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[nenjin]

Found the save file.

C:\Users\<userprofile>\AppData\LocalLow\FerrtetDev_Org

There's a FerretDev.org folder there too, created the same time I first ran the game. Nothing inside it though. Some vestigial folder naming convention before realizing . are problematic in folder names?

[nenjin]

So I've been playing this way too much over the last two days.

After probably 10 or so runs I finally managed to get my groove going as an Orb of Power Dark/Dark/Dark character. I had no idea what I was doing, it just sounded edgy as fuck.

Last night I kinda hit a breakthrough where I was able to get past floor 3 for the first time without a ton of problems.

Mostly my strat consists of a) Guilt b) Pariah c) Flash Heal on the entire party and d) the best fuckin' uniques I can manage. Headless, Artemis and Ogre (not a unique) have been my stone cold wrecking crew for a while. (Viktor (sp?) turns out to be not that great compared to any of the above IMO.) Flash Heal on the entire party turns out to be magical for overall damage mitigation since your AI uses it all the time, and it's allowed me to evac more than one summon that was in real danger. Between that and Guilt (sadly not the one that applies on Melee attacks) they've been more or less unstoppable except for spell spam at range. I've yet to get the ability where they regen life based on the damage of their slash/impact/pierce attacks, but I imagine that would probably take them in to healing overkill territory.

So at around Floor 6 I found the save file and can save scum. So I figure that's the end of my legitimate progress in Demon. That said, I've pushed way further now. Got to see some different, rad looking tilesets and that makes me happy, it's exactly what I was hoping they'd look like.

If I have any feels after about 20 hours with this....

-I wish credits were a little easier to come by than just lying around each floor. Recycle on your Relic only really helps when you're forced to delete a really old, valuable summon. But it doesn't do much in the short term for making money. In my mind, fights with Demons should sometimes result in a small credit cache from time to time.
-This game needs a creepy little wizard shop when you can buy items or sell your existing ones for a very modest amount of credits.
-It needs the standard roguelike unidentified items thing slipped in there somewhere. For example the "Orange Essence","Purple Essence" stuff would be an ok candidate for making them Essence.So you can slip a couple bad ones in there, or at least some weird ones.
-Demon recruitment too often comes down to credits, which is the only real resource you can't afford to give away. I feel like demons need more dialog options like SMT:N, where they want to know your opinion about something. Something like "iS It BEtTer tO bE L0vEd Or fEAreD?" Basically all my negotiation recruitments happen because they ask for life or items. Sacrifices and credits tend to get NOs from me every time.
-I find LOS super frustrating in this game. Short of Low Profile, having demons doing their job generally means your summoner is relegated to a support role. With how much shit transpires in one round of combat I often feel like I shouldn't move at all. As such a lot my offensive abilities end up doing very little. I realize that's probably how Orb of Power is supposed to play but still. I feel like hitting enemies past your allies should have a % to succeed. Maybe add a new trait for guys like the Ogre where they're too big and will fully block shots. (High Profile?) But I don't feel like every demon should. Low Profile should remove the chance for being hit entirely, but I don't feel like everyone without low profile should always get hit.
-Do Demons ever actually learn new abilities through level up? The text of their affinity implies they do but after most of them have gained 4 to 5 levels no new abilities have been earned. I feel like that text could be clearer on what affinities actually do, especially when you change a monster's affinity through fusion. If all fusion does is change their AIs preference for stat spending and award them a couple random abilities....it should just say that instead of what it says now.

All in all this probably the most addicting fan-made Roguelike I've played in the last few years. I like it enough I wish it had the full treatment of music and sfx. If FerretDev ever needs or wants some free fan help with writing or spriting, let me know!

[Zangi]

I've hit around 6.  Died to a heroic unique.  Forgot his name, but I really wanted his skills.

And yea, much of the combat, you are the support, not DPS.  Mostly cause it seems like everyone around you moves 2-3 times.

And yea... Lighting spam floors...  I don't look forward to it with my next guy, who is weak to electricity.

My playstyle is 2-3 healers.  I keep the beginner fairy and give her the 0SP lucky aid.  The rest is varying levels of tank/DPS/Resistance.
I also like having the SP exchanger on my main guy.
There is also SP cost of your Pokemon skills to consider.  Many battles can be drawn out and you just don't want your magic/ranged DPS to decide to go in and hit em with their fists or having to switch em out too much.

