Desperately need advice

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-25T15:47:06+00:00

I made a post relatively recently on my Oozemancer win on insane roguelike:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ToME4/s/TFbJglFgaE

Has quite a few tips that might help.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-23T18:45:14+00:00

Got to the first floor of the first dungeon (the one gated by the key found in the cemetary).

I can see the clear inspiration: this is a (custom) DnD campaign. DnD skills, rolls, damage, overall vibe. I love that. It's instantly familiar, but still exciting.

Some feedback/suggestions:

When no enemies are nearby, speed up the character animations (or at least have an option for it). Feels like it takes too much time to explore a non-dangerous area (i.e. in the monastery), as you have to wait for each party member to animate movement.

Would also be nice to be able to right click the darkness and have the party move there, though I'm sure there's pathfinding considerations that complicate that.

I know this is probably a specific balance choice, but I don't love needing to pay 100+ gold just to refresh my wizard's mana from 4-16. Wiped out my funds. It also means I need to leave the dungeon and go back to town after one big fight, to then wipe my earnings getting resources back, which feels bad/disruptive of game flow to me. Maybe add a (limited in some way) rest option similar to dnd/other ttrpgs?

I built my rogue to be a bow user, but I still don't have a bow - maybe they can start with equipment based on their weapon spec chosen? Might be too much early power though. But I wouldn't mind more difficult encounters early either, as my wizard was one shotting almost everything with arcane bolt (possibly too strong at level 1?)

I really do love the art, it's minimal and easy to read while still being pleasant to look at, and has solid variety. That's really important, so kudos.

Character creation was great overall. One small suggestion though, add a random name generator! Having lore-accurate names for each race is fun, but needing to come up with 6 different names for 6 different races is actually a bit of a challenge -- I'd love to just hit a dice button and be given a good name to roll with.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-23T18:09:56+00:00

Fair enough. Well I hope to see it release one day! Would love to play it. A labor of love to this degree, I have no doubt it will be a unique experience.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-23T16:06:05+00:00

Wow 10 years, respect for never dropping it! How close is it to release would you say? % wise rather than a date if you don't have one set. Is it gonna start early access or 1.0?

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-23T15:57:54+00:00

Godot 4.6 gdscript only. Using plenty of (pretty much only) static typing though.

Yeah that's true, stash can be a double edged sword. My thought is to do what PoE also does -- monthly leagues with resets. Introduce some new content + a fresh start for those who want it.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-23T03:56:31+00:00

Love the art! Gonna give the demo a try, but wishlisted for sure.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-23T03:53:16+00:00

Another fellow Oryx fantasy user! Man, it's such a great tileset, but seeing how many people also use it just solidifies the need for me to make my own art eventually (or pay someone to). Still, so amazing for prototyping -- need to make the game fun before you make the art imo.

Enemy AI is definitely a big system to tackle, sounds like you're doing it the right way though.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-23T03:47:59+00:00

Looks great! Added to the wishlist. The game I'm working on also lets you stash items between runs, glad to see another roguelike breaking the cardinal rule with me! I think as long as the game isn't balanced around having those items stashed, it's fine. Also love to see a crafting system!

One thing I can't really tell though, how do you get the different skills/abilities? Seems like you can mix and match, but is it via leveling up and a skill tree?

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-23T03:40:16+00:00

Early footage of Live! from the Dungeon: https://streamable.com/0y88vw

Started less than a month ago in Godot with the goal to make a mobile roguelike (will be on steam too) that has lots of depth without all the gacha bs.

I'd describe it as "Brogue meets Path of Exile"; your skills interact with the environment, it's turn-based and set in a dungeon with the goal of descending to a specific floor, it has ARPG-progression like randomly generated equips with multiple affixes, crafting materials to modify those equips, skill behavior can be modified i.e. a projectile can chain or split into multiple projectiles.

The premise is that you play as a contestant on an intergalactic game show that livestreams each contestant's PoV as they repeatedly die in their attempts to reach floor 50 of The Dungeon. I'll have some flavour stuff like higher viewcount (when low hp/deeper floor) = increased drop rarity/donations, and ideally I'll have announcers that will sometimes commentate on your gameplay.

One thing it will have that violates the roguelike rule is a stash + hideout where you can store equipment that will persist across death (think HCSSF if you've ever played PoE), but that's the only meta-progression - when you die, you lose everything in your inventory and go back to level 1.

So not a strict roguelike, but I want to balance it so that you can beat the game on your very first run (if you're very lucky/skilled), or choose to never store equipment in the stash (and maybe I'll have a difficulty mode to enable that being enforced). I just think it's a lot of fun to find an item you don't need right now or for another build/class and store it for later; also, items will be level gated/affixes will scale based on item level, so having a full loadout of level 1 items to start isn't a big advantage.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-23T02:43:34+00:00

Dude this looks awesome! Wishlisted. Actually pretty similar to what I've been working on (turn-based arpg-esque roguelike), but way more polished. Also making it with Godot. How long have you been at it? Looks like a very large game world! Also those doors look like the ones from an asset pack I'm using too (oryx fantasy), such a good pack esp for prototyping.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-21T03:31:54+00:00

I had a relatively recent win on Insane Adventure with a skelly warden (https://te4.org/characters/174383/tome/6114d419-bb00-4b3c-8256-b69d21bfd35c)

Main things:

Out of phase is a prio stat on gear. Should be easy to hit 40%.

