Rogue-likes! (not a discussion of the correct use of the term)

[Kaptin Keen]

Does Slay the Spire count as a roguelike? I started playing a couple days ago, and I've become obsessed with it. I love the combination of deckbuilding card game and progression mechanics it offers. Anyone else?

This was on my mind for the OP, but I also didn't know if it counts as a roguelike. But unlike you, I haven't bought it yet. But I will. I just have enormous inertia towards early access games.

[Narkis]

This was on my mind for the OP, but I also didn't know if it counts as a roguelike. But unlike you, I haven't bought it yet. But I will. I just have enormous inertia towards early access games.

So do I. But it got a full release last week, and so it's fair game now.

[Knaight]

Does Slay the Spire count as a roguelike? I started playing a couple days ago, and I've become obsessed with it. I love the combination of deckbuilding card game and progression mechanics it offers. Anyone else?

I'd count it, I adore it, and I got it a fair while ago (though it's in "early access" the way Minecraft was in "beta" for years, it's been at what could be a finished state for a good long time). Deckbuilders are one of my favorite board game genres, and this is close enough to scratch that itch while also being an excellent roguelike.

[Anteros]

I like StS a lot. I wish there was a bit more diversity with the cards and build types, but I certainly feel like I got my money's worth out of that game.

[Kaptin Keen]

So do I. But it got a full release last week, and so it's fair game now.

Oh really?? Wow. Ok, I'll go buy it as soon as I get home =)

I'd count it, I adore it, and I got it a fair while ago (though it's in "early access" the way Minecraft was in "beta" for years, it's been at what could be a finished state for a good long time). Deckbuilders are one of my favorite board game genres, and this is close enough to scratch that itch while also being an excellent roguelike.

I've kept waiting for them to throw in some animations. Because it always looked to me like they would. You know, Darkest Dungeon style. But far as I know, they never did.

[Knaight]

I've kept waiting for them to throw in some animations. Because it always looked to me like they would. You know, Darkest Dungeon style. But far as I know, they never did.

It's full of animations. Not so much character moving ones, but honestly those would probably just cause clutter.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I've found that -Tele is pretty much a death trap no matter how good the rest of the item is. It will kill you, it's just a matter of when. Of course you can always unequip the item and teleport, but generally when you need to teleport out you don't have the turns to spare.

Quite true, but I was like "Okay, this is my ONLY MR item, and MR helps resist banishment and stuff, right?"... got tempted by the shiny, got punished for it.

Funny part: I had FIVE blinking scrolls in inventory at the time, just out of sheer habit.

I tend to go with Okuwaru for my melee monsters. Trog is slightly better, but I prefer the diversity of Okuwaru's gifts, and you can abandon him late game for TSO or Mak much more safely than Trog.

Okuwaru is only really decent for gear if you get unlucky in your drops. Heroism is meh, and while the haste is nice, it's not really spammable. Granted, the wrath for switching out is tolerable, but it's not really worth going through for the gear you're likely to get from him.

Trog... well, I don't much care for berzerking. Yes, I know, it's really powerful, but I've always been cautious about anything which can leave me exhausted in a bad place. And since that's kind of the main draw of Trog... not as attractive to me. It could probably work for someone more skilled at manipulating the game mechanics than I am. The regen is not really enough to be worth popping on the fly, although the MR would've been pretty darn nice. And his wrath is way harsher than Oku's is for abandoning after I gear up, assuming I get any gear worth keeping.

TSO... I mean, you *could*, and I can definitely see the advantage, especially if you could bless up a Holy Scourge or the trident thing, but there's a lot of things that piss TSO off. Especially as I had already switched to axes, I didn't want to risk a cleave accidentally hitting something TSO considered 'neutral' and pissing him off. I mean, no denying he's quite a powerful deity who does quite a bit for you (rN+++ for free passively? Yes please!), but he's also one of the pickiest who gets offended at a lot of common tactics (ambush, poison...). He also gives sustain based on slaying evil foes, of which there are many, but not as much sustain as Mek gives.

Mek, on the other hand, is a constant sustain. Kill something, heal up. It also gives spotty ranged attack to help out if you can't reach something. I've never really trusted the summons, because I never really invest enough into Invocations to be really sure if I could trust something, but occasionally whatever I'm dealing with is worse than what I'd summon, so a disposable minion is an excellent distraction while I back around a corner.

