Just One More Run…The Roguelike Thread

Just downloaded it and started it…you bastards. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Ok, Dawncaster question. What does “interrupt” do? I’ve seen that on some enemy cards and I don’t see the effect so I’m not sure what it does.

Interrupt is deleting your energy, you wanted to spare for your next move.

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Ah, got it. I forgot that energy was conserved

Managed to get an amazing run on normal for Arcanist - was a library book deck with 50 cards, with some great enchantments imbued / memories.

Couple of tips

  • transmute (35g) from alchemist includes a rarity upgrade.
  • collector gives a “trait” if you hand him an orange card. It is sometimes worth holding an orange you don’t like, just to feed him
  • the shrine that swaps energy cost is good for offloading high costs onto corruptions, which you can then cut at rest sites
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I’ve heated Danwncaster in normal with every class now but I am struggling mightily at the next difficulty. I’m thinking that it is going to require quite a bit of grinding to unlock further class weapons and perks in order to be successful.

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I have moved off Dawncaster for now, as my Steam Deck arrived this week. This gave me an opportunity to pick up Rogue Book on sale this week, and have been playing that on the SD.

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I hate it when global warming effects my gaming time.

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I am at the same spot on wins in normal.

About to embark on the next level…

Another Dawncaster question.

What does Perform do?

The keyword index isn’t very helpful. It says to increase your Perform level or start a new performance.

No idea what that means.

When you first play a card with Perform you will be shown a choice of Performances. Such as … “When you achieve Perform X Get Y”. Each subsequent play of a Perform card increases your Perform level accordingly and when you get to level X you will receive Y.

You can opt for a quick performance for a shorter term gain or go for an epic performance that will take longer and have a bigger (hopefully better) pay off …

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Having played a few Perform-heavy decks, the flexibility is the big draw. Most builds run up against an enemy that neuters their focus, but it’s very hard to totally break Perform.

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Thank you! They really need to get a wiki set up for this game :slight_smile:

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I struggle to get it to work. Most of my success in this game comes from upgrading my cards as much as possible to the point where my opening hand can usually dispatch an enemy. I haven’t had much success with any subtle decks.

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Same. I keep seeing people posting about beating Dawncaster and I can’t make it past level 6 without dying to something stupid… Hunter is nearly fully upgraded and I have yet to win.

I find that the builds which work well for me usually involve rejecting offered cards a lot more than in other similar games. Most of the time, I don’t take any of the three options after I beat an enemy, which feels super odd.

There’s a distinction I’ve seen in Magic (initially here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/come-together-2003-10-06-0), between cards which are linear (meaning that they push players toward having more cards like them, which heavily drives the strategy of decks which use these cards well), and those which are modular, meaning that they fit into a wide variety of archetypes and so give players less direction. Because these roguelite deckbuilders tend to give very limited control over your deck, they tend to have pretty modular cards. And because you usually start with crap, you generally want to take something when you can because it’s usually better and helps dilute the crap.

That’s not been my experience with Dawncaster. For some builds (my Warrior successes being good examples), I really want to upgrade the heck out of my basics and take only the cards which help them, so even though you start with crap, you might not want to get rid of it. Also, the game offers kind of a lot of options for removing stuff, so you can get a pretty slim, focused deck if you want to. And generally, you do want to, because a high proportion of the cards are either truly linear or what you might call multi-linear: they fit well into two or three distinct builds, but ideally pretty focused ones.

At least, that’s been my experience with what I’ve seen so far, given my biases and playing exclusively on normal. But this is part of what I really like about the game: while the structure of its rules is similar enough to other games that it doesn’t especially excite me, the card design and tweaks to the frequency of various options produce very different dynamics, and make each card feel like a puzzle that’s actually worth trying to solve.

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One of the things that I like is that there is a decent selection of cards outside the standard builds that continually tempt me to try something vastly different from my normal run. There are cards to build a bard class, some ascendant angel, blood mates, dark mages, assassins, gamblers, etc. etc. Some card choices are not a binary good/bad choice, but they can set you on a completely different path than the one on which you started. On top of that, the card and perk pools seem fairly character-specific so you can theory craft a little outside of the game based on the cards and perks you are likely to see.

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Yeah it’s super deep and flexible.

I still haven’t got a win in the difficult level (one up from normal). Had a few runs look positive then I brick on a dude that is designed to smash me.

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This strategy, of not taking a card every time, seems to really work well; I concentrated on culling the chaff and upgrading my basic attacks till they were doing 20 or so damage each! I only took other cards that gave me more actions for free or chained with my basic attacks and it worked superbly till I died to what I surmise was the final boss. He drew a couple of those “do damage equal to 10% of missing health” or whatever in a row while he was at low health and absolutely crushed me… furthest I’ve gotten though, so h/t!

So I put about 20 hours into Vault of the Void this weekend and really like it. It is in Early Access on Steam, but that never bothers me much if a game is clearly polished and it is a Roguelite/like that I am going to do many runs on anyway.

There are some interesting takes on the genre here, first, you have a 20 card deck. No more, no less. As you get new cards, you can add some into your deck, but then you must remove some, so that you are always at 20.

Energy is used for abilities and attacks, but you can purge (discard) cards in your hand to burn them for more energy.

As you play through a run (like a sideways STS tree/path) you also build up a gem meter that will give you gems to upgrade cards with additional abilities.

I have beat the game on normal with all 4 classes and they have some good variety in them, and some interesting ideas. Normal mode was a good introduction to each of the characters. Now to try it on hard.

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