By John Walker on June 20th, 2012 at 8:00 pm.
I went back to Dungeons Of Dredmor recently, having realised it had expanded twice since I’d last played. The good news is it’s still as brilliant as ever. The bad news is, I’m still just as terrible at it. The brilliant news is, Kieron’s still just as cross that we’re all playing Rogue-likes now, after having ignored him about them for years. And the news news is, there’s to be another update “hastily named” Conquest Of The Wizardlands, due out soon. It’ll be adding not only new realms, but sneakiness and at last some weapon and armour augmentation crafting.
It’s been four months in the making, and their typically obscure description suggests these Wizardlands will appear within the main game as another realm to portal to.
They also seem to suggest a new “Pocket Dimension” which seems to be extended storage, a new upgrade system for weapons and armour called Encrusting will be added, and the addition of minibosses, as if the game didn’t already kill me frequently enough. On top of that there are two new weapon classes to be made available (or as I like to think of them, two more types of weapons in my inventory I won’t be using), Daggers and Polearms. And there are even more skills for the list, thankfully including Daggers and Polearms, but also adding Bankster, Communist, Paranormal Investigator and Magic Law, and, they claim, more.
And finally, they’re giving the monsters sight cones, which will make it possible to sneak past enemies, which is very welcome news. It’ll be another $3, and is set to be released “Pretty Darned Quick”.
20/06/2012 at 20:07 Gasmask Hero says:
DoD is ideal for a five or ten minute slice of gaming. That’s usually how long I last.
I downloaded Gateway and that Hyrule thing but i’m far too afraid to try them.
20/06/2012 at 20:07 deadly.by.design says:
So, Dungeons of Daggermor?
Sounds like quite the exspearience.
20/06/2012 at 20:52 Pamplemousse says:
This is going to be great, I’m banking on it.
20/06/2012 at 23:03 Jake Albano says:
My pun detector doesn’t seem to be going off.
20/06/2012 at 23:44 Pamplemousse says:
Bankster is a skill they are adding.
Yeah.
21/06/2012 at 15:52 Jake Albano says:
Ah, that would explain it. :|
20/06/2012 at 20:09 aliksy says:
I’ll probably get it, but I haven’t even had a chance to poke at the last expansion yet. Haven’t really had the heart to go back since dying a stupid death on the final floor. Sigh.
20/06/2012 at 20:13 Vinraith says:
I suppose the question is, at this point, how does it stack up to the host of brilliant free roguelikes out there?
And while we’re at it, this is as good a place as any for a “recommend your favorite roguelikes” thread.
20/06/2012 at 20:19 gschmidl says:
DoomRL and DiabloRL.
20/06/2012 at 20:26 B1A4 says:
Infra Arcana(you could call it BloodRL)
and then the well known ones – Brogue, Stone Soup and Adom. And maybe a little bit of Unreal World.
20/06/2012 at 20:41 Kaira- says:
ADoM, IVAN and well, obviously Stone Soup. It’s a shame that the development of IVAN has stopped and apparently no one has picked it up, because that game has some crazy features.
And personally on DoD… well, it’s a roguelike-lite. It lacks so much what many other roguelikes have (diagonal movement for heaven’s sake!, time-system, hunger) but it has a nice crafting system and an easily approachable GUI. So it’s a bit of swings and roundabouts.
20/06/2012 at 21:18 Benkyo says:
Brogue & DoomRL are excellent. Crawl a distant 3rd.
20/06/2012 at 21:34 Oddtwang of Dork says:
Stone Soup, for my money, just about perfects the “classic” RL formula. It’s best played online while hanging out in the IRC channel, methinks :)
Incursion is promising, the release which is out there is very incomplete but enjoyable, but it’s going to be a good while before it shows its true strengths.
DoomRL, as mentioned above, is a great combination of RL with nostalgia (the music and SFX completely make it) and the unlocks and challenges help to keep it fresh.
Lastly, TOME is pretty tasty these days – it feels very modern, with a hotbar of skills on cooldowns, achievements and loads of content to unlock. Bit samey once you’ve played a given area a few times – same problem ADOM had for me, though less severe – but well overlooked IMO. It also has a decent enough graphical engine and mouse driven UI – it does a great job of reducing the barriers to entry which put people off trying Rogelike games.
20/06/2012 at 21:45 Hoaxfish says:
I feel Powder doesn’t get enough love. The guy has basically put it on every platform he can, and it has a pretty good set-up in terms of gods, “put up/put down” sessions, and general experimenting with your equipment.
21/06/2012 at 00:33 Adynod says:
Powder is a fave of mine too. Used to love it on my DS as something to play in bed before dropping off. The customisable skill bars were great for that device.
20/06/2012 at 22:55 Nesetalis says:
wat?! no one even mentioned Nethack or Sporkhack? D:
I generally play a home rolled variant of Sporkhack that my room mates and I have been recoding and adding to for a few years.
