How come I can't find your scores on the leaderboard or in OF at all? You have a lot of OF games (assuming there is only one "coconutbowling") but not this one. I would feel like I were giving up a lot if I only used Skill Elixir when I could immediately Teleport. But that's certainly a strategy. I just tend to play more aggressively (but then I admit eventually I get killed, I haven't seen how to get much past 30k on Hard this way).
I don't use openfeint anymore. It glitched on me when I got my new iPod and I haven't been able to use my username since. Since then I've just disabled openfeint all together for my games.
....I admit it's on easy. However, I do have blunting. I've done a lot since I posted that: It's gotten to a point where I can't kill myself if I tried. It's going to be a while before this one is done
I haven't had the patience to play on Easy and find out how long I can play. Seems like it could be tens of hours.
I'm up to 35k on Hard and still going. Playing a more defensive strategy with Boost Armor, Boost Damage, Teleport, and Heal. Lots of armor and blunting and regeneration. I don't have very much offense so there's lots of specials I can't kill, but I can defend and then teleport out. Eventually the enemies will get too tough or I'll get stuck with a Mage at the wrong time. But I think I can keep going for a while yet.
Died at Hard at 37k. Scoring slows down as enemies get harder to kill. Upgraded armor at 90% durability is good but eventually gets overwhelmed. I want to try playing without Boost Damage next. Maybe Teleport, Boost Armor, Skill Elixir, and Dazzle as a way of getting rid of coins plus generating damage potential?
Looking forward to the new release whenever it hits the app store. Just made #5 on the OF leaderboard on hard!
Good job, but I just made #3 with 82,916. You have quite a way to go. I think I could have kept going a while longer, if I didn't get sloppy. The main thing that made it hard eventually was, I was playing an upgrade-heavy strategy and eventually the weapon upgrades started appearing more and more rarely. I don't know why; I was getting lots of Armor and Health but without the weapon upgrades it was getting harder and harder to kill things, I was needing almost a whole screen of swords to kill specials (I was at +170 or so, but some were taking ~3500 to kill). Looks like Piercing maxes out at 50%, Durability at 90%, and the Coin, XP, and Upgrade multipliers all at 3.0.
P.S. I had another idea about how to improve the upgrade/item shop interface. The game could remember what I chose last time and put it at the top. E.g., in my last game for the last 500 turns or so I was picking always in the same order: Blunting, then Weapon Upgrade, then Health, then Armor, then Regeneration, etc. If it remembered my previous choices then it could automatically rank things in the order I've picked them in the past, and I could most of the time just tap the top one and get what I want.
Looks like #dungeonraid is a trending topic on Twitter in Japan. I've been pushing this game like crazy to all my friends in the game industry and recently shouted quite loudly about it on the 8-4 podcast. Glad this game is getting more fans!
I did my deed and posted my five star review on iTunes yesterday or the day before. Not in Japan, but hopefully it still helps!
"Harder" seems considerably harder than "Hard". I have tried a few times, but I can't get a game going to the point where I can set up my big combos, before I lose due to not enough HP or not enough damage potential or not enough healing rate. I will keep trying though. I am not sure how much I can improve the 82k Hard score, the highest score seems awfully hard to reach. I am wondering if some scores were achieved in earlier versions of the game with different settings and difficulty? Does the hardness of the enemies increase based on the number of turns played, or the number of enemies killed, or the level of the player and equipment, or some combination of factors?
Enemy strength is based on turns only. Harder is significantly harder as it is quite unforgiving. You have about 80 turns to have your base setup, and then it starts ramping up fast and because of this you have to make much tougher decisions. If you don't have 1-2 points of luck by turn 80, you are probably dead. My theory on harder has always been to take as little damage as possible, so taking too many +UP or +EXP won't boost you up fast enough to make up for lack of damage capability. Base damage is more important, because you cannot risk spending too long to set up chains. This is why Dazzle is so powerful on Harder, it opens up your board for you so much.
Seems like a higher luck factor about what skills you get offered early on. On Hard I don't mind waiting forever for the skills I want. Maybe I just need to try more starts on Harder, until I get a good one.
Well you are certainly not going to wait for Elixer or Enchant. If you get them great, but you have to think about survival first. You almost have to have either disarm, teleport or dazzle, and I personally think you need 2 of those 3. Teleport means you don't necessarily need a boss killer, but if you have disarm and dazzle, you almost have to have a boss killer also. So that really limits other skills you can take.
I don't really want Skill Elixir or Enchant. Like you said, it's hard to spare the slots for these. My best game on Hard was based on Teleport and Dazzle, along with Boost Armor and Salvage, which make a great combo (I was routinely getting 4-5 upgrades in a single turn). I was definitely getting more value from Boost Armor (every 5th turn) than I would have from Enchant (every 25th turn).
I only play on Normal but generally agreed. In the later game (i.e., the later turns before I eventually die), I find that it's more a fight just to survive turn by turn as it is racking up combos to power level. Which is why XP in skulls is prioritized a little higher for me, although you do need to clear both armor and coins in order to get more swords. Argh, this game is so good. Got distracted for a bit with Radiant Historia and 3DS but I am back. I also offered all my friends on Twitter $100 bucks to the first person who can beat my high score on Normal in GameCenter (35k). I know, not that impressive here, but it has incentivized many people to buy Dungeon Raid.
When you consider that score is still probably top 5% all time, it's a tough one to beat. My high on normal was in the low 30s when I switched to Hard, where my high is only about 13K. Maybe now if I went back I could beat that score after a while, but I wouldn't guarantee it.
