Regarding Roguelikes

[Moniker]

Since a few folks in these parts have expressed interest in roguelikes, thought I'd start a thread for roguelike news and so forth.

DoomRL just released version 0.996, with the long-awaited graphical mode. They also bumped up the music/sfx quality. Check it out here: http://doom.chaosforge.org/

Also, a discussion stemming from popcorn enemies on Roguelike Radio led to one of the lads recommending me what he termed "The Quintessential Bullet Hell Roguelike" - it's actually rather fun. It's a short experimental game, so you don't actually have to learn a typical roguelike interface in order to try it. Give it a whirl:

http://www.gruesomegames.com/blog/?p=58

[Ruldra]

DoomRL veteran here. Had sooo much fun with the game a few years ago, it's incredibly challenging when you raise the difficulty. Nice to see that the graphical version was finally released, will give it a try later.

This thread is convenient since I've been playing "The Dungeon" on my brother's iPad, it's a fun but dumbed-down version of Nethack. Nice for people who doesn't have much experience with roguelikes. Fatal Labyrinth for the Mega Drive is good too.

I'm a sucker for roguelikes and dungeon crawlers but I haven't ever come close of beating Nethack, I still want to beat it someday. Anyone here ever did it?

[Moniker]

I'm a sucker for roguelikes and dungeon crawlers but I haven't ever come close of beating Nethack, I still want to beat it someday. Anyone here ever did it?

Yeah, I ascended most of the classes. After you get one, it's sorta like riding a bike.

Quick guide for a first win: your best bet is going for a lawful valkyrie and get excalibur early on. Some go for neutral to get mjollner from sacrificing, but excalibur is really all you need for the whole game, and easier to get. Get some armor, luckstone, and hopefully a magic lamp from the mines, find an altar and get some luck. With all that you should be able to make it to the Castle. If you can clear that, you get 3-5 wishes and the rest of the game is basically just avoiding screwups.

It also helps if you play a bunch of wizards who leave behind bonefiles w/ cloaks of resist magic.


I've been playing a lot of Brogue, which I think is probably another good entry-level roguelike that doesn't require spoilers or anything. Really elegant design with a great art sense. I'll have to try Fatal Labyrinth.

[Drum]

I came close to ascending as a wizard but it becomes trivially easy once you've got all the best stuff and a ton off buffs - your worst enemy is inventory management. I was put off by that and the cryptic rigmarole aspects of ascending. Still have that character alive and kicking, I just much prefer starting new characters and dying over and over than actually finishing.

[Moniker]

Yeah, that's probably the main reason most people move on from nethack after beating it a couple times. Once you've got the whole ritual down, there isn't much mystery left to the game. Inventory management isn't so bad, though, so long as you have a BoH and a locked chest in a certain strategic location. But yeah, after you get familiar with it all, the only compelling part is really the early game up until you clear the Castle, and the endgame.

I do recommend you finish out at least one character. The finale is glorious - perhaps my most treasured experience in gaming.

[Ruldra]

Quick guide for a first win: your best bet is going for a lawful valkyrie and get excalibur early on. Some go for neutral to get mjollner from sacrificing, but excalibur is really all you need for the whole game, and easier to get. Get some armor, luckstone, and hopefully a magic lamp from the mines, find an altar and get some luck. With all that you should be able to make it to the Castle. If you can clear that, you get 3-5 wishes and the rest of the game is basically just avoiding screwups.

No use rolling valkyries when I still die from hunger and food poisoning Either that or I die from regular enemies after Minetown.

Is it possible to beat the game without resorting to spoilers? I once read a Let's Play of the game and the player regularly checked the Wiki along the way, it feels like cheating.

By the way, if Nethack is no longer a challenge for you, it's time to raise the bar and play ADOM. I heard even Nethack veterans have trouble beating that one.

[Moniker]

Remember that you get lots of outs by praying. I can't remember the turncount for prayer-recharge, but it's pretty generous. That'll take care of food poisoning for the most part. Also, I believe orcs have intrinsic resist-poison, which is why a lot of people go for orc-barbarians. If you're dying to regular monsters, you probably want to concentrate on AC. I assume you know you can buy divine protection from the minetown priest? If you sell all the spellbooks you find on the way down, you'll definitely be able to afford a decent bump in armor. For food, Sokoban is the place to go - I typically dive down to minetown, do my business, then load up on food in sokoban before returning for the goblin king, after which you'll have no issue with hunger.

Is it possible to beat the game without resorting to spoilers? I once read a Let's Play of the game and the player regularly checked the Wiki along the way, it feels like cheating.

