Toss out the Beacon. It’s doing the opposite of what you want, by making you move faster through the level and thus reducing the number of spawns. Or replace it with the Temporal Beacon, which has a more useful effect and will spawn monsters.
What’s Oblivion for? Just for clearing a path to the boss on the last loop, or is there some specific tile spawn you’re afraid of.
Yeah that’s my gut feeling too. I did some experimenting with beacon and temporal beacon and feel that temporal is better, for chucking out more enemies with the 50% time increase but also adding time watchers–even if they can bite me in the arse with their shields then escaping. I like the idea of 20% attack speed with beacon but… it applies to all so there’s no real benefit, unless I’m missing something? The movement speed is a problem for spawns and is the reason why I reinstated swamps–I just never extended that line of thinking to the beacons.
Chrono crystals sound great but I’ve had runs where I’ve had far too many early on (ultimately tipping the spawn rate too far). Chrono crystals and cemeteries could be interesting…
I’ve toyed with ruins but I don’t like the ranged adjacent worms and their tendency to escape without a blood grove as @Brad_Grenz mentions. Blood groves are also fantastic for ransacked villages.
As for Oblivion, that’s a good point. For some reason I’ve never even considered that I don’t have to bring it. There’s the odd time I use it to clear a bandit camp for a blood grove or outpost, or even uncouple a blood grove from a forest to make a hungry grove. Other than that, I should probably toss it.
Thanks for my appraisal! :-)
I’ve nearly got to the final boss twice now (as the rogue) and each time, on the final or penultimate loop when I’ve been crushing it, I’ve been hit by something that gives me a snail icon and cuts my attack speed by -66%, and both times it’s ended my run. I braved the Steam forums and asked. Apparently there’s stamina in this game. 37 hours in and that’s news to me. Somebody suggested finding a sweet spot so you don’t wear yourself out but… where is the stamina? How do I find that sweet spot?
Edit: apparently it’s one of the tiny bars above your character during battles. Ugh.
I also just noticed the ‘Take all’ button above ‘You will lose’:
Click it and they get added to your ‘You will keep’ pile:
So let me get this straight: I keep 60% of all resources if I retreat, but if I click the ‘Take all’ button first, I’ll take the lot? Because that’s totally what’s been happening since I started pressing it.
I think it uses a resource, so you can’t do it every time. I’m pretty sure you get those skulls from boss kills, so every few boss kills, you can keep everything from a run when you lose.
In the case of the image it uses 4 out of 17 Skulls you have.
Ohhh, okay that’s obvious now you’ve both pointed it out. Thanks!
Yeah, you get skulls from killing bosses, so it’s a little reward for replaying them.
Well, I just uninstalled this. I may come back to it later but I think the late game is too dependent on RNG or the incremental upgrades. I’ve had woefully barren early loops so no spawner cards to play or trophies to exchange. Some later loops have given me no new weapons, basically ending that run as I fall behind the HP curve. One of my last runs gave me no new weapons on my first loop so I nearly died on loop 2 with hardly anything on the map.
Yesterday, I was doing so well–better than I’d ever done, honestly thought: ‘this is the one!’–so felt ready to take the Act 4 priestess on. Full health, full potions, two guards, great stats (was crushing everything). I’m not sure whether it was the angels or the mirrors or a succession of criticals/evades but I got demolished (stamina wasn’t an issue this time). Other runs I’ve been doing really badly but thought ‘fuck it, let’s go’ and managed to handily beat her.
There’s definitely strategy here but I think you get to a point later on where certain things need to fall into place for you to stand a chance, from the moment-to-moment auto-battles (enemy targeting, criticals, evades, counters, trait specials etc.) to the card and gear drops, to the trait choices and when, even to the shape of the loop itself. I’m usually incredibly persistent with tough games but there’s something about Loop Hero that makes me feel annoyed with myself for coming back to it and having another roll of the dice, and I don’t like that. I think coming within spitting distance of the final boss, twice, and dying because of some unclear mechanic soured me too.
Edit: it reminds me a little of Risk of Rain but I really like those games. I feel like there’s perhaps a bigger ‘decision space’ there; a better balance between difficulty, RNG and playing well. Hmm.
So I saw that some people call this an idle / clicker game, others say it isn’t that at all. On a podcast they talked about how there was a great sense of discovery. As someone who doesn’t like idle / clicker games at all, any chance this game would click with me? I can handle slow pace (liked Per Aspera), but I need to feel like I’m making strategic choices or something to pull me forward. This is on sale by the way on Steam.
There are, I think, strategic choices to be made. The problem that I have and the reason I’ve stopped playing it, is that the game doesn’t tell you what they are or much about the impact of your choices. I gather you can eventually unlock an in-game encyclopedia that might help with that but I put in five hours and was nowhere near getting it.
I see what you did there. :-)
I played 5 hours and decided that there are a ton of games to invest my time instead of Loop Hero. It’s all grind and wait, grind and wait. It’s not for me.
Even when you get the encyclopedia, it hardly opens up a new wealth of information. You just get more opaque bullshit and a few hints about how some things work and what kind of resources might drop from certain things.
No chance. The decision density in the game is extremely low, and everything is painfully obvious once you understand the economic system. 95% of the gameplay is just busywork.
There’s basically one meaningful strategic decision (deck composition) before the run starts, and then some minor tactical decisions during a run.
Thanks for the replies . Sounds like I’ll pass on it.
I like deeply strategic games and I also enjoy the occasional more mindless games that suck me in and I spend an eternity playing. Loop Hero falls somewhere on that spectrum and yet after about 15 hours, I don’t feel like I am really progressing and the progression I need to make I am not interested in attempting. I really thought this would be right in my wheelhouse. So many other games to catch up on that I think this one will languish awhile before I go back.
I basically look at my friends list now to make decisions. If @robc04 and @Jason_Lutes have played the game a lot, time and time again, it is one I have enjoyed or know I will enjoy. :)
I don’t get into clickers games either, but this one entertained me - for a little while at least. I think I got about 4 or 5 hours out of it, including time spent in the demo.
It’s a bit of cheap fun. The main enjoyment came from seeing what you get next as things unlock, and the different interactions due to proximity.
We do have quite a bit overlapping tastes, don’t we? :-)
Honestly, having not been on Steam for a couple years and having a PC again, I’m just going through my library and the store, seeing what you and a few others have played a lot of and reinstalling or buying (if on sale). It’s much appreciated. :)
So that’s why I saw you playing Monster Train today! ;)
