After a few days of failure I managed to win as a wizard, rogue and warrior. Sneaky stabbing gets really tiresome after a while. You need to be fast enough (light equipment, light inventory or high enough stats to negate weight) to hit something and run away before being hit back. It also needs to be dark enough for the initial hit and for you to hide again, which essentially means torch micromanagement. No light wand for you. Torch micromanagement = dropping torches that go out, dedicating 1-2 inventory slots for torches of various levels of use, equipping and unequipping torches, extra management if you want to use a shield (you should want to).
I found that stealth and stabbing became utterly pointless before the midway point in the game. The extra damage from critical strikes isn't very much. If you're fast enough to hit and run you can ignore critical strikes and stealth altogether. Just hit and run. Or just run. Also the inventory management seems to get really bad in this game, having to juggle torches isn't worth it. Use the light spell or a light wand.
My rogue character blurred into a warrior with a lot of wands to zap.
Wizard had a more interesting start. Not enough mana to spam spells and not enough health to take hits, the game was to throw a fireball, kite while it burned, and finish it with a melee attack. If you don't finish it with the melee attack you'll probably get hit back for 1/3 or 1/2 of your health. The spells are varied but mostly pointless. 4 types of damaging projectiles, most of which are garbage when compared to the fire projectile. One harder hitting projectile which you want for end game. Outside of healing and mapping all of the utility spells are.. unnecessary. They consume mana which can be spent killing things in order to do stuff wands can do. Mapping takes so much mana that it should only be used to avoid the Minotaur in emergencies or on special levels.
Needless to say my mage just turned into a wand zapper with a built-in wand. And healing in case I stopped paying attention for some reason.
Not much to say about warrior. You hit stuff a bunch, get hit a bunch, and like everyone else you hoard wands/skill up appraising.
Seems to me like all characters congeal into one of two things in the end, which isn't abnormal as far as roguelikes go. Not very interesting either. The different class starts aren't compelling enough to warrant replaying the game when everything just ends up being the same. Hoard wands, manage inventory and appraisal, avoid boulder traps. That didn't stop me from running through as 3 different classes, but had I known it'd all be so samey I would have stopped at 1.
Oh, whoever designed boulder traps really deserves to be [given a stocking full of coal] in the teeth. I read somewhere that there's an audio queue but I've never been able to hear a fucking thing before the trap actually triggers. Instant death for all characters who don't have a massive health pool, i.e. almost everyone before the final 2 regions. Solution? Stare at the top of your dimly lit screen while anywhere near a low hanging ceiling. Don't stop staring. Move slowly so you can spot the hole. I believe someone posted that running quickly is effective because you can completely dodge boulders that way- bull shit. Most characters move quickly enough to trigger a trap and get under/away on occasion, but most of the time the boulder is going to crush you when you hit the obligatory dead end or don't turn the corner fast enough. Cool trap idea, shitty damage mechanic. Couldn't come up with something other than instant death? What about confetti? Or just not instant death?
I should note that this was all a while back, maybe the game has changed significantly since then but I doubt it?
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Topic: Barony: 3D, multiplayer roguelike (Read 23619 times)