Iratus - Like Darkest Dungeon but different

@coldsteel thanks. I’d been watching mostly twitch streams, but will happily check this out.

As to the RNG, I guess it depends on what you mean. You can miss or crit, as can the enemy. I feel like a lot of that can be dealt with by choosing upgrades wisely and watching the debuffs you get hit with (a lot of players seem to not pay attention to this).

This is also a game where you shouldn’t try to get cute and stall for an extra turn to heal someone. I watched someone do that and get half their squad annihilated by a massive AoE yesterday.

I struggled with the concept/mechanic of initiative in DD. My preference was to build parties that had high speed and so often the other side not only went first even though their speed was lower than my squad, but there were times when they would not only go first in a round and complete their attacks and the round would end and they would go first again in the next round with my squad absorbing two full rounds of attacks without the ability to respond (with exception of MaA).

I could live with RNG but not with the obscure initiative mechanics. Maybe I confused high speed with higher initiative? Yes, I loaded up on trinkets to boost initiative.

No idea how initiative worked in DD or if this game employs it, but the only situation I’ve seen remotely resembling that in Iratus was a boss fight where the back row party member was stunned repeatedly and killed without ever getting a chance to do much. Some other characters were stunned, but no idea if that one was randomly picked on or was by design. It’s worth mentioning that the party being employed by the player in this fight was wildly imbalanced (3 Death knights and one Bride (archer). A more balanced group might have dealt with the stuns more effectively, for instance, a mummy should have been able to remove the stun from the whole party, I think (they can remove all debuffs with one move).

My understanding in DD the intitiative is based on a roll of a D8 and whatever roll your character gets has speed and other factors added/subtracted and that is the initiative compared to the initiative of the baddie.

So more RNG to contend with.

I haven’t watched all of the vids I posted above (only 1.5 so far) but to me it seems like the guy is using some pretty poor strategies. He keeps boosting the Iratus skill that gives you more body parts after a battle and ignoring completely that fact that some of his other (mana using) skills could provide him with some big help in his battles. Plus, he keeps focusing on dread builds to the exclusion of everything else which seems like a bad idea. Nevertheless, he loves the game and is very enthusiastic about it. I also find his naming of his units hilarious.

The first vid is useful because he goes over everything pretty well at the beginning, including the types of buildings, minions, minion skills, and body part crafting, for people new to the game.

That’s interesting, because most of the people I’ve been watching ignore stress attacks for the most part. I’m not sure how I feel about the stress system yet. I LOVE that your minions don’t get afflictions. OTOH, making enemies insane can be a real problem if you aren’t careful. I’ve seen it be really effective(e.g. making someone attack their own team or drop dead from a heart attack), but making a unit berserk right before they attack can mean trouble.

Yeah, stress attacks are too RNG to rely on them as a way to win fights, imo. If you’re going to use them, fine, but you better bring something else to the party as well. Relying on them pretty much exclusively seems to me like a recipe for disaster. Sure, you get those good battles where everything drops dead of a heart attack but then in other battles, the enemy gets inspired instead and crushes you. Too RNG.

In each round of combat in DD, initiative order is determined by Speed + 1d8. So it’s possible for the same hero or enemy to end the current combat round and start the next one.

Afaik, there are no rounds per se in Iratus. I think that when a character moves, they just go to the back of the line. I haven’t noticed moves having varying duration or anything, though I wasn’t looking for it.

Edit: there definitely is an initiative stat. Not sure on the specifics of how it works. Might be rounds too.

Here are three more vids by Rhapsody that extend his let’s play from the original three I linked above, to a a total of 6 in the series.

I must say, I’ve watched all 6 of these vids and they have convinced me to absolutely buy this game tomorrow. I can’t wait to play it.

Rhapsody has gotten better playing as the series goes on. He was putting together some interesting combinations. I did see one he missed that I’m dying to try out with the lich minion. With the lich you have a skill to summon a skeleton and another one to sacrifice a skeleton and heal the whole party. Lichs also have a ‘shrapnel’ ability that damages the first two in the enemy row but also damages the first minion in your row.

Now the skeleton minion also has an ability that allows them to charge to the front of the row and attack the first enemy position. So, I immediately thought, why not send only 3 minions into battle including a lich and immediately summon a skeleton? Then the first thing he does on his turn is charge to the front of the row. The the lich can cast shrapnel all the wants and when the summoned skeleton gets low on health, sacrifice it to heal everyone else and then summon another skeleton, rinse and repeat.

Now there are a bunch of questions. is the summon skeleton a skill you can only use if you’ve built up wrath during battle? Probably. If so, this strategy won’t work. It also won’t work if you are only allowed to field a full party of 4 (also probably). Still, there are some other ways I can think of you might be able to get this to work.

