As a game mechanic it’s terrible. As is the fact that you have to go pretty deep into the tech tree to even unlock the encyclopedia. I had a good run with this game, but I think I’m done with it. There’s a really great game somewhere in here but I don’t feel like the developers put in the effort to fully chisel it out. And if they did put in that work, it’s all buried under one of the worst UX designs I’ve seen in the modern era of gaming.
Hah. Nearly put down the game while struggling to do anything in Act II with the rogue. First run through Act II with the necromancer and I roflstomped the whole thing. Not sure if balance is fucked or if my understanding of things is just much better suited to the necro, heh.
That’s currently where I’m at. Trying to work out how to get the rogue in a good place ready for the boss. Even if I unlock the necromancer, I want to beat that chapter with the rogue now! I’ve managed to get up to level 14 gear but struggling with health. I’ve got a few ideas but it’s been tough!
I never even engaged the boss with the rogue, but her design seems like it would be exceptionally hard with the way the rogue fights.
I discovered the hard way that “Damage to All” does nothing for the Act 2 boss. I was hoping to be able to wipe out all her mirrors in one blow but I guess that would have been a bit overpowered, hehe.
So I’m still trying to find the best class/build for that boss.
I smashed my first-ever faceroll Necromancer into her, with no potions and down 400 hp, and won handily. The skellies crush mirrors just fine.
The Rogue has a tougher start but also has -much- better scaling than the warrior. I think he makes runs much easier.
Defensive benefits like life from mountains and life per day from meadows are not that great. They don’t scale well into later loops and don’t help you complete fights faster.
The best stats are attack speed and evasion. Evasion is doubly good because it scales no matter which loop you are in and it additionally gets more effective the more you already have. Both of these benefit greatly from the rogue passive and it’s definitely worth it to selectively use loot that only has those stats and one more (damage vs. all is good, magic damage is usable, crit chance/crit damage in a pinch).
The rogue really takes off once you unlock forest tiles. They give attack speed. I found it’s a really good idea to -only- use forest tiles (+later the river tile that doubles their effect), no mountains, no meadows, no other tiles from that row. Getting +400% attack speed, 50% dodge and say 40 “damage to all” clears most fights before you take a second hit, many before you take any damage.
Half a million!
I had the first character that felt like it could have gone infinite. A Necro with all the good level upgrades (0.25 skeleton level per loop, 0.5 permanent magic hp per summon, 3 max hp per kill, damage to hero gets distributed on the summons, summons counter when hero is attacked). With 7 max skeletons, 200% attack speed to basically insta-summon them all, and by calibrating the skeleton levels to keep the fights lasting a bit, I was increasing by 250 max hp and 200 magic hp per loop. It was super rare to lose even one hp.
But this was only at difficulty 3, so the resource drops weren’t meaningful enough to keep running, and it was taking like 20 minutes per loop.
Beat the final boss on the first try. Probably not going to do it with the other two classes.
The game was well worth the money, but I am a bit puzzled by why it works.
- Gambling your resoureces on continuing or retreating ends is a totally meaningless decision.
- The promise of the adjacency-based terrain system isn’t really met. There aren’t as many adjacency effects as it first looks like, and many of the effects are basically irrelevant.
- It is pretty slow, and with a low decision density. (Jesus Christ, give me a 4x speed and an toggle to skip all battle animations). This was somewhat expected, given the autobattler influence.
- I in general don’t love the Rogue Legacy type progression systems. It’s always unclear whether you’re able to advance with your current level of meta-progression, or need to grind for that rather than for victories. For Loop Hero, I suspect that grinding is totally optional.
It really might be just the joy of figuring out the intentionally obscure systems, and the slowness of the game is required to make the exploration process last for longer. (I spent far too much time exploring really bad deck compositions / map layouts).
I’m still enjoying it all right, but it’s weird to me that the design feels so rough. Not in terms of broken or buggy bullshit, but in terms of the way the game communicates to players, the way it totally fails to lead you toward discoveries, the wildly uneven balance and difficulty.
Might set it down. Not really a disappointment as such, for the price, but I feel like it really needs a good couple months of design iteration to reach its potential.
While the game doesn’t have a dedicated option one of the steam guides describes how to increase the game speed. I found that one very helpful with the slow pace of the game.
Supposedly it has minor effects on regen skills, potion usage and maybe treasuries but I haven’t noticed and I think even so the QoL improvement well worth that price.
Next up, we’re working on patches with quality-of-life updates you all asked for, including a system for saving during expeditions, new speed settings, and a deck of traits gained from bosses!
After that, you can expect to see lots more content added to the game, such as new cards, transformations, classes and new music.
I tried an Outpost the first time while playing a necromancer. Those dudes have zero chill.
I haven’t used the Outpost card yet because I didn’t like the tradeoff, are there specific places on the map that they seem worth losing the items?
First time I tried an outpost, I was on a rogue, and I played it right next to the campfire (I wasn’t quite sure how the card worked yet, so I just plopped it down anywhere).
You know how the rogue only gets items when he hits up the campfire every loop? Yeah, outpost guy took ALL THE YELLOW AND ORANGE ITEMS every loop. Either that or my random item generation was coincidentally ridiculously unlucky on that same run. But most loops I was either getting all grey items, or all grey with a very occasional blue. And yet the merc dude never fought a single thing.
After my hilarious start, I tried it out once more, and honestly, I didn’t find the helper strong enough to warrant the trade off. On more than one occasion he actually died during the fight, but still took my rare items anyway. So I haven’t really used it again since then. If there’s a worthwhile use for it, I don’t know what it is.
Feels like this for a lot of the cards you unlock in the mid to late game.
And if the game would document its damn mechanics in any meaningful form, we’d be able to experiment with strategies with more complicated heuristics than throwing darts!
So I’ve been hammering this pretty hard over the last week or so (as rogue), mostly trying to wrap it up. I nearly threw the towel in after trying lots of different card combos and conservative strategies. The truth is, and as @jsnell said up-thread, you’ve got do as New Zealand did: go hard, go early. Get the spawners down as early as possible and tank as much as you can per loop. Get those trophies for gear that puts you ahead of the power curve which in turn allows you to confidently deploy more spawners to keep the cards and trophies coming. Keep fuelling that engine.
This change in strategy took me from banging my head against Act 2 (never reached the boss), to getting to Act 4 in one run (two bosses on first go). Act 4 is tough and I tried a few different combos before falling back on what seems like a more likely route to success:
And honestly, at this point, while you can have the base strategy more or less pinned down, you’re ultimately at the mercy of the card, gear and trait drops (for the rogue at least, but my guess is this extends to the other characters too?). Just now I nearly cracked Act 4 but on my last loop I didn’t get any new weapons so fell behind the power curve, despite stomping up until that point. I’ve had several runs where I’ve been dealt lots of river or forest cards (or fields which I quickly ditched) and they just aren’t useful early on. Vampire mansions (and villages), groves and spider cocoons are great on the first few loops for pumping out enemies. Cemeteries are often two skeletons for the price of one (with slow attacks) and battlefields can bolster spawns. Blood groves, storm temples and outposts provide excellent support later on too.
FYI I only just unlocked the necromancer. Must have been burning through some key resource with other upgrades!
I’ve found Blood Groves are awesome for getting those Scorch Worms before they can retreat when their health gets low.