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Anyone else here enjoy playing roguelikes? Let's have a discussion. (Search gives me no results for "roguelike" - I'm surprised no one's talked about them here yet!)
For those of you who aren't roguelike players yet, roguelikes usually are low or no-graphics turn-based rpg's with randomly generated levels and items, with permanent death, meant to be replayed often, rather than just once through. If you can get over the lack of good graphics, they can be really enjoyable games. Grab loot, power up your character, solve situations by thinking tactically, and learn how to take advantage of the game's mechanics. Randomly generated levels means the game isn't the same every time you play. Permanent death means you can't just casually make choices and then reload when things go wrong (well, if you don't back up your savesgames, which is kind of frowned upon).
I'll start off the thread with my favorites. I prefer fast paced roguelikes, moreso than the "mainstream" roguelikes - usually they take under an hour to play:
DoomRL - Doom, the Roguelike
An unusual game among other roguelikes, this game is primarily oriented around ranged combat (gunplay!) rather than melee and/or spells. It's based off the original Doom computer game, but you don't have to be a fan of that game to enjoy it. Even though it has only represents everything with letters and symbols (like many other roguelikes), you really feel like you're gunning down hordes of demons and such. Later on more dangerous enemies appear, like Arachnotrons and Revenants, and if you make it all the way you could even face the Cyberdemon!
Download here: http://doom.chaosforge.org/downloads
POWDER
The original(?) roguelike designed for the GBA (but now available for many platforms, PC being one of them), I enjoy this one because it's focused and flexible. It think the tile-based graphics are rather cute! Due to its original heritage as a GBA roguelike, the interface is streamlined and not overly complicated. A good mix of melee combat and spells, lots of useful items and a unique progress mechanic - choose a god that represents a class each time you level up, and try to gain favor from them to get rewards. There's some cool tricks in the game - you can dip your longsword in greek fire to create a flaming sword that creates light and does extra fire damage! If you wear a pointy hat and slippers with a robe, you regenerate mana more quickly! See of you can make it through floors of monsters to reach the depths of the dungeon and retrieve Baezl'bub's heart!
Download here: http://www.zincland.com/powder/index.php?pagename=release
Berserk!
A very streamlined and fast-paced ASCII-only roguelike, related to the manga, and made by the same guy who made DoomRL. Takes mere minutes to play. It's not 100% polished, but very visceral. For example, all the red %'s in the screenshot above represent dead bodies that the main character has killed. In this game you simply face endless hordes of enemies that constantly close in on you. But the main character is pretty badass: his attacks hit hard, he can learn a few special attacks, and he has a supply of cool alternate weapons - a multicrossbow, throwing knives, a cannon, bombs, and more - like the manga character. You don't need to be a fan of the manga to enjoy it though (I'm not), you just need to enjoy destroying hordes of beasts as a bad motherfucker.
Download here: http://berserk.chaosforge.org/index.php?module=downloads
MageGuild
I often enjoy roguelikes that aren't centered around melee combat, and MageGuild is one of these. I actually don't like the tile graphics that are used here, and play the ASCII version instead. The twist in MageGuild is that you aren't a warrior, but a mage of some sort, so you aren't very good at fighting up close. Instead you have to use your spells and carefully manage your mana to make it through the level and find the orb. Survive all the levels to face...well, that's a spoiler.
Download here (I hope this is a permanent link): http://lukos.x10hosting.com/node/8
So what other roguelikes do you guys enjoy?
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Nethack is a classic and still awesome. 
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Canada8028 Posts
I've been playing NetHack (probably the most popular rouguelike) for a year or two, but I still haven't managed to ascend. My current character is a level 17 valkyrie and I'm wandering through Gehennom building up my ascension kit.
The thing about roguelikes is that the learning curve is absurd. Since your characters usually start off ridiculously weak, new players are pretty much screwed if the RNG spawns a decently difficult monster in the early stages of the game. Once you learn the ins and outs of the game, things get a bit better. The permanent death makes every death a memorable one (moreso if it's YASD).
ASCII > tilesets
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On December 19 2009 10:40 Spazer wrote:
I've been playing NetHack (probably the most popular rouguelike)
...
The thing about roguelikes is that the learning curve is absurd. Since your characters usually start off ridiculously weak, new players are pretty much screwed if the RNG spawns a decently difficult monster in the early stages of the game. Once you learn the ins and outs of the game, things get a bit better.
I'm actually a post-NetHack player. One thing I rather disliked was the similar routines you had to go through every game to win, get this and that specific resistance, this artifact, etc. Anyways, the four roguelikes I've listed are much more fast paced and contain fewer arbitrary obstacles - I think the average person can come to enjoy them much more quickly than they can with NetHack.
On December 19 2009 10:40 Spazer wrote:
The permanent death makes every death a memorable one (moreso if it's YASD).
ASCII > tilesets
Indeed, permadeath makes decisions much more important. YASD's are infuriating!
Most tilesets do stink - but the POWDER is sooooo cute! I love that tileset.
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Angband.
I haven't actually played the original Angband, but I have tried a couple of variants, mainly Zangband and Z+angband.
