Infra Arcana - An H.P. Lovecraft/Horror based Roguelike

[non]

I recommend waiting for v19.1.

When?

The same first level feels like an official one for me now.

Just joking, no pressure. But if it is not soon... I don't have randomly generated levels. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career.

It's going to take longer than expected. I'm doing a major update of the spell system, and lots of balancing (this should almost be called v20.0 instead of 19.1).

I'm making really good progress though - I think it's gonna be good!

 

[non]

My only complaint is that sometimes secret and locked areas are too empty. I can find a loot-rich chest/bookshelf room pretty easily, then have to find a switch for a locked door and backtrack to it only to find a few rocks inside. Perhaps make it so that the former areas are the ones typically hidden or behind metal gates? It would make sense that knowledge would be concealed or locked away in a lovecraftian setting, and it give all classes an incentive to find/unlock these rooms as currently the loot that they have is mostly oriented towards war veterans (since I mostly saw heavy weapons and body armor in there). Then again I'm sure you put more thought into the algorithm so I might be talking out of my ass.

I'll see if I can do something about that.

 

[Trash Player]

Ascended with Vet. Lv10/10% insane. Went with the nerf-in-progress rock/electric gun build. Found 4 devices but no insight, otherwise quite lucky: +5 Hatchet, 0 armor/meds problem, 3 invis/3 fort, no lantern oil but adequate flares. Craziest find: first descent potion right in front of welcome party on dLv 20.
Got nyctophobia at 5%, cured around dLv 25. No real dilemma posed with lucky flare finds and ranged focus. Rocks OP as hell with Marksman ranks.

 

[non]

Yeah marksman (and rocks, haha) is OP as hell in v19.0.

Please hold out for v19.1

 

[Matador]

I read this on reddit and I thought it was very wrong. What do you think guys? I don't think that because you found a second Cloud minds rod in a lucky run, you should nerf to the ground the item and stealth builds in general. Also you can blow up zombies to get things done. It's not like there are so many tough dudes to alert in first levels.

IMO 1 charge per cloud minds is fine. When I had 2 rods and 4 charges, I was mostly just chainstabbing tanky enemies.

I watched your vid. It was interesting to see someone else play this game. I might record myself playing as well (but I play with ascii and no sound).

Well, what rogues have trouble with early game IMO is:

• Zombie groups. You can stab one, but if it doesn't die, it will alert the rest of them. Even if you can kill some of them, the corpses are difficult to clear by kicking. You might kill the entire group and be unable to clear the corpses, and all the while you're accruing wounds and terror.
• Oozes. You can stab one, but it'll never die. This alerts all the rest. They can't really be lost without cloud minds.
• Uniques that can't be killed in one stab. This results in a temptation to use cloud minds to chain stab a total of 1-3 times (or more if a second rod is found). This is costly but can be worth it.

Cloud Minds really takes care of the above situations, so if you want to bring it down to 1 charge (and I prefer this, even with the 250 turn recharge), then you can compensate by making zombie groups smaller / corpses easier to wham / easier to kill with one stab. Oozes could take a large HP hit. Uniques are generally avoidable but Major can be ridiculous if he spots you.

This it's what I posted:

I disagree. Weakening the monster encounters and lefting a weak character to play is the most unfun thing you can do. This game has great stealth mechanics and it's obviously designed to allow stealth builds (specially after XP kill removal).

Sitting 250 turns to recharge the rod because your character build is useless otherwise is good? Is fine to reverse a well thought adjustment just because you hit the jackpot with an overpowered combination in a random game?

If I find 1000 tommy gun bullets in a game, and I can Rambo the dungeon is OK to ask to nerf the weapon to the ground just because of my good luck?

Zombie packs in first levels are a little annoying, but no so problematic as a stealth build. I'm taking care of that shit now like a man with TNT and bullets, and I have not complaints to be honest.

The real problem is in later levels, because you can get 2 tough straight packed encounters with really nasty dudes, and you can't fight through with the squeezy stealth-melee build or have some maneuverility with only a 250 cooldown charge, it's ridiculous. That's where I really see the need for less cloud minds cooldown or two charges.

Also if you weaken these packs the ranged or tanky builds are a joke to play, so you mess not only with the rogue balance but with the game difficulty as a whole.

 

[non]

What do you think about double charges vs shorter duration for Cloud Minds then? 4x cloud minds chain-stabbing does sound a little bit ridiculous to me.

I'm taking care of that shit now like a man with TNT and bullets, and I have not complaints to be honest.

I wish more people had this attitude!

 

[Matador]

What do you think about double charges vs shorter duration for Cloud Minds then? 4x cloud minds chain-stabbing does sound a little bit ridiculous to me.

I'm taking care of that shit now like a man with TNT and bullets, and I have not complaints to be honest.

I wish more people had this attitude!

A posibility it occurs to me is give the starting rogue rod 2 charges and the ones you find on the dungeon one charge. Or simply lower the cooldown and give one charge to all rods.

To be honest I can't find a precise number, sure you know better, but for sure 250 turn cooldown is too much deeper in the dungeon with the wicked fuckers you encounter. As I said in early levels you can kill them with explosives- molotovs, and a couple of shots.

Anyway great job, the direction of the game is great and I imagine is very tense and hard to adjust all aspects after a major update like 19.0.

 

[eXalted]

One charge with lower cooldown seems the best option.

Or a few charges but every use giving insanity? Although, I don't know if this feels right...

 

[non]

I think I'll change it to one charge, with 80 turns (40 with Electrically Inclined).