[Whisperling]

Nope, don't think learning by level-up is a thing. If you have a certain relic upgrade (one of the ones pure heart starts with) you can pay to have demons learn a random ability from their modifier, but that's about it.

Not all ranged spells act as beams or projectiles, although I'm not sure whether Orb of Power can start with any direct ones. Off the top of my head, easig saints, Areas, and aethnir all come with spells that let you attack from the back line, so I'd recommend recruiting one or two and grabbing their abilities when you get a chance.

----------

PSA: Heroes/summoner hunters can be really hard to deal with. They're not everywhere, but they're fully capable of wrecking a good run. I've had one regenerate themselves to stall me out, and another parry everything and then kill me with charge stunlocking.

I tend to pick up a zombie somewhere along the line, so the regen is actually pretty easy to deal with if I hang on to infectious bite, but I can't really think of a good counter to the other. Maybe keep one bulky thing in melee, and add as much ranged support as possible?

------

I've gotten to level 8 or so pretty consistently, but there seems to be a pretty big difficulty jump on nine. Usually end up dying after the first two encounters.

[nenjin]

Electricity does seem to be pretty OP compared to fire or frost. Chill makes you less effective in combat and ignite does put on the damage....but shock both does damage, and regularly robs your characters of multiple turns. Aeras or whatever his name is has an ability that will often hit 3/4 party members at random and put shock on them. Every goddamn turn they have SP.

Orb of Power does come with a direct attack when you go Dark. It's called Snuff Out. Unfortunately it's one of those "only hits and deals damage if it would kill the target" attacks. So it's useless most of the time.

PSA: Heroes/summoner hunters can be really hard to deal with. They're not everywhere, but they're fully capable of wrecking a good run. I've had one regenerate themselves to stall me out, and another parry everything and then kill me with charge stunlocking.

I've learned with enemy summoners you have to hit them with everything, or they will summon new demons until the cows come home. You can kill their healers and their debuffers all day but they'll just summon more. Had one guy summon 8 guys out of his relic before I finally wised up and just killed him.

I've gotten to level 8 or so pretty consistently, but there seems to be a pretty big difficulty jump on nine. Usually end up dying after the first two encounters.

The big jump for me was from Floor.....6 I think to:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Anomaly, and Our Sanctum. Average demon level went from 2 - 6 to 6 - 8. And FFS how many floors is the Anomaly!?!"

[AlStar]

I had a fun WTF moment in the anomaly when I ran into a level 19 Shoggoth (I think my demons were all around level 5 or 6 at the time.) On the plus side, it turned out to be somewhat reasonable in its demands, so I recruited it - thing had nearly 100 HP.

[( Tchey )]

I feel i never have enough money to fuse my monsters, only to copy some skills sometimes. I think one big balance pass should be done here quite soon.

[nenjin]

My biggest problem with fusing is it doesn't seem worth the pay off. Occasionally you get a bump in the right stats but otherwise.....? You lose a competent demon and randomly pass off some skills you may not use or may not jive with the demon being fused in to. After testing a bunch of fusions, on my starting list of 8 or w/e, I found one that actually seemed to be a good idea.

Like, recruiting any random demon and immediately fusing them doesn't seem that worthwhile. The limitations on your list of demons at the start also prevents you from freely fusing; you end up not fusing because you need those demons to win fights. So your best and most performant demons don't get fused because you still need them, it's super expensive, AND the loss of the demon and the credits may not actually equal the worth of the fused demon.

Put another way, I feel like Fusing was both easier and more worthwhile in the SMT games than here. (Not that this is supposed to be a direct copy.) Possibly because skills there are way more general, whereas here half the of passives are directly keyed to specific ability types.

It's to the point now I have a full roster of skilled up, unique demons that I don't want to get rid of, and like 1 slot I hold for "new blood." But even then, I use them for Transpose Soul (a specific power of the Orb of Power) to get an ability I want rather than fusing them and hoping/praying for something I want. I get that fusing bumps their stats and all but.....like I said, recruiting a random demon just to fuse doesn't seem to make established demons all that better. In fact most cases I fused they lost stats they should care about to gain stats they should care nothing for. On top of changing their affinity so their level up AI makes different decisions......yeah, I just haven't found Fusing that good or appealing or useful yet. TBH though I think I never really used what is essentially the same option in SMT/Persona either.

