That's the thing, I used to have preperation as a talent, now I don't anymore and didn't realise it until I started missing it, so I did not know what happened that caused it to disappear... . I also achieved them, and did not buy any... .
Possible bug report: It seemed like kinetic charge was not working for the necromancer. It was late last night so maybe I was missing something, but I never saw my mana go up after using it. Also I don't remember other details on my deck that might have been relevant, but I think it's worth looking into. Feature request: Display the monster level on their portrait on the map. I often have to move around to double check, which is annoying. Got my first win with necromancer on run 72 and I am hungry for more!
Another feature request due to my stupidity: I paid gold for an upgrade at the forge, then noticed the close window X top right and closed the window, thinking I'd get a refund (in my defense, this works when you choose upgrade as a talent). No such luck here, my gold was gone. It is definitely not necessary but maybe we can have a warning or a refund or just get rid of the close window button.
The forge doesn't charge you until you actually upgrade the card. No gold is deducted when you just go to look at your deck.
Now I feel even more stupid... Btw I think someone already asked for it, can we get more statistics like how many runs per class, how many successful runs per class etc? And maybe show the score of the last run without having to add it by yourself?
Thx for the quick reply. I think my bug is related to the fact that this is a long fight. I managed to "pass" it by dying quicker. LOL So it must be related to the fact that it is a long fight. It happened to me in "normal" fights as well. The common nominator: "Long Fight". Cheers.
Regarding final boss, can you just get rid of the time? I think it's plain unfair when even clicking on play all cards, you still don't have enough time to play all cards... . Defeats all sorts of intents and purposes... . Also, what should I do regarding the missing talent?
I think I understand what's causing the missing talents and it'll be fixed by next build. Still working on the memory. I can now fight the final boss for 10 minutes on an iphone 4 without crashing, so it's getting better, but not there yet. As for the timer on the final boss, I'd recommend not hitting play all even though it seems like it should be faster. Use the time you have to play your high priority cards, rather than trying to cycle through your deck and play everything. Of course, some decks will have an easier time with this than others. I actually kind of like it since it makes you play completely differently than all the others and the final boss is really intended to be a chaotic fight that's much more random than normal ones. Thanks for all the reports - it's really helping me figure out the memory issues!
I am running an IPOD touch (3rd gen) with IOS 5.X. Have lots of crashing on bosses and normal encounters. Running a professor and can't copy a boss's card with ability. There might be a memory problem. I had a thief game where Genie kept using the wish card and I kept giving him 1+ card. It crashed when it came to my turn. Also had the professor use pounce and drawing cards which leads to a crash. I love this game, but I am too poor to upgrade the touch. Will report more problems, but most likely it is due to hardware on my side. Great game and keep up the great work. =D
It so happened that all 3 times I go against him with time, I was playing with a huge deck that is crucial for most cards to be played in the right order, and then the rest spammed (eg. like the card that gives out a weaken for every attack card). It just bums me out that I felt that it was a great deck, but it could not be tested at all to it's fullest potential, mostly just 50%... . Also, it's not as simple as playing your high priority cards, when you have to wait for 3-4s for all your equipment to work, and then 1-2s more for it to work the first time with your cards, and cards that give you more cards such as circle or the hourglass card. On another matter, there are some levels where I started out as a lvl2 vs lv4 creeps (v unlikely to kill them) because they are blocking the chokepoints. And there was one time in lv1 where a 100% physical immune (wisp or something) stood at the lone chokepoint and there was no treasure or shop that sold any elements. It didn't matter to me, a quick death and restart solved the problem XD but just a feedback.
I also hate the stupid timer -- especially when it's combined with the one where you have to give him a gift or "choose your poison." In those cases, it flusters me so much I often just ignore the timer, let it count to zero, without playing anything, and then think about how to sequence my next turn + what poison to choose next so that at least my next turn can be somewhat effective. I'm not sure if it's much worse than decrees though... "don't play action cards." Uh, ok :[. I think he's designed to only give you like 2 (or maybe 3) "real turns" unless you get a lucky spawn. You kind of need a way to either do insane burst (ie. lightning wizard + overload), or be effective without playing very many cards -- Darting Daggers, poison/penance, Coup de Grace, Mental Fortress, Fire Shape. Also, I think there are hints to what his abilities are in the text when you go down a floor -- someone should collect/decipher those and put them into the wiki. There are some things that can hose HIM pretty hard too. Periapt of Protection essentially stops decrees from working (and poison too). Same goes for other invulnerability things, but Periapt is permanent... All your damage is piercing talent makes resistant useless. Destroy all equipment card and deal 5 per makes his equipment thing worthless. Altar to Jeremiad can also be insane against various incarnations... So if we knew beforehand what he was, we could somewhat prepare. Also, if you click on him, you can see what his abilities are before you go in, but I always forget because I'm too excited to get my ass handed to me.
