Discovered that there was a Wand of BlastWave lying in the floor of floor 14 right as I was ascending with the amulet... Not that I needed it (got a good armor early on and just upgraded it and... Well, if you've ever played SPD with a +13 plate armor you know that hard doesn't enter on its synonyms list) but still, the best wand in the game just laying around? A gnoll probably dropped it after I killed it without even noticing...

I thought I had it in the bag this time, with Swiftness glyph on armor and Ring of Arcana +7 (pretty sure I broke the sound barrier), I was able to use 3 scrolls of Foresight for the entire run from the demon halls to the surface.

For the halls themselves I always conserve 4 magic mapping, I fully explored floors 25 and 26, and on the ascent I left no square uncovered or even blue from revellation. I circled each floor at least once, found several hidden rooms I'd missed on the descent. I definitely fully explored every boss room as well.

I've got a really fun run going here, with a blooming staff of Blast Wave and platemail of camouflage. Normally those enchantments are not the best, but the combination of knockback, creating grass, and Invisibility when trampling is both tactically amazing and enormous fun.

But which ring should I use? I can't seem to decide.

I have some SoU's, so whatever ring I use, I'll probably upgrade it to +3.

I do some modding of Shattered for my own use and my current project is adding rares for each enemy type. I'm curious if anyone has comments or suggestions on that topic.

What I'm thinking about so far:

Sewer Viper - poison on hit, guaranteed drop of starflower seed on first kill

Gnoll Poacher - ranged attacks, drops tier 2-3 ranged weapons

Swarm of Blood Flies - atracks drain life, drops seed of sungrass

Elder Crab - moves at normal speed but attacks twice per round and cripples, drops 3 mystery meat

Unstable Skeleton - explodes similar to a bomb or explosive trap when killed, drops a weapon with +1 tier probability

Guard Captain - chain pull also roots, drops armor with +1 tier probability

Malfunctioning DM-100 - immobile, continuously sparks electricity around itself that paralyzes while still also making ranged lightning attacks, drops scroll of retribution

Bloodletter Bat - attacks inflict bleeding, drops potion of purity

Gnoll Warlock - same as dwarf warlock but retreats after applying debuff, drops wand of corruption

Cave Trapper - attacks inflict poison, blind, and cripple, does not retreat after applying debuff, webs to block escape, drops potion of paralyzing gas

Dwarven Ghoulkeeper - ghouls revive with full health instead of 5 when a ghoulkeeper is nearby, and the ghoulkeeper periodically heals and buffs nearby ghouls, drops unstable brew

Senior Warlock - if alone, summons a pair of ghouls, otherwise uses regular warlock attack that also cripples, drops unstable spell

Siege Golem - attacks knock back, throws bombs, drops shrapnel bomb

Enchantress - attacks inflict blind and vulnerability as well as charm, drops exotic scroll of siren's song

All Seeing Eye - ranged attack pierces walls and barriers, can always see and target the hero within 3 tiles (blind doesn't help), charging up gives the hero mind vision on the eye, drops potion of mind vision

i honestly have never saw this happening before

This is my latest attempt at reaching whatever's at the bottom. I've learned from my previous mistakes and I believe I've got a better character this time. I even brought two akhs, a blessed one and a regular one (both lost in this same level). I'm still running out of food and health potions very quickly in the last levels. The bosses are really taxing in terms of health potions, and exploring takes a lot of time, which means I'm using many food items. Here are my items and skills:

This is in the beta. I can't tell if this floor generation is intended game design or not. Yes I already searched for any hidden doors and there are none.

This is refarding the slot in the journal where the game keeps a track of all the floors and important landmark and presents in a list format.

2.5.0 update has made certain changes that I find it disappointing than the previous one.

The prev format was simple and even highlighted the floor the player is currently on. NOT the case now. It neither highlights nor the presentation is simple but comes with an unnecessary icons attached to every landmark which is quite unnecessary and not appealing.

Also the format of the list has changed with floor details now shown side by side order rather than the straight chronology which was better.

I think there's no need to tinker with the format. It was perfect in its presentation until now.

What's the logic behind adding grass and other icons to the floor details? It's quite distracting.

Please restore the journal to its original format.

I kinda feel bad killing bees for their honey and wish we could be friends without enchanting or corrupting them. We normally take care of bees to share their honey IRL. :(

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While I'm on the subject, I actually wish there was a version of PD or some gameplay in SPD where you can save creatures instead of slaughtering them as the only solution to everything you encounter. Otherwise, it can feel like you're just in a power struggle with the Dwarve King and Yog is really a protector to stop anyone from wielding the amulet's power to grant wishes.

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I'm not even sure the amulet wants to be freed from the dungeon as it resists granting your wish to ascend by making it harder to leave... unless you keep killing everyone! After that, there's no lore on if it's a good or bad thing for anyone to have it back in the world, but based on that, it appears to create an undesired balancing effect that counters the wish granted which makes it more like dealing with a Jinn or blood craving demon.

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Not that I hate that idea as it makes for good storytelling but the game does have a pretty loose definition of the title "Hero" when you're really just breaking into someone else's house to loot and kill a bunch of homies who were unwillingly caught in the middle of the whole thing... lol. It might actually make more sense if the player characters were demonic creatures trying to rule the dungeon based on their actions in the story-line.

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I do like playing chaotic characters but sometimes it's more satisfying to be clever and helpful like Link... and while sometimes funny... not always absurdly murderous like Deadpool. Anyway, just thinking out loud!

I hate that I have to ask this but the internet is awash in garbage these days and I hate sorting through it. Does anyone have a link to a good new player guide for this game? I installed it on Tumbleweed and tried it for a few minutes but had absolutely no clue what was going on. The love everyone has for this game makes me want to give a decent shot though!