In other words, I'm n00b enough that I didn't want to risk TSO's downsides, so I went for quick, cheap, easy, dependable Mek. Kill a mook, get a heal. I'm a simple bloodthirsty monster with simple pleasures.

[Maryring]

Hrm. Seems like the latest build of Stone Soup has left mutations only something that slime worshippers will get to really play around with and not come out of it a terrible mess. Maybe I'll finally get around to playing a game with Zin now. The new Gnoll looks interesting too. A complete jack of all trades. Which'll probably leave em horribly weak but... eh. I did beat Stone Soup once with a Stabber Spriggan. Well, I say stabber, but pretty much everything in the lategame is immune to stabbing, so I had to pick up some conjuration magic too. Was fun. Tough but fun.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Hrm. Seems like the latest build of Stone Soup has left mutations only something that slime worshippers will get to really play around with and not come out of it a terrible mess. Maybe I'll finally get around to playing a game with Zin now. The new Gnoll looks interesting too. A complete jack of all trades. Which'll probably leave em horribly weak but... eh. I did beat Stone Soup once with a Stabber Spriggan. Well, I say stabber, but pretty much everything in the lategame is immune to stabbing, so I had to pick up some conjuration magic too. Was fun. Tough but fun.

There are mutation potions which lets you play Mutation Roulette. Odds are in your favor of getting generally beneficial ones, although the definition of 'beneficial' may vary. Getting Horns 2 might seen like a good deal, but it removes your ability to wear a helmet.

Mutation potions will also remove mutations before adding more, so you might end up ahead of the game, or very very behind.

[Maryring]

At least it keeps mutations relatively under control. Unless your luck is terrible. Which mine is.

I swear. The moment my glow tips over into yellow, I will have a negative mutation surge.

[Anteros]

Quite true, but I was like "Okay, this is my ONLY MR item, and MR helps resist banishment and stuff, right?"... got tempted by the shiny, got punished for it.

Funny part: I had FIVE blinking scrolls in inventory at the time, just out of sheer habit.



Okuwaru is only really decent for gear if you get unlucky in your drops. Heroism is meh, and while the haste is nice, it's not really spammable. Granted, the wrath for switching out is tolerable, but it's not really worth going through for the gear you're likely to get from him.

Trog... well, I don't much care for berzerking. Yes, I know, it's really powerful, but I've always been cautious about anything which can leave me exhausted in a bad place. And since that's kind of the main draw of Trog... not as attractive to me. It could probably work for someone more skilled at manipulating the game mechanics than I am. The regen is not really enough to be worth popping on the fly, although the MR would've been pretty darn nice. And his wrath is way harsher than Oku's is for abandoning after I gear up, assuming I get any gear worth keeping.

TSO... I mean, you *could*, and I can definitely see the advantage, especially if you could bless up a Holy Scourge or the trident thing, but there's a lot of things that piss TSO off. Especially as I had already switched to axes, I didn't want to risk a cleave accidentally hitting something TSO considered 'neutral' and pissing him off. I mean, no denying he's quite a powerful deity who does quite a bit for you (rN+++ for free passively? Yes please!), but he's also one of the pickiest who gets offended at a lot of common tactics (ambush, poison...). He also gives sustain based on slaying evil foes, of which there are many, but not as much sustain as Mek gives.

Mek, on the other hand, is a constant sustain. Kill something, heal up. It also gives spotty ranged attack to help out if you can't reach something. I've never really trusted the summons, because I never really invest enough into Invocations to be really sure if I could trust something, but occasionally whatever I'm dealing with is worse than what I'd summon, so a disposable minion is an excellent distraction while I back around a corner.

In other words, I'm n00b enough that I didn't want to risk TSO's downsides, so I went for quick, cheap, easy, dependable Mek. Kill a mook, get a heal. I'm a simple bloodthirsty monster with simple pleasures.

TSO is more of an extended end-game god, which is why I go Okuwaru to guarantee my early game and gear up, then transition to TSO when I hit the crypts to quickly max out piety. TSO is probably the best overall god in the extended game. The other good thing about the good gods is that you can freely switch between them and even carry piety over which can be really useful for to switching to Zin if you get a lot of bad mutations. Get them cleared up, and switch back to TSO when you're done.

Mek is a solid choice all game long though. You can't really go wrong with them and it's a lot less micro-managing.

