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[Vault of the Void] Did you pack your backpack properly?

The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry CorpseRegistered User regular
Vault of the Void!

What is it? It's a Cardgame Rougelike. Yep. another one.

capsule_616x353.jpg?t=1619577502


Vault of the Void's claim to distinctions are that it's a very deterministic game.

To quote the game itself:

"A Single-player Roguelite card game where you're in control.

Build your deck as you go, a CCG experience where you can always modify your deck. Swapping in and out cards before certain encounters will always help improve your odds and allows you to adapt to monster strategies.

Card Rewards from fights are public knowledge, so plan your path in a way that gives you the cards you really need to take down the Void!"

You can also see exactly what you're going to fight, as well as what these fights will get you. Anotehr big mechanic is Purging - you automatically keep the cards you draw, but you can Purge them (Discarding them, i thiiiiiink?) to gain energy. You also keep energy - for StS afficinados, imagine always having Icecream and Runic Pyramid, with a built in Pseudo-recylce.

At least this is my understanding so far. My thanks to @Whelk for recommending it to me. Knowing very little else about it, i'm about to launc into my very first run... Expect a VoD and thoughts in a follow up post!

Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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«13

Posts

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    So!

    First run down. I absolutely love that they do a truncated Intro run for you. That's very cool.

    The UI is a bit busy, i think? But i got the hang of it pretty quickly.

    Cool stuff: You have exactly 20 cards, always! But you can freely swap in and out cards before a battle, or any time before that, letting you tune your deck. All your generic strike/defend equivalents are not only different per class, each class has subclasses, and they're different per that!

    Attack order/block order is different: You take damage initially as "Threat". If you don't reduce the threat to 0 by the end of a turn where you've got threat (By playing block cards), you then take it as damage. There's a reward of extra gold for perfecting a fight, and this mechanic + the sacrifice cards for energy/retain cards really plays into the strategy of going perfect. Enemies also call in reinforcement until you fill a blocker bar (...by defeating enemies!) so there's plenty of strategy to be gained by smooshing things tactically, rather than just killing whatever, whenever.

    Cards have BOTH slay the spire style upgrading and a socketing mechanic called Void Stones. You get Void stones by punching things to death it seems, which is cool! They come in different colors and each one does a specific thing, so you know what you're getting into. one of the characters can freely remove and add void stones, but otherwise you can replace a void stone at cost of destroying the existing one. You also know what color void stone you're getting next, and i think what pattern they're coming in too, so you can plan around things like "I want that one that makes it Innate, and i want this one to duplicate, and these ones to get more block, and this one to get a cycle mechanic"

    It does feel like a very thinky game, due to it's deterministic nature. Still! What a blast for a first run. I'll edit in the VoD of the Intro run later, but now i'm diving into my first real run.

    Edit:

    Here's a VoD of my first intro run, and here's a VoD of my second run where i think i got up to the final boss before calling it quits for the night because Ow My Brain.

    Initial impressions are that other than a slightly clunky UI (Which honestly, i'm rapidly getting used to and i couldnt put my finger on how i'd improve it easily, just that it feels off), this is real good. Routing is a lot of fun - i love the fact that The Hidden's artifact rewards him for going to empty squares. I also love that you can see what sort of rewards you get, and change up your deck based on what you're fighting. Very cool stuff. The combos between upgrades and void stones feel really good. I can see why the dev is worried about front loading, but the tooltipping has been 80% great. A few cases where scrolling over an artifact pickup didnt tell me what it'd do - hopefully these get fixed, and they seem like they will given this game is ABSURDLY determined to give you information. I really like the enemy reinforcement system, it opens up a lot of tactics and really makes things a lot more intersing than just "Aoe all the things". (AoE seems to be pretty thin on the ground so far, at least for the first chap)

    The Zombie Penguin on
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  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    Hey! I'm glad you like it! I really like that he tells you what the schtick of each encounter is ahead of the encounter so you can adjust the deck. It's saved me on a couple of bosses, but it was close anyway because it was all cards I hadn't really invested into making work. Then I got slaughtered right before the last boss.

