This game came out 15 months ago, and we are still having interesting advanced strategy discussions. I am continually amazed by how simple this game appears to be as compared how deep it actually is. One again I would like to say Kudos to the developer. Well done, sir. One of the top games on the app store, if not one of the top computer games I have ever played.
I tried it, but it's just too slow for me. I need to play for hours doing something I already did to death, just in order to get the ability to do something else at a suboptimal level where I can spend hours more trying to level it up. Some people have the grind mentality, I can do it sometimes in other games, but in this particular case I think it's just not for me. I started feeling incredibly bored and frustrated and that's when I felt it was time to do something else. I think the quicker you are at "catching on" and taking advantage of new content, the more frustrated you will get at how slowly it rolls out. I keep hoping that Fireflame will reappear and add the $9.99 unlock-everything IAP. Or $99. Or $999. The other thing I've considered is getting someone who's unlocked all of the content to just clone their file for me.
Instead of waiting for DR2 - Hah, I jumped a little on the inside at the thought of this. Every time I see this thread pop back up I get psyched. I would love to see a sequel or more content somehow and would happily pay a premium price for it in a heartbeat. It was cool someone posted something from fireflame a few weeks ago, I wonder what the dev has going on (I know there was just a recent Android release). I unlocked the classes and have been leveling them up trying out random strategies and random assortments of skills. No super high scores, but a new way to mix it up, nonetheless. I believe the only way to get the stupid high scores in this game is accomplished by getting each of the desired skills absurdly early in the game.
i would gladly pay a full, premium price for a HD [non-IAP ridden] update with new graphics/effects, or an entirely new version of DR if that's what's in the mix. any news/updates on either of these possibilities would be pretty awesome. this is one of the few threads i have subscribed to, and every time i see it bumped i have that twinge of giddy hope that something great is about to happen. if you're out there fireflame, know that you've done great work, and it's highly appreciated.
Text is so small...... Anywho (a late) welcome to TA, I'll be your tours man, if you feel the need for any assistance, please, don't hesitate to ask. Now since this is a 3 hour tour, I would highly suggest eating and using the bathroom before climbing aboard, as there won't be any stops unless I need them (which is not that frequent to be honest). Be prepared to see lots of exotic things, such as: trolls, spammers, bumpers, and people who only post to increase their post count. If you didn't already pay the ticket lady, I'll go ahead and collect your fee. Hope you brought your camera, cause we're off!
This is clearly the best combo for high scores (gold combo with charge), if you get everything you need at the beginning of the game... I just tried it yesterday, and I made a high score (on normal difficulty) of 144,260 (which I believe is the highest I heard around here)... I died on turn 1132 because of a silly mistake (I used the golden torch scroll on the last upgrade after the gold combo, and got a lot of skulls. Even then I could clean the remaining coins, kill most of the skulls but the next incoming skulls were too strong and bad positioned (I had only 900 HP from about 2500), so I could not recover from this misktake. Even on turn 1132 I was feeling very comfortable on leaving some skulls (even special ones) to kill later, so I think I could easily reach turn 1200, and a high score of about 160k... My weapon damage was near 450... I played as a Sauren Warrior with charge, double gold, treasury and treasure chamber (as the fourth skill with -1 colldown perk). I also used the arrow and blue mana perks, since thy are usefull very often.
So I decided to email Alex (the dev) to ask and see what the future of Dungeon Raid is. Updates, sequel, IAP, etc. Well I got a reply:
Thanks for posting the email, andsoitgoes. Any additional content to the game is fine by me. While admittedly I don't care for a universal update (not saying it isn't necessary, I just don't own an iPad), just getting more attention to the game is great. I do like seeing that he said free updates. Mostly because updates is plural.
