one dungeon I had the necromancer in the first room next to the entrance, I also had a spike trap right by the entrance so it's pretty easy to kite enemies to just keep getting spiked to death, any resurrections are just bonus xp while necromancer becomes a pin-cushion.
I dunno how you do this, because being out in the open and within 6 tiles of a Necromancer, he curses, then does a couple damage spells, then buffs, then throws some runes on the floor for area denial. I'm down like 60 HP in just his opening moves.
But I did just get Pyromancy so maybe that will make life a bit easier.
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It's not quite that drastic in SS. More it's just, the idea that you should grind outside of "missions" is kind of a trap. You won't make enough money doing that and you'll end up in a downward spiral.
Now, note, I totally fucked up the first contract quest. I beat it at like level 4 or 5, but mistakenly sold the loot I needed to turn in and essentially broke it. If I'd completed it, I'd have been on my way
MUCH earlier on. But I had to do the Necromancer as well after that, and also couldn't beat it, and added in sight seeing and exploring on top of all that.....it really set me off the main path of the game. Which makes sense I guess, the game's unfinished so all that profitable side stuff isn't there to support not playing the main contract missions. Again that's the problem with big canvas games, walking into a part on it with only a couple brush strokes on it.
There's just this intersection of character level and contract completion where you're like "ok, making money is no longer a life and death struggle." Up until that point, the game seems incredibly harsh. And is if you push it too far. But if you play within the boundaries, get strong and solve your repair cost issues, then all that secondary exploration, while still not being super profitable, having big pay offs and taking a lot of time to do, don't seem quite so intimidating and better in context. If you hadn't beat the first contract and advanced the story a little, you could easily come away with the assumption that Stoneshard is the kind of game that expects you to walk 4k tiles to get between two towns.
TLDR though, it's really the atmosphere and and the dungeon crawling that are keeping me with it. The dungeon art and sprites are just *chef's kiss*. The dungeons aren't necessarily super complex for being randomly generated, so I hope there's more yet coming down the line there.