  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    Ok, not gonna lie, the Mindfulness deck for the Enlightened was so much fun. Shii is such a fun mechanic. I watched one of your VoDs, Penguin. Was neat to see you route.

    @MNC Dover You taken a look at this?

  • akjakakjak Thera Spooky GymRegistered User regular
    Nooo… Not another one! My wallet! Ow!

    Switch: SW-4133-1546-2720 (Thera)
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  • MNC DoverMNC Dover Full-time Voice Actor Kirkland, WARegistered User regular
    How long can this go on?! I’ll give it a look see

    Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
    Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
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  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    It is a really think-y game, but I enjoy that sort of thing.

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    akjak wrote: »
    Nooo… Not another one! My wallet! Ow!
    Whelk wrote: »
    It is a really think-y game, but I enjoy that sort of thing.

    Yeah i gotta admit i'd be hesitant to recommend it to you Akjak given your commentary so far on what you like - It doesn't feel like you can play it anywhere near as casually as even StS. But then again, you might actually realyl dig Just How Much info it throws at you, and find that easier that SnS

    I like that the Dev is very clearly aware it's a lot, and is working on balancing that, but also wants it to be a core part of the game. As overwhelming as it is, it's really cool to have such clean, clear information. Still, i dont think this is going to bea game i can pick up and play as causally as i do StS - or at least, not until i've achived a lot of playtime in it.

    So far i've won with the Hidden using a bleed build - i managed to set things up so that i filled his combo bar and kept it filled permanently, then spammed his starter cards so they were each stacking 12! bleed a cast. Which, okay, the bosss had 1.1k health + it's adds, but dat's a lot of bleed.

    Now i'm playing the Enlightned using a build based around Shii. Which is NotADebuff and it makes people's heads explode. Literally - if they get Shii in excess of their remaining hp, they go boom and anything still left alive gets half their shii stacks put on them. Which can lead to hilarious and very satisfying chains as the head honcho's head exploding makes everyone else suffer cranial energy excesses.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • ArcticLancerArcticLancer Best served chilled. Registered User regular
    "Highly methodical" is incredibly up my alley though. That's a very strong set of descriptions to pique my interests.

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    "Highly methodical" is incredibly up my alley though. That's a very strong set of descriptions to pique my interests.

    @ArcticLancer You'll love this then: You can paint tiles in the map screen so you can pre-plan your route and where you'd like to go. You can even give them multiple colors to help you think about branching paths. It'd be nice if you could preview how paths were going to collapse, but it seems easy enough to grok once you get going.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    Golly this all sounds cool. I'mma grab it and check it out wooooo

    Battle.net ID: kime#1822
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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    This game is so good!

    Had a nice chat with the developer too today via Discord, so that was fun. He's very responsive to feedback!

    More i play the more i'm enjoying this game's systems. it is still A Lot, definitely a real brain work out, but it's a fun A Lot and really, what else can you ask for?

    Won my Enlightened run, tehre were a lot of satisfying Brainsplosions. Now i'm doing the Void lady, who i guess is kind of the mage? If mages threw away their cards to corrupt themselves and then started doing Massive Damage.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • AuralynxAuralynx Darkness is a perspective Watching the ego workRegistered User regular
    I could've sworn I beat y'all to the punch by a couple weeks on this one over in the STS thread. It's a great game, very interactive gameplay.

    kshu0oba7xnr.png

  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    I had a void daughter lady run where I just discarded every card and generated tons of block and for doing it. It wound up being very satisfying to slam dunk 400% corruption into the Void's face every other turn.

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Auralynx wrote: »
    I could've sworn I beat y'all to the punch by a couple weeks on this one over in the STS thread. It's a great game, very interactive gameplay.

    I must have missed that! You should def talk about your thoughts more here though, because I fully agree it's a great game.

