It's the best one if you want to play a streamlined roguelike that DCSS was supposed to be. If you want to play a turn-based diablo3 which its devs are trying to achieve play latest version.
Is the game just pointlessly spending hours of time auto exploring, and one shotting 95% of mobs before an actual challenge comes along, or is almost every fight tactical in some way?
I played tales of mayeal and the whole game felt like diablo 3 on easy difficulty with the occasional boss, which was more of an item check than skill.
Blizzard games are marketed as "easy to learn, hard to master". DCSS is hard to learn, easy to master, and impossible not to fall asleep while playing it. People mostly abandoned it in favor of that zombie survival roguelike I didn't play.
>in favor of that zombie survival roguelike I didn't play.
You mean cdda, which was also ruined by the devs extreme autistic obsession with 'muh realism'.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>You mean cdda, which was also ruined by the devs extreme autistic obsession with 'muh realism'.
That game could also really use full mouse support. There are way too many menus in that game to not have it.
DCSS lol, /rlg/ used to call it otab crawl: removed soup. I wonder what those dumbasses are up to now, if that pony-obsessed futa mare guy still plays around.
Either way, play an older version or play one of the hilarious bloated forks like Circus Animals or bloatcrawl. The base game is run by a team of actually autistic people who balance everything around tournament players and speedrunners and make incredibly heavy-handed changes for fringe cases they don't like.
is right, the game is hard to learn like most old fashioned roguelikes, but once you become familiar with the mechanics, you will most often die due to bored carelessness rather than actual mistakes or unfamiliarity.Mid to late game you will be auto exploring and mindlessly killing pretty 9/10 creatures that pop on your screen on almost every non-felid / octopode @. Of course this will lead to your brain turning off from sheer boredon, then suddenly you find yourself 2-turned at 30 hp because you stepped on a random shaft/an OOD unique wandered in/an elf sorceror banished you despite Will++++
Not to say that you can't avoid any of that via careful play but the game actively discourages careful play by drowning you in tarpit enemies until it's too late. The power scaling in the game is moronic with a single early game mountain and then occasional mid to lategame spikes, with everything else being at the bottom of the mariachi trench.
11 months ago
Anonymous
yea I dont like rougelikes like that.
Its why I like binding of Isaac even if its not a real roguelike its always engaging.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>suddenly you find yourself 2-turned at 30 hp because you stepped on a random shaft/an OOD unique wandered in/an elf sorceror banished you
Sounds like cdda
I had my year long run ended by a random npc sniping me with an m14 to the torso in the middle of the bumfrick nowhere woods despite me wearing full armor.
11 months ago
Anonymous
it's because health regenerates out of combat. it leads to a massive change in the pace of the game since fights that definitely won't take you to zero lose all meaning. but that has a lot of benefits too.
death by a thousand cuts is way less exciting than one insurmountable obstacle taking all 100% of your health.
and fights against basic enemies that aren't exciting CAN be ignored, as opposed to other games where the best option is to fight tooth and nail to preserve every last point of health you have even against the weakest and most boring of enemies
and balancing of any sort with so many numbers involved is just completely impossible even if the people working on the game weren't a loser cabal of idiots
11 months ago
Anonymous
The core skill of DCSS is learning which fights you have to take seriously. The key to getting good is understanding that it's more of them than you first though.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>The power scaling in the game is moronic with a single early game mountain and then occasional mid to lategame spikes, with everything else being at the bottom of the mariachi trench.
The new hells are actually fun and tomb is always a challenge. Agree with the rest.
11 months ago
Anonymous
First lair branch and zot are noticeable spikes too.
The last good version of DCSS was around when they removed food, the devs just can't help themselves but add the lamest spells and remove all the good ones
Still the best roguelike, and every version is an improvement. Everybody praising old version is just upset that their favorite exploit was removed and now they need actual skill.
is this roguelike a slog to play or actually engaging?
I dont want to fall asleep one shotting 100s of mobs for hours on end, only to get fricked by a boss.
Even if you play something braindead like a Minotaur Fighter and just autoexplore+autoattack you'll soon run into something that requires thought to survive. Combat variance is fairly high so you have to pay attention and use consumables when things go bad. The game is good about not wasting your time.
even then MiFi is going to breeze through the first 10 levels barring the occasional grindr or double orc priest encounter
but after that I think the game levels out. you aren't going to be tabbing through D12 or Lair 6 or Swamp/Spider/Shoals/Snake
DCSS was streamlined over the years, to fit classic roguelike tropes, it results in fairly challenging and fair gameplay, yes it is relatively easy to die, but you die because you messed up. There is also no way to cheese or completely brake the game. However you can find roguelikes with more novel ideas, more imaginative settings and so on. DCSS is your classic of the genre. If you're starting with roguelikes it's a good choice .
>Caves of Qud
Setting is fun, and you have many fun mechanics, like for example multiple limbs or items and character cloning.
>TOME4
Some will say that it is bloated, but it's fun, they are heavily leaning into various high fantasy tropes thanks to that, classes are not boring, for example your Rouge is more like batman than classic sneak attacker, sure you can sneak and backstab, but you can also throw daggers, use gadgets like smoke bombs or grappling hooks set traps, do acrobatics and so on.
