I've finally gotten around to giving this freebie Roguelike a good shot, and been having fun with it. 

Been wanting to check it out since finding out it has a graphic tile set version, and not just ASCII.  If you liked Dredmor, there's a decent chance you'll like this one too.  The GUI makes it much less on the arcane keypresses, too.

http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/

I've been playing this baby these last couple of weeks and been having an absolute blast. This game is ten times more fun to me than Dungeons of Dredmor.

 l always have the wiki open, silly huge game.

Originally Posted By Fetrik (4 MAY 2012 10:35am)

I've been playing this baby these last couple of weeks and been having an absolute blast. This game is ten times more fun to me than Dungeons of Dredmor.

 

 l always have the wiki open, silly huge game.

+1

PE

The large amount of character customization (races, gods & divine gifts, open skill advancement, abilities, open spell learning) is great.  Future RPGs should take inspiration.

Here's a tip:

The text docs, in the Settings folder, have a ton of extra options you can uncomment and change (mostly true/false ones).  Notably the Ini and Tile Settings ones. There is a settings manual in the Docs folder to explain what they all are.

I raised the size of the tiles a bit, because they were quite small at higher resolution (from default 3 pixels per to 4).  Also shut off that annoying keypress prompt when the text window overflows, so it automatically does that now.  Oh, and monster list targeting enabled, along with a couple others.

Glad I went digging in the files a bit.

This thing is seriously kicking my ass.

I haven't survived even halfway through.  Ever.  The dungeon is now riddled with the angry ghosts of my many dead characters now and I regularly get attacked by them.

I need to learn to guesstimate my survival chances better, against various monsters and groups.  Often I'll be cruising along, kicking butt for awhile, and then run into a rather mundane looking Orc Knight or similar, in a group of monsters that I could normally turn into so much pulp.  And then it turns out that the normal-looking orc has picked up some pretty awesome magic items somewhere (off the floor!) and is waylaying me with some crazy Battle Axe of Facemelting/Lifedraining in two hits.    After diving into the wiki, what I once thought of as a pretty basic RPG/roguelike actually has a lot of stuff in it.  Superb.

I also gotta admit, all the dying in roguelikes really make me want to play more & more, to get further.  I normally have problems sticking with playing a game very long at a stretch unless it's one where you're generally expected to lose.  The same seems to go for other genres, because I tend to play the tough Scourge of War scenarios back-to-back for long periods of time, even though I lose repeatedly, and a few other favorites.

Perhaps I've found the answer to my indecisive flightyness in games:  difficult challenge.

I think i been stuck in this game for almost three weeks with few diversions.

My most successfull and still living character is a Mino fighter of Okawaru. He is currently battling his way through The vault, feels like he has almost exhausted his options due to no luck with resistance items.

Lately i've been trying to get a blasty type mage going with minimal summoning. They all die due to various reasons. One was murdered by one of my ghosts, Fishy. He was a Merman Skald, using a artifact trident and various utility spells, like blink and regeneration.

Yeah, Minotaur Fighter has been my best run thus far too.  And my casters get killed somewhere in the early game. 

Oddly, most of my deaths are to Orc Mages in those big mob groups of orcs.  Even when I've used an Orc priest, and been able to get tons of them to ally with me, they just seem to spawn bigger & bigger groups and those damn orc casters nuke the F out of me before I can kill them all .  Lotsa deaths to Orc Mages.

I've done ok with the Orc priests so far. But then again it may have something to do with that none of my casters have even entered the Orc mines yet. Found both Lair and Mines on lvl 10 for this char, but gonna peek below for a bit before attempting Lair.

That's probably my issue - entering the Orc Mines too early. 

When I see a branch entrance, I get anxious.  And I'm not always sure which ones have the limited time before you can enter, so I get jumpy.  I'm getting better now that I've studied up on details at the Crawl Wiki.

