Endless loop

[BitgamerX]

My poor robot is stuck in an endless loop.  I start a new game, configure with available items, explore for awhile, eventually meet up with enemies and shortly afterwards die.  I'm torn between continues this endless loop or reading up on how people get started.  I like to discover stuff on my own however at this point I'm getting much traction in it. 

[Kyzrati]

Cogmind is fairly different from other roguelikes, so even if you come from that background, it won't help you a whole lot (and might even hinder you in certain ways...). It's a very tactical game, due partially to the extreme emphasis on ranged combat, so positioning is quite important. And in the bigger picture, strategy-wise there's a lot to think about because encounters are not usually isolated--you have to consider how your actions might affect the overall state of the world since it is a reactive living environment. All of those reactions are (eventually) learnable, however, so it's not a completely secret and opaque system.

I can tell you that if you check out one of the spoiler-free beginner guides you'll learn a few of the basic tactics that you just might not have been able to come up with on your own yet, and it will still leave you with a huge amount of stuff to discover, both in terms of mechanics and of course content (being spoiler-free).

With some players these things really snap into place and we've had some go on to win in a couple weeks or less, while others have been playing for over a year and are only just now starting to reach the end game areas. I would always recommend that anyone having repeated trouble in the early game should check some beginner's tips, because once you have the basics down, while the early/mid-game is still challenging, it will rarely be able to kill you! (unless you're trying something crazy on purpose )

Good luck!

[BitgamerX]

Thanks, that helps.  I got Alpha 10 freshly installed and I'm ready to take another crack at it.  Like many roguelike games learning how to get some traction as a novice can be the most challenging part.