Honestly, I don't think this is fun game design. In order for the game not to feel slightly unfair, I think it would be better to minimise the randomness by not having bosses where certain builds simply can't win. Its very frustrating to reach floor 3 at the end of a 15-30 minute long game and then die to an enemy that you couldn't possibly have defeated, even though you never played badly. Skill should trump randomness imo, otherwise the game will eventually get boring since it becomes luck. The same applies to several other bosses, where certain builds basically cannot win (the Hydra and the Hand of Glory are the obvious ones, although the Phoenix is up there too.). The other major critique I'd make of the game (and overall I love it) is that as far as I can tell, the only viable way to survive on floor 3 is to use a very healing/anti-damage build that hides behind shields and does consistent damage over time. The problem is that this build isn't very fun to play, since it leads to 10+ minute long fights where you just whittle the enemy down gradually. My worst experience of this was when I was playing a Monk and I fought a Hydra that spawned with 90 health. Since the Hydra regenerates all its health each turn, that means I had to deal 90 damage in a single turn to win. 90% of builds would not have been able to win this fight (see above complaint), however I was able to win by just constantly healing and using the single Fire Shape card in my deck (which makes the enemy take 2 damage every time they play a card). By cycling through my deck 15 times and constantly recasting Fire Shape, I managed to get this up to 30 damage per card played, after which the Hydra killed itself and I won. The whole process took over 10 minutes during which I was never in danger of dying, and it wasn't remotely fun. So basically I think this game is amazing (perhaps GOTY) but there are some balance issues that imo could really be improved, mainly to make non-healing heavy builds viable, and to reduce the "hey I've just wasted 20 minutes since I died to some random boss that I couldn't possibly have defeated with my build, despite having not made any obvious bad decisions or bad play" factor. edit: some other random constructive criticism on things that I think could be improved: 1) More variety of talent choices for floor 1 (its basically just health vs mana, although flee is a possibility). For the vast majority of builds taking health is a no-brainer. Moving some other talents to Floor 1 would be nice so there is a meaningful choice to make (e.g. +1 action, polymorph, copy, upgrade) 2) The Upgrade talent should upgrade 2 or 3 cards, its very underpowered at the moment. 3) More opportunities for forgetting. The monk imo seems the strongest class by quite a distance due to this (despite his terrible starting cards), it would be nice if every floor had both a guaranteed forgetting altar and a guaranteed upgrade forge 4) More healing on floors 2/3 would be nice, its frustrating to win a hard fight but be so damaged that you have no realistic chance of winning the next one (which is one of the reasons why healing-heavy builds are so strong). Doubling the amount of healing that packs give might be reasonable, although I realise there's a risk of making it too easy. 5) Maybe provide descriptions for what the altars do before the user clicks on them, some of them are game changing and now I don't really bother praying ever, due to the potential bad consequences 6) It would be nice to provide a description of the enemies when you clicked on them, rather than having to look them up in the Bestiary. edit2: to provide context, I have not won the game yet, so its possible some of the issues above may just be due to me sucking.
Add my name to timer hate. It's cruel and pointless and totally ruins some builds. Even if we are supposed to figure out what the crazy jibber jabber at game open means and build around that, it still screws builds that rely heavily on selected abilities because of the need to accurately confirm use on tiny buttons. That's boss design against play design. Your ability to accurately tap under stress is not what I go to this kind of game for. I've won DC:SS and Tome 4 on Nightmare. I don't mind learning how to win with a plat style I like. I do mind when the play style I like and appears supported by the game can't actually win.
I have the exact same bug with the exact same talents. I am no longer able to pick the talents. Given than preparation was my favorite talent, this ruins the game for me.
I think the hydra and phoenix is fine, creeps like that kinda forces you to change your deck a little etc. It just so happened that your build is based off lower damage. I'm not sure if this is necessary, nor would I agree that the monk is the strongest. I've recently been discovering many decks that do not need much forgetting at all, and they work equally as great as a small, tight deck. I don't think there needs to be more health, but I do think there should be a certain bare minimum of at least an oasis or something: there were many times I was forced to go through 2-3 health packs in a row but do not need them because they were in the way in a single choke point. The altars do tell you what they do, as long as you've already tried them before.
