Demise: Ascension - is anyone else here playing it?

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Multi-headed Cow


Being in the first slot is like "being in front", so he's more likely to be attacked.

Pinning is a bit annoying but not really a big deal if you plan your adventures a bit, e.g. you start heading back when your party gets close to pinning.

To make XP gain between fighter/wizard, there are several things you can do:
1) multiclass your fighter, to give him a bigger XP penalty
2) use the wizard to blast monster groups (slaves on lvl1-3, then ants on 4) for big XP boost
3) keep switching fighter/wizard between front and back rows

This is game is EXTREMELY long if you actually want to finish it (takes like 6+ years for some, playing it casually and not every day of course), so no need to rush anywhere! :D

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Ah, thanks for the assistance. Multiclassing might not be a bad idea to slow my fighter down some, but all I can jump him to is artisan and as far as I can tell the only real benefit to that would be faster access to magic items. Maybe. Though maybe he'd be better at IDing items and traps too, dunno.
Managed to do my first class quest completed for the fighter, haven't found the correct monster for the wizard yet. My excursions into dungeon level 2 are kinda hairy, but my last trip found some bronze chainmail for my fighter which gave him a pretty massive boost to defense.

Not sure how I feel about spells being tied to stats. My wizard got a generic protection spell and I thought "Hot damn, he'll be able to shield himself and the fighter and grind some XP to catch up!" only I was dismayed to learn he wasn't strong enough to cast the spell. Strength! For magic! MADNESS!
Appears his mana doesn't increase as he levels, but the amount of mana it takes to cast his spells decreases, so that works I suppose.

Current status is (I think) warrior is level 6, sorcerer is level 5 (Maybe 4, not sure on him), and both are 17 years old now. The occasional death and aging trap is adding up!

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

It's a good idea to have someone as a thief, and explorer, especially if it's your first time exploring the dungeon. Thieves - because you want to stock up on items fast (your store is empty), and chests give the highest % of getting some. The traps will be rape-tastic later on (petrify, permanent item destruction and stuff), you really won't want to just "blow them". Explorer - because it's a huge headache without one, especially once you start running into spinner traps and getting "lost". Exploreres are also the best fighters out of the "non-fighters" (1-swing), and have great spells. Thinking far-far ahead, it's a good idea to have everyone to some 100lvl in explorer to have cheap mark and recall spells.

Artisan's biggest advantage is, as you say, having the earliest access to NCR (non class-restricted items), but that's irrelevant for you since on the first party run through you may not any before you can actually use them. They are more of a "powergamer" class to start off with, especially on a multiplayer server where the store has tons of great items.

Re: stats, just run around levels 2 and 3, lots of tomes drop there. Level 2 for physical stats, 3 for mental ones. The ones that drop them the most are undead, I think (check out the graveyard!)

 

[Overboard]

Yeah what he said. Going to Artisan will give you a little more thieving ability, but a dedicated thief is best. Also agreed about the explorer, since they can teleport you around and also portal back to town (eventually).

It's good to have a spare decently-levelled Mage when starting off, to help with all the 'return with x monster' quests, whether guild or board. e.g. That Paladin is going to have a hell of a time trying to charm a wraith.

I personally prefer not to multiclass until I've hit a target level for the initial class, because then you don't have to deal with the xp penalty when trying to level the initial class again until much later (or possibly never, since you might not want to return to the class again). Also you get the NCR items, which means you get to use a level 200+ dagger when starting your new class at level 1, which makes levelling a breeze. Otherwise Warrior is a great class to push all the way, they're fantastic at fighting.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Hmm. Guess I could try rolling up a thief and explorer and adding them to the party. Bit concerned about XP management due to how fiddly it is with even two characters, but that might be best. Hmm, or I could try multiclassing my sorc to explorer, which I just realized he couldn't because he's a weakling. And couldn't be a thief because he's evil. Damn my party creation before I had any idea what I was doing!