Trog is really only good for brothers in arms. Summons are just so strong, and getting them for free with Trog and TSO is invaluable. Of course Mek gives summons too, but those are as likely to get you killed as to help.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

TSO is more of an extended end-game god, which is why I go Okuwaru to guarantee my early game and gear up, then transition to TSO when I hit the crypts to quickly max out piety. TSO is probably the best overall god in the extended game. The other good thing about the good gods is that you can freely switch between them and even carry piety over which can be really useful for to switching to Zin if you get a lot of bad mutations. Get them cleared up, and switch back to TSO when you're done.

Mek is a solid choice all game long though. You can't really go wrong with them and it's a lot less micro-managing.

Trog is really only good for brothers in arms. Summons are just so strong, and getting them for free with Trog and TSO is invaluable. Of course Mek gives summons too, but those are as likely to get you killed as to help.

If you get your Invocations skill up over 10, the summons from Mek are actually pretty reliable.

But yea, TSO is pretty powerful when trying for a twelve rune run. I'm still trying to complete a three rune run, though, so that sort of extended end game isn't on my to-do list just yet.

[Kaptin Keen]

Oh hey - I was browsing through my Steam library just now, and I spotted an excellent (by my amateur reckoning) roguelike that hasn't been mentioned: Sword of the Stars: The Pit! It's frankly a wonderful little game, and everyone should waste at least a few hours of their life on it. For the absurd price of 9 European Monies, you're really spending your wealth wrong if you don't buy it.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Oh hey - I was browsing through my Steam library just now, and I spotted an excellent (by my amateur reckoning) roguelike that hasn't been mentioned: Sword of the Stars: The Pit! It's frankly a wonderful little game, and everyone should waste at least a few hours of their life on it. For the absurd price of 9 European Monies, you're really spending your wealth wrong if you don't buy it.

Always liked doing marine runs.

"Who's a smart little monkey..."

[Kaptin Keen]

Always liked doing marine runs.

"Who's a smart little monkey..."

Ahh, but there's a new class I never played. I suppose I'll have to try.

Never completed SotS:TP. To my eternal shame, because it seems it's .... not that hard. But I'll re-download, and give the psy operative a try. I'll undoutedly fail miserably, I mostly do =)

Edit: Sweet merciful heavens - there's like a ton of new stuff I've never seen. WTF, why didn't anyone ever tell me? oO

[Anteros]

If you get your Invocations skill up over 10, the summons from Mek are actually pretty reliable.

But yea, TSO is pretty powerful when trying for a twelve rune run. I'm still trying to complete a three rune run, though, so that sort of extended end game isn't on my to-do list just yet.

Where do you usually get hung up? Maybe I can offer a bit of advice.


On a semi-related note: I'm trying to get a gargoyle fighter off the ground for the torment resistance in the end-game. In theory it should be one of the easiest races to play, but for whatever reason I'm having trouble getting one past the mid-game. Which is weird because I can pretty consistently play most of the "harder" races to at least a 3 rune win. I'm sure a bit of it is bad luck, but at least part of it has to be on me.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Where do you usually get hung up? Maybe I can offer a bit of advice.

Sometimes, it's just plain ol' RNG. I mean, weapon synergies generally mean you can pivot somewhat if you find a really good weapon of a similar type, finding an awesome axe when you've been training with maces or something, but sometimes you just plain don't get good gear. I had one run which went down Swamp, Ooze, and Orc... and died because I couldn't find a single piece of non-cursed jewelry anywhere, and just didn't have the resistances. Which happens in Roguelikes. It's part of the challenge. Couple of times I ran into some named thing with a poison weapon up on level... 3 or 4ish? Before the first branch, at least.

Other times, I just get too greedy. I start feeling like I've got a good run going, and I start taking chances I shouldn't. I get in a rush to finish a branch, or try for a pyramid or one of the timed branches before I'm truly ready for it. Once I accidentally ended up in a Crypt without realizing that was what I had done. Without any rNeg. Needless to say, that run died shortly thereafter.

On a semi-related note: I'm trying to get a gargoyle fighter off the ground for the torment resistance in the end-game. In theory it should be one of the easiest races to play, but for whatever reason I'm having trouble getting one past the mid-game. Which is weird because I can pretty consistently play most of the "harder" races to at least a 3 rune win. I'm sure a bit of it is bad luck, but at least part of it has to be on me.

See, I thought the same thing. Then I realized what the problem was... their HP totals suck. I mean, sure, you've got hella armor, immunity to poison, all the things that should pretty well guarantee you to get down that deep, right? But your HP totals are bunk, and the moment you run into a cleric or shaman who starts hitting you with Smites, your run abruptly ends.