Zangband is available in both ASCII format and with tile graphics, however, the tile graphics version is not up to date and unfortunatelly, discontinued as far as I know.
I played some Nethack aswell, it's also enjoyable, but I like Zangband more, perhaps because I had played it for a long time before trying Nethack.
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Vatican City State491 Posts
Few yeas ago (more like 'many years ago, in a galaxy far, far away'), when I didnt have internet Ive played some ADOM, but that game was really, really hard, mostly due to its complexity. At the beginning my character would often die of starvation; then Ive learned that one cant eat the meat of kobolds. Anyway, I've never managed to get far in the game because I dint have any FAQ what to do at the beginning - and the lack of ability to save easily was really frustrating.
I tried giving that game a try again two or three years ago; but the lack of ability to save was pretty hard; also I was hoping to do something lame and pass it by reading a walkthrough, but I found none that would lead me by hand.
If someone has a lot of time, then ADOM is definitely interesting, because the game is really, really big.
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i had a few run throughs of powder and I have a quick question. How do u take off an evil item? I think evil weawpons, you just kill enough monsters and u can take it off, but i duno what to do with the fucking helmets of draining i keep getting. After dying on my warrior, i wanted to make a mage but 3 times in a row, the first helmet i come across drains my mana, and im pretty much boned.
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United States47024 Posts
My top ones:
Nethack - a classic, awesome, and the standard by which other RLs should be judged. It has its faults, but in general, it can be considered the "stock" roguelike. I actually think it's a good one for a new player to start with, because, while some things are arbitrary and frustrating, it's very easy to see yourself visibly improving at the game as you develop some basic survival strategies.
Adom - I have a few issues with it--it tries to adapt in things like skill ranks, which don't work that well in the context of a roguelike, and in general it feels more luck-based than Nethack, but some of the things it does are pretty good.
DoomRL - Zona has it covered pretty well.
Additionally, two others that aren't that amazing yet, but show promise:
Dwarf Fortress - has been introduced in other threads. While the main game isn't strictly a roguelike, and Adventure Mode isn't fully fleshed out, once it happens, IMO it has things that could make it very unique and special among roguelikes (a persistent, growing, world; location-based, non-hitpoint damage, etc.). That is, at best estimates, going to be several years away though, and realistically, longer than that.
Incursion - this showed promise, but development seems to have gotten bogged down. The basic idea is adapting D&D 3E to a roguelike, and IMO it manages to do this while avoiding some of the issues of 3E. It retains skills in a form that makes them useful (while not required). It avoids the problems of magic-using classes becoming overpowered that D&D 3E suffers from (though the opposite problem occurs). The game has some work, particularly expanding certain ruleset aspects, but since the next release is slated for October 2010, with the last release having been in February. Trivia note: Westley Weimer, one of the most influential members of the Baldur's Gate II modding community, is a playtester for Incursion.
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Ive played only ADOM to any bigger extent. At this point its pretty easy for me to finish a game win an evening, at least with a decent race/class combo. Also afaik still in possession of 3rd fastest speedrun through the game, and fastest with a non-wizard character (18755
turns with a drakeling barbarian :D).
Dont really play it anymore though
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Not a Roguelike, but obviously inspired by them (with less of the soul-crushing difficulty), I've been playing Elona quite a bit lately. It's a lot of fun, I've just been sandboxing, setting up my castle and ranch.
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I play Angband every once in a while. Haven't ever managed to really get good at it in a couple years of occasional play. I had one Ranger that made it to dlevel 78 with Tenser's and a near endgame level kit that I YASD'd meleeing my way through a Giant pit too casually.  Never been able to get nearly that far since. I've gotten to the point that I can reasonably reliably get to about dlevel 50 these days, but usually by that point I haven't actually found much in the way of strong items and can't really kill anything, and end up getting crushed by some Drake or nasty undead.
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I like dungeon crawl the most as of now. The thing I hated about other big roguelikes like nethack and ADOM, is the need for spoilers, you just cannot get through the game without them because there's so much counterintuitive stuff.
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I play Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup a bit on and off. Been a while now though since my demonspawn chaos knight of Mahkleb died being lvl 22 and all : [
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On December 19 2009 15:51 gameguard wrote:
i had a few run throughs of powder and I have a quick question. How do u take off an evil item? I think evil weawpons, you just kill enough monsters and u can take it off, but i duno what to do with the fucking helmets of draining i keep getting. After dying on my warrior, i wanted to make a mage but 3 times in a row, the first helmet i come across drains my mana, and im pretty much boned.
There more than one way to deal with stuck evil items, but the easiest way I would say is to keep/grow favor with your chosen god. If you have a lot of favor (by doing things they like - e.g. kill enemies when worshipping the warrior god Klaskov or casting spells when worshipping the mage god belweir, then they'll grant you gifts and bonuses when your favor is high, or solve various afflictions, including stuck evil items. Another common way is mix/dip the item with holy water. If you're desperate you can dip/mix the item with acid to destroy it.
On December 19 2009 16:50 TheYango wrote:
DoomRL - Zona has it covered pretty well.
The whole point was to have a discussion! Let's talk about it - why do you like it, what kind of strategies work for you?
