New version \o/

Dungeon Mercenary » Devlog
6 years ago by smelc3 (@smelc3)
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After 10 months of development, I'm very happy to announce the new version of Dungeon Mercenary, bringing more interesting monsters (welcome bounty huntress, death mage, mother of spiders, cerberus, etc.!), more interesting rooms, a better balance, and better dungeons. I'd be happy to see the first player reaching the win screen, so please post it if you do, coz the game is quite hard now! Happy rogueliking #indiedev #gamedev #roguelike #dungeonmercenary Check out the game's webpage for the full changelog.

Files

dm.zip Play in browser
Apr 30, 2018
dm-18-04-30-windows64.zip 50 MB
Apr 30, 2018
dm-18-04-30-windows32.zip 57 MB
Apr 30, 2018
dm-18-04-30-mac.zip 48 MB
Apr 30, 2018
dm-18-04-30.jar 12 MB
Apr 30, 2018

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Dungeon Mercenary

Modern ASCII roguelike - Can your mercenary beat the dungeon ?

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ulgrash6 years ago (1 edit)

i finished :)

an important observation:

baby blue dragons are stupid overpowered. Seriously, twice, i was full health with protection spell, plate armor, ring of thougness and had used several life potions, there were no enemies on the screen, the dragon breathed lightning and i died

when he is on screen, it's even worse. So many instant deaths

image:

https://ibb.co/dsYFgo


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smelc36 years ago

Hehe congrats! I'll check the blue baby dragons. Lighting has a wide range of damage (I mean it can do very little damage on a bad roll and a lot of damage on a good roll), you've suffered for sure good rolls. Nevertheless you're right, I should tune them down. Impressive kill list by the way :-) What build did you use ? Mostly spells ? Mostly melee ?

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ulgrash6 years ago

killed with sword but the spells are extremely important

tips/important things:

1. the most important thing is: heal spell

i have no idea whatsover how to win the game without it

if u have it, u can just kill a monster, heal youself to max health (pass time with z so u can cast as many times as u want)

2. a sword is extremely useful.

3. a good trick is raise dead + protection. u can literally double their health (and again, same trick as heal. z so u can protect all of them)

talking about protection, it is either bugged or the description is wrong. the description says the shield is a fixed amount (7) but every time u cast it, the shield is different (similar to lightning)

the problem with summons is u can't control them

4. paralisys spell was very useful up to a certain depth. but for some reason, on late game, the monsters were kinda resistant to it (bug?)

mine was lvl 3 (should paralyze for 4 turns) but some mosnters were paralyzed for only 1 turn (they were not the mosnter's that are immune to it like undead and such. i'm talking about dragons and trolls)

5. teleport spell mostly for teleporting away the enemy. sometimes, in extreme urgencies, teleport yourself. but u need luck for that

6. patiance. go up a few depths to get stuff u left behind (like potions and forges). before i went to depth 14 i went all the way back to 1 to get everything

7. save the powerful consumables (dynamite) for depths 13 and 14. 

 i forgot the name of the blue potion... against magic creatures... it's very difficult to defeat lich without it

8. explore all depths!!! u NEED to find the good stuff to be able to beat deaths 13 and 14

9. don't let your allies die! once again, heal spell is very useful

10. i'm pretty sure ranged spells would be awsome, but i was unlucky and didn't get any

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smelc36 years ago

Looks like you understood the game very well :-) Kudos to you.

Indeed health is the most valuable resource, that is why the health spell is vital.

I think your run is typical of how one should win the game (another kinda easy way to do is to use a vampirism weapon) and that why I think I should make waiting less powerful, and also going back to earlier depths should be made impossible or difficult; otherwise it's too easy to grasp early rewards while being in the last depths. To make waiting less powerful, I could spawn monsters when you wait too much; or I could tie spell rejuvenation to monster-killing instead of time-passing. Or I could turn spells into consumables, once you've used a spell once or more; it disappears. Or I could make the depths not connected, i.e. like different missions instead of a full dungeon. What do you think ?

Regarding paralysis, could it be possible that you were slowed down while it seems paralysis wasn't lasting enough ? If you're paralysed, you do not witness some of the monsters' turns.

Regarding protection, I don't think there's a bug; but because protection stacks; every-time you cast it, your total health increases which means the next casting will make the orange bar grow a bit less.

On a final note, I'm glad you used quite a few different items and spells to do your winning run. This shows that many items have a distinct purpose :-)

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ulgrash6 years ago

1. i believe going back to earlier depths should stay the way it is. because it motivates to explore the entire level and kill all monsters so that u can go back whenever u want

2. waiting is definitily powerful

   2.1. tie spell rejuvenation to monster-killing is a bad idea. it makes certain builds impossible (sneak around monsters build)

   2.2. if spells are consumables, then it's impossible to be a mage.

   2.3. spawning monsters when too much time passes might be a good idea (however, do that only for time u pass with z, not the normal turns)

3. different missions might be a good idea (this would change the entire game). however i believe each mission could still have more than 1 depth

something like, when u finish a mission, u go back to the village/city. there, u can choose a mission (they would have different rewards and difficulties

perhaps add a shop at the village?

4. i'm pretty sure protection is bugged

i had 3 skeletons. if i cast protection once in each of them, they will definitely have different amounts of shield

when a skeleton (or me) had received a little amount of shield, i would cast it again on them. sometimes it would stay the same, sometimes it would increase

---------------

I made several posts yesterday.

u replied most of them. except 1

this 1 is the most important to me

it's in the wall tiles topic i think

i requested u upload the latest playable version (and keep the old one as well so that people can choose which one they want). and i know the animations are not ready, but i prefer having graphics and no animations than no graphics at all

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smelc36 years ago

1. OK I'm not sure what to do on this topic

2.1 Yes after an evening of thinking about this topic, I think the best solution is to add a mana bar and mana potions. The full bar would allow to cast 3~4 spells, the potion would refill the bar, and I could had mana rings that make the bar larger (say +1 spell per ring level). I think spells being overpowered is the biggest issue of the game right now, so I should do something about it for the next version.

2.3 I guess I would count 'z' turns as well as turns where you walk on cells already seen before (or something like that), so that you can't trick the game into not spawning monsters by walking around instead of waiting.

3. Yes I intend to do a different game with the pixels backend where there would be missions, and some missions would still have more than one depth; exactly as you suggest. But I need more art for that :-) I only have the terrain, items and monsters so far (no village, no tavern inside, nothing else).

4. OK I will look into it.

-----

Sorry I must have missed your post. I'm sorry but I can't upload the graphics version yet. As I said, I don't have the sprites for all monsters, so many late depths monsters would look the same and I believe it makes the game unplayable.

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