    Also oh man that sounds fun Whelk.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Fair, Reasonable and Fun things are happening! (Also, take a look at my max hp, that's not a joke)
    ?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    I had those relics offered to me yesterday, but I was too chicken to go for them! What's the leaky eyeball spell?

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Leak eyeball spell is the Sacrifice Daughter's spell, it gives you Rage and if you're past it's Threshold, gives you Death Strike 1.

    Death Strike 1 makes it so when you play an attack, if it's energy cost is equal to or less than Death strike, reduce your death strike by that amount... Then play the attack again.

    Which is how this happened towards the end of the run:
    ?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

    Yeah. Perfect on the guardians and the final boss. Actually, perfect on a *lot* of things. (the number by each fight shows how many rounds, and is green if it's perfect)
    ?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Gonna make a big ol' guide to Vault of the Void and it's mechanics, so look out for that.

    Meanwhile i killed the Void on turn 2 with a perfect, so it's time to increase the difficulty. Whoops!

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    My first run wasn't great, I started with the Combo-based deck and tried to continue that too much I think. And the combo mechanic just did not click for me. After that, I had fun with Bleed and Shii and Corruption, including winning on Normal, so it's been fun!

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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    kime wrote: »
    My first run wasn't great, I started with the Combo-based deck and tried to continue that too much I think. And the combo mechanic just did not click for me. After that, I had fun with Bleed and Shii and Corruption, including winning on Normal, so it's been fun!

    Combo is pretty hard to wrap your head around, yeah.

    Best way to think of it is that any card that's Swift or Balanced acts like an X cost card, where X is equal to 1+ your combo. Balanced card wont eat your combo, while Swift cards will (But swift cards are generally more powerful than balanced ones). One good trick with this is that means they'll activate Void stones repeatedly - so stuff like a Purple or Yellow void stone can generate a ton of Overcharge or Block for you. Or a bunch of Rage with a red stone (But you generally want Rage before you play attacks)

    Thoguh i got this amazing run last night on hard. You can literally see the bit where the deck came online fully. It's the bit where act 2 turns into a bunch of turn 1 wins, including the boss.
    ?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

    I described it on my stream as looking like we taped knives everywhere to ourself and then bellyflopped people. Interestingly it had very little ways to spend combo - i think there's one, maybe two cards in there that spend combo? Instead it just tended to max it's combo out asap and then kill things with a hail of hidden blades.

    I got it recorded on stream, actually, i should post that.

    @ArcticLancer Seriously, you gotta get in on this dood. Game's a delight! I love that you can do crazy combos like StS, but they dont feel mandatory - and getting to them feels much more like StS than say Monster Train. I think you're a bit more likely to hit them because of the sideboard mechanic, but that's cool - they involve a lot of moving pieces to get going. Like this deck would basically draw it's entire hand on turn one and discard cards that couldnt be purged... so it could purge cards it drew for energy, then feed all of this Energy into Gusher (creating a bunch of blades and a copy of itself thanks to the Black stone), Gusher again, then use the remaining energy to buff up with rage and just throw knives everywhere.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • kimekime Queen of Blades Registered User regular
    The sideboard is cool, as is knowing the rewards (mostly) ahead of time. It really makes it feel like you can flex into what you need, as opposed to it being really difficult to just swap archetypes or whatever late in a StS run. I don't think I'm fully taking advantage of it, but I like the potential.

    Battle.net ID: kime#1822
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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    kime wrote: »
    The sideboard is cool, as is knowing the rewards (mostly) ahead of time. It really makes it feel like you can flex into what you need, as opposed to it being really difficult to just swap archetypes or whatever late in a StS run. I don't think I'm fully taking advantage of it, but I like the potential.

    It's a very different feel to StS, and i appreciate it - like i love how StS is all about aggreate value, but i love how in this you can take cards that are bad now, but go "ah, but i can see on floor Y, i'll get X that will make this a good card".

