Your scores will be higher on Hard, and like the others said, you might have to look at some of the other combo sets. My high on Hard was a Gold build (Treasure Chamber, Charge, Boost Gold, Dazzle), 1205 turns, 75,983 score; second high was a Shield build (Boost Armour, Scavenge, Dazzle, Teleport), 1155 turns, 68,085 score. Third highest was also shields at 913/65,822 with Slash (in 4th position, with -1 cooldown on that spot) instead of teleport.
I play almost exclusively on hard as normal takes a lot longer and is less exciting to me and harder can get very frustrating since you really need a perfect start or you're going to be in some trouble. Regarding your (Indy that is) questions on hi scores, I agree with Psac above that the two best combos known so far are the gold build and the shield build. There are some interesting builds based on the classes (like the halfing masochism build) but I haven't gotten AS high scores on those. My personal best was on the shield build with slash in the 4th slot and it was over 100k. I don't remember the exact number but whatever. I play a lot on the train where I don't get wifi so most of my scores aren't on the leaderboards (not that I care about them anyway) I will say I almost always take slash in the fourth slot over teleport though. Slash will continuously give you points (as you can use it almost every turn) and by the time you want to use teleport it's not going to buy you tooooo many more turns. I'd rather continuously get points than survive an extra 50 or so turns. Slash is a very powerful skill. There's been plenty of times it's saved my bacon just by collecting health potions for me too... Regarding your questions on specials... Are you playing with the latest version? Because I recall those issues (flame guy not hurting others and hurler guy throwing guys immediately) but I thought they were addressed in updates. Maybe not though... I just thought they were...
what makes basically all other skills kind of useless and the game a bit boring, especially with lame unlock and level up systems.
If all you care about is high scores then I'd have to agree. There's only two good options and it can get repetitive. If you just enjoy the game though I think all the options are great and can lead to some very varied game play. For example, doing builds to last as many turns as possible is a lot of fun (elf w/ poison and skills like teleport etc) and some builds are just completely different (like the halfing masochism one I said above). As for the level up/unlock stuff... it's never bothered me. I just kept playing the game as i was before and got new stuff unlocked slowly over time. I enjoyed the game before the classes after all so this just added more options for me the more I played. I think some people are getting to hung up on the unlocks to be honest. If you just play normally you'll get them all eventually and the game was already excellent without them. That said I do think some option to have them all unlocked for you would be smart (like a $5 IAP or something)
I agree about Harder, but Normal doesn't really take much longer than Hard, it just feels that way at the start. You can't actually survive that much longer, maybe 1400 turns instead of 1200, something like that. That said, I agree that Hard feels like the most interesting balance.
The thing is, from my point of view, they would add more variety, but the unlocks don't come fast enough to get past the version of the game I'm pretty much bored with. So I would have to play several hours of the "now boring" game to have a chance to try out some of the new stuff. Not worth it. It would probably be different if I'd started with the new version of the game, by the time I exhausted the basic content I would have unlocked some new stuff.
That makes a lot of sense. Thankfully I was still having fun seeing the meatshield in the game at the time the classes rolled out so I was able to unlock all the classes before getting bored. At that point I started experimenting with the classes themselves and had most of the stuff unlocked before I got bored again. Hopefully fireflame comes back soon and can breathe some fresh air into this game. It definitely was one of my favs for a while and I'd love to have a reason to pick it back up again!
I still play every once and a while but it seems to me most people have faded on the game and are just waiting for fireflame to come back.
Definitely something I have (and will) come back to on occasion, but it hasn't been my 100% play nothing else game as it once was. I would probably have to list it as my personal favorite of the year, though. Even though it was released at the end of 2010, in terms of the game I spent the most time on (and enjoyed the most) in 2011 so far, this was it, with Aralon a second.
