Expected more people arguing about dark souls in here. There’s usually a contingent of people going at it over “I want to win on the first or maybe second try” vs “the game is about failing repeatedly until you persevere”
They’ve really shortened the game. Lair used to be 8 floors. Orc was 5. I think they shortened hell, too.
The qol stuff has generally been pretty solid.
The only change I actively dislike is the opportunity attacks you suffer when moving. I added a “blink the screen yellow when it happens” to my config to alert me, but I just think the mechanic isn’t fun.
Ok, I do kind of miss the yellow wands (heal, haste). And being able to learn Controlled Blink as a spell. That stuff was nice.
Congrats. I play a lot of crawl, and have pretty regularly since v0.16 or so. There’s been a lot of changes (there used to be food! Spells made you hungry!) but the core of it remains very good.
At one point I had a win with every species, but they added new ones and removed some since then.
Minotaur Berserker was my first win. Can’t go wrong with screaming and headbutting, I say.
Gargoyle Earth Elementalist was also fun. If you get Shatter online it can delete a lot of stuff outright. You just need another solution for flying stuff and jellies.
I think it’s an Ice spell now, but the one that takes a couple turns and then just kills the nearest creature was amazing. Did the extended endgame with that. Blew up so many pandemonium lords.
I don’t usually do the extended anymore. Hell is, appropriately, unpleasant. Pandemonium isn’t as bad, but there’s always the risk of popping in next to a very bad crowd.
Also the tomb can get fucked.
The ascent with the orb is usually pretty safe, with the occasional heart stopper. I’ve lost at least two dudes on the way up. One gargoyle ate a high damage spell from one of those hell sentinels. Should have blinked or fogged or something. One felid ate a pan lord’s chain lighting that was more than his max health.
I think part of it is a lot of stuff goes on deep discount repeatedly. Like Overcooked is $2. That’s a steal. But I already have it. If this was my first steam sale, I’d be super excited about that.
There’s a single mod that purports to convert the game to pathfinder 2e. I’m not sure if the balance isn’t to my taste or if I was doing something wrong, but my characters all had very low hit chances on their first attack. Missing isn’t fun for me
I tried a Pathfinder mod, but it wasn’t quite doing it for me. I’m not sure what would do it for me exactly. I’m being a stereotypical customer where I don’t know what I want, but I can tell you what I don’t like, heh.
I don’t think it was a slog, but I do find DND 5e an unsatisfying system. You spend a long time waiting to get to the cool parts of your character, and unlimited resting breaks dnd’s already dubious balance.
Played for a while, a few times, but there’s not much challenge so I don’t stick around that long. Got strong enough to kill all the sentinels easily. Got a freighter and billions of credits. Lots of resources.
I can imagine deeper stuff they could do, and maybe they will one day.