Hi all, I just picked up Dungeon of the Endless a week ago and have put about 33 hours in it so far. You could say I'm enjoying the experience. Beat the game on Too Easy after a few tries, beating it on Easy took a bit longer. Haven't tried out the other spaceships yet, still playing regular to unlock Ken (he dies in every game I get him .png" alt="smiley: " title="" />). Anyways, I see how this game is still fairly new and being worked on by the developers, so I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents as an avid rogue-like, strategy game player, and modder for decades.



Deena: a decent runner with low damage but fairly tanky with just base stats. Her problem is that her skills are just boring, and I normally like the healer type characters in games. Paramedic, despite being floor-wide, is just weak. Compared to other floor-wide effects, like Cooking With Gas or Winter Just Came, it's barely noticeable. It should either just receive a numerical buff (it could be doubled in effect and still not be too strong) or have some other effect tacked on. Her other unique skill, Placebo, is also not very discernible, especially with regen mods. Balance-wise I think Deena is fine, it's just that she's also very boring. A healer should have more than just passive heal over times in their kit. Think of the Medic from TF2 who can over-heal and create temporary invulnerability for more interesting abilities.



Chef: Cooking with Gas is incredibly powerful and so defining that everything else Chef does pales in comparison. He kind of has the opposite problem of Deena - a very interesting unique skill but an otherwise forgettable character. I don't even know what to do with him, composition-wise. He's not fast enough to scout, he can't operate, he has no tanking skills, and his main form of damage has nothing to do with anything else he does. I just end up sticking him next to a tank in a choke point to add a bit of extra damage since he can't really do anything else. My suggestion is to tone down Cooking with Gas a bit and make the rest of him more interesting. His other unique skill, Extenders, is incredibly boring and relatively minor, so buffing that might be the way to go. Doubling the effect of extenders but only making it room-wide would solidify him as a good tank supporter in choke points.



Seblaster: seems a bit weak, compared to Claymore and considering it damages the heroes as well. The area of effect increase they have over Claymore seems incredibly niche, since it requires a big room with a lot of minor mod slots and a lot of waves coming through to work effectively. I've managed to pull that off once, and it was pretty cool, but it's honestly not worth the science for a mod I'd only use a couple times per game. Increase the base damage but make it do full damage to heroes, that would make it interesting.



Mizi and Skroig - having only two item slots makes them a lot less flexible compared to other characters, and item slots are the best way to diversify characters. Even if they're balanced without having the third slot, it just makes them less interesting because of it.



Pepper Spray: Is it just me, or is the way this scales with tiers backwards? Having the duration of the effect last longer doesn't really matter when everything dies so fast anyways. I'd rather it keep the same duration when upgraded but have its cool down lowered. I haven't used it very much so I don't have much experience with it, but it's never seem to really do much when I do use it.



Holohero: This thing dies way too fast to really be used as a distraction. It's health is low but I'm willing it bet it's the low defense that makes this thing die so fast. Maybe I'm just missing the point of these?



Stele: I get the point of these things, it's to make a temporary change on how you play while they're up to add variety. The problem is that most of the effects are marginal while they're up and thus mostly unnoticeable, and they take up a major mod slot until they break. You can't make them destroyable since some of the effects are negative, but even the positive ones are usually better off an empty slot for a major mod. My recommendation - make them more impactful and interesting. Make them less common but have larger and longer lasting effects, with more positive-negative balance. There could be a lot more effects as well, these are a great source of interesting game play I feel that haven't really been tapped into.



Aftershave: it's the only source of Skulker, which is so incredibly strong on high DPS heroes it can make or break a hero if you can get it. Either provide the effect somewhere else for build diversity, or weaken it. The only comparable skill is Crawler, which is both limited in duration and a unique skill for Golgy. On low damage scouts it feels fairly balanced, but on a hero like Ken who is so polarized in his offensive power, it feels both overpowered and a must-have to make squishy DPS heroes effective.

Good morning Reat, and welcome to the forum !

Hi Reat,



Thank you! The balance of the game is still being tweaked update after update and this kind of feedback is really helpful

Thanks Reat for having taken the time to develop your remarks and suggestions. It will help.



Yes you are missing a point of the holoheroes, you can build many of them to make your rooms look like a nightclub

I'm glad some devs looked at this post, I really like this game and hope it continues to be improved!