>Cogmind
Bare in mind that I have not played it yet but it is on my list, you basically are a robot and you build yourself from various parts along the way.
There is also Cataclysm but it's more of a survival game.
Play transcendence by george moromisato. No one even fricking knows about it, meanwhile it has mod portal, an orchestral soundtrack and is essentially set in a classic sci-fi novel.
I had fun with it some 11 years ago. Never made it out alive with the orb because I like to risk more than is worth it and game punished me for it. I think best attempt was 7 runes and dying somewhere around Dungeon 5 or so.
Fights imo are mostly about maxing out core skills and trying to survive. I wouldn't call it tactical, but maybe my strategy of stair dancing to whittle down the enemy was ineffective. Once I got all resistances I needed the game was "attemptable", but I rarely got an "easy mode" situation. There are a lot of strong enemies that you can never completely outgear, if they brought friends it's gonna be tough.
I played this game so much, I get angry just thinking about it. Fricking bullshit game, lmao.
I didn't like when they removed fireball and LRD from the starting books, but I won't miss fulminant prism if it's out. Even if it is the last proper aoe option the starting books have.
>Nethack is still fun
How many ascensions? Nethack is only fun at first. There's little replay value, because all characters play more or less the same, and there's a shitload of tedious busywork.
However, I recommend Nethack as a first roguelike. Your first ascension is definitely fun. You'll better appreciate what DCSS gets right after you've gotten bored of Nethack.
it's at the bottom of some decision tree in design. >we want to place multiple encounters around the same map >we don't want too many of these encounters to bleed into eachother because that can lead to difficulty spikes, so we need the map to be spread out enough that this doesn't happen so often >...now we want the player to move a single tile at a time by pressing numpad directions >oops
Last good version is 15 or something
I'm new to the game, could you tell me why 15 is better by any chance anon?
It's the best one if you want to play a streamlined roguelike that DCSS was supposed to be. If you want to play a turn-based diablo3 which its devs are trying to achieve play latest version.
Is the game just pointlessly spending hours of time auto exploring, and one shotting 95% of mobs before an actual challenge comes along, or is almost every fight tactical in some way?
I played tales of mayeal and the whole game felt like diablo 3 on easy difficulty with the occasional boss, which was more of an item check than skill.
Blizzard games are marketed as "easy to learn, hard to master". DCSS is hard to learn, easy to master, and impossible not to fall asleep while playing it. People mostly abandoned it in favor of that zombie survival roguelike I didn't play.
Diablo 3, and 4 endgame is most definitely not hard to master.
>MiFi players
>in favor of that zombie survival roguelike I didn't play.
You mean cdda, which was also ruined by the devs extreme autistic obsession with 'muh realism'.
>You mean cdda, which was also ruined by the devs extreme autistic obsession with 'muh realism'.
That game could also really use full mouse support. There are way too many menus in that game to not have it.
DCSS lol, /rlg/ used to call it otab crawl: removed soup. I wonder what those dumbasses are up to now, if that pony-obsessed futa mare guy still plays around.
Either way, play an older version or play one of the hilarious bloated forks like Circus Animals or bloatcrawl. The base game is run by a team of actually autistic people who balance everything around tournament players and speedrunners and make incredibly heavy-handed changes for fringe cases they don't like.
is right, the game is hard to learn like most old fashioned roguelikes, but once you become familiar with the mechanics, you will most often die due to bored carelessness rather than actual mistakes or unfamiliarity.Mid to late game you will be auto exploring and mindlessly killing pretty 9/10 creatures that pop on your screen on almost every non-felid / octopode @. Of course this will lead to your brain turning off from sheer boredon, then suddenly you find yourself 2-turned at 30 hp because you stepped on a random shaft/an OOD unique wandered in/an elf sorceror banished you despite Will++++
Not to say that you can't avoid any of that via careful play but the game actively discourages careful play by drowning you in tarpit enemies until it's too late. The power scaling in the game is moronic with a single early game mountain and then occasional mid to lategame spikes, with everything else being at the bottom of the mariachi trench.
yea I dont like rougelikes like that.
Its why I like binding of Isaac even if its not a real roguelike its always engaging.
>suddenly you find yourself 2-turned at 30 hp because you stepped on a random shaft/an OOD unique wandered in/an elf sorceror banished you
Sounds like cdda
I had my year long run ended by a random npc sniping me with an m14 to the torso in the middle of the bumfrick nowhere woods despite me wearing full armor.
it's because health regenerates out of combat. it leads to a massive change in the pace of the game since fights that definitely won't take you to zero lose all meaning. but that has a lot of benefits too.
death by a thousand cuts is way less exciting than one insurmountable obstacle taking all 100% of your health.
and fights against basic enemies that aren't exciting CAN be ignored, as opposed to other games where the best option is to fight tooth and nail to preserve every last point of health you have even against the weakest and most boring of enemies
and balancing of any sort with so many numbers involved is just completely impossible even if the people working on the game weren't a loser cabal of idiots
The core skill of DCSS is learning which fights you have to take seriously. The key to getting good is understanding that it's more of them than you first though.