On December 19 2009 16:50 TheYango wrote:
Dwarf Fortress - has been introduced in other threads. While the main game isn't strictly a roguelike, and Adventure Mode isn't fully fleshed out, once it happens, IMO it has things that could make it very unique and special among roguelikes (a persistent, growing, world; location-based, non-hitpoint damage, etc.). That is, at best estimates, going to be several years away though, and realistically, longer than that.
I was seriously addicted to this for some time - it's really neat expanding your team of dwarves and building serious fortresses/towers/constructions/etc. I don't consider it primarily to be a roguelike, though.
On December 19 2009 18:32 Hinanawi wrote:Not a Roguelike, but obviously inspired by them (with less of the soul-crushing difficulty), I've been playing Elona quite a bit lately. It's a lot of fun, I've just been sandboxing, setting up my castle and ranch.
To me, Elona is a roguelike - the only thing it really doesn't have is permadeath, but it fits every other criteria. I was turned off by the major grind, though.
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On December 19 2009 16:50 TheYango wrote:
Nethack - a classic, awesome, and the standard by which other RLs should be judged. It has its faults, but in general, it can be considered the "stock" roguelike. I actually think it's a good one for a new player to start with, because, while some things are arbitrary and frustrating, it's very easy to see yourself visibly improving at the game as you develop some basic survival strategies.
Nethack is a really broken game imo. + Show Spoiler [Nethack spoilers] +Every class ends up playing almost the same (because offensive spellcasting is not an option for your main source of damage, because Elbereth is absurdly overpowered, and because ranged multifire weapons outdamage melee weapons). If you clear out the Castle playing normally (not "dig for victory") the game is essentially over--unless you succumb to one of the numerous new-player-trap instadeaths in Gehennom ... but the game will make you play another few thousand turns (or another few ten thousand turns if you play at my pace) just for kicks (okay, you can legitimately die in Air or Astral if you're seriously unlucky). The early game is pretty decent but poison instadeath traps are a terrible idea.
And you pretty much can't win without some sort of spoilers.
It's not horrible; it's good, but once I figured it out the game got really boring really fast. I liked Sporkhack better, though I haven't looked at Spork in maybe a year and a half so I don't know what that's like now.
I like dungeon crawl stone soup also. It feels a lot like Nethack to me, but it's significantly less broken and different races/classes have significantly more diversity in how they play. There's some stuff that can definitely be improved (such as stats other than Int being worthless, and super high AC being too good, and the rune choice being too easy for most characters--I'd like to have swamp/snake not be so obviously easiest) but I certainly don't feel like I've in any way "figured out" Crawl like I did Nethack.
It is devilishly hard compared to Nethack.
I think I have seven wins now (one with all 15 runes) ... in probably a thousand or so games. Three of those wins were transmuters (SETm, MfTm, and DrTm); the all-runer was a MiCK of The Shining One (started with Makhleb because he's significantly more useful early on and trains invocations nicely, switch to TSO at the crypt, then abuse the fact that TSO is broken good in the extended endgame). Even after my wins I still feel like there's stuff I haven't tried yet. (I think all three of my Tm wins were in the 0.4.x branch, where transformations were still a pain in the ass because they unequipped your stuff. The melding behavior that it does now makes playing them much less of a hassle especially early on when spider form is really good).
Mostly been playing around with stabby classes (SpEn and VpAs) recently. I've now killed off at least three SpEns in Elf: 7 to the exact same type of overconfidence The 0.5 update that the game now tells you if a monster can see/sense invisible makes playing stabby classes much less spoiler-intense.
I still want to win a character under Nemelex and under Xom eventually, they're fun but my Nemelexites are usually stabby and I kill those for reasons other than Nemelex not working out, and Xom ... well he tends to kill me midgame
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United States47024 Posts
On December 20 2009 14:18 Zona wrote:
I was seriously addicted to this for some time - it's really neat expanding your team of dwarves and building serious fortresses/towers/constructions/etc. I don't consider it primarily to be a roguelike, though.
The Adventure Mode fits the qualities of a roguelike, but the problem is that it's basically in an unplayable state as of right now, since Tarn is rewriting a lot of mechanics from scratch (e.g. the next release, which is due out at around the end of the month at long last, tissues are being completely rewritten), and has left Adventure mode to languish a bit. Once he devotes some solid dev time to it, it should explode in terms of quality, since a lot of the qualities and mechanics of the game give it a sound basis (probably one of the best being that the dungeons that you explore are, for the most part, dungeons you built.
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Its not a roguelike if it uses a tileset.
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so i beat POWDER... which from what i gather is the easiest roguelike. I beat it with a pretty standard non magic user. I've tried many times to try and ascend with a mage but its so much harder. The only decent offensive spell being sticky flame doesnt really help.
Im thinking of trying nethack or angband. Which is easier?
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EPT![[image loading]](http://doom.chaosforge.org/images/17.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.zincland.com/powder/screenshot/buttonassign.png)
![[image loading]](http://berserk.chaosforge.org/images/screen3.png)
![[image loading]](http://lukos.x10hosting.com/images/MGShot1.png)
