Interlude - Zot Defense - Monica TrMo
A Short Interlude: Zot Defense Mini Game
Monica the Troll Monk
... in which I spend some time playing DCSS's version of tower defense.
The trunk version of DCSS (0.8) is different in a number of ways. We'll see some of them later, but the first one you see in the tiles version is the title screen. There are a couple and the game rotates between them. It's small but a nice touch.
The second change you'll notice is that when you login you actually have two entirely new game options; Sprint and Zot Defense.
The first, Sprint, is a variant of DCSS that has been around for a little over a year. It's a game of DCSS on steroids; you fight constant enemies, you gain levels far faster than normal, it's a blast, albeit damn hard. We'll play it later at some point (I need to get better at it, it's no fun doing an LP where you die 5 minutes in every time).
The second is Zot Defense. This is the dungeon crawl answer to Tower Defense games. If you've ever played a tower defense game you should immediately know what kind of gameplay to expect, but in case you haven't:
Tower defense or TD is a subgenre of real-time strategy computer games. The goal is to try to stop enemies from crossing the map by building towers which shoot at them as they pass. Enemies and towers usually have varied abilities and costs.
Tower defense in crawl basically follows this principal, though of course it is uniquely suited to this game. Rather than try to explain it, let's just go through the LP.
Before we start though, one thing - I've played this game for maybe an hour and am completely unspoiled. I have no clue what I'm doing beyond what little I've learned from actually playing, so if you have suggestions, throw em in.
Meet Monica the Troll Monk. She's going to be our hero in this short adventure. You select your character in exactly the same manner as you would any game of DCSS. You'll notice right away that things are different in other ways though.
The most obvious is that there are no staircases here. This is not a normal entry vault. Instead, you get an Orb of Zot.
The second is that the map is already displayed for you, not hidden like in a normal game.
The third is that when you press the 'a' key, you get the above. In Zot Defense you will be granted these special abilities as you level up. You start with the ability to build dart traps, so that is exactly what Monica proceeds to do.
The room you spawn in will always have some natural chokepoints to take advantage of. Though the dart traps do little damage, they do soften up your enemies for you.
You'll notice that I'm standing on the orb. That's because every time a monster hits the orb, your HP is rotted away. You absolutely don't want that to happen, so in the early game you'll sit on the orb to defend it. Monsters don't operate like in normal games - they beeline towards the orb.
After a while you'll level up to level 2. When that happens you'll get the ability to spawn Oklob saplings. They're minor versions of the oklop plant.
Because you can place plants directly onto the orb, the general idea seems to be to put your first plant on the orb, as Monica has done. That gives you the ability to move around and defend where the need arises. Just make sure you don't leave a sapling all alone for long. They're not very good at defending themselves on their own, and you'll quickly lose your orb and thus the game.
Every so often you'll have unique monsters join the attack. They're more dangerous, obviously. Though you can get actual uniques from DCSS, from what I've seen you'll also get randoms. More powerful versions of existing monsters with random names, like the guy above.
At level three you gain the ability to make arrow traps. Similar to the dart traps, but better.
Rather than build arrow traps, Monica chooses to add another Oklob sapling. When you get a bunch spamming monsters they can take down some powerful monsters quickly.
At level 4 you gain the ability to remove curse (no idea what that does) and place plants on the map. Plants are just like in normal DCSS - they last a lot of hits but don't actually do anything. You can use them here to funnel the monsters down paths you choose.
Monica start's to get her plan in place to funnel the monsters.
After a while Monica has her plants set up to funnel the monsters in. Some unique Ogre walks in and takes it in the chin - doesn't even reach Monica.
Monica reaches level 5 which gives her the ability to create a burning bush. A bit tougher than the oklob saplings and it does strong fire damage.
After a while a Kobold comes in with a dart of dispersal and throws my defenses a bit out of wack. Monica takes over guarding the orb again while she waits to gain more XP to put in some proper defense.
At level 6 you get the ability to build altars, which we'll see Monica do a bit later on, and the ability to make grenades. I don't use grenades in this game, so I might as well explain them - they're spores that go after the monsters. They damage you and your plants too though, so be careful using them.
Monica's defenses take out another unique monster.
Rather than put another weak oklob sapling up to defend the orb, Monica places a burning bush there.
Monica's defenses are good for the moment, so she goes exploring. Looks like this is where the monsters come from (there are two that I could see, mirrored across the map).
At level 7 Monica gains the ability to place Oklob plants.
Hey, it's a unique we recognise! (though he hasn't showed up in games yet)
Prince Ribbit dies just like the randoms though.
Monica knows you can't depend on the last line of dense to be the only line of defense, so she starts building her second last line of defense. She spams arrow traps down and puts a couple plants at the end. That should chew up most monsters.
One of the monsters gets through and destroys her plant, so she puts down a burning bush.
And hey, it's Grum. That's a unique we do know well. I don't think he's ever killed me... and he didn't start today.
Blork came to the party too! He didn't even make it as far down the trap lane as Grum.
At level 8 you gain the net trap. I used it a bunch in a previous game and didn't like it. It's cheap, but it's kind of intensive too. I think it would work better if I could get my defenses out further - where they're at now I need to defend two corridors, and it's not working.
Monica starts placing altars on the ground. They're random, so if you don't get the god you like, just keep trying. Chei is not terrible, but we could do better.
Hmmm... A lot of crap.
Eventually Monica gets an alter to Maklheb, who she worships.
I picked Oki in a previous game and when my character got confused he punched one of his plants and Oki flipped out. Not good. I think I'd stay away from him.
And so the adventure ends. The yaks gang-rape Monica. It was a fun game, a great interlude from actual DCSS.
I'll probably post more of these later.