    This is what i mean when i say games shouldnt try and be <example game that's top of it's class in the genre> - this isnt sts, and it dosent want to be! and it's all the better for it.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    So, i'm up to 56 hours in the game now and i've beaten it on Hard difficulty with 5/6 of the subclasses, and moved up to Impossible because Hard was getting too easy.

    Time for a more in depth review!

    Let' start with difficulties and cover what I've played and what I haven't.

    There's 5 main difficulty in the game:

    Intro, Normal, Hard, Impossible, and Impossible+

    Intro is a curtailed, tutorial mode for the game - you only do act 1 (Out of the 2 acts and boss rush), and it tutorializes heavily as you go. Very good, and i recommend everyone takes a crack at this first because the game is a lot.
    Normal is the standard. This is honestly probably easier than A0 in something like StS... and needfully so. The game has a ton of moving parts (We'll get to this) and it can be overwhelming. There's more upgrade points on normal too.

    Hard just increases the stats of enemy's (How much damage they do, how much frenzy (Multihit) they have, how their passives increase), and makes Void stones more difficult to earn. I find once you get rolling in Hard, a well crafted deck can easily splatter the game at the end. It can be a bit silly! Thankfully, it's a much more gradual power process - I've never felt like "Oh, i pulled X and Y, i win" like i did in Monster Train/Roguebook. I've hit things that were as Silly as Dead Branch/Corruption in StS, but that was in the final 4 fights of an act, and i'd crafted my deck to do the silly thing that let it chain turn 1 wins for a while.

    Impossible does this again - From what i'm told these are all hand crafted changes. I'm yet to play on Impossible. (Edit: I've just started as of writing this review)

    Impossible+ lets you start adding Instabilities - think similar to Hade's heat mechanic. There is however apparently a guided approach if you want a more curated feel ala Slay the Spire's ascensions. I believe right now Instabilties cap out at Impossible+68, which is pretty crazy - the game treats Impossible +50 as the big threshold, rewarding a unique card back and battlefield (Purely cosmetic) for winning this. Again, i'm yet to play this.

    Oh yeah, the game has unlockable battlefields and card backs, which is a great feature and a fun way to flex on a stream.

    Mechanically, the game is very solid. Each class has a pair of subclasses, which change your starting deck and starting spell, and then drafts from the same pool of commons, uncommons and rares for that class while having a unique mechanic and starting relic. EG The Hidden has Combo which he gains from various sources and then spends on some cards, causing them to be played repeatedly and his relic makes the first target he smacks vulnerable, while the Enlighted has the ability to go into a Trance by playing 3 of the same color cards in a row - reducing the cost of every card he plays while in trance.

    The game is split up into three floors. Floors 1 and 2 act like what you'd expect form this style of game, with a couple of key exceptions: One, you always know what you're getting on what floor (The sole exception is that walking into empty tiles on the edge of the map *may* reveal a secret chest), and two: you always know the rewards you're getting. Routing is a lot of fun once you understand the rules it behaves (and you can even mark out a path on the map before you go to help you remember), encouraging a lot of zig-zagging.

    Act 3 however acts like a boss rush - You're given 4 champions (There's a pool of six currently iirc), you need to defeat two of these, and then you can fight the boss fight. Each also gives a blessing - but what blessing they give is randomzied at the start of the run. You actually know what 4 champions you'll have to fight from the start, a lovely touch. Extra fun is that one of the two types of currency you get can be fired off at the boss for extra damage. I dont think it's possible to one shot the boss this way, but it would be funny.

    Drafting is done a bit differently to other games of this type - In general, rather than selecting from multiple rewards, you get a single card (with Rares almost always coming from elites). The trick is this: You know by looking at the map which floors give which cards! Shops, Chests, and a few other thing can provide places where you'll need to pick and choose from cards. You also start each run with a booster pack of 5 cards, the ability to pick a sixth card that you've mastered (Every time you reach the final boss area, you can master one of the ten commons for that class). You cannot pick the same mastered card twice in a row, which provides some nice enforced variety.