21/06/2012 at 00:21 zeroskill says:
IVAN is good. Funny. If you into that sort of humor. You will know what I mean. Cataclysm is great, and I did enjoy Caves of Qud (both unfinished at this state)
For more go to the Bay 12 Forums (Dwarf Fortress) -> Other Games.
21/06/2012 at 08:42 Moth Bones says:
Stone Soup has pretty much spoiled every other RL (well, the ones I’ve tried) for me, partly due to its accessibility, variety and difficulty (very hard, just the right level of frustrating) but also because of its terrific interface – autotravel to unexplored areas, the ability to search for any already-seen item/floor and travel directly to it, the graphically cute Tiles version (which can be played online!). I had fun with Dredmor and it was my gateway to this, but I barely look at it now; it’s really hard to read the map, and travelling by repeated key-press seems tedious and unnecessary.
Another great and simple thing about SS – if you find an item, you pick it up for use or ignore it. You can’t sell them at shops. At a stroke this eliminates so much potential grindiness of the type often found in these games.
21/06/2012 at 14:34 Namey says:
I suffer from the same “problem”. DCSS just has the exact right amounts of difficulty, with enough accessibility to make it a good experience even for a newish player. The difficulty also does a good job at scaling upwards for more experienced players. And it’s actually well designed and balanced game, with active patching. I can’t recommend it enough.
I just lament the fact that I can’t really enjoy DoD, or most other roguelike anymore. I’m too accustomed to how DCSS does things now.
21/06/2012 at 11:22 paddymaxson says:
It’s actually a pretty goddamn good game, it might not be free but a lot of effort has gone into it. I like it a lot, and at about £6 including all the expansions (and the free expansion) I find it hard to say no to. Maybe there are good free alternatives but I respect what they’ve done in making rougelikes more popular, and that deserves my £6.
21/06/2012 at 12:53 eddparsons says:
TOME!
It’s got a ton a features including auto-explore, graphical tileset, music and sound effects, achievements. May not be everyones cup of tea but I like the fact some of the races/classes are unlockable either by progressing to a certain point in the game or by trying out different playstyles. After you reach a certain point in the game for the first time you get a chest which automatically converts your unwated items into gold, which you then get to keep with all new characters.
I think the best idea in TOME is intergrated chat – if theres something you don’t understand then press space, type your question and it’s usually answered pretty quickly. Such a useful feature for a roguelike.
25/06/2012 at 06:02 Geen says:
Dwarf Fortress. Basically, an everything simulator.
20/06/2012 at 20:20 MistyMike says:
How are you people geting killed? I played the game just a little, but from my experience on the default difficulty if you choose a sensible skillset and explore thouroughly, you are rather invincible. What I mean by sensible skills are something like:
- sword/axe
- armour
- shield
- berserker
- perception
- smithing, alchemy or whatever you like
That’s like a failsafe mode.
20/06/2012 at 20:27 mazzoli says:
You are obviously playing the game far too sensibly if you aren’t going out in a blaze of glory mere minutes after entering the dungeon.
20/06/2012 at 20:36 Flint says:
It’s easy to find a skillset that works brilliantly and seems foolproof. Then all of a sudden in the later dungeon levels you find yourself caught in a situation that turns the game from a cakewalk into something suddenly very fatal and eventually find yourself to be rather dead, usually because of your own stupidity/recklessness*. Plus the variety of enemies, especially with all these updates, makes it certain you’re never completely invincible against everything.
*(then you start again and have more fun)
20/06/2012 at 21:16 zairekaboom says:
This was my build almost exactly. Standard difficulty, second character. The combat quickly became very tedious and the sudden jump in difficulty on the last dlvl made me die on purpose, couldn’t stand the thought of going back up to grind. Somehow I didn’t care about winning at that point anymore. Took about 13 hours to get there.
21/06/2012 at 01:05 Malk_Content says:
I would go back to it for another shot, within updates they’ve added a bunch of new stuff to mix things up including a “No time to grind” mode which ups xp gain and reduces floor size.
20/06/2012 at 21:16 InternetBatman says:
That’s an amazing build for the first six levels. Eventually you lose the relative advantage smithing provides as later levels give you the same loot. Armor becomes far less useful because the protection it provides doesn’t scale with damage. Beserker procs are nice, but you have to take hits to get them.
My first character that got pretty far was almost that exact build, but a bit more optimized. At the end of the game, mages are the most effective and fighters are the least.
20/06/2012 at 21:39 MistyMike says:
Funny thing, I never actually used any crafting, ’cause I had not figured out how it works. I got somewhere where you meet carrots and golems and invisible diggles without any trouble, and then I got fed up with grinding.