Would be a fun secret... or add a new armor to that tab

Got the war hammer from caves as a +1 with a blazing enchantment. Had it as a corrupting war hammer in dwarf king and later got lucky with the vampiric enchantment! Last SoU used on arcana ring for them juicy vampire heals. Ring of arcana was originally a ring of haste+2 that i transmutated.

Video for the last fight: https://youtu.be/lCBdiFUREEA

I am still trying 7 challenges with mage at the moment, and the start of this run was quite blessed with RNG...

• WoD +2
• SoU
• Well of identify

All those things combined make for a not so pleasant experience for the early dungeon inhabitants.

Does the ring of arcana have any effect when boosting the projecting enchantment on the spirit bow? Can it go through more walls? Does it slightly boost damage? What happens?

With a +0 Mimic tooth too, right as I was making a run to kill the ebony mimic to add it to my bestiary. Also, it is over a strength potion and I think I don't have enough gear to kill it 🥲

So, I've spent about 7 hours in this game and dying at this point was really painful, after killing the DM-300 and surviving the dwarven city (which was incredibly hard) I died at the hands of some monk. No food, no health potions, nada.

I'm playing as a rogue assassin, I had got a level 8 evasion ring, which I was hoping would make it impossible for enemies to hit me. I also had level 2 plate armour with viscosity.

Looking back this was definitely my fault, I think I was too careless in the dwarven city. I lost two ankhs in one level.

Any advice?? This is the farthest down I've got.

I had already done runs where every possible upgrade went into a Throwing Stone or Studded Gloves. I wanted to try maxing out the Mage's Staff. Normally I would only ever upgrade it to about +12. At +8 you get the max 10 zaps, and upgrading higher is just for damage.

The trick to get max upgrades was to not upgrade the staff until I met the Troll Blacksmith and I could put two of his upgrades into it before spending any scrolls, but you can actually do better than that.

The Old Wandmaker gave me a +3 Wand of Lightning! Perfect! In all of my hundreds of games, I have literally never used the feature where you imbue a higher level wand into the staff for "free" upgrades. I would always dump the first 7 upgrades I found into the staff to smooth out the early game and kill bosses.

This time I waited until I found the troll on Floor 12 and suffered with a +0 staff until then. That was the only real challenge in this mode of play. Then I had the Troll do one upgrade on the staff before I imbued the +3 wand into it, resulting in a +4 staff. Excellent start! Them I dumped 7 upgrade scrolls into it. Now I was suddenly a beast, one-shotting almost everything.

On floor 24 my staff was +19. Just murdering everything. Elemental Blast with Lightning is really good, BTW. Stuns everything in a radius for a long time. And then I made a critical mistake!

I'm so used to doing these challenges with melee characters that I had the brilliant idea to Curse Infuse my staff. That made it +23! Nice! Time to go fight Yog. I try to zap him and paralytic gas comes out. What have I done!? I had no scrolls of Remove Curse. I had to do the whole fight with melee only. Not gonna lie, a +23 staff hits for a lot. My curse was Flashing, and I had Eye of Newt, so it wasn't even a bad curse.

I decided to try the ascent, and it was tough. The imp didn't have any scrolls either. I had already bought and used them. The enemies during the ascent get so much evasion. I used a lot of healing pots. On floor 2 there was an unused Well of Health, so I uncursed my staff so I could have fun zapping things again on floor 1. I must have killed 40 rats just for fun.

Now I want to try this exact run again, Curse Infusion and all, but with Wonderous Resin! I'll have to find a seed that has the resin and another +3 wand. Actually, I'm not even sure that'd be interesting. It would still only shoot cursed zaps, and they would be neutral at worst. That still means I would get a lot of bubbles, paralytic gas, random teleports, and probably not a lot of damage. I dunno. Worth a try.

I just had to test the newest SPD 2.5.0b3 on the oldest Android device I have, and I am proud to say that it works great!

My old Zeki nearly went into the trash this month as nearly all support for 4x has ceased. Then I discovered XPlayer, a 3rd party app designed to run MKV movies in h265 format. Along with WiFi FTP I am able to stream quality movies on this old tablet.

Better still, I can now play one of the best roguelikes ever on it! Thank you 00-Evan for not writing off older hardware.

While playing beta I was shocked to read the changes to ring of haste by reducing the effect from 20% to 17.5%

Now I am waiting for the drop currently to try and experience the changes but Iam really disappointed reading about the nerf

Has anyone tested the ring? Will the turns be impacted to avade the monsters significantly like requires more upgrades than before?

I've been slowly increasing the number of challenges I play with, but I always get stumped on how to work around on diet. Does chalice of blood work even when starving/hungry? Does ring of haste effectively increase how much you are able to explore before going hungry? Is it more efficient to craft pies or not? Thanks!

Turns out, making it to the Troll Blacksmith with +0 gloves wasn't all that hard. There's always the bow and random wands.

Finished the ascent with one potion of healing left and no food except for a couple of hasty blandfruit which I forgot about all game.

Someone on Discord mentioned how good Aqua Brew is, and damn, it's amazing! I made it twice (16 uses) and ended the game with just a couple left. They have so much utility in so many situations. They're like baby Ethereal Chains sometimes: you can push yourself over 1-tile gaps and push enemies into chasms. Plus they break traps, and put yourself out when on fire.... kind of. I swear in used one right on my head, got pushed away, took several damage, and was still on fire. I had to take a step to put the fire out. They're also really good for putting distance between you and an enemy who's all up in your butt.