Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jimmijamjams]

WARNING SPOILERS!!!

Before you scroll down understand that I have embedded screenshots of weapons/items/screens that are only found in the higher levels.  If you want to find out this stuff for yourself I would advise not to look at this post.







Things went very well for the first few floors.  I concentrated mainly on a more combat focused build early, but an opportunity came up to convert to a speedier build on level -5.  Here was my kit at the start of that level:





Both Levels -4 and -5 were tough and I'd searched almost the entirety of the levels before finding a suitable set of stairs.  Some of the items that stood out as game changers for me were the Experimental Optical Array and the Heavy Disruptor Cannon.  The increased vision proved invaluable in avoiding bad situations and if I was ever in a narrow hallway I would shoot service drones until one shut down; sending it ahead to see if there was a squad waiting around the corner.





Level -3 didn't prove much of a problem I was easily able to avoid the enemies I wanted to avoid and take down the enemies that were in the way.  The Heavy Disruptor Cannon worked well to take down most enemies and the Heavy Proton Missile Launcher cleaned up groups of Swarmers fairly quickly.





Level -2 I basically got smashed.  There were groups of about eight Swarmers that I could take out fairly easily until two Programmers showed up and took out all my key Utilities (mainly my Experimental Heat Sinks and a Coolant Network) that were enabling me to run a fully Energy Weapon based build.





The following sequence of shots are me basically running nude on Level -2, switching on and off an Electron Diverter when I had the energy to do so.  The sheer amount of dead-ends I kept encountering caused me to have to run back and forth in front and past the enemy on several occasions until I finally found the exit.  I think I spent the most time on -2 than any other level.









The Electron Diverter didn't make it to the end and I was left with a selection of completely useless items in my inventory.  I think if I had spent time to be more selective as to what I had in my inventory I would have had a better chance in Level -1.  Here's a shot of my faithful Electron Diverter:





There's a cool screen when you evolve to Level -1 which I hadn't seen before.  I'll leave it in a link in case you don't want to spoil yourself.  Anomaly detected?  Surely not!



Once in Level -1 things go bad very quickly.  There were enemies absolutely everywhere and I pretty much had nowhere to go.  Everywhere I went was a dead end and the one way I should have gone was filled with enemies.  I did find a flight unit before I was descended upon, but I couldn't deal with the upkeep of energy.  The following sequence of shots is me being hunted down until I died.


I started in the bottom left of this shot, checked the room down there and came out to a group of Grunts.





Managed to run to the North and found this helpful corridor.





The exit to that corridor is up in the top left.  Things are looking really bad now...





Checked the room on the right where the Swarmers came from and found another dead end.  Backtracked across the room and another Programmer was waiting in my only exit.





I was on about 10 Core Integrity at this stage and thought I would take a screenshot for posterity.





All in all, not that great a score.  I was expecting a bit more considering the time that I'd spent wading through some of the earlier levels, but I guess I was taking more time to avoid than usual.  This was also an unusual run in that I didn't end up taking out any reactors (at least I'm pretty sure).  Destroying reactors, while making your Alert Level very high, may net a few extra points in the long run.





Thanks for taking the time to read

[Supernovadx]

Nice run, and even better documentation. Wow. I hope something like this will end up in the series.

[jimmijamjams]

Nice run, and even better documentation. Wow. I hope something like this will end up in the series.

Cheers!

I don't tend to play nearly as well when commentating, also most of the time in these later levels I'm um-ing and ah-ing at what I'll equip next as I'm not nearly as familiar with these later levels.  Even so, I'm thinking of starting the recordings on later levels as the mid-game is where things get interesting.

[Kyzrati]

Aw, too bad you weren't recording this one, but I can see how that can somewhat put you off your game. Nice read, and the fact that you managed to escape alive from -2 after that screenshot is impressive...

I already wrote about the late-game difficulty on /r/Cogmind, but I'll quote myself here for the record:

Right now I think -3~-1 might be a little too harsh on combat builds and by then it's better to start leaning heavily on stealth, but I also think that for now it makes sense to wait until the later branches are added before adjusting the difficulty too much. I'll probably end up tweaking Research/Access to be slightly easier, and leave the really difficult stuff for the alternate endings/routes.

Before the next release I need to do some playtesting of my own and perhaps temporarily drop the number of hostiles towards the end. Doing so would make those levels even easier for a speed run, but I also have near-term plans that might increase the difficulty of quickly racing to the end.

[jimmijamjams]

Aw, too bad you weren't recording this one, but I can see how that can somewhat put you off your game. Nice read, and the fact that you managed to escape alive from -2 after that screenshot is impressive...

I already wrote about the late-game difficulty on /r/Cogmind, but I'll quote myself here for the record:

Right now I think -3~-1 might be a little too harsh on combat builds and by then it's better to start leaning heavily on stealth, but I also think that for now it makes sense to wait until the later branches are added before adjusting the difficulty too much. I'll probably end up tweaking Research/Access to be slightly easier, and leave the really difficult stuff for the alternate endings/routes.

Before the next release I need to do some playtesting of my own and perhaps temporarily drop the number of hostiles towards the end. Doing so would make those levels even easier for a speed run, but I also have near-term plans that might increase the difficulty of quickly racing to the end.

I never seem to be recording when the best stuff happens, but I have way more games that I don't record than ones I do.  I guess they'll just have to be immortalised in this format, which as I understand it is the preferred way to digest roguelikes for some people.

I'll be interested to see how inserting the extra levels will impact the game.  If my guess is correct, once you get past the multitude of Sentries in one of the Weapons Cache rooms and get to the exit there'll be relatively low numbers of hostiles (at least initially) with a lot of Alien Tech lying around (please say yes ).

I personally would be wary of changing too much in the late-game prior to adding the extra branches, but if it's putting people off maybe something does need to be done about it (at least in the short-term).

[Kyzrati]

I guess they'll just have to be immortalised in this format, which as I understand it is the preferred way to digest roguelikes for some people.

This I'd have to agree with. LPs are good for a certain crowd, but in general I think there's a lot more interest (at least from the core audience) when runs are captured via screenshots and text. That said, LPs are a better way to reach the non-established audiences.

I'll be interested to see how inserting the extra levels will impact the game.  If my guess is correct, once you get past the multitude of Sentries in one of the Weapons Cache rooms and get to the exit there'll be relatively low numbers of hostiles (at least initially) with a lot of Alien Tech lying around (please say yes ).

We shall see . The general idea is they'll be similar to existing branches in that they might be riskier and less predictable in some ways, but the rewards will be much greater than what you generally find in Complex 0b10.

I personally would be wary of changing too much in the late-game prior to adding the extra branches, but if it's putting people off maybe something does need to be done about it (at least in the short-term).

Yeah, that's why I'm not really acting on it just yet. Players are still getting better, and getting further faster, so it's not so easy to judge yet. This is also why I'd like to save some time to play more myself for the extra firsthand experience. I need to spend time examining how someone with perfect/optimal knowledge (e.g. myself) can handle the late game.