[ShinQuickMan]

Mostly my strat consists of a) Guilt b) Pariah c) Flash Heal on the entire party and d) the best fuckin' uniques I can manage. Headless, Artemis and Ogre (not a unique) have been my stone cold wrecking crew for a while. (Viktor (sp?) turns out to be not that great compared to any of the above IMO.) Flash Heal on the entire party turns out to be magical for overall damage mitigation since your AI uses it all the time, and it's allowed me to evac more than one summon that was in real danger. Between that and Guilt (sadly not the one that applies on Melee attacks) they've been more or less unstoppable except for spell spam at range. I've yet to get the ability where they regen life based on the damage of their slash/impact/pierce attacks, but I imagine that would probably take them in to healing overkill territory.

Bloodlust (said life-sapping ability) only works for melee, so Artemis wouldn't benefit much from it. Also, it's much better for fast, area attacking uniques like Vikhor, as they'd attack often enough to take advantage of all the healing.

-I wish credits were a little easier to come by than just lying around each floor. Recycle on your Relic only really helps when you're forced to delete a really old, valuable summon. But it doesn't do much in the short term for making money. In my mind, fights with Demons should sometimes result in a small credit cache from time to time.

Recycle gives benefits for any previously leveled up demons you recruit, not just monsters you leveled up yourself. This includes monsters you encounter from corpse spawns and enemy summoners. As such, it's often a good idea to treat one or two demon slots as Recycle fodder. I personally find this Relic completely invaluable in all runs.

-Demon recruitment too often comes down to credits, which is the only real resource you can't afford to give away. I feel like demons need more dialog options like SMT:N, where they want to know your opinion about something. Something like "iS It BEtTer tO bE L0vEd Or fEAreD?" Basically all my negotiation recruitments happen because they ask for life or items. Sacrifices and credits tend to get NOs from me every time.

You could also get points by moving closer, unsummoning your guys, and deleting (hopefully useless) moves when asked. Also, some demons aren't as temperamental when you deny their requests, and some may join you outright if the dialogue chain goes on long enough. Such things tend to happen with light aligned demons, such as Zaltys, and is unlikely for outright villainous looking monsters.

I find LOS super frustrating in this game. Short of Low Profile, having demons doing their job generally means your summoner is relegated to a support role. With how much shit transpires in one round of combat I often feel like I shouldn't move at all. As such a lot my offensive abilities end up doing very little. I realize that's probably how Orb of Power is supposed to play but still. I feel like hitting enemies past your allies should have a % to succeed. Maybe add a new trait for guys like the Ogre where they're too big and will fully block shots. (High Profile?) But I don't feel like every demon should. Low Profile should remove the chance for being hit entirely, but I don't feel like everyone without low profile should always get hit.

1. There are very useful auto-hit spells and area spells here and there, such as Censure from Easg Saint.
2. As an Orb of Power summoner, you can Transpose such spells from Demons directly. Hint: Transpose a psychic demon (such as Buruburu) ASAP for Mind Scream(?) , an auto-hitting auto-targetting full screen area psychic spell.

Electricity does seem to be pretty OP compared to fire or frost. Chill makes you less effective in combat and ignite does put on the damage....but shock both does damage, and regularly robs your characters of multiple turns. Aeras or whatever his name is has an ability that will often hit 3/4 party members at random and put shock on them. Every goddamn turn they have SP.

Ice has much more efficient area spells then the others, while fire kills things faster. As an Orb I usually go for ice.

The big jump for me was from Floor.....6 I think to:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Anomaly, and Our Sanctum. Average demon level went from 2 - 6 to 6 - 8. And FFS how many floors is the Anomaly!?!"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anomaly has three floors total, plus the Hacker's Sanctum and a possible lair for Python. Hint: Bring a fire resistant heavy hitting melee guy, such as Melingee.

I've learned with enemy summoners you have to hit them with everything, or they will summon new demons until the cows come home. You can kill their healers and their debuffers all day but they'll just summon more. Had one guy summon 8 guys out of his relic before I finally wised up and just killed him.

Hit-and-run tactics work well too. Pick someone you think you can kill in three turns or less. When that's done, switch to healers, run away, and when sufficiently off-screen, unsummon your guys. Rest, rencounter, rinse, and repeat.