Nearly impossible - most modern roguelikes are at least in part a negative reaction to this aspect of the game. This came up on the newsgroup some time ago - the only recorded case of someone attempting a completely spoiler-free game never got past Medusa. My guess is that even if you visited the oracle a whole lot, and kept records of every fortune cookie in the game, it'd probably take a lifetime to learn enough arcane crap to actually win. There are, however, spoiler pages that only tell you the absolute minimum knowledge it takes to get a win. It'd probably take you awhile to get there, but you might wanna check that out. Using spoilers is definitely not cheating, though, by anyone's definition.

By the way, if Nethack is no longer a challenge for you, it's time to raise the bar and play ADOM. I heard even Nethack veterans have trouble beating that one.

Yeah, I've only ever really reached the midgame in ADOM. My big gripe with ADOM is how big an element inventory destruction is in the game. There are probably ways around it that more experienced players know, but every time I go through a trapped door and have a piece of valuable equip ripped apart, I die a little inside. The combat system is definitely better than Nethack's though, and the game is so open, complex, and atmospheric that you really do get caught up in the feeling of adventure. Spoilers are still sorta-necessary if you want to really understand all the new places and features you see in each game, but you def don't have to keep the guidebook open while playing. Its author is a bit of a tool, and left some pretty nasty gameplay imbalances unaddressed for 10+ years. I recommend before starting it, you find both the ADOM-Sage front-end, and the unofficial patch that fixes the worst offenders.

[Damocles]

I've been transferring back to less hardcore Roguelikes lately. Most of my spare time has been with the quasi-roguelike "Epic Dungeon" on XBLIG and POWDER. DoomRL is an excellent experience as well.

[Mortificator]

Been messing around with various Mystery Dungeon games available in English over the past several months. SNES Shiren and PS1 Torneko are the best I've played so far.

SNES Torneko is the most like Rogue. The dungeon's difficulty curve is the biggest problem. You might die at the very beginning, but get past that and you'll coast through most of the floors filling your inventory until the game gets balls hard for the last few.

Druaga has some good mechanics, but the graphics hurt playability. Its 3D camera perspective limits your field of view compared to the sprite-based games, compounded by your diminishing resource being not food, but light.

PS1 and Wii Chocobo are too revolting to play for more than a few minutes.

Pokémon's first wave had potential. Maybe the last DS iteration capitalized on it.

I think that's everything except the DS and Wii Shirens.

[Moniker]

I need to try Torneko. I've heard good things.

I played a little of Pokemon Mystery - Something of Time. Apparently if you beat the regular game you eventually unlock the real roguelike, which is pretty good. I didn't have the patience for it, although maybe there're save files floating around.

I got the Wii Shiren (Shiren 3) awhile back, which is good but ugly; the psp version is better visually and interface-wise - and there's a good english patch for it. You still have to go through story mode, but you quickly unlock permadeath dungeons you can play whenever you want. Very challenging too. 3 (so far) playable characters each with a pretty unique play style. Not as good as the original Shiren, but more than worth picking up from the bargain bin, esp if you're getting tired of Shiren 1.

As far as I've played, Shiren DS is pretty much the same shit as Shiren SFC. Apparently it's a little easier, but I haven't noticed. Cleared everything but Faye's Final Puzzle in the DS version. Brutal. Someone once pointed me to something that said that only around 25% of FFP games are winnable, which seems about right. Still fun now and then. I prefer one-riceball runs of the regular game.

Me and another guy exhaustively translated all the items & menus in Shiren DS 2 at the Shiren Wiki. I'd say it's my least favorite of the Shiren games, but it has some interesting features and equipment.

[Necronopticous]

NetHack, guys. NetHack.

I have been playing this god game for well over ten years. I...I have so much to say about this game, I don't even want to get started.

I performed my greatest NetHack accomplishment to date last year, ascending an illiterate atheist:

http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/N/Necro ... .nh343.txt

And almost nailed pacifism, too:

http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/N/Necro ... .nh343.txt

I also did this:

http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/N/Necro ... .nh343.txt

which was more masturbatory than anything. I really just wanted to have a score high up on the all-time top scores list on NAO, and I also got to perform a bunch of stupid ascension tricks like making Famine and Pestilence my bitches.

[Ruldra]

Been messing around with various Mystery Dungeon games available in English over the past several months. SNES Shiren and PS1 Torneko are the best I've played so far.