Anyways, I decided to try to see just how to make Holohero and Pepper Spray work, so I figured a team of squishy high damage heroes like Ken would synergize with the distraction these mods made. Anyways, here's my experiences so far:



Pepper Spray: okay so I was a bit wrong on one point, in that the cool down does lower with higher tiers, but just not by that much. I tried a few tactics with this mod. First, I filled a room with them at a choke point and had a Ken defend it, hoping the Pepper Sprays would psuedo-tank the damage for him. What ended up happening is the very first monster that entered the room took the debuff of ALL the Pepper Spray mods, meaning one monster was charmed while the rest of the wave barreled at Ken. After the cooldown for Pepper Spray reset they all at least started targeting different monsters, and were somewhat effective. I seemed that they would typically target the same targets that Ken did, meaning the charming effect didn't last very long and was only marginally useful. All in all, it was not an effective strategy. Next up I decided to place a couple in a room before the actual chokepoint, and let Ken mop up any monsters that made it past. This was slightly more effective, but the problem was that since only one monster in the wave was charmed first, it took a few more seconds before Pepper Spray charmed again, and by they the wave was halfway through the room. When they charmed the second time, about half the wave was hit, but the other half was not and continued to walk to the choke point. By the time the wave hit Ken some of them were still charmed and most had taken some damage from infighting, but it didn't seem to be much more effective than just filling the previous room with Prisoner Prods, which would be fine if Pepper Spray had the same industry cost of Prisoner Prods, but they're much more expensive.

Next up I found a long room and filled it with Pepper Spray and Neurostuns and waited to see what happened. This one was fairly amusing. The monster wave would come in, half would be charmed, but the long walk and the neurostun meant that all of the monsters in the first wave were charmed before they left the room, which made them turn around and fighting the next wave of monsters coming in. Like I said, it was pretty funny watching the room becomes a giant monster brawl. But then two things happened. First, the number of monsters entering the room increased to the point that the Pepper Spray couldn't keep them all charmed and they all started to walk out of the room, with the charmed guys following the uncharmed. This meant that when the monsters made it to the actual chokepoint, instead of several waves entering in succession, it was like five waves entering all at once. Sure, the infighting had weakened or killed some, but the mechanics of waves meant it actually made it harder than if the room just had a couple of neurostuns in it with Prisoner Prods. The second problem was that some of the monsters had area of effect damage, so when they attacked their fellow monsters they did damage to the mods in the room, even though they were charmed. Considering how expensive these mods are and how they have anti-synergy with having a hero in the room with them, having them be destroyed every turn didn't really justify their use.

Okay, so the conclusion I have about Pepper Spray is that it's not a horrible mod, but it needs some tweaking to really be useful. I think that the best idea is to rewrite hero/turret targeting so they focus non-charmed monsters over charmed ones. This is really my biggest complaint, having damage in the charm rooms just meant that the charmed monsters where also focused by damage as well, so the charm effect was virtually worthless. I think that having all of the Pepper Spray target the same first monster that enters the room cripples their usage except in large rooms with neurostuns. This could be mitigated by just having the cool down be lowered a lot more per tier but not have the duration last as long. Another option is keep the cool down just as long or even longer, but have the charm work in a small area of effect, so that at least if it hits only the first monster that enters the room it will tag the ones that came with it as well. Finally, maybe not have the charmed monsters deal area of effect damage to the mods? They don't do that AoE damage to thier monster friends when they're not charmed, if I'm not mistaken.



Holohero: okay, so I tried to make these work. My first attempt was to fill a chokepoint with them and Ken to have them tank while he kills, and even if they don't last long they'll hopefully last long enough for him to survive the waves. So, a wave enters and the first monster immediately targets the closest Holohero. Great! Then Ken walked up to attack him, and the rest of the wave targeted him... Then the next wave came in, and they all targeted him. The only ones who didn't were the crystal monsters who ignored the holoheros as well. Okay, that didn't work. Next, I filled a room before the chokepoint with holoheros to see how they work as a distraction. Well, a wave came in, and all the monsters piled on each holohero in sync with each other. The result was each holohero lasting about a single attack from the entire wave, slowing them down by about a half second per holohero. Yea, a single neurostun would have been more effective.

My conclusion is that the holohero is just garbage. Yea, they look cool (and should come in randomized colors to really make a disco), but they are really really useless. In a room by themselves they slow down monsters for much less time than neurostun since they die in one hit from a wave, and with a hero in the room they just sit there useless since waves target the hero if he's closer - which he will be once he starts attacking. I think this mod needs a serious buff. Increase the health so they can actually distract a wave for a few seconds, and maybe give them Me First! so that monsters target them before heroes, making them useful with a hero in the room.



Okay I'm done blabbing on about this now lol, and thanks to the devs for giving me such a fun game to play

My guess, you put out the light in the room to deactivate the holo when monster attack it, and reactivate it later to kite monsters, that way it doesnt die? not used it yet myself tho.