    Secondly, rather than cards going straight in your deck, they go into your backpack. As long as you're not in the middle of a fight, you can freely switch cards in and out of your backpack. Additionally, there's a pool of classless cards that turn up as part of the rewards. These are often actually really good - they can be anything from nice to haves to incredibly strong cards, so you're never unhappy to see them vs a class card.

    Cards can both be upgraded (Which is done by earning upgrade points - marked on the map, sometimes found as prize in the chests scattered around, or from the Well at the end of each act) and Gemmed. One mild criticism here is that upgrades quite often add new text to cards, and it's a lot to keep track of when you're new to the game.

    Which leads us to Void Stones. There are six of these in the game, and they hit a nice broad spectrum of nice to haves (Card cycling, duplicating, making them turn up in your opening hand, you get the idea). At the top of your screen you have a bar that fills as you do damage to enemies. Fill it up, and you get a Void stone! You always know which color void stone you're going to get, and which ones you'll earn next. This creates a really fun tension where you want to fight as many things as you possibly can in acts to earn more void stones, with all the risk that entails. Sometimes you get card rewards with a Void stone already socketed in them. Placing a void stone is permanent, but you can replace a void stone with another void stone. One of the characters (the Daughter) can freely remove Void stones without destroying them, giving her a lot of interesting flex.

    Like a lot of these games, Artifacts exist, and are split up across multiple rarities (I believe common, uncommon, rare, elite and shop). In general they're a lot rarer than in something like Slay the Spire or Roguebook - Think ending runs with about 7-9 relics. The flip side is they're generally pretty potent, and my favorite touch - when you fight an elite, ratehr than getting a relic at the end of things, you pick your relic from one of 3 elite rarity relics at the start. Just a lovely touch.

    There's also potions. Unlike StS, you choose to use these before a fight. They're probably one of my biggest criticisms right now - they're mostly generically powerful, and with no limitations on how many you can carry, you end up sitting on a whole pile of them and then mass chugging them in the final fights. The game, however is still in early access, so this might yet change

    My other big criticism is not really a criticism in the sense of "This is bad" but just in "you need to understand what you're getting into" - The game is complicated. Immensely, immensely complicated with a wealth of information thrown straight at you. Every class has multiple moving parts, there's multiple different scaling mechanics depending on the class... etcera. As i've said in this thread, it's A Lot. Relaxing, this game is not.

    But if you want a real mental workout and a game with an amazing amount of depth and replayability, then this is absolutely one to grab, and if not that, watch closely.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    And then i beat the game on Impossible on my first try and downed the Void with a perfect too.
    ?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

    Grasp is one of those cards that looks really unassuming, and then you see it's going off for over 200 damage and you go "Oh, so that's why you keep 5 of your starter cards in the deck..."

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • WhelkWhelk Registered User regular
    I put a ghost gem into one of my buff cards and wound up using an artifact to duplicate the first card I purged each turn. Every one of my shivs swung +12 times by the time I got rolling. Had a card that dropped the cost of my first buff each turn by two. So I wasn't even running low on energy. A+ would run again.

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Impossible+ 7 down on the first try! (Also impossible +5, that took two tries).

    Impossible +5 deck:
    ?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false
    Impossible +7 deck (with bonus VoD!):
    ?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

    The +7 run was just funny, especially when i eventually (in the void fight, shaddup) understood exactly how to play it. My house, my rules with a pile of corruption, cards cost corruption instead of energy and cycle (Drawing another card every time you play one...), and i've got X costs.... Anyway yes, very silly. Heck, just going infinte Ghost Walks on people was pretty crazy.