>The power scaling in the game is moronic with a single early game mountain and then occasional mid to lategame spikes, with everything else being at the bottom of the mariachi trench.
The new hells are actually fun and tomb is always a challenge. Agree with the rest.
First lair branch and zot are noticeable spikes too.
If you suck (^:
The last good version of DCSS was around when they removed food, the devs just can't help themselves but add the lamest spells and remove all the good ones
I quit when they removed my sludge elf homies.
Didn't they add a bunch of furry/anthro races or am I thinking of something else?
>erm the current version of the game sucks
good thing i can play any version of the game I want in my browser?
Seems like every time you blink some feature is removed. I miss deep dwarves
Still the best roguelike, and every version is an improvement. Everybody praising old version is just upset that their favorite exploit was removed and now they need actual skill.
more like my favorite exploit was removed so now i need to use the loser dev's pet exploit
is this roguelike a slog to play or actually engaging?
I dont want to fall asleep one shotting 100s of mobs for hours on end, only to get fricked by a boss.
Even if you play something braindead like a Minotaur Fighter and just autoexplore+autoattack you'll soon run into something that requires thought to survive. Combat variance is fairly high so you have to pay attention and use consumables when things go bad. The game is good about not wasting your time.
even then MiFi is going to breeze through the first 10 levels barring the occasional grindr or double orc priest encounter
but after that I think the game levels out. you aren't going to be tabbing through D12 or Lair 6 or Swamp/Spider/Shoals/Snake
Depends, what you're looking for ?
DCSS was streamlined over the years, to fit classic roguelike tropes, it results in fairly challenging and fair gameplay, yes it is relatively easy to die, but you die because you messed up. There is also no way to cheese or completely brake the game. However you can find roguelikes with more novel ideas, more imaginative settings and so on. DCSS is your classic of the genre. If you're starting with roguelikes it's a good choice .
> However you can find roguelikes with more novel ideas, more imaginative settings and so on
could you provide some examples by any chance?
>Caves of Qud
Setting is fun, and you have many fun mechanics, like for example multiple limbs or items and character cloning.
>TOME4
Some will say that it is bloated, but it's fun, they are heavily leaning into various high fantasy tropes thanks to that, classes are not boring, for example your Rouge is more like batman than classic sneak attacker, sure you can sneak and backstab, but you can also throw daggers, use gadgets like smoke bombs or grappling hooks set traps, do acrobatics and so on.
>Cogmind
Bare in mind that I have not played it yet but it is on my list, you basically are a robot and you build yourself from various parts along the way.
There is also Cataclysm but it's more of a survival game.
Play transcendence by george moromisato. No one even fricking knows about it, meanwhile it has mod portal, an orchestral soundtrack and is essentially set in a classic sci-fi novel.
it's a rougelite though
I had fun with it some 11 years ago. Never made it out alive with the orb because I like to risk more than is worth it and game punished me for it. I think best attempt was 7 runes and dying somewhere around Dungeon 5 or so.
Fights imo are mostly about maxing out core skills and trying to survive. I wouldn't call it tactical, but maybe my strategy of stair dancing to whittle down the enemy was ineffective. Once I got all resistances I needed the game was "attemptable", but I rarely got an "easy mode" situation. There are a lot of strong enemies that you can never completely outgear, if they brought friends it's gonna be tough.
I played this game so much, I get angry just thinking about it. Fricking bullshit game, lmao.
>autistically placing fulminant prisms for 20+ hours of gameplay
Hopefully they will be removed soon.
Everything that is not pressing tab as your mifi shall be removed
I didn't like when they removed fireball and LRD from the starting books, but I won't miss fulminant prism if it's out. Even if it is the last proper aoe option the starting books have.
>last proper aoe option the starting books have
Mystic Blast is the best starting book AoE.
prism is annoying as a staple spell but would be good as an item
I played recently not having touched it for years and it somehow seemed to have less content. Nethack is still fun so I just play that.
>Nethack is still fun
How many ascensions? Nethack is only fun at first. There's little replay value, because all characters play more or less the same, and there's a shitload of tedious busywork.
However, I recommend Nethack as a first roguelike. Your first ascension is definitely fun. You'll better appreciate what DCSS gets right after you've gotten bored of Nethack.
I only find roguelikes fun to play when my internet goes out.
Am I weird?
All games are fun to play once you have no internet connection.
I don't like roguelikes balanced around auto exploring. I think it tends to encourage bad game design and make the moment to moment dull.
Play a Meteoran.
it's at the bottom of some decision tree in design.
>we want to place multiple encounters around the same map
>we don't want too many of these encounters to bleed into eachother because that can lead to difficulty spikes, so we need the map to be spread out enough that this doesn't happen so often
>...now we want the player to move a single tile at a time by pressing numpad directions
>oops
The only game which is actively being developed backwards
>Our game has too much content
>Let's remove half of it
It's makes nuGanker mad so it's obviously good.