Finished the game on Escape Pod for the first time yesterday!



Started with Max and Hikensha. Got her to level 5 ASAP to spam Endless Expert (+4 Science per turn), then Max to level 5 for Pilfer. Then found Ken and Gork. Both are monsters, specially on later levels.



Turretwise, I used a lot of Tesla modules. Very effective for the price. Nice damage and fast cooldown. Also got KIP cannons IV at later levels, they did a nice job as well.



The combo Neurostun + Tear Gas + Pepper Spray is amazing to disrupt some mobs. Always had some rooms with this combination.



Finished the game with level 5 Max (he's quite good using Sonic Gun and aftershave), level 11 Hikensha, level 12 Gork and level 12 Ken.

Got through another Escape Pod win on Easy level!



Heroes: Hinkensha, Nanor, then found Opbot and Skroig.



Levelled up ASAP Nanor to 13 for Cooking, Skroig to 15 for Red Plume 6 seconds (amazing!), opbot to 6 (nothing too useful above), Hikensha to 10 for lev 2 Nyctophilia



Built up Science resource to 700 so I could spam cooking and red plume.



Red plume is amazing for destroying large wave of monsters.



Needed the Shop, and 1 generator which kept getting destroyed on level 12

I beat the game within the first few weeks of the game's initial release, but of course that was also when there were only 5 levels on the game.

I've Just got my copy today spend some a couple hours but can't complete first level *doh



I'm not quite familiar with Rogue dungeon crawling before but yet i find this game quite challenging

I did it again, getting a good team bond with Max, Nanor, then Hikensha. then I found Opbot but he died again on 10th floor, I was barely able to recruit Golgy on the 12th floor because some dam MOBs chewed my dust down to 18, was pretty desperate there!



I made a really bad mistake on level 12 that almost blew it, a few harmless diamond shaped MOBs got away from me and attacked my crystal for almost 30 points damage, my idyllic production facility I had set up was suddenly in the dark, kaput, I had only 14 dust, 14 food, 300 science, 10 or so industry, desperately needed dust, barely surviving the growing dark dungeon, and then I found a merchant, I only had a 4 powered rooms, and only one module room to build a shop but it was a Food, I waited until after opening a door and the swarms started, so I could still get one last food resource points, then I bulldozed that module to make room for the shop, but I wanted to push it just a bit tighter and waited a few micro seconds before building the shop--there was a bit of time before any mobs would threaten the merchant, before I built the shop and moved him, but I got sucked into the battle and forgot. . . . and next time I looked, the merchant was chewed to bits !!! This was an exciting victory!

Yay I finally did it. It's possible.



I finally completed the basic Escape Pod on Easy after 34 attempts!! Yes it's possible (After 30 tries on Easy I tried Too Easy and got it first time.)

Overall it seemed I got lucky with dungeon layouts, weapons, and monsters encountered. Luck is definitely part of it. Also, I barely made any mistakes, 1 "major" blunder I think and only a few serious mistakes, otherwise was a near perfect game, except I lost Opbot stupidly. . .

I got lucky with good dungeon recruits (Opbot and Rakya) although sadly I lost Opbot on level 11, sorry buddy. . .



Basic strategies I use:

-Trying for "perfect game" with no mistakes, I don't think you can really win if you make a few critical mistakes early on. No wasted turns or gear purchases, etc.

-Pausing

- I don't buy any of the cheap armor (ie. prison shirts, anything with defense less than 12)

-I almost always played with Max and Nanor (for cooking with gas) and used Food modules to level up quickly. I was very calculating when leveling up based on anticipated need and always keeping a food reserve; focusing on Nanor getting extendors, cooking with gas, and Max getting Operate. I used the Scope item to get 3 operators by equiping Nanor. This freed up Max to open doors.

-Nanor is handy for the Rhino and Chimera keepers because he does damage to all monsters on the floor; he can usually kill a rhino remotely using Cook with Gas, maybe with one reset.

-I Worked desperately hard to stockpile Industry (so I'm always able to build modules ASAP), + Science for Skill Resets, and Food for leveling up fast. By level 7 or 8 I had about 300 each, By level 11 and 12 I was at about 600 of each, I finished the successful game with 1000 science on hand! so I could spam active skills as needed.

-Always researched FIDS modules asap; fave turrets are: upgraded prod, smoking gun, viral infector, and neural stun. I used HUD and LAN, and SHOP on final 3 levels.