My cemetery list shows almost half of my longer-surviving characters dying to, literally, "Orc Mage".  I suppose the Orc Priests cast their nuke on me and I generally try to kill them ASAP and the Orc Mages (along with the swarm of melee Orcs) just murderize me while I'm doing so.  Wouldn't be quite so tough if there were readily available chokepoints nearby but I think some of the Orc Mine layouts have lots of wide open spaces, so be careful.

When around shooters / casters i always try to keep Repel missile up. It doesn't help against the priests Smite, but pretty much everything else i belive.

I always try to spread a few Mephitic clouds around to encourage the Orcs to hit each other or themselves. Then kill them off asap, casters are a priority and any summoners are a definitive #1.  

Oh, I certainly try to get Mephitic Cloud ASAP on my casters.  Don't always have Repel Missiles, though. 

So what is your fav caster race? I use to go for DE, they are kinda squishy but i like their aptitudes.

I dunno... so many to choose from!  High Elf is great but doesn't help survivability.  Draconian's nice for some of the natural AC and extra breath weapon & wotnot. 

I've also enjoyed starting with a Tengu caster and moving a bit towards hybrid a little earlier.  Maybe I should just start with one as a hybrid background to start with..

I just did a little run with a Naga Wiz. Picked up a spear as soon as i found it. Plan was to get certain blink and mephit and then in extension poke monsters behind my own summons. 

Did fairly well, aside from the lvl 1 ring of hunger and not focusing any skills.

The end came when i went stalking a Orc Wiz with 1/3rd health...   

Would try again.

I've tried starting a couple Nagas, in the hopes that I get to the Cheibriados shrine and declare for that "slow" god before dying.  I died first both times.

Looks like it would be a pretty mean combo though.

One of my first characters was a Naga Gladiator of Chei wielding a polearm. He did quite well, untill he got stuck between Rupert, Kirke and a giant...

I think i will remake him soon. 

Is it me, or does early game Dodge just plain suck?  My characters with higher EL & Dodge seem to get hit about the same amount as ones with just armor.

Doesn't seem to give much extra advantage, and having very little damage reduction is a large part of why my casters and stabbies die so much earlier than the heavies do.

That's what i think too. Another reason why i always put on a good leather on my casters if i find one.

Originally Posted By Fetrik (11 MAY 2012 5:14am)

That's what i think too. Another reason why i always put on a good leather on my casters if i find one.

Even then they're quite wimpy.  Supposedly the armors starting with the -2 penalty, and higher, have an extra % damage reduction so that's probably why the heavies last so much longer.

Even though I'll suffer some hit penalties in the early game, I try to put chainmail on the beefies ASAP.  That extra DR makes a huge difference.

If i find a buckler for the casters i add that too and always a shield for the heavies. Watching how my mino fighter parries or shrugs of all blows is very nice.

Maybe I should start usiing a buckler with all the casters, then.

I guess that since you won't need a big friggin' 2-hander for melee in the end-game, with a caster, then having a shield would be the smart thing to do with the squishies.

Nef, have you tried this rogue-like?

http://te4.org/tome/screenshots

Tales of Maj'Eyal 4 (TOME4) - it certainly has the content and some nice graphics to go along with it.

Originally Posted By spelk (11 MAY 2012 3:54pm)

Nef, have you tried this rogue-like?

 

http://te4.org/tome/screenshots

 

Tales of Maj'Eyal 4 (TOME4) - it certainly has the content and some nice graphics to go along with it.

Ooo sweet!  Another roguelike that doesn't look as if a cat had walked across a keyboard!

Aww, it's in beta still?  I wonder how finished it is.  I'll check it out sometime.

Originally Posted By Nefaro (12 MAY 2012 7:32am)

Aww, it's in beta still?  I wonder how finished it is.  I'll check it out sometime. 

I think it's always in beta, because it gets quite regular revisions. I've certainly played it a bit a while back and it was very functional and didn't fall over at all. So I would take the beta moniker with a pinch of salt.. it's in beta, at version 4 of it's evolution.