Excellent news! So I apologize for the length of this post in advance… but it’s been a long time coming. I’ve compiled a list of all the little tweaks/suggestions I thought of since Fireflame last logged in here. Hopefully fireflame sees this at some point but here are my thoughts. Fireflame has always been really good about picking which ideas to use and not to use afterall! Balance Tweaks: * Make it so haste doesn’t create a chain unit but lets you just chain two different types of units for one turn. It feels very underpowered as is. Another option that I like more is make chains similar to arrows in that a perk can make them randomly drop (instead of shields) and then have haste be a stronger version (much like volley is a stronger arrow). * Nerf the two strongest strategies to help even the playing field for competitive builds. The two best builds are boost shield and boost gold. Here’s my thoughts on both… For gold combo… Remove boost gold (this makes treasure chamber less ridiculous) and replace it with a different gold boosting ability. That way each of the 3 paths (gold,XP, and shields) have different feeling strategies/abilities. For example… I’d suggest an ability called alchemy or midas touch that turns all the swords and shield into gold coins. Then you still have a powerful combo with treasure chamber, treasure, and it… but it’s not all doubled and is still risky since you are clearing large chunks of the board. You could also keep boost gold and instead get rid of treasure (that way you lose the crazy interaction with it and treasure chamber while boosted with 2x gold) but I prefer ditching boost gold since it will help each of the 3 paths mentioned above feel different (as boost gold is similar to boost armor). For the shield combo I think you just need to increase the cooldown for boost armor by 2 or 3. That way you can’t fire off the combo every 4 turns and the abilities don’t all sync up perfectly. This will also give enchant a slight buff which it needs because right now boost armor is just better in every way (although honestly it likely still will be) * While you’re doing this reset all the scores on gamecenter and openfient. I know you mentioned that wasn’t easy (although I’m surprised by this… you think it would just be a simple email to the admins of it) so alternatively I’d propose adding turn count into your score. Give people 100 points for each turn survived…. That way it makes sense to play safer and try to last longer at the end of the game… and new high scores will be significantly pumped (I haven’t checked the high scores enough to determine if 100 is a good number to dethrone the current high scores but the gist of my point is there… you could even have that bonus per turn # be different for each difficulty). As it is I seriously question if all the high scores are legitimate (I know 2 of the top 5 are and were done with the boost gold combo… but those aren’t the top one) or if they are using some of the older broken versions of the game (the poison elf glitch… no caps on some key skills that you later capped) but either way it will not be fun to have no chance to beat them since I am proposing nerfing the two strongest strategies. * Give meatshield three times the life(or a lot more shields) but make him take the damage for EVERY skull you would be damaging (right now he takes the max damage you would do to one skull only). It’d make him less back breaking and still makes sense. He is shielding each enemy from damage that way. Even if you overkill him though he still takes everything for that one turn. * Similarly make life leech take life from each enemy you hit… but reduce the % a lot. For example… if the max were 2% then you’d have to chain over 10 enemies for this to be more powerful than the current system. I think this will be more intuitive and make more sense. It also rewards riskier plays and longer chains. * Make slash, charge, fireball, etc do damage to specials equal to your base damage. It doesn’t seem to do anything right now which seems silly. It kills regular skulls but magically whiffs on specials? EDIT: Maybe it makes sense for them to do damage equal to the strongest skull on the screen... reason being... it would also be silly if your base damage was 30... and the special takes 30 while the regular skull with 60 life is obliterated... * Make last stand stronger. Right now teleport is better than it in every way. My suggestion would be for it to be a passive skill that is always active when not on cooldown… so as long as it’s not recharging then if you die you will automatically revive with full health. Then have it start its cooldown after it triggers and give it a slightly longer cooldown than teleport. This way it’s an interesting alternative to teleport… you’re in the same room where you died (so theoretically a not so great board) but you have full (or heck make it half) life. It would also enable some riskier plays as you can fall back on it. It’d also be an interesting training wheels type skill for beginners. * Make combat abilities improve once maxed out. For example, fireball could become targeted instead of random or it could take out specials but still be random. This will make them more appealing compared to the score maximizers that currently are the best to take. It also helps give a sense of character development/ultimate abilities. You could even change the icon art and maybe even the name when it maxes out. * Hack seems weak to me. I'd make it a vertical version of slash and not just turn one row into swords. That'd also still make sense with the hack and slash combo (which I love by the way even if it's not very good!). What would be really neat is if you max both out then they become one (already maxed out) skill called hack and slash (with maybe a 8 turn max cooldown) and you get a skill slot back. That'd be slick and still be a big investment of levels to do. In fact I like the idea of combo skills merging in general. It's an interesting way to open up more options late game for players and is just a fun mechanic. EDIT: Rune is a cool concept but stinks in application. At the very least it should collect anything you completely wrap around (even if you don't start and end on same spot) and maybe even anything on the edges you wrap around the other 3 sides of. UI/Game Design Tweaks: * Put a turn counter in the pause menu * Bring back the mimic but make it an option to have it on/off (with it defaulted to off). Then have a pop up warning explaining it the first time someone turns it on. * Make level up skills more relevant when you max out the bonus chances (see this post for more http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=1739753&postcount=1905). This would allow for more strategies too as