This kind of strategizing and theorizing is what has me excited to play the game. They’ve also added a lot to the management layer and it looks like a lot of fun.

Edit: Actually, going back and looking at the end of that last vid again, neither skill uses wrath, so this should absolutely work. Excellent (rubs hands together). Also, he didn’t have to lose that Bride of Iratus if he’d sacrificed a skeleton the turn before. Even after doing it, he doesn’t seem to realize the implications of the lich having those skills.

I started watching the first video yesterday. Keep in mind Rhapsody is playing on the second difficulty. I wonder if there are artifacts or trinkets that increase the chance of causing a heart attack with a stress attack. While I can see the temptation to try and specialize in one area, I agree you better have some strength in at least two of physical/magic/stress, with maybe a need for all three. Then again, I think successful play throughs will require creation of multiple parties. Brains are limited, and relying exclusively on them to get back on your feet in case of a wipe seems like a terrible idea.

I saw someone on Twitch using a lich the other day (saw the sacrifice/summon/dash combo) It looked pretty great. There’s also at least one artifact for Iratus that has an effect based on number of minions destroyed in a battle (I think it was body pats, but not sure). If the summoned ones count for that, it could be really powerful.

Yeah. I went back and looked at the end of vid 6 again and the lich actually can’t summon a skelly until he has 70 wrath. So, it is keyed to wrath after all.

You’d probably need to equip +wrath body parts, pick any +wrath lich skills and maybe equip an artifact (if you can find one) that increases party wrath. Iratus may have a skill that does that, too. Since you’d start with only 3 in your party, you’d need to survive a few turns until you can get enough wrath built up to start the combo chain.

I’m assuming you can choose to only have 3 minions in your party, but we’ll see. Unfortunately, it looks like it takes quite a while to unlock the lich minion so I may have to wait a good bit to actually try it all out.

Game is live. There is a supporter pack with some extra skins and artbook, soundtrack, plus a new minion to come later on called Infested.

On the latter, there was this exchange on the discord the other day:

I think that some kind of disease ridden zombie/undead would be cool. it could be covered in pestilential bubos or something like that. He could be focused on debuffs and bypassing blocks/wards and inflict debuffs and/or damage/stress when attacked as retaliation to substantiate the concept of infecting others.

believe or not we already plan something like this 😃

Not sure I dig there being a minion locked behind dlc like that. Hoping to acrape up the cash to get this since i would like to stream it. Will likely have to aave for remnant though

I picked this up, did the tutorial and am now about halfway through the first level. Love it so far.

Awesome. I picked up the bundle and look forward to playing once we get settled in the new place.

@Harkonis yeah, I thought the same thing when I saw it in the supporter pack. OTOH, it isn’t out yet, it is coming later, so it is very much like a DLC in that regard which I don’t mind. It’s also not terribly expensive, so I’d say buy the game and if you live it, it will be worth a separate purchase. You could also wait for a sale.

Figured out something regarding initiative while watching Rhapsody’s Let’s Play:

There are definitely rounds. You can see markers on the action list at the top. Here’s where it gets odd. Whatever the initiative order is in the current round, it will also show that for the following round as it approaches on the list. But when the next round actually arrives, it will calculate initiative for the round and you will see the icons slide around in the order. Rhapsody gets confused by this during the 4th episode, trying to figure out why the lost soul keeps acting out of sequence.

I get it now, but I’m not sure this is the clearest way to present the info. Perhaps simply graying out the portraits for the next round would help convey this.

The last boss in the first dungeon is a tough one. I’ve taken a few cracks at him so far and haven’t been able to beat him. I think I’ve not been picking the right skills in Iratus’ skill tree. So far the game is plenty tough on the starting difficulty. I’m not going to boost that up until I can consistently get past the first dungeon level.

My lich strategy does not work as well as I’d hoped. It does work after a fashion but the problem is lichs don’t have a lot of offense and skeletons don’t either. And if you only bring 3 minions to start with, you’re at a serious disadvantage in a lot of fights. Maybe I can come up with a combo there that works there but so far it’s a no go.

Well, I beat that boss (keymaster) this morning on my first try. I read last night that a party of 2 death knights, a mummy and a zombie was really good for that battle and it sure was. Won easily. So, on to the the second level.

This game is really growing on me. The similarities to DD were distracting at first, but the more I play it, the more I see its strengths showing up. Tactically and strategically, they’ve put in a lot of neat mechanics. There are many strategic decisions to make, and I haven’t even begun to open up the enhanced options yet. Really strong showing for an Early Access game. Hell, this is a strong showing for a fully released game.