Together Retro: First-Person Dungeon Crawlers

[Exhuminator]

I did what all men should do when they have their houses to themselves...I played a lot of Shadow Tower!

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I'm now 19 hours into Wizardry - Tale of the Forsaken Land on PS2. I just made it to level 6 tonight; "Moldy Fort". Yes the level is named Moldy Fort. I've managed to evolve my ninja into a samurai, and replaced one of my priests with a powerful sorcerer. So now we're two human warriors, a human samurai, a human priest, and two elven sorcerers. Every time I play W:TotFL I eek a little more progress, but I have no idea how long this game is, or if I'll have it beaten before June. That is if it doesn't beat me first.

[Ack]

Due to ongoing medical stuff, I haven't been playing as much of Dungeon Hack as I should. I'm currently on floor 12 of the 18 in my dungeon seed, and I have also encountered a terrible enemy, the Greater Freyer. They hit hard, they ignore AC, and they're invisible. I'm so glad I added that Mage class, because thankfully I have both the Detect Invisibility and Improved Invisibility spells to be able to hit them and not immediately get reamed myself.

The downside to Mage is that I only get new spells from scrolls, so I have been lucky to get what I have found. I still have yet to find an Identity scroll, which is what I wanted it for.

[BoneSnapDeez]

In the final Trials cave in Shining in the Darkness. Almost a comical difficulty spike at this point. Enemies are much harder now, and there's one-way doors and pitfalls galore! According the the internets I'm not even halfway through the game. Yikes!

Yeah, due to time constraints, I’m probably not going to get to the end before the month is out, either. I just finished the second trial in the cave of courage, but I’ve only covered about two thirds of the first floor. I suspect I’ll need to explore further before I can move onto the next one.

But, will definitely play to the end after the month is out!

Yeah I'll probably finish in the first week of June (hopefully).

I'm in the second floor of the labyrinth proper. Took Popo's advice and got a cursed whip for Pyra, it tangles her up occasionally but also hits groups of enemies. Enemies are pretty tough now, and progress is slow going. There's a big warp on this floor which is kinda annoying for the purposes of map-making. Tons of equipment for sale now in town; I feel like the game is teasing me as I can only afford a small fraction of it. The best stuff needs mithril ore anyway, which needs to be found in the dungeon depths.

[chupon]

Anyone ever play Arx Fatalis on oXbox?

If so I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If this already came up earlier in this thread I'm sorry I missed it. Everyone should take a look into this oXbox game though. Would have been great for this months play through!

[Exhuminator]

The downside to Mage is that I only get new spells from scrolls

W:TotFL is kind of like that. Sorcerers and priests can only gain new spells from magic stones made from monster organs and appendages. So as you kill monsters, randomly you'll get say a hound tongue or a dragon heart, stuff like that. Then you take these gruesome souvenirs to a particular shop, and someone there constructs magic stones from them. Afterwards you use the magic stone to teach a magic-capable character its relevant spell, and then that stone immediately breaks. Yeah you can only use magic stones once. However using the same stone again on the same character will level up the spell they've already learned. Frankly I find this whole magic stone thing inconvenient, and I wish magic characters would just gain spells from leveling up. However, I can see how the developers were making things more challenging this way, as well as introducing further complexity. The one boon of the magic stone system, is you can use it to teach characters spells who normally wouldn't have them. Like say a flame ball spell to a ninja. Although a few classes cannot learn magic at all.

Anyone ever play Arx Fatalis on oXbox?

I've only played the PC version, but I very much enjoyed the PC version.

[dsheinem]

Orcs & Elves is pretty ace, though I think I tried getting those dragon eggs before I should have...that did not go well.

For those of you who have played- is there a particular piece of gear worth saving up for (and holding off other purchases)?

[Ack]

Well, floor 12 turned out to be the last problematic floor. Everything after that tended to feature a bunch of monsters I had seen before, and while the room layouts were unique, I noticed a few consistent patterns with teleport floors that would be laid out the same way

Bottom line: I have beaten Dungeon Hack.

It turns out my focus on self-sufficiency was the best way to go. By the end, I could handle melee, keep myself well-fed, and buff myself with a variety of spells that stopped many creatures from being able to deal meaningful damage to me. It didn't completely erase the challenge, but I was able to plan for potential problems and could handle what the game was throwing at me.

I'll do a write up later in the Games Beaten thread. Now I need to figure out what else to play.

[MrPopo]

Got a list of choices?

[Ack]

I do. I'm gonna give it to my fiancee and see which one she picks.

[MrPopo]

Bah, she won't pick one soul crushing. You've gone soft.