PSA: Heroes/summoner hunters can be really hard to deal with. They're not everywhere, but they're fully capable of wrecking a good run. I've had one regenerate themselves to stall me out, and another parry everything and then kill me with charge stunlocking.
I tend to pick up a zombie somewhere along the line, so the regen is actually pretty easy to deal with if I hang on to infectious bite, but I can't really think of a good counter to the other. Maybe keep one bulky thing in melee, and add as much ranged support as possible?

Quite frankly, Heroes are best avoided than killed. You practically need a team specialized to deal with each one to take them down. There are cheesy hit-and-run tactics you could use with HP draining effects to take them out, but even that's not entirely guaranteed.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you get far enough to encounter Mordecai and Reprobus, do yourself a favor and just get out of there. Leave bait guys to stall them and their team of bandits, and use items if you need to get distance. And whatever you do, don't even think about linking with Reprobus.

[Zangi]

I ended up with +10k just spending money copying skills, maybe only one or two fusions.  Eating pokemon for their credits all the time is a huger money saver/gainer.  Especially the ones from corpses.

That was my +6 floor run with necroguy dark/dark.  Being able to fix/gain maxHP and essentially being able to tank a bunch of stuff is pretty good too.  (Enemy AI likes to attack squishier people though.)
With that build, you could essentially run 2 ranged units and a healer.  Once the ranged units run out of SP, you switch them out and bring in melee allies. 
Switch healer out for a more durable healer/place em out of melee range, when they run out of SP.  Or be like me and use the SP transfer skill for the healer/ranged to keep em in the fight longer.  The 0SP Lucky Aid is awesome when it rolls up 50 more SP to anyone.

When is the next Relic upgrade?  I know you get one at lvl 5.  (Fast unsummon = essential in my books.)   I had hit lvl 10... but no Relic upgrade.



Fusion is only really useful for changing resistance... for example, changing a weakness into a resistant.  But you also have to account for the stat changes... so yea.   You can at least remove the random skills for free if they are no good.

[nenjin]

Bloodlust (said life-sapping ability) only works for melee, so Artemis wouldn't benefit much from it. Also, it's much better for fast, area attacking uniques like Vikhor, as they'd attack often enough to take advantage of all the healing.

Ah, didn't realize BL was melee only, I was just focusing on the Slash/Piece/Impact information. That said, BloodTHIRST, the one that regens SP based on damage, does work for ranged.....Have to check it when I get home.

Recycle gives benefits for any previously leveled up demons you recruit, not just monsters you leveled up yourself. This includes monsters you encounter from corpse spawns and enemy summoners. Personally, I find Recycle to be an invaluable rune to pick up.

It must apply ONLY to summoner's demons. Because every guy I recruit and try to delete is worth a measly 43c regardless of level. I read Recycle as "Any demon YOU level has their delete value increased." And tbh I'm not going to tie up a party slot just to level a guy so I can delete him when I need to. Tried doing that and the rate of return seemed shit.

You could also get points by moving closer, unsummoning your guys, and deleting (hopefully useless) moves when asked.

Moving up and dismissing allies almost always gets me 2/4 or 2/5 approval points. The rest from there is either life, credits or sacrificing/deleting one of your demons. Every. Single. Time. The only demon I have ever seen roll over at 2/3 acceptance has been Zaltys. I've literally gone through 20+ dialog options with a demon where they will accept nothing but credits, but refusing them doesn't generate annoyance. So it just kept cycling and cycling and cycling....until the RNG finally said "ok, he's pissed now that you've refused his credit request for the 20th itme in a row."

So yeah. More flavorful dialog options please. Persona and SMT already mapped this stuff out. Also consider that rather than fighting every demon you've pissed off, some of them throw you a debuff or something and disappear rather than engage in combat. I guess what I'm saying is that the negotiation dialogs seemed like they had variety to them when I started the game, but now are largely a matter of "will you actually ask for something other than credits." And that's kind of disappointing, I'd like more flavor and randomness out of it.

1. There are very useful auto-hit spells and area spells here and there, such as Censure from Easg Saint.

Saw Censure, have been a recipient of it multiple times. Wasn't too impressed with the damage though, it took three Easg Saints spamming at my summoner only over 6 turns before I actually became a threat. For one guy using it....probably doesn't perform that hot. In fact, that's the way a lot of skills seem: deadly as fuck when there are three demons all spamming it. Somewhat underwhelming on use as a single character. The same is true for Flash Heal; as a heal spell by itself it's underpowered and probably won't make the difference. When you've got FOUR of them though all with alternating cooldowns, suddenly it's a game changer.