Thinking about it a hair more, I guess I could make an explorer and thief, party them together, run them around until they're about level 5, then add them to my warrior and sorcerer. Also just learned about "Experience factor", which partially explains why my gnome sorcerer is leveling so much slower than my ogre warrior.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

That said, you *can* do well without explorerers and thieves altogether, they just make things easier. Nice but non-essential things (you *will* get the items you need eventually - even without a thief. Living without explorer is really a PITA, but you can just avoid levels that have spinners and abuse teleport/other movement items.)

I think the only thing that is an absolute *must* in this game unless you know 100% its ins and outs is resistances - but you already have that covered with your sorcerer.

Sorcerers/Warlocks/Clerics need the most XP, but that's compensated by the fact that later on they will be your biggest damage dealers and will take the lion's share of XP - in fact, later on they'll be your fastest characters to level.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Well that's a pain in the ass. Found some bronze plate, but I can't equip it because it requires 10 DEX, and my fighter's 11 DEX is dropped too low while wearing the plate because it gives -2 DEX. I need stats!

Leveled the thief and explorer up to 3rd really quick and then attached them to my other two adventurers. Things seemed to be going pretty good in dungeon level 2 until we hit a tengu which poisoned a few party members and the sorcerer died yet again. Trekked back to town and then was disappointed by that damn platemail. Thief is certainly handy though, really good at detecting and disarming trapped chests.

I have got a question about weapons, though. I found a mace which is listed as A4/D0[1.1] which I understand means it adds 4 attack, but I'm not sure what the [1.1] is. Along those lines, my warrior got an iron sword as a reward for his class quest which is listed as A3/D0[1.3] but has much higher level requirements than the mace. Seemingly the mace is better and easier to use, so I feel I'm missing something. Are the numbers in the brackets the weapon speed, so the sword does less damage but is faster? If that's the case, daggers are listed as [1], so either they're really slow or the iron mace does more damage AND is faster.

Edit: Also I assume these stat boosting potions (Potion of fitness, etc) are permanent? Don't see how they'd cost that much if they weren't.

 

[Overboard]

1.1 is the damage rating, the higher the better. A is just whether you hit or not.

Stat potion/tome gains/losses are permanent.

Oh and you are going to regret not seeing another tengu for ages when the time comes to charm/kill one, they're ridiculously rare unless you abuse the seer.

Also, level a mage, even if you have to do it slowly. Trust me, you need one when playing this game for the first time.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

[1.1] is the damage multiplier. No one knows how the game mechanics work, exactly (it's a guarded secret! ;O), but through experimentation it probably means that the STRONGER your hero is, the more important that multiplier becomes. So a Giant with 40 strength and a [4.0] warhammer will deal insane amounts of damage, while some puny Elf won't really notice the difference between a [4.0] and a [1.0 weapon] (though it's unlikely he will be able to wield it in the first place).

There are 2 things that make a difference to "speed": weapon's number of swings, and your class's innate number of swings (it goes up with levels, and is different for every class - Ninjas get the most swings, while all dedicated spellcasters only 1)

Stat boosting potions are indeed permanent . In fact, the "easy way" of starting out is to make a potion/tome gathering party at the start to gather as many tomes and potions on levels 2 and 3 as possible (level 1 doesn't drop any), before starting a "real" party with maxed out stats from these stat-boosting items. You *don't* have to do this, but it certainly makes it easier.

Either way, maxing out your stats (the race sets the max stat ceiling) is no big deal - it should be done as early in the game as possible anyway. In that way it's quite different to most RPGs (where stat boosters are extremely rare and valuable, as opposed to really frequent in Demise), but quite alike to Nethack.



Re: having mage, not really necessary. Almost all "return with monster" quests can be accomplished with scrolls... The only exception, I think, is the Sorcerer's Nakovant quest - even then, Nakovant is pretty common reward on the quest board. Then there is post-game, but don't worry about it.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Thanks for the info bros! One final dumb question I've got, when you get a class quest for a particular character to kill such and such monster, does that character have to deliver the killing blow or does a party kill count? My sorcerer needs to kill an issus (Or something like that) and I could've sworn I had killed a few of them during my last excursion, but the sorcerers still won't let him level up. Could've been mis-identified monsters too I guess, if party kills count.

