Thursday 2 August 2012

First win

I've been playing roguelikes since c. 1990.

I've just beaten one for the first time.

:)

Brogue spoilers below the pic.


Brogue: Enchanted plate armour up to its final value, then staff of lightning from [2/2]. Had an ogre trained up with Protection for a while, then lost him, rescued a Tentacled Horror and finally got him to eat a Dar Priestess for Healing, after bouncing him off everything else. Polymorphed every dragon I saw, had more than enough healing/telepathy/magic mapping for the final few levels. The only times I really felt threatened was an out of depth flame turret across the level which I jumped into a chasm to avoid, and when I ran into my first Dar battle pack torturing said Tentacled horror. Of course, when I read an unidentified scroll to try for options, and said scroll was summon monster and it didn't materially impact the situation I was in, I knew I was pretty good for a victory.

Verdict: Plate armour in brogue is probably OP. The seed I had was definitely OP - three stacks of javelins in the first few levels (two in the same room), and it just persisted in throwing plate armour at me.

11 comments:

Todd said...

Congrats Andrew! I've been working on my first win for quite some time now. Hopefully this week, since I'm on vacation. I really think 1.6.4 has hit a sweet spot in terms of balancing difficulty vs. showing you "cool stuff" in the game.

Quite the masterpiece, in my opinion.

I was surprised at your rings though.. I normally ditch clairvoyance the first chance I have. Even a ring of light is better, for me.

Darren Grey said...

Congrats! I've yet to play Brogue so I can't chastise you for taking so long to win. (Though I beat Dredmor for the first time yesterday, woo!)

Todd said...

Thought this post might've been a good luck charm. Instead I got 'burned to death on level 22, amulet in hand' ;)

Scott said...

Congratulations, and I understand brogue is no pushover either.

Abe Heron said...

Congrats...brogue ftw!

XLambda said...

Congrats man, that's so awesome!

I must play more brogue as well. Seems like a fun game.

Andrew Doull said...

1.6.4 is definitely the best version so far: I suspect it does need a slight rebalance though. I didn't abuse the reward rooms (or really benefit from them) because I ended up getting multiples of the same ring types and only one detect magic potion. Clairvoyance was +2 for most of the game and I only spent 1 enchant scroll on it before getting the amulet. I didn't really need to see too many monsters at range, whereas being able to see e.g. acid turrets through walls made a big difference (I only got protect armour about level 20).

Darren: You need to play brogue. It really is that good. Just hold your nose when it comes to autoexplore.

Andrew Doull said...

Todd: Getting back out of the dungeon is surprisingly crunchy in terms of difficulty.

Pender said...

Congrats, Andrew :)

Todd said...

Yeah, getting back up with the amulet is no joke.. usually I've used just about every trick up my sleeve to get to it. I've now died twice with it in my hands. At least this time I got off level 26!

Clairvoyance for turret-avoidance is an interesting tactic. I find my best games are ones where I find a staff of tunneling. Or as I call them.. staff of turret-destruction. ;)

But yeah, Darren, you need to play brogue.

Unknown said...

I'm amazed--it's seriously taken you twenty years to finish a roguelike?