Re final boss: Note that I'm not talking about the floor 3 boss. The floor 3 bosses are all intended to be very killable. The final boss is meant to challenge your deck in weird ways and isn't meant to be killed; he works on a completely different axis. There are builds that don't work very well for different final boss configurations; that's why there are hints to his abilities on the way. I'll think about the timer, but it's low priority right now relative to crashing, especially since I enjoy playing against the timer boss because it's totally different and very frantic. It's possible that there's another solution here that's more satisfying and also does the things I like about the timer; I'll think about it a bit. Changes here are more likely not in 1.06, but for the update after if I decide to make a change. Re altars showing what they do: They do. Re healing/defensive/forgetting decks: There are other options. Re hydra vs monk: I'm making pierce-modified fire/poison damage work on the hydra. This is already in the current test version, so will be live in the next update. Re healing in general: There's a tough balance here. I'd rather not spawn a healing fountain on every floor, but it's possible the right number of health packs to spawn on non-healing fountain floors should be slightly higher. I'm not going to change anything for the next update, but it's on my list for the future. Re wisp on floor 1: Was that recent? I thought I moved all physical immune/resistant monsters off floor 1 in 1.05 for basically this reason. If it was after 1.05, let me know and I'll look into it. Re floor 1 talents: I take health, flee, and upgrade pretty regularly on base classes and I think mana is a reasonable option as well. I usually don't use the unlockable ones since I tend to test on fresh accounts, but of them I know Sixth Sense, Heal, and Preparation see a lot of use. Crumble, teleport, and smash are much more niche, but I've used them in particular situations. Re no preparation bug: Yeah. It's a thing. I have a fix for the next update, but there isn't really a work around. Sorry - I wish I could tell you something helpful here, but the best I can do is apologize. Re next update timeline: I've isolated a memory leak in combat. I need to figure out a clean fix for it, then work on reducing texture memory in general to move away from the threshold for older devices (which they're hitting without the leak, though it's actually pretty close). It'll take me a few more days, then probably a week of testing and fixing, then release. I know that's kind of a long way off (and it might be longer depending on how things go), but it's better to do it right than to do it quickly.
Played the heck out of this the past week, and just cleared all the achievements! (other than buying a few of the class-hurting-theend-boss and buying two of the special ones I didn't 'earn' the hard way). Enjoyed it enough that I registered an account on these forums just to share my thoughts. The 2 special achievements I didn't manage the hard way: Pure (Begin a combat with no cards in your deck): Yeah, I'm sure it could be done with a monk, but a bit more hoping for luck on cathedral (or whatever its called) spawns on top of everything working right. Merciful (Defeat a Boss without killing any monsters on that floor): Interesting one to try, but just requires so many things to go right for it to work. Achievement that I really liked going for: Get 50 base mana. Pretty much need the necromancer for this, but having so much base mana made for an interesting spell-oriented deck that didn't need so many mana cards. Also was interesting trying to successfully cast soul siphon on just about every monster. I used Divine Inspritation and copies of it (when I got bonus talents) so that I could get it when needed. Don't make copies of soul siphon though, because its a worthless card except for finishing the fight. When the enemy is not at 1-5hp, Divine Inspiration can be used to get whatever card you need to get him down to that range. Most creative classes: Professor and the Dragon. They just play so completely different than the rest of the characters, they were both very creative and inspired creations.. Not just different cards, but changing the whole way the game is played. Fun, and not just because they're powerful. Bug that's not worth trying to take advantage of: Linda's Lemonade. If you need 3 or less exp to level up, and you buy multiple xps at once, you'll level up with every purchase of three xp. For example, if you're at 7xp and need 10, and go into Lindas Lemonade, and buy the 3xp thing 3 times (for free, 5gp, and 20gp), you'll go up three levels. However, I dont see this as something that needs to be fixed, because taking advantage of it puts you at a severe disadvantage on floor 3, as you'll be level 10 by the time you enter it, and you will have to make it through the whole 3rd level without any free heals for levelling up... Once I found that out, I stopped abusing it. Easiest way for a non-professor to kill the end boss (but you won't get the achievement): If he's the type that demands gifts, give him the "Last Chance" card, which gives him an extra turn, and if he doesn't kill you, he dies. You *do* have to survive an extra turn, which isn't a given against him, and you won't get achievement credit, because even though you killed him, you didn't bring him to zero hp. Easiest legit way to kill the end boss: If his powers work out so that you have a decent number of turns against him, use lots of poison that you keep doubling with poison clouds (combined with cards like mana swell that you get to have poison cloud cast twice in a row), allowed me to get his poison rating over 1000 quickly (killed him that way even when he was resistant to poison). You'll want to use the 'copy card' talent on poison cloud, or perhaps mana cards, or perhaps things like accelerate that get you through you deck quicker so you cast it more often. Most enjoyable way to usually have a tiny chance at killing the end boss and a pretty good chance at getting him to 850 health or less: Get a deck of wonder in floor 2, duplicate with both extra talents you get for getting to the 3rd floor and reaching character level 10 (and if you're lucky, yet again with the mushroom quest)... And get enough equipment slots to have at least 3 decks of wonder equipped at the start of the fight. Depending on your mana level, conduit may be recommended for being able to cast the randomly summoned spell cards. Its *not* the most effective way to try to kill the end boss (too random for that usually), but it almost always gives hope, and the 3 extra cards are a major help with certain versions of the end boss (particular card decay and gift-requesting). Might be a bit too random for some people, but I like it. Theres no one best way to go try to kill him of course, because he plays so different depending on which set of powers he has. At first thought, you'd think having a finely tuned deck with all excess cards removed through piety is needed, but even that optimized a deck can quickly have problems against the gift-requesting boss (unless its so honed that you only need 4 turns to win, which I really only managed wih my poison deck). So.... how about a sequel?
Will the next update retroactively fix my game? Since you know how the bug works, if I start over will it happen again? What causes it?