21/06/2012 at 01:12 InternetBatman says:
I’ll admit, I do wish the first four or so floors were less grindy to melee characters. Once you’re aware of your character’s frailty, it becomes a pretty easy application of various moves. I think the game doesn’t really start until level 5 or 6 (except possibly for the monster zoos), when you have a skill maxed and enemies start to get tougher. By level 7 the enemies start using more esoteric damage types, which makes your gear way more important.
I like it, but I’m not a fan of rogue-likes normally. I get that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
21/06/2012 at 08:55 Warskull says:
Melee builds like that are crazy strong early on, but as you progress it gets harder and harder to sustain them. Early the armor means you take basically 0 damage, but around level 5 you should start to feel some pain. About level 8 melee combat starts to get risky. Aroud level 10 it gets downright dangerous, ArchDiggles can mess you up if you stay toe to toe for long.
Magic on the other hand has a really rough start, but is probably much more viable in the long run.
21/06/2012 at 22:37 aethereal says:
I’ve found that theres a viable middle ground. If you go dual wield staves with vampiric and psionics and blood mage, you can focus on stacking magic damage (staves skills and vampiric heal also scale with magic damage), and stunlock enemies to death with staff procs/psionics while also keeping your health way up with vamp drain and crystal healing.
The last two points you can change around, magic training, burglary, viking magic, and fire magic all work well in those slots.
21/06/2012 at 16:32 Ringwraith says:
I went for a build that simply stacked counterattacks, and by the end I was at 81% base counter (it went up while in actual combat) and over 80% block, on top of decent armour and resistances, meaning melee attacks rarely ever touched me.
Of course spells became a problem, but I did regenerate one HP a turn, and I resorted to throwing cannonballs at anything out of range anyway, or using that most powerful of anti-ranged abilities, a corner.
20/06/2012 at 20:25 qrter says:
Excellent news. Love this game!
20/06/2012 at 20:49 Cryptoshrimp says:
Aww yes. More acid traps to die needlessly in is always a good thing. In the game, obviously.
20/06/2012 at 20:52 caddyB says:
That dimension doesn’t look like a pocket at all!
20/06/2012 at 21:20 Voxel lens says:
It has already expanded twice? Why don’t I see it in my steam-purchased game? Shouldn’t I see new skills at character creation?
20/06/2012 at 21:56 zeekthegeek says:
Only if you actually buy the expansions.
20/06/2012 at 22:05 Voxel lens says:
Then why was I under the impression that at least one of the expansions was free? Oh, I know why- http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/06/06/dungeons-of-dredmor-the-game-with-no-name/
21/06/2012 at 02:25 Tagiri says:
With the free expansion, you still actually have to go to its steam store page and click the button to add it to your account.
edit: ninja’d!
20/06/2012 at 22:09 Hmm-Hmm. says:
One expansion is free. It’s called ‘You Have To Name The Expansion Pack’ but you don’t get it automatically. You have to add it yourself.
20/06/2012 at 22:23 Voxel lens says:
Ok, thanks but how? Nothing appears on my DLC tab.
20/06/2012 at 22:45 The_B says:
Try this: http://store.steampowered.com/dlc/98800/
20/06/2012 at 23:22 Voxel lens says:
Cheers
20/06/2012 at 21:24 fiddlesticks says:
Wizardlands? Are we off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz?
20/06/2012 at 23:03 JD Ogre says:
Nah. Oz is in the Fairy Lands.
*hastily hides the copy of The Emerald City of Oz he’s currently reading* :P
(kinda says something about the crap we get today when a book written a hundred years ago for preteens is still better than most of the stuff put out today :P)
20/06/2012 at 23:38 Hidden_7 says:
It was better than most of the stuff they put out back then too. That’s how greatness works; it’s remembered.
21/06/2012 at 00:28 JD Ogre says:
Whoops. My last line there should have been “…is still better than most of the stuff put out today for adults. :P”
21/06/2012 at 06:03 qrter says:
That sounds awfully disprovable.
21/06/2012 at 00:00 ain says:
WIZARD!
21/06/2012 at 02:25 piratmonkey says:
I want the Communist skill. That sounds amazing.
21/06/2012 at 02:27 DarkFenix says:
In Soviet roguelike, Communist skill wants you.
21/06/2012 at 02:54 SkittleDiddler says:
I love DoD and am looking forward to even more expansions, but they seriously need to fix the broken-ass crafting menu. It drags the game down.
UI fix before more expansions, please?
21/06/2012 at 07:14 jrodman says:
When are they going to add a manual that is useful in any way? Currently the whole system is completely inscrutable and requires random guessing as to what is going on.
21/06/2012 at 08:28 ain says:
If you’ve ever played any game involving any kind of dungeon crawling you should have no trouble figuring out whats going on at all.
21/06/2012 at 08:28 Keymonk says:
Play it with permadeath and random skills for even more exciting guesswork! It’s the only way to play. :D
07/08/2012 at 22:33 jikavak says:
Y WAS ITS release not covered here??!!