Basically, anything with smite targeting that the Gargoyle isn't immune to is going to absolutely rip it a new one. In particular, anything that casts Airstrike, LRD, or Shatter is going to pretty much one-shot you.

[Silfir]

died because I couldn't find a single piece of non-cursed jewelry anywhere, and just didn't have the resistances. Which happens in Roguelikes.

(psst...)

(Doesn't happen in ADOM.)

(Don't tell anyone!)

[Knaight]

(psst...)

(Doesn't happen in ADOM.)

(Don't tell anyone!)

There's some roughly analogous things, and if we look specifically at resistances there are a lot of games where that either doesn't happen or happens in extremely preventable ways (for instance there's an area in ToME where going in without lightning resistance is a very risky move, but it's an entirely optional area and there are other ways to mitigate the risks).

[Maryring]

Instead in ADOM you have things like surprise corruption traps that give you poison hands long before you find any scrolls of corruption removal, or door traps that burn up your archer's missile launcher, or getting a cat as an opponent in the arena. To suggest that bad luck can't make a run painful is just disingenuous.

Anyhow. Finished the Ice Queen's Domain as a Drakeling. Not too tempted to try that again though. At least not without Alchemy so I can shoot myself with fireballs. Only getting 1 move while everyone else moves 5 is painful. Horray for invisibility.

[Silfir]

Instead in ADOM you have things like surprise corruption traps that give you poison hands long before you find any scrolls of corruption removal, or door traps that burn up your archer's missile launcher, or getting a cat as an opponent in the arena. To suggest that bad luck can't make a run painful is just disingenuous.

Can, but almost never does. None of the examples you bring up strike me as either common or particularly egregious. You have trigger so many corruption traps to get even one corruption, and even if you do, poison hands isn't particularly crippling - if anything, it's a net positive, even if you haven't managed to find thick gauntlets yet. What can make runs painful is a lack of foresight, knowledge or adaptability - if you don't know that you should be picking up and holding on to every pair of thick gauntlets you can find, or where you can get some corruption removal, you can get blindsided, but that's not bad luck.

Same goes for spare missile weapons; if you're relying on keeping the same perfectly mundane wooden long bow of accuracy you found in the mid game around forever and didn't bring any backup, you kind of deserve what's coming to you - it's not like archers don't do plenty of damage with a basic short bow. Arena is the same story; you as the player decide to fight there, and you can delay it until you have a plan for how to deal with cats. (For that matter, the ring of the master cat is a luxury, not a necessity.)



Luck becomes a factor when you play a mist elf - you'll have to dodge stone block traps for a while until you scrounge up enough hit points.

[Maryring]

You're really going to be that disingenous? "Poison hands is a net positive."

There's a ton of corrupting effects that can happen. Pools, corrupting monsters, background corruption. And there's only one guaranteed source of scrolls of corruption removal. The single scroll in the mountain village. Otherwise the only guaranteed sources of corruption removal are potions. Which you can't use. I've gone through the whole game without finding any thick gauntlets before, so don't act like it's a sure thing.

And I just can't get over how you're trying to argue that poison hands is a "net positive". A potential minor boost in damage is nothing in return for being unable to use potions at all. Poison is nice, but I like the option of using blinding or confusion. And of course, you can't be using herbs either because they'll all be cursed, which means spenseweed won't be able to save your life.

Yes, there are work-arounds. Just like there are work-arounds in DCSS to not finding the resistances you need. But you're acting as if poisoned hand has negligible impact on your ability to survive situations. Which is just untrue.

[Silfir]

You're really going to be that disingenous? "Poison hands is a net positive."

There's a ton of corrupting effects that can happen. Pools, corrupting monsters, background corruption. And there's only one guaranteed source of scrolls of corruption removal. The single scroll in the mountain village. Otherwise the only guaranteed sources of corruption removal are potions. Which you can't use. I've gone through the whole game without finding any thick gauntlets before, so don't act like it's a sure thing.

And I just can't get over how you're trying to argue that poison hands is a "net positive". A potential minor boost in damage is nothing in return for being unable to use potions at all. Poison is nice, but I like the option of using blinding or confusion. And of course, you can't be using herbs either because they'll all be cursed, which means spenseweed won't be able to save your life.

Yes, there are work-arounds. Just like there are work-arounds in DCSS to not finding the resistances you need. But you're acting as if poisoned hand has negligible impact on your ability to survive situations. Which is just untrue.