it might make sense to max one out as fast as possible instead of slowly building them all up. It also is just a fun new design space. * Tweak the unlock scheme as it is the most complained about feature (see this post for my suggestion http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=1956208&postcount=2076) EDIT: at end of game it'd be cool to see a graph of your score vs turn count. It'd really help compare builds too! You could also include icons for key points (like maxing out a skill). New specials: (I like the first 2 ideas… the other 3 might need some work…) * Blademaster - cannot be damaged unless chained with over 4 swords * Grim Reaper - 5 turn timer… automatically drops your life to 1 … unless you have under ¼ life in which case he kills you... this would happen AFTER the other skulls do their damage though (i.e. you won’t go to 1 and immediately be killed by the reg skulls… but you COULD be knocked below ¼ by the regular skulls and then the reaper kills you). Make this one very rare and attach an achievement to beating him. (and please make it called don’t fear the reaper… more cow bell!) * Infected - you can’t heal as long as he is on the board… but he is constantly poisoned even if you don’t attack him (maybe for half his attack value or something?) * Insane - high attack value but attacks a random thing each turn including itself…. So if there are 5 skulls on the field you have a 1 in 6 chance it attacks you * Slime - 5 turn timer… each time it goes off it pushes the turn timer up 10 for the calculation of enemy strength only… so it effectively makes stronger enemies appear sooner and would also make the next special appear sooner… without actually increasing the turn count since some people like to play for most turns survived EDIT: Maybe slime is a poor choice of name. My logic was it slows you down and is an iconic monster. But for the average person what it effectively does is make enemies stronger permanently. So maybe it should be called warmaster or general or something... New Abilities: * Time Warp/Time Bend - reduces the turn count by 5… if a timed enemy is on the field this also pushes back their timer). This would need a fairly decent cooldown to not be broken beyond belief… but it’d be fun! * Replay/Mirror – Gain the exact amount of XP/GP/UP that you did last turn. * Roulette (for a gambler class maybe?) – Randomly changes all tiles into something else (this would include special monsters… both ways… so it changes specials into something else… but can also turn stuff into specials on a rare occasion)
Thanks :- ). I put a lot of thought into that one. I updated it in blue with some more thoughts. I actually hit the max post size and had to edit it down... Hahahaha. First time that's happened to me. In other news... I started my first high score run with the gold build and it is ridiculous. Already over 70,000 and I still have a ways to go (iPad is recharging). I definitely think its better than the shield build. My best moment so far was doing the combo with a full screen of coins except one tile... And I got 3 scrolls of treasure. So I collected over 4 full screen of coins with double gold... And got over 20 item shop visits (I wish I had counted exactly how many... But they just kept coming). So good. I'm hoping to crack my personal best with this run and it's only my first try... And I don't even have the warrior class maxed (so I only got to use 2 perk slots). I definitely suggest trying out this build if you haven't. Oh and I'm using charge as my fourth if it matters. EDIT: Bah go figure. I died in the mid 70,000 shortly after I started up again. It took 6 specials on screen at once to take me down :- P Still I'm up to level 8 now and have 3 perk slots... and I learned a lot from my first play thru. You definitely have to prioritize upgrades differently! For example, you hit the upgrade shop a lot less so you always want to take durability and blunting ahead of anything (even +GP) since you don't get offered those in the item shop but you do get +GP sometimes. I love how simple yet deceptively deep this game is. I'm definitely going to be trying again shortly!
elfin - I like all your ideas, but I think you should email them directly to Alex, since I doubt he follows this thread, there is way too much chatter here. And I don't know how much he'd be willing to put in, it seemed to me that he was mostly finished and just is finalizing some things. But hey, it's worth emailing him about it! . And I'll keep my fingers crossed that he's willing to implement at least some of the things.
I don't have his email unfortunately. If you do, then please feel free to forward it along! I know he used to check this forum a lot and was actively updating the game... it was one of my favorite parts about this game actually :- ) It's great when developers interact with the community and strive to make the game better and in this games case it truly showed in the final product! I know he took some of my ideas previosuly and I still smile each time I see them in action. Still, it's been a while since he's been here. I'm hoping he's willing to do some more updates now that he's resurfaced! It's also a great way to help push the android version of the game as each update is more oppurtunity to generate more buzz (and sales) about the game.
Just remove all the weird stuff and you can email him dungeon.raid at yahoo com au I'm sure he'd love to hear from you
I'm seriously thinking about developing a semi-clone of this game system, if he's never going to do much more with it. It's a great concept. I wonder if I could just buy the license to do a sequel, from him.
So I got a pretty lengthy reply from Alex on my thoughts. I don't want to just cut and past the whole thing but one thing I thought I should share was this. "I don't think I'll be adding a turn counter in the standard mode because that seems like too much of a gateway into metagaming. As you know, the difficulty curve's controlled by the turn counter and right now you still have to rely on some gut feel for how tough the monsters are getting rather than having a number in the corner more or less spell it out. I think hiding the turn counter preserves some sense of uncertainty in the late game and I've convinced myself that that's probably a good thing." I actually really agree with that and think it's a smart design move. Also... "I'm currently working on Android issues as well as the HD update which should hopefully be ready within a month, and after that I'll get back to adding content & fixing current stuff." Hurray! EDIT: Now I don't want me posting that to set a timer for him. I'll be happy whenever the update comes. It's just great to know he's working on it again and has more planned for the future!