Unlocks I just got this game the other day and love it. However, I've got one major issue that hopefully some experts of the game can fill me in. It's hard to search through 200+ pages of information. Are the treasure drops extremely random and rare? It seems almost impossible to find unlocks. I have probably played about 10-15 games, each one lasting 10-15 minutes I would guess. I kill several special monsters each time, and have only unlocked three classes and no level upgrades for those classes. I have been playing on every difficulty other than easy, but it just seems slow. Am I missing something? I need some type of incentive to keep playing, and if it takes forever to level up and unlock the classes it just seems like a lot of work.
From recollection of what the Dev said a while back, it's not exactly random, but percentage based on a certain number of boss kills, including Big Game Hunter. No numbers were given, but it might be like at 15 bosses since last unlock, 10% chance for new one, at 25 bosses 75%, etc. There is a cap of 3 unlocks per game, so if you have a long game, sometimes you'll find the first boss of the next game gives you the unlock. The other thing I would say is you mentioned most of your games in the 10-15 minute range. On Normal or Hard, once you have a good strategy, you should get into the groove of "breaking out" every 2-4 games into something that will last you HOURS. Good luck and enjoy!
Which, of course, suggests you're looking at HUNDREDS OF HOURS just to unlock the game so you can play with all the content. Which is why this whole approach has been a real turnoff for me.
Leveling up all the classes does indeed take a serious time investment but just unlocking the classes themselves is not too bad. I did it in probably 4 or 5 games (granted each lasting 1-2 hours). The trick really is getting good enough to have a sustainable long game. Specials show up very frequently if you survive long enough and then the unlocks come fast. So my suggestion is stick to adventurer first both to learn the ropes and to unlock classes (because as adventure EVERY trophy unlocks something since he doesn't level up) and then you can play with the class you like to unlock it further. While I don't think it's the perfect system I do think it was well thought out. Veteran players would be able to survive longer so unlocks would come faster... and newer players will only just be starting out and will unlock them as they naturally progress through the game. I know when I first started playing this game it absorbed weeks of my life as I kept trying to get further or last longer or try out new abilities. I would have played regardless of unlocks. Of course it certainly helped that fireflame was actively updating the game too to keep me coming back for more. Heck seeing the meat shield boss added to the game kept me entertained for weeks. The simplest solution in my opinion would be to do a small IAP to unlock everything immediately for those who don't want to wait. Keep it cheap and then you're good to go. Alternatively I'd suggest changing the scale for when unlocks drop. Make it so it's always possible but the more specials you kill the more likely it becomes. I'd envision something like this... Under 5 specials killed (since last unlock) = 1% chance a trophy drops 5-10 specials killed 5% chance 10-15 specials killed 10% chance 15-20 specials killed 15% chance 20-25 specials killed 25% chance 25-30 specials killed 35% chance 30-35 specials killed 40% chance greater than 35 specials killed 50% chance Doing some real fast math this correlates to roughly 95% chance you won't unlock something in first 5 specials 74% chance you won't unlock something in the first 10 specials 44% chance you won't unlock something in first 15 specials 20% chance you won't unlock something in the first 20 specials 4.5% chance you won't unlock something in the first 25 specials 0.5% chance you won't unlock something in the first 30 specials 0.04% chance you won't unlock something in first 35 specials I'd take this one step further and suggest (1) scale for unlocking classes and a separate scale for leveling up classes. So you have the game do two checks each time a special is killed. If either one works a trophy is dropped... if both are triggered at the same time then I'd default to unlocking a class as most people will prefer that and it will help players have more styles to try. Just my two cents for whenever fireflame returns (and yes I like math if you can't tell) EDIT: In my suggestion above (for the two unlocking scale) I'd say be generous on the scale for unlocking classes so you unlock classes fast. The second scale for levelling classes could be harder so you do that slower (or heck you could have it so with each level it's harder to level up again) Another idea I like is trophies to unlock the classes... but you level up the classes based on how far you get in the dungeon. It'd give some real incentive for getting down there! Obviously you'd have to make it so you need to go further on easier difficulties... but you get my drift