    This was on the beta too, so consider it a sneak preview - the big change is you can now discard volatile cards. Which i'm a fan of as it gets rid of a werid edge case and helps cut some needless complexity from the game. (I love this game, but it is VERY complicated and i think trimming the fat of some of the complexity is a good thing)

    Something else that pleases me is up until i hit impossible+ i was feeling like it was just a bit too easy to roll the final boss - you were (usually) so powerful by the time you got there and had so many potions it became a joke. The increase in it's moveset and hp really helps mitigate that - if you dont get yourself scaling fast you will get slaughtered by having your deck fill up with afflictions if nothing else.

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • ArcticLancerArcticLancer Best served chilled. Registered User regular
    I was trying to finish up my Stardew Valley replay before buying this, but I'm having a weak Friday so eff it. Ought to be able to mess with this a bit over the weekend~

  • ArcticLancerArcticLancer Best served chilled. Registered User regular
  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    Update:
    Ow, my head ...

    Heheheheh.

    I should bug Josh about updating steam to warn you of that!

    The Zombie Penguin on
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  • ArcticLancerArcticLancer Best served chilled. Registered User regular
    I think I partially had a headache coming on when I started, so it was just bad on bad. :P I took a break at the end of act 1 to have dinner.
    I'm officially on my way~
    cog4y9l0jhym.png

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    Bahahahahaha. I broke the game (playing on beta, so bugs are to be expected).

    But as bugs go, confusing the game so hard it gave on knowning what a card was and just named it "-1" with the rules text "-1" while it cycled between every cardframe and color combo was pretty great.

    Clip here: (Warning: contains penguin laughing like a hyena loudly)

    Also i downed the game on I+9, and unlocked I+15 in the process (The I+ goes up by a minimum of 2, but you get a bonus amount of unlocks by how hard you crunch the game into the pavement. As it turned out, this deck crunched pretty hard).
    ?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

    The Zombie Penguin on
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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    For anyone worrying about the difficulty of the game (it can be surprisingly easy one you get your head around the mechanics)

    Don't.

    Impossible+ will cheerily kick your arse all over the place.

    Downed I+15 and unlocked I+18. Fun blade hidden deck that got to draw it's entire deck repeatedly. (The way that card draw = energy in this game is super interesting)
    ?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

    Anyway jab and Nick are very powerful cards, even more so when you have a purple void on jab and a bloodthirst to fill your tank with

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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    Wohooo!

    I18 and I20 down, I23 unlocked.

    I18 kicked my arse all over the place - i kept rolling corruption daughter and just struggling. Lesson learned: do not be afraid to reload and burn potions on hallway fights (I honestly think i prefer StS potions than this one's, but they're still cool).

    But i beat i18 with a very cool Bleed Hidden deck that made amazing use of Strange Stimulants (Max combo = 1, abilities give Combo 1) and Card Spikes (Every extra card you draw during your turn increase the counter, at end of turn do bleed equal to counter.).

    VoD here, and a Decklist over 'ere
    Saw 18 or even 19 on Card Spikes a few times, and it was routinely going past ten, so you know, the deck was doing very reasonable and fair things. The way Purging works out is so interesting - I was regularly double casting Response in this deck (if enemy's have an attack intent at start of turn, get X volatile blades - i was getting 4 per enemy that wanted to attack), and then using cycling stuff to discard the volatiles so i could purge the newly drawn cards for energy... and then draw more thanks to crazy levels of card draw.

    Hmm. I think that deck was actually close to an infinite?

    I20 was starting as Corruption Daughter, and rolling a lot of good attacks in my booster pack. Which let me brute force my way through most of the early acts... and then start over when a bug deleted an elite from existence. Thankfully, it being recorded let the Developer figure out how to fix it, so uh, go me?

    Spoiler for the exact bug and what happened:
    So when i was looking at the map mid fight, i changed the color of a tile. This updated the game state! So when i left the fight and loaded back in the game went "Okay, you've done the fight, moving on!"... and deleted the Elite out of existence as well as the relic and card reward. Whoops.

    Anyway, trying again lead to some different routing because we knew about a secret room (...we forgot to visit it though), but the deck got really strong, started doing discard things, and by the end,
    This Happened. Here's the Decklist too.