Then you can use it plenty of times, but typically not multiple times per encounter. I don't like the quadruple chain-stabbery cheesiness.

 

[Trash Player]

I find Cloud Mind way too unreliable against fast mobs: they detect immediately in their own turn.
My 2 cents for this particular problem:
1. Limit 1 rod spawn for each type, gamey as hell for sure but it solves that particular aspect
2. Change Cloud Mind to something else, like Temporal Stasis: enemies take no damage but no actions either for a short number of standard turns.

 

[non]

There is another solution though, I'm quoting myself here:

Paralyzis must be based on standard turns instead of actor turns yes. It's very strange now that paralyzing a faster monster is usually completely useless.

Spotting sneaking actors must also happen on standard turns, so that super fast monsters aren't completely impossible to hide from.

Cloud Minds could possibly also apply a one turn debuff, which prevents them from detecting you.

Edit: Missed the full quote.

 

[Matador]

Cloud Minds could possibly also apply a one turn debuff, which prevents them from detecting you.

Edit: Missed the full quote.

Yes, cloud minds can be somewhat unreliable without "Imperceptible".

 

[Matador]

non Do you know approximately when the next version is going to release? I want to play, but if the new release is soon I can wait playing another game.

 

[non]

non Do you know approximately when the next version is going to release? I want to play, but if the new release is soon I can wait playing another game.

I'm gonna release a v19.1-beta.2 tonight or tomorrow. This should be very much playable.

After that I will just do a couple of "nice to have" things like displaying the exact speed % of monsters in their descriptions (Edit: no I won't) before I release the actual v19.1 (probably on sunday/monday).

 

[Tomatohead]

Great to see progress! One of the nice roguelikes out there.

 

[Epsilon]

Thanks non Your game is excellent. Enjoying it a lot on Linux.

 

[non]

There we go!

v19.1-beta.2 released.

Linux x64:
https://github.com/martin-tornqvist...v19.1-beta.2/ia_v19.1-beta.2_linux_x64.tar.gz

Windows x86:
https://github.com/martin-tornqvist.../v19.1-beta.2/ia.v19.1-beta.2.windows.x86.zip

Changelog (just continued from v19.1-beta.1):
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/martin-tornqvist/ia/v19.1-beta.2/res/release_history.txt

 

[Matador]

Let's go!

 

[eXalted]

Alright! Started playing and I think I found a bug?

I drank a Potion of Descend, 2 turns later I descended using stairs and now it seems the portion stopped working because I didn't sink through the ground many turns later.

 

[Trash Player]

That trick, if possible in earlier patches, doesn't work for a while: I tried that in 1.9, same result. Descending stairs removes the Descend effect.

 

[Matador]

Got to the boss with a rogue. I actually hit him a lot. But the moment he broke my asbestos suit I was stunlocked to death. The guy is a complete bitch.

I throw smoke, nuked him with dynamite and molotovs, hit him some times with the tommy gun, but it wasn't enough.

Either way I'm very happy with the run. Great fun. A shame I got so close.

Player
Explored to dungeon level 31
Was 82% insane
Killed 163 monsters
Gained 805 experience points
Gained a score of 1638
Phobia of darkness

Traits gained:
Adept Marksman, Expert Marksman, Dexterous, Stealthy,
Imperceptible, Mobile, Lithe, Observant, Treasure Hunter,
Electrically Inclined, Vicious

Unique monsters killed:
Keziah Mason
Major Clapham-Lee

 

[Trash Player]

Got to the boss with a rogue. I actually hit him a lot. But the moment he broke my asbestos suit I was stunlocked to death. The guy is a complete bitch.

I throw smoke, nuked him with dynamite and molotovs, hit him some times with the tommy gun, but it wasn't enough.

Either way I'm very happy with the run. Great fun. A shame I got so close.

Player
Explored to dungeon level 31
Was 82% insane
Killed 163 monsters
Gained 805 experience points
Gained a score of 1638
Phobia of darkness

Traits gained:
Adept Marksman, Expert Marksman, Dexterous, Stealthy,
Imperceptible, Mobile, Lithe, Observant, Treasure Hunter,
Electrically Inclined, Vicious

Unique monsters killed:
Keziah Mason
Major Clapham-Lee

Impressive. Insanity is a real possibility now. I am not sure if the other classes are up to Rogue's level at this point for reasons we are aware of.
Better luck next time.
Edit:
I just slapped myself on the mouth gleefully: A Lv 9 WarVet was just ascended with 29% insanity!
Pretty lucky with decent potions/manuscripts/Spirit increases, no med/ammo problem; I picked up like >200 Tommy slugs, ended the run with >100 left over.
Picked Stealthy first and then spreaded to pick up Marksman and speed. Really cannot go wrong with this.
Electric gun is pretty lame damage-wise but it is still very good as a CC tool.

 

[eXalted]

I am really enjoying this new version!

Are there any improvements on the generator concerning secret/locked rooms and their loot? They really feel like a hand-crafted room with rewards.

Btw sometimes it seems the stairs are spawned too close.

 

[eXalted]

non It seems the potion bug is still there - the one where drinking a Potion of Descent and using the stairs after that removes the effect of the potion.

 

[non]

non It seems the potion bug is still there - the one where drinking a Potion of Descent and using the stairs after that removes the effect of the potion.

That's not a bug, that's a design choice. I figured the game is pretty short, so going down the stairs then almost immediately skipping the next level is.... too much skipping.

I added a message now though, to make it clearer that this is explicit and not just a bug: "My sinking feeling disappears".