-I always played the fine edge of a dangerous / minimal turrets game, mixed with safe and never-taking-chances especially with back door weaknesses, or not building enough turrets once heroes are spread out, or if I can "sense" the next big wave is coming. I often build turrets during battle

-Much juggling of gear between characters between and during turns. I kept a few different gear items for different situations, i.e. repair skill, hero speed buffs, shared armor, or even taking off armor to run somewhere fast, then put back on armor, during a battle, etc.

-Favourite k ll setup generally is always tried to get an operator working on a module, with 1,2, or 3 dark rooms adjoining each module for farming mobs; or kept module farms relatively safe "behind the lines".

-Used power-light switching lots during battles and pre-deploying dark rooms with turrets: during battle I turn off power to FIDS rooms after getting the resource points, to then light up rooms that already have turrets built in them

Too easy was a fun way to learn strategies for the game, granted, many of them don't hold over well into the next difficulty mode especially later when dust gets sparse. I died on level 12 several times before finally pulling a win out with 2 characters left. Once you figure out exactly how to be utilizing your team, especially who to take and when to level or replace them, the game becomes very winnable unless the RNG decides to send you to bed.

I have finished a base run once. Now that I know the 999 limit I will try to beat it with cheats just to know what to expect, and then I'll try again without cheats(probably won't even get close).

Without cheats it's incredibly difficult once you get past floor 30ish, and everything beyond 60 is pure luck and measuring the possibility of death against an ever dwindling stockpile of resources.



Stock up on as much food and science as you possibly can in the earlier levels, (even if 5000 sci sounds like a lot, it will go fast on later levels and no matter how much you have, it won't be enough to last to floor 999 without strict rationing) and once you get past floor 25ish just focus on finding the exit as quickly as you can rather than opening every door in the dungeon.



Aftershave, if you can get one for every hero and have a couple designated as runners to pop the fat monsters that like to spawn in rooms, once you get beyond floor 20ish you'll get 2-4+ spawns per wave.



Also the pause key is your best friend, remember to use it to better time healing and abilities and queue up module builds in empty rooms if it looks like your primary/secondary /tertiary defense lines are about to collapse/ be over run.

I have finished a base run once. Now that I know the 999 limit I will try to beat it with cheats just to know what to expect, and then I'll try again without cheats(probably won't even get close).

Has anyone actually completed this game? Honestly, really? Is it actually possible?





I had 4800 science and amazingly, the game scaled the difficulty, it seemed to calculate right down to the final seconds before a perfect chess-match endgame, I needed to reset the cooldowns, and was down to 20 science, then 14, then 8 then no science, no more resets, a final run through a door and hopscotch through two chimera keepers, and just as I get the diamond to the 12th floor exit, with the green exit button flashing once, monsters swarming, I'm DEAD! happened so fast, nothing I could do. . . would have been my first escape.



Using Max, Nanor, Mizi, and Golgy.

Seems possible, I'm stuck around level 10 on easy. As for too easy, thats exactly what it was.

Guess I've fallen on some bad luck lately, or poor strategy.

I've found actually winning is not that hard once you get the hang of the game. It would be nice if the other pods had additional settings to increase difficulty/length.



IMO roguelike games (like this one) Should be more about challenging yourself for high score, rather than worrying about finishing. Gives more replayvalue. . ect.



Would be nice if we had some sort of leaderboards.

Most levels are winnable. Every so often you'll get really bad luck and have a virtually untenable setup after level 9 or so when monsters get pretty specialized. Other than that, you learn to handle most eventualities.



Learning how to build up dust early in a level, inventory management between floors (in case you find a dust merchant on the next one), what character balance to have, how to use what power you have, and which fires have to be fought first/second/third/etc when things get hairy... That seems to become the nature of the complex strategy. Just realize sometimes you'll get screwed. You'll have an electromagnetic pulse or get a hallway out from the crystal that can't be defended adequately, or a level that never gives you more than 50 or so dust. When that happens, eh. You get the free opportunity to practice patience, as a "feature".

The biggest problems new players face is exiting the second they find the exit instead of opening all doors and not operating resources and allocating their players accordingly

What do you call "completed" ? I first thought you was talking about 100 % completion, the characters/biographies/album/pods and everything.



But if you are talking about a run, with the easiest mode, I completed it at my 5th try, and I'm not really good at tower-defenses either rogue-likes. On the second difficulty mode, it's an other story but still really possible. I mean I didn't do it yet with the second difficulty, because I didn't try it many times, but the few times I tried it didn't seem impossible.



And you have a part of luck in the game, of course.