    So that was fun! Josh (the developer) said he couldnt even figure out what was going on, so i can mark that off my list bucket list apparently.

    ---

    I really need to talk more on my streams. It's kinda hard to keep a patter going with no audience, you know?

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  • MNC DoverMNC Dover Full-time Voice Actor Kirkland, WARegistered User regular
    OK, I broke down and bought this game. Let's see what it's all about.

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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    MNC Dover wrote: »
    OK, I broke down and bought this game. Let's see what it's all about.

    Self inflicted head wounds from over thinking.

    Lemme know if you need an explainer stream!

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  • MNC DoverMNC Dover Full-time Voice Actor Kirkland, WARegistered User regular
    Initial impressions:

    Pretty neat game. Everything is laid out and it feels different enough from StS to not get caught in it's shadow. I played through the tutorial level and finished the first floor on the normal difficulty. I like the upgrade stones being added to cards and how they're always the same upgrades.

    The map movement is mostly straightforward, but I did notice some oddities in pathing. I assumed you could only move left to right, but I've been able to move up and down occasionally. Not sure why that is, but I'm sure it'll make sense eventually.

    Overall, it's a lot of fun. Should fill the StS spire itch quite nicely.

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  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    @MNC Dover As long as there's a valid tile to move to, you can move in any direction that's not backwards - so up, down or diagonal.

    Whenever you move to a tile, any other tiles that were connected to the tile you moved from collapse. So you can move straight up/straight down if you come in from a diagonal. Routing often involves a very zig-zag pattern to maximize hitting as many tiles as possible, because you want to hit both elites, you usually want to hit the cursed shrine, you want to hit a shrine to purge voids (if you've two) or greed, Lost and Found, etc.\

    Meanwhile, a vigorous intellectual debate! By which i mean i punched the Void inna face repeatedly. I23 done, I25 unlocked.

    Decklist here! This was a pretty smooth run - nice emphasis on future strike with a dollop of shii, doubled Counter to let me block while punching people, and that's all he wrote. Had a really tough act 2 where i ended up skipping not one but TWO elites (I had three thanks to a well bonus), just so i could hit the Mime and duplicate my counter.

    Seriously, look at this jerk of an act.

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  • ArcticLancerArcticLancer Best served chilled. Registered User regular
    Mmm, just trying to clear Hard with each of the classes before daring to poke at Impossible. I feel like it's somewhat difficult to appreciate what each class does in the beginning because the complexity floor in this game is significantly higher than any of the others. My run with Daughter was so all over the place. I felt so fucking slow compared to the other two classes, and after absolutely pulling myself across the line of the second floor (1HP lets go), I double-perfect the two champs before dying to the void itself. One of the minions blew itself up before I could scale hard enough and I hadn't held on to any potions for the fight. shrug
    I think one thing that's making this a bit hard to take on is that the game takes pretty long to play in the beginning, because there's so much to read and figure out as you go. Setting aside 2-3 hours is kind of an ask, and I'm not good enough to be able to pause/resume runs with any confidence. :P

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    edited July 2021
    If you can think of sore spots, or places where the game could use clarity, or is too complicated, any feedback at all, let me know! I can pass it on in the discord (or you can yourself)

    Or if you need advice .

    Daughter is def the hardest to understand. If you're corruption don't be afraid to just purge your entire starting hand. Soul tithe is often looking for the magic combo of rage, vuln and death strike at which point she can just blow things apart with no issue.

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  • MNC DoverMNC Dover Full-time Voice Actor Kirkland, WARegistered User regular
    First level defeated! My deck was pretty stacked by the end. I had lots of ways to generate hidden blades, then unloaded with 10-12 of them for stupid amounts of damage and bleed stacks. I went through most of the second and third floors without taking damage. It was pretty neat.

    I think I'll try the Bleed deck before trying the next character. Of course, I'm hoping my 2 hour and 15 minute run time will be greatly decreased as I don't have to read as much. :biggrin:

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