Quite frankly, Heroes are best avoided than killed.

I've only encountered one (Vinji I think?) and I kicked the shit out of her badly. But that was with the Brute Squad and she was alone, so I'm sure the rest are nastier.

That was my +6 floor run with necroguy dark/dark.  Being able to fix/gain maxHP and essentially being able to tank a bunch of stuff is pretty good too.  (Enemy AI likes to attack squishier people though.)

Yeah, I've found myself tanking the bigger chunk of damage for my team, especially against ranged demons. And by tank I mean "stand there in the open and let them blast away at you, and wait for your own demons to hit you with Flash Heal so you don't die in two turns." Which is why I find LOS so annoying, when they can shoot you with their basic attacks and you're stuck in the back row turning in to a pincushion because your l33t relic skills can't hit anything without you literally wading through the fight to get LOS.

When is the next Relic upgrade?  I know you get one at lvl 5.  (Fast unsummon = essential in my books.)   I had hit lvl 10... but no Relic upgrade.

IIRC the help documentation, you get your first relic upgrade at 5 but you don't get your next until 15 (then 25, then 35....)

[AlStar]

Fusion is only really useful for changing resistance... for example, changing a weakness into a resistant.

I'd say it's this, 100% - ideally you'll also be getting a stat boost and two rare and/or desirable skills, but that's more of a crapshoot. Being able to (for instance) give Headless a resistance to electricity, however, is well worthwhile (IMO.)

[ShinQuickMan]

Mousing over a demon's type (ie Deadly for Melingee) will tell you what sort of resistances, stat distributions, and abilities will be passed on to demons. Weaknesses can even be converted to resistances in such a manner, though a demon must have at least one weakness left over for a fusion to be applicable. Hint: Fiery Dryads are very resilient.

Spoiler: Fusions (click to show/hide)

All uniques have similarly unique monster types, some of which grant multiple resistances. These even tend to be rather lackluster demons such as Friar Rush. Some highly resistant and effective combinations include Gluttonous Nero/Dryad (Rush fusion), Stormy Aithir (Cocoa(?) fusion), and Cthonic Melingee (Python fusion). These could then be saved for fusions with very strong mid or late game uniques.

Further on, you'll see advanced common monster types which could not only grant better abilities, but immunities to non-physical defenses. Much later on are creatures that give resistances to all physical defenses.

EDIT:

[Recycle] must apply ONLY to summoner's demons. Because every guy I recruit and try to delete is worth a measly 43c regardless of level. I read Recycle as "Any demon YOU level has their delete value increased." And tbh I'm not going to tie up a party slot just to level a guy so I can delete him when I need to. Tried doing that and the rate of return seemed shit.

Ah, guess I wasn't clear. Corpse-spawned monsters can sometimes generate at higher levels, especially when further up the tower. These can give decent to very profitable returns when they're high enough. Good rule of thumb is to find and Recycle things three or four levels higher than its lowest level incarnation for maximum returns. For instance, a recruited lv 5 Zaltys (a creature with a base level of one) gives about 480 gold when Recycled. These numbers only get higher for uniques and creatures with higher base levels and level differences (ie over 1100 gold for a level 9 Dryad, a creature with a base level of 5).

EDIT2: In the end, your party composition is completely mutable, early game ones doubly so. Monsters generally have a shelf-life of ten levels, after which they'll not gain enough XP to keep up with you. Best treat all your demons as good as expendable.

[nenjin]

That's partly what has had me confused with demon types. Do I overwrite a good unique monster type with some garden variety one? Is it providing any benefit beyond the leveling choices the AI makes (and the resistances passed on.)

Again this is why I say the writing should be made clearer on what this stuff actually does. It passes on abilities, it modifies stats, it modifies resistances, it CAN pass on an ability from the archetype....but other than stat ups it has zero to do with the leveling process.

Fusion is only really useful for changing resistance... for example, changing a weakness into a resistant.

I'd say it's this, 100% - ideally you'll also be getting a stat boost and two rare and/or desirable skills, but that's more of a crapshoot. Being able to (for instance) give Headless a resistance to electricity, however, is well worthwhile (IMO.)

Wouldn't giving him fire/poison resistance and immunity be better, since he'd literally be unkillable due to Die Hard (or whatever that skill he starts with is called.)

[Zangi]

That has a cooldown, he survives one hit, but won't survive the next for a few turns.