I was put off by the SNES Shiren once I realized the gist of the game is to pick a good weapon and upgrade it over several playthroughs until it's strong enough to one-shot everything. Not sure if it's possible to beat the game without doing that, but I remember I could hardly kill anything after I got past the treetop village.

[Eno]

It's been some months since I last touched one. I haven't even touched DF2012's Adventurer mode yet(despite playing a lot of Fortress).

My all time favourite must be Alphaman. It's simple, it's random and you can fire nukes and lasers at your enemies, what else would one want?

Never ascended in anything, though.

[Moniker]

I was put off by the SNES Shiren once I realized the gist of the game is to pick a good weapon and upgrade it over several playthroughs until it's strong enough to one-shot everything. Not sure if it's possible to beat the game without doing that, but I remember I could hardly kill anything after I got past the treetop village.

It's very possible - in fact, I never use the warehouses. You may need to do the Jar Master quest so that melding jars start appearing in regular levels. Companions can be helpful too, but only up until the mines; then they usually just die and level up monsters, so you can certainly do without them. There's one semi-scummish trick I sometimes use to make some money - keep going back and forth between the Bamboo Village and the previous level until there's pickpocket meat available at the store. Buy it, eat it, then clean out all of the monsters on the previous level. Then you can stock up on air/earth bless scrolls and the like.

[Teufel_in_Blau]

Thanks for the info Moniker!

I'm playing DoomRL from time to time. It's a really good "casual" Roguelike.

I played now the updated version a little and it looks really nice. But I wish that he had add a running animation or something like that for the character. But still he did nice jobs for a good game.

I also recommend Baroque for the PS1 and the PS2/Wii version. Both are highly enjoyable and the PS2/Wii games got even a western release. So make sure to check it out of you are in the mood for some console Roguelike.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

DoomRL's a whole lotta fun. I never did get the real ending though (albeit that requires a lot of luck it seems). There's also some RLs based on Megaman and Metroid I tried, although they didn't click with me.

I'm still trying to ascend with a Wizard, not used to having to rely on magic so much. I managed to do it with a Tourist (weak early on, surprisingly good later), was carving everything up with dual-wielded Grayswandir and a silver saber by the end of it which made it pretty darn easy. Still probably my fave roguelike, although Angband's a ton of fun too.

Using spoilers is definitely not cheating, though, by anyone's definition.

Agreed, my first ascension was after I'd read up a lot on the deeper mechanics (albeit I relied mostly on nabbing a good set of equipment). It's certainly possible to beat it without spoilers, but you need to be very observant in order to figure out a lot of things, and probably keep notes too.

No use rolling valkyries when I still die from hunger and food poisoning

Learning to manage food is definitely one of the most important things in the game. Valkyries are pretty good actually, and praying when your god's happy with you and you're getting pretty hungry will fill you up. Also, sinks can be used to easily identify which of your rings is a Slow Digestion without losing it in the process. It also helps to know that wearing most jewelery or casting spells will generally make you hungrier.

[Moniker]

I keep forgetting to mention that there's a good NetHack "variant" that recently came out called NitroHack.

There aren't any gameplay changes - it's all UI improvements and bugfixes, based on vanilla 3.4.3. It's got its own server too, so unless you're an NAO devotee, there isn't much reason to play vanilla anymore.

[Drum]

I keep forgetting to mention that there's a good NetHack "variant" that recently came out called NitroHack.

There aren't any gameplay changes - it's all UI improvements and bugfixes, based on vanilla 3.4.3. It's got its own server too, so unless you're an NAO devotee, there isn't much reason to play vanilla anymore.

Oh man, a health bar would massively improve my survival rate. Most of my deaths come from moving around super fast by holding down arrow keys and getting killed by surprise soldier ant/leocrotta/kobold zombie attacks and a better visual representation of when I am about to die would kill those deaths dead. A colour-changing hunger-level warning would help immensely too.

[Ruldra]

Oh man, a health bar would massively improve my survival rate. Most of my deaths come from moving around super fast by holding down arrow keys and getting killed by surprise soldier ant/leocrotta/kobold zombie attacks and a better visual representation of when I am about to die would kill those deaths dead. A colour-changing hunger-level warning would help immensely too.

If you want to stick to NetHack, the version at NAO use colours for health, hunger levels and blessed/cursed items.

[Ruldra]

Regarding iOS roguelikes: After beating The Dungeon with all classes on the iPad, I got 100 Rogues and Sword of Fargoal, anyone familiar with these?

