But with a sapper also appearing every stage, that frequency doubles and that can be a real problem.

I mean, I know they are choreographed; that's not the issue. The question here is specifically about not killing the Sappers ahead of time so you can get the 'complete' fight, so to speak. When you have rockslides on consecutive turns or even two on the same turn, it's nigh impossible to avoid getting hit (sometimes literally).

I feel the obvious strategy is to try and find a ring of elements and get it pretty high leveled.

A few notes. First, a shuriken is a thrown weapon (sometimes called missile weapons), not a melee weapon.

Secondly, I have two runs on record where I used only only tier 1 gear, with additional stipulations. The first was a warden run where I finished with strength 6, having used no strength potions and equipped two cursed might rings, on in the caves and one in the halls. For that run, I ended with +10 armor to avoid encumbrance, but both my +3 gloves and my +5 bow were too heavy, though I used then anyways.

The second run was a completely potionless/scrolless rogue run. I ended with the same gear I started with, and didn't end up with any additional rings or artifacts either because I couldn't confirm any were uncursed. Now, I have done potionless/scrolless with three classes total, but in the other cases I either had a lucky armor drop (leather +3 for Warden), or I found a great shield (for mage; I couldn't attack with it, but melee combat wasn't a good idea anyways so that wasn't really an issue), so that rogue run was the only one of those that was all T1.

I do think that highlighting the current floor would be a nice UI tweak though.

Just wondering, are there a few variations for each region? Randomly picking from say, 3 or so different loading screens seems like it would be in line with some of the other variety features, such as the three-part music tracks or the three sad ghost dialogue lines per region.

The most important talent on sniper is shared upgrades. You don't need a great variety of thrown weapons to kill just a few enemies, and each thrown weapon upgrade increases the bow's special attack by 30%. The tomahawk + followup strike can kill basically anything just fine, if you upgrade the tomahawk.

Just wondering when you plan on releasing this update in alpha? Its close to the date you had anticipated after the last update.

Just curious if you're willing to share any info on those 9 badges. Any chance they're related to the subclasses? It's sort of weird that Gladiator players get one more badge than anyone else.

One of them is lore entries, because that tab had been removed from the bottom? A bestiary would wish be nice.

Currently the tiers have 5/7/6/7/7 weapons, although the 7th tier 2 weapon is the pickaxe which isn't pictured here.

I still never understood why magical porter was removed. Yes, alchemize replaced the merchant beacon, but magical porter served a different role. At the very least alchemize should allow the old porter effect as an option, which would be another way to help with inventory management.

That's due to how sewer pipe rooms specifically generate. They first start completely filled, then

—(with 3+ adjacent rooms) the shortest path connecting all adjacent rooms is carved out of the perimeter

—(with 2 adjacent rooms) a straight-ish path is carved through the middle to connect them

—(with one adjacent room) a path is carved from the adjacent room to the center of the room

This case is a merging of type 1 (lower room) with type 3 (upper room). Merged sewer rooms are responsible for many of those s-shaped dead ends.

First of all, welcome back! I've missed seeing your incremental dev updates, and am glad everything's going well now.

I can't say I'm too fond of this change though. At some fundamental level, alchemy used to be a crafting system. 1.1 took away from that somewhat (and made the third ingredient slot almost never used), but it was largely fine because it made recycling items more effective, particularly with the overall changes to how energy worked.

It already seemed a bit odd however to have items that weren't really 'crafted', but it makes sense for wands and missiles, and is at least tolerable for scrolls and potions. My gut reaction for this new proposal is that it just creates too many 1-item recipes, and in doing so alchemy seems much less like a crafting system. The assymmetry of the item types in the interface (some potions would show one option, others two or three, with a haphazard mix or exotics, elixers and spells) also seems quite inelegant.

There is also the fact that a visible catalyst option makes since in-world. What is energy? It's not very clear. However, why does putting a scroll in an alchemy pot create one thing vs another? One particularly noteworthy case is turning normal and exotic levitation into spells. How does that work? Using a scroll byproduct to make those spells seems far more concrete than simply using 'energy'. It is also somewhat irksome to have both a potion and a spell as outcomes for a single input, which are two different item classes.

I also think having at least some sort of item tradeoff is valuable. Scrolls are generally more useful than stones, and three stones vs. a scroll and a stone are not the same from a balance perspective. Sacrificing a scroll for a spell or a potion for an elixir is not prohibitive, but it requires a bit more thought by the player.

Can you possibly find some seeds where:

1. All floors have a depth feeling (except 1/26/ boss floors)
2. Given 1, All floors within the same region have the same depth feeling (except floor 1/26/ boss floors)
3. Given 2, Each region has a different feeling from other regions.

I was wondering if you could find a seed with at least 10 torches before floor 20. I'm also more interested in floors with lots of the same feeling in a row in general, but if you can only do item searches this seems like the only real option. Some weeks ago I played a seed with four consecutive dark depths (3,4,6,7), and want something similar.