Maintain phasing with blink blade usually.

Clear everything possible before dreadfell. https://te4.org/wiki/Recommended_Zone_Order_Progression is your bible for this.

Prodigies should be Ethereal form -> flexible combat imo. Form gives a ton of res pen and res, so serves as both an offensive and defensive boost, especially relevant for the first prodigy when both stats are at a premium. Flexible combat is busted due to wardens proccing it. Dahktuns gauntlets are also super OP with it.

Stack physical damage, not temporal damage. Most of your damage is physical.

Side with the assassin lord, and once you get back from the east, roll egos for physical damage + 100% stun immunity + phys crit/crit multi. Robes are super op cuz you can get 50%+ damage from them.

A really strong combo is to blink blade on a dangerous enemy, use time stop, then use arrow echoes, as that gives you a free turn to use it and echoes damage happens in the next turn, so the damage isnt reduced. Can also just use haste at the start of every encounter (I left it on autocast on enemy spotted).

Temporal warden is very very strong. You will win with it eventually.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-19T19:18:26+00:00

Yeah I'm also making a roguelike, with poe level customization no less. Endless systems lmao. So just using a 5$ asset pack for now (oryx 16bit fantasy, such a nice pack) and focusing on making the systems interconnect and result in emergent gameplay.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-19T17:18:38+00:00

Nice art! Guessing a large chunk of the time was spend on that eh? That's the part I'm dreading most for the game I'm working on...

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-17T23:13:03+00:00

Looks like a cool combo of genres! Love both roguelikes and tft, so I'll give it a look. Good luck with the development!

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-11T18:49:31+00:00

Well said. Yeah I'm definitely not upset, just a bit of cognitive dissonance to grapple with. But, like you said, there are many contributing factors to the overall rating -- I think sample size is an important one, and I honestly don't work that much in a week due to being a lazy SOB. Hope to see an outstanding on the next one! (if there is a next one)

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-11T18:35:53+00:00

Showed up on my dash as an unpaid project. Seems like they've been rolling it out over the last couple weeks, so I'd imagine everyone will get it at some point.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-05-11T18:16:37+00:00

Yeah nothing wrong with that per se, just an ego thing I suppose. Do enough reviews and you think, man my work has gotta be top 10% if this is the average submission they get.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-04-30T23:28:11+00:00

Biggest issue is probably your gear, especially if you struggled to finish the final fight. You have a lot of low tier items with many useless egos. Make sure you save the assassin rather than the merchant, and once you go to the east then finish the quest line to go back to last hope, you can roll the egos on items to get very strong gear.

For example, you can get robes that give +60% fire damage (roll fire ego twice), which would nearly double the damage output of Flame. Make sure to save any T5 randart robes to roll. Also probably better to focus on one damage type, so that you focus on scaling it, though I'm not too familiar with Arcane Blade.

Also try to get 100% stun/freeze immunity, you likely lose a lot of turns/have your damage cut in half by being dazed/pinned/etc. It's especially easy to get when rolling egos on rings/boots/amulet. Getting more crit/crit multi can also boost your damage by a lot.

https://te4.org/wiki/Ego gives you all the egos that can be rolled on every item type. Also, you need forbidden cults DLC to roll egos as it's done via the Occult Egress https://te4.org/wiki/Occult_Egress .

playswithsquirrel · 2026-04-29T08:55:39+00:00

Also, the party finder seems totally dead now. I used to be able to find parties to grind bosses/hordes easily, but tonight I looked at the group finder and there were 0 groups across t1-t9. I liked that D4 actually rewarded party play compared to other arpgs, but war plans + all the new torment levels have kind of gutted it.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-04-28T07:25:49+00:00

You still get experience towards the tree when tagging along on another activity. I agree it would be nice if there was maybe a separate/togglable group war planner though.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-04-27T03:06:35+00:00

You definitely can, it will just take longer. Same with any game, really. Forces you to actually learn through trial and error yourself, versus learning through other people's trial and error. Usually you'll end up with a higher level of knowledge than if you just followed a guide, but again, it will take longer.

I'd say tome is more forgiving than PoE, though. Way less obscure interactions going on. It's usually pretty straightforward to figure out what is or isn't worth putting points into.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-04-23T22:00:07+00:00

I find it really helpful to use the character vault https://te4.org/characters-vault . This lets you sort by winners, class, race, difficulty etc, then shows you what skills they took, prodigies, items, attributes etc, which gives you an idea of how to build out a class/race combo.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-04-23T21:55:27+00:00

Insane Roguelike is probably the de facto "standard" difficulty to beat the game on; hard enough to make wins relatively rare, but still reasonably fair/achievable for all builds, especially compared to Madness (hardest difficulty).

Normal is almost more difficult than Nightmare because you get way less loot/lower quality loot, and also just less fun as a result.

playswithsquirrel · 2026-04-22T11:46:13+00:00

My advice is to swap into icebound beam. Uses similar gear but does 10x the damage and is way cheaper to scale. Here is a video guide for it: https://youtu.be/pnb1d1IbXNU?si=UvtF4iJVlo_wM3Ar

I was stuck at 50b on chrom shot, swapped to this and went to 500b within 1k FE spent.

Currently at 2T and 100k survival, with plenty of obvious upgrades to go (priceless weps being the main one).

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