100 Rogues is a cartoonish roguelike. It only has 12 levels but it's quite challenging, if you don't build your character correctly you won't stand a chance against the final boss. You can play as a Crusader or a Wizard. There are more classes but you need to pay for them. Overall, I recommend the game.

I saw many people recommending Sword of Fargoal on other forums but this one has one major flaw: no food system. You can stay in one level forever and grind as much as you want before proceeding, so it sucks in that regard. I like the Atari sounds and how the fights are automatic, though.

And just for kicks I played the SNES Shiren to see how it goes, reached Floor 13. I think I'll start playing this one again, the game is great.

[Moniker]

I performed my greatest NetHack accomplishment to date last year, ascending an illiterate atheist:

http://alt.org/nethack/userdata/N/Necro ... .nh343.txt

That's pretty insane. I wouldn't even know how to begin prosecuting a game without a magic marker. The best I've done is wishless + genoless. Genoless isn't too hard - after I did it once I stopped genociding things coz it made the endgame more suspenseful. Wishless was a bitch, though. IIRC, the game I won with, I got lucky and a grey dragon dropped scales in the castle.

Regarding iOS roguelikes: After beating The Dungeon with all classes on the iPad, I got 100 Rogues and Sword of Fargoal, anyone familiar with these?

I've been wanting to play 1000 Rogues. No iThing, though. From what I've heard, it takes a lot of inspiration from Shiren, at least in terms of enemies.

I think I tried Fargoal's android version (or something else with a similar name). Couldn't get past the interface, though. Probably would be much better on a tablet. Same with Dweller. I really wish Desktop Dungeons would do a mobile release - it seems like it'd be a perfect fit.


On another note, has anyone here played any of Tome4? I can't get any of the recent builds to run properly on Vista. Previous versions of ToME were Angband variants, but the latest one is pretty different. I played one of the first releases, and the combat was more like a turn-based Mass Effect/Dragon Age - in-depth skill trees, with ability cooldowns instead of mana/stamina. AFAIK, there's no food clock, but levels are persistent and stay empty once you kill everything.

[Necronopticous]

That's pretty insane. I wouldn't even know how to begin prosecuting a game without a magic marker. The best I've done is wishless + genoless. Genoless isn't too hard - after I did it once I stopped genociding things coz it made the endgame more suspenseful. Wishless was a bitch, though. IIRC, the game I won with, I got lucky and a grey dragon dropped scales in the castle.

I had done both illiteracy and atheism separately prior to that. Neither of them are too bad by themselves, but the thing is that usually when you do one of these two, you really want to abuse the hell out of the other to compensate. Doing them both at the same time was extremely difficult to approach. I did a lot of planning and was actually able to tackle it in surprisingly few games once I really put my mind to it (unlike pacifism which is just absolutely fucking insane). Being a Dwarven Valkyrie helped, obviously. The illiterate atheist ascension run was actually one of the most fun games of NetHack I've ever played. The only shitty part was the neverending need to use test everything since there is no possibility of manual identify or enchant and you can't buy intrinsic protection. I scraped by with -10AC, and I worked my ass off for every point of that. Without the Orb of Fate I would have been in a lot worse shape.

[szycag]

I loved Dark Cloud 2's random dungeons but got put off with the having to build things and take random pictures to make objects. Is there something like that but more focused on dungeon crawling? Maybe I should just play the first one, but it looked really ugly.

[Ruldra]

I forgot to mention, there's one amazing roguelike called Unreal World. It's set in Iron-Age Finland and there's no real goal, just to survive. Hunt for food, fish, build a house, defend yourself from bandits and wild animals, skin animals for their fur to make clothes and trade for other stuff, gather supplies to survive the winter, etc.

It has some fantasy elements but overall it's extremely realistic. I mean, just look at the wounds screen: http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/kuvat/urw-screenshot-12.png

Got a big cut on your leg? You need to suture it. Broke your arm? You need a strong piece of wood to tie your arm and immobilize it. And so on.

The demo lets you play for 10 in-game days but a lot happens during this time. I've rolled countless characters and only one made it past 10 days. Causes of death include having my arm ripped off by a lynx and slipping from a tall tree and falling on my stomach.

Screenshots:
http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/kuvat/urw-screenshot-10.png
http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/kuvat/urw-screenshot-7.png
http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/kuvat/urw-screenshot-6.png
http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/kuvat/urw-screenshot-5.png

Main page: http://www.jmp.fi/~smaarane/urw.html

[Moniker]

I tried getting into Unreal World a couple times, but couldn't get past the photos that are obviously the dev and his friends playing with their renaissance fair getups in the woods.