Eh. You probably want to emergency heal with prayers in the first place, not spenseweed. Potions of blindness and confusion can be quite helpful, but so can poison - whether it's melee or potions of poison to coat your missiles in. If you want to use corruption as an example of the game randomly screwing you, you've got a better case with stiff muscles. Poison hands is an annoyance, not deadly. (Granted, it can be a big annoyance. And you probably need holy water a little too much in the long run for it to be net positive without thick gauntlets.)

In the current version there's a bug that causes writhing masses of primal chaos to be twice as fast as intended - that's the game randomly killing you as a result of corruption traps, arguably, though highly telegraphed by the abundance of "you sense a soul in agony" messages that precedes it. Can't fault anyone for waiting until that's fixed by patch.



Anyway, what's with the incredulous reaction towards dissent? Is that how you usally approach discussions?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Having never played ADOM, I have nothing to add to that discussion, however a key element of any Roguelike is procedural generation, which means RNG can possibly screw you from time to time, depending on what you encounter. Some games are set up so that you can mitigate or avoid most 'bad' RNG, and perhaps ADOM is one of those kinds of games, but RNG basically screwing you over is something that is a constant among most, if not all, Roguelikes.

Granted, there are many things that can seem like 'RNG is screwing you', when in reality, it is something you can 'play around' (apparently, like the Poison Hands thing) if you know what you are doing. In DCSS, a major thing like this is simply picking your battles. In many cases, you can see and avoid bad encounters, particularly once you get Blink scrolls. Stair-dancing is a well accepted cheese tactical maneuver to break up bad clumps of enemies, so you don't have to just charge in where angels fear to tread, and using one-wide corridors as choke points to keep from having multiple enemies on you simultaneously can also be a valuable tactic.

But sometimes, RNG just craps on you, and there's not much you can do about it.

In my case, usually what happens is a poor choice early on comes to haunt me later on. My example about picking up a ring which provides several key defenses but removes my ability to teleport is one of them, because I could have escaped that with a blink scroll had my ring not prevented it. A Slay The Spire example would be something like picking up Coffee Dripper (+1 Energy, no resting at campfires), then getting a bad encounter and not being able to recover from it.

[zlefin]

ADOM definitely has a good share of ways RNG can screw you over; especially early on for some of the weaker race/class setups.

It also has a bunch of stuff that you need to know/understand and plan for. which of course you might not know if you haven't gotten to that stage of the game before and haven't read guides on it; stuff that can very easily kill you or cause other problems.

[Anteros]

For DCSS there are acquirement scrolls that are weighted to give you gear that you haven't found yet. So if you haven't found a resistance you need you can use them to fill the gaps. Of course it's far more tempting to use them to gamble on getting a great weapon or piece or armor but gambling in roguelikes is almost always a mistake.

[Knaight]

Even if you can play around the RNG you still get cases where you have to play really, really well because of it and cases where the RNG is throwing things in your favor as hard as it possibly can.

[Kaptin Keen]

I feel it's at the very least worth mentioning that I've played literally hundreds of games of ADOM. I've seen plenty of thick gauntlets. I have never even heard of poison hands until right now.

Of course, ADOM being ADOM, the game you do get poison hands will be the game you see no thick gauntlets.

[Maryring]

So my Drakeling Mindcrafter ended up becoming an Avatar of Balance. Though to be fair, the game gets rather... well, unfair when you get both Far Slayer and Thunderstroke. And if things ever got dicey, I could teleport to safely with my Mindcrafting. And the Greater TK Blast could just melt enemy summoners. I did struggle a bit against the big bad himself, because the game's utter inability to give e a decent source of light. In retrospect, I did have a Wish-Ring that I'd saved up for an emergency, but... ah well. Victory was achieved.

Now I'm gonna give it a go as a Troll Monk. Which made me think.

Not considering classes (because I'm not gonna be suggesting Troll Wizard or Mist Elf... well anything. Mist Elves die to a sudden sneeze) what races would you recommend to a newbie? I recently got a friend into the game, and I want him to maintain his interest.

[Kaptin Keen]

Not considering classes (because I'm not gonna be suggesting Troll Wizard or Mist Elf... well anything. Mist Elves die to a sudden sneeze) what races would you recommend to a newbie? I recently got a friend into the game, and I want him to maintain his interest.

Well trolls get through the early game with rediculous ease - long as you keep them fed. And keep them away from ghosts.