I think you mean item shop items not upgrades, but it's a good point. Still I agree with Zaraf. You shouldn't be offered something you can't have. Especially since there's no way to check your stats once the level up kicks in to see what you already have maxed out etc. It should keep track of that for you and remove options that offer things you won't actually get.
The perks and skills give benefits but fairly minimal ones. The designer even said that was his goal, this shouldn't be a big surprise. Well, I got something like 100k points in 1300 turns, if I recall correctly. You're scoring much less per turn because your skills aren't helping you get more upgrades or levels, which is where the points come from. Also, because you aren't gaining power as fast you hit the wall sooner. I am pretty convinced that Dazzle + Scavenge + Boost Armor is the best combo, since it lets you clear 30+ shields (doubled) every 5 turns, for most of the game. That's 4-5 upgrades, every 5 turns, or close to 1000 upgrades over the course of the game. I don't think there's a comparable combo with Boost Gold, because there's no good way to make enough coins---Treasure Chamber is too slow, Golden Touch uses the swords you need to kill skulls and leaves you to figure out what to do with your shields and potions. Maybe there's something with the new skills.
That's an interesting thought! My ideal has been Dazzle + Boost Armor + Skill Elixir + Teleport. The idea being Skill Elixir helps you clear unneeded potions while gaining levels but I might have to try subbing it our for Scavenge in my next game. Thanks for the tip.
More armor per shield doesn't speed up upgrades, you want more DEX as that increases your "Bonus Shield Chance", speeding up upgrades.
I don't know how scores are calculated, but are upgrade/level/item level all contributing equally? Seems like they should, but only fireflame knows whether that is the case or not. If upgrade level is dominating the calculations, perhaps that explains the 100k scores. Alternatively, perhaps it is because there are such great skills for converting/collecting/boosting shields that don't exist for coins and skulls. Being able to convert 2 types of tiles with quick cooldown through the coins->swords->shields path is much more than for coins and skulls. Has anyone that regularly uses skill elixir noted any bonus effect from using that with boost potion? I'm very interested in finding out. I guess I might find out this game.
Does anyone know exactly how difficulty progresses in this game? Does it simply increase with tiles cleared uniformly, or is it based on character level and other factors? The fact that a shield collector is the best build makes me wonder if level affects difficulty since a character who improves through upgrades (or gold/items for that matter) and not as much through leveling would have a distinct advantage in such a system.
They are all contributing more or less "equally", which means that your points come from what you do. If you focus on leveling up and do that a lot, then you'll get a lot of points from that. If you focus on upgrading equipment and do that a lot, then you'll get a lot of points from that. When I play a game very focused on equipment upgrades, then most of my points come from equipment upgrades; that shouldn't be that surprising.
Everyone who has weighed in has said that the strength of the skulls and the preponderance of specials only depends on the turn number, and I have no reason to doubt that. It would be somewhat easier to check if the game starts displaying the turn number, as, e.g., different players could post the average strength of their skulls in different games all at turn 700 on Hard difficulty.
I meant does 1 upgrade = 1 level = 1 item level in terms of points? Also I think you're using the word preponderance wrong. I'm interpreting you as saying special skulls are overrepresented due to turn number when I think you mean to say frequency increases. For example, I would say there is a preponderance of skills for gaining shield upgrades because they are overrepresented in light of the entire skill set.
Dungeon Floor It's awesome that turn number display is coming in an update. Might I suggest, for added flavor: Create a "dungeon floor" concept, which could be computed solely based on turn number. Redundant information, but more thematic than "turn number." Then, when you have taken enough turns to tick over to the next "floor," you could display "Entering Floor 5" text, similar to the "Monsters Attack" text. This floor numbering could also possibly tie into the counter that decides when the next special comes up. If there were a visual indicator how long it was until the next special, then that would open the door to skills that affect the countdown (perhaps delaying or accelerating the appearance of the next special/descent to the next floor).
Do you think there is really a counter? How does that work? You mean, like, every Nth skull will be a special monster (and N goes down as the game progresses)? I have certainly noticed that they don't tend to come out exactly together, but I am not convinced it is as predictable as a counter, either. But I could try to check that.
The paladin flaw is "special monsters appear 1 turn earlier" so there is definitely a counter of some sort, probably N turns and not N skulls though.
There are lots of ways to interpret that statement. I was interpreting it as something like, in a normal game you don't get any special monsters before turn 100, but with this flaw you can get them on turn 99. Pretty pointless/trivial, but so are other flaws/perks. I hope it's not the case that the specials are appearing on certain turns regardless of how many/few tiles you clear, but if that were true it would open up a lot of ideas for manipulation, especially if it were predictable (with a status track like you describe above).
Thanks.. I'm still trying to understand the scavenge + BA combo. Doesn't it run into the same problem as Golden Touch in that it uses up swords? Do you think use Skill elixir instead of scavenge is any good?
On another note, does everyone just alway teleport away from spiky monster in the late game? Is there any reliable way to kill it with normal swords? I find setting up a kill (attack, heal, attack again) almost aways gets me killed or in big trouble.
It doesn't work without Dazzle. The idea is that you make a lot of swords with Dazzle, use some of them to kill whatever monsters are around, and then the next turn convert the rest to shields and boost them all. Then repeat. Once the cycle is going you rarely collect coins or shields except every 5th turn, a typical cycle might have two or three attacks and one or two potion collects (you're getting your HP mostly from leeching, the potion collects are primarily to get them out of the way) and then the boost armor turn. If you get a bad drop when you were about to do Scavenge/Boost Armor, then you still have a screen mostly full of swords so you can kill whatever shows up. If you get a bad drop when you clear a whole screen of shields, that's what Teleport is for. But for a large part of the game once you get this going, even a bad drop isn't really a problem since you are way ahead of the curve (on Normal or Hard) for a long time. At some point the difficulty catches up with you, and my experience is that it goes from "really easy" to "impossible" pretty fast, maybe a hundred or two hundred turns.
I play this game nearly every day on my train ride...and I still suck at it! Easily the most played game on my iPhone great work!