There's a new one in a similar vein called Rogue Survivor. It sounds more or less like Project Zomboid the Roguelike. Haven't tried it yet, but from what I hear it's pretty good and in rapid development.

I loved Dark Cloud 2's random dungeons but got put off with the having to build things and take random pictures to make objects. Is there something like that but more focused on dungeon crawling? Maybe I should just play the first one, but it looked really ugly.

Hrm... As far as realtime roguelikes go (which DC2 isn't, though I really liked it), Baroque isn't too far off what you're looking for. As someone mentioned above, there are versions for PSX, PS2 & Wii. Apart from that, all I can think of are the Diablos and Torchlight in permadeath mode.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Games with real time combat and randomised dungeons: Crimson Tears (the post-game dungeon is rather nifty), Tobal 1&2, Ehrgeiz. Cyber Org is good with a DualShock, but I don't recall its dungeons being randomised.
Both Champions games for the PS2 have this kind of dungeons, but the single player mode isn't great.

[Ruldra]

Does anyone here ever beaten SNES Shiren? I try to kill every enemy I find to get stronger, but once I reach Neburi Mines enemies can kill me in like 3-4 hits. At that point my only option is to run away, but the enemies get stronger and stronger after each level. For the first time ever I reached Table Mountain (floor 17), but I got killed in 2 hits. There's a point items can't save me anymore.

I see no option here but to upgrade sword and shield to absurd levels. I'd rather not do that.

There's one semi-scummish trick I sometimes use to make some money - keep going back and forth between the Bamboo Village and the previous level until there's pickpocket meat available at the store. Buy it, eat it, then clean out all of the monsters on the previous level. Then you can stock up on air/earth bless scrolls and the like.

This doesn't work in the SNES version, you can't go back to previous levels.

[Moniker]

Hmmm... have you unlocked melding jars? That's the main means to upgrade weapons. When beating the game for the first time (NDS version), I would leave my 2nd strongest weapon behind at each warehouse, and meld them when I had a run where I found a jar. Might be a nice, unintrusive compromise. First win was with Katana +4 w/ air slayer (air slayer is non-negotiable), and iron shield +2. You do need to rush through the last few levels, in any case. Scrolls of light, invisibility and confusion are your best friends there.

There is one more trick that I think still works on the SFC version, although my memory's slightly hazy - in the level above the last village, you can intentionally fall through a trapdoor back into the village (which has a store) and keep regenerating the level above. I've only tried it once and can't remember the results.

I'll have to play the SFC version a bit more to see if riceball runs are feasible. Here's a list of differences b/w the two versions:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/925583-m ... r/40044639

Other than that, have you played through all of Faye's puzzles? They really are worth doing, and give you some good tips on the less-obvious item uses.

[Ruldra]

I did unlock the melding jars (they're called fusion pots here), but they haven't been much useful yet.

I suppose I need to play the game more and get more experience, but I'm getting pissed off at how often I cannot prevent my death. Even with good equipment, enemies are much stronger than you are and you can't fight them all. Scrolls can save you but they're limited and once you run out of them you have almost no options left. Most of the time I die and I don't know what I could've done differently.

[J_Taishu]

Does anyone here ever beaten SNES Shiren? I try to kill every enemy I find to get stronger, but once I reach Neburi Mines enemies can kill me in like 3-4 hits. At that point my only option is to run away, but the enemies get stronger and stronger after each level. For the first time ever I reached Table Mountain (floor 17), but I got killed in 2 hits. There's a point items can't save me anymore.

I see no option here but to upgrade sword and shield to absurd levels. I'd rather not do that.

I have the same basic philosophy; always enter a dungeon with nothing more than a single riceball. For the Mines, the biggest problem are those tank enemies. Keep in mind that they can't use their ranged attacks in corridors, so try and lure them in after you. Keep in mind that the thief enemies are guaranteed to drop an item, so killing them should be a priority. If you have a Todd Jar and are confident you can handle it, just throw the thing at a wall and kill them for their items.

If there's an enemy that seems tough, still try and kill it. Use the wand of paralysis and then peg it with arrows from a distance. Remember that Shiren heals but enemies usually don't. Another thing you can do is use the pain sharing wand on an enemy and then just nailing yourself with a trap over and over again. Keep in mind that undead enemies can be hurt with healing items. Did you know that you can put gold into your jar of holding and then throw the coins at the enemy for a hefty amount of damage?

This is cheap, but you can visit the village in Table Mountain as many times as you want if you fall down the trap door on the floor above it.