 

[moraes]

Bought this on Gamersgate but apparently they are selling games without registration keys. It's been two days now and the fuckers haven't got their act together. Will email developer.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Bought this on Gamersgate but apparently they are selling games without registration keys. It's been two days now and the fuckers haven't got their act together. Will email developer.

You have to register you product key with the developer so they give you the activation key. I think it's meant to be like that.

Thanks for the info bros! One final dumb question I've got, when you get a class quest for a particular character to kill such and such monster, does that character have to deliver the killing blow or does a party kill count? My sorcerer needs to kill an issus (Or something like that) and I could've sworn I had killed a few of them during my last excursion, but the sorcerers still won't let him level up. Could've been mis-identified monsters too I guess, if party kills count.

Anyone in the party can deliver the killing blow, it doesn't matter. So yea, you probably mis-ID'd id.

 

[Overboard]

Re: having mage, not really necessary. Almost all "return with monster" quests can be accomplished with scrolls... The only exception, I think, is the Sorcerer's Nakovant quest - even then, Nakovant is pretty common reward on the quest board. Then there is post-game, but don't worry about it.

Scrolls are based on your Mage caster level, which being at 0 means you have fuck all chance of charming a decent level creature, hence my example of the Paladin quest to charm a Wraith.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Re: having mage, not really necessary. Almost all "return with monster" quests can be accomplished with scrolls... The only exception, I think, is the Sorcerer's Nakovant quest - even then, Nakovant is pretty common reward on the quest board. Then there is post-game, but don't worry about it.

Scrolls are based on your Mage caster level, which being at 0 means you have fuck all chance of charming a decent level creature, hence my example of the Paladin quest to charm a Wraith.

I had no problem charming most mobs without any mage levels. You have to realize the "trick" to charming them - you need to bring down their HP a bit with low-damage attacks or spells (fists, the "shock" orbs etc.). This may take a few scrolls and a few tries (mobs may die, run away etc.) at 0 mage level, but really it's way faster than leveling up a mage early just for that.

Later on you'll have ways of speed-leveling to 100+ or so in an hour (or much less, abusing tarantulas and such), so I'd save your "obligatory post-game mage leveling" for then.

That said, mages are an awesome class on their own - great spells (movement, heal), companions are OP etc. But getting them to park level *just* for fetch quests early on is IMO not worth it *unless* you want something else from the class (like heals).

 

[Overboard]

I think you mean glowing rocks, and yes you can use those. Thing is with that method it's very hit-and-miss, which leads to a lot of wasted time when hunting something down for a guild quest. Tacking on a mage at position 3 or 4 costs you nothing, you don't have to try to pin every time, just level when the opportunity arises.

To each his own anyway, I haven't started from scratch for a long time but this is what I'd do if I had to now.

 

[TheNizzo]

there's been a gamersgate promo, you can get this, devil whiskey, and Some Random Shovelware for $4, its p. sweet. as much as i like the strong points of Demise, it is NOT worth anything over ten bux, so jump on this if you're curious. there's a week left i think.

http://www.gamersgate.com/indiefort-bundle

sadly as much as i want to like it i'm having trouble getting into devil whiskey, it has that archaic system where literally the entire interface is accessed by awkward keyboard letters and that just gives my entitled genitals whiskey dick

 

[cutterjohn]

It's a mighty well made Dungeon Crawler. Lots of grind, but it feels rewarding since it's spiced with great exploration - huge dungeon (35 levels, 45x45 to 90x90 in size with lots of unique locations and 3 dimension - spells like magical flight are essential, and amphibious breathing for underwater exploration), item hunting (every item is unique, no "Flaming Sword of Striking +3" - and there are a LOT of items to choose from with strategic variety) and just seeing numbers go up.

Very well balanced - lots of classes and race combos, every one of them interesting and having a use. An "Explorer", for example, might sound exotic but is tremendously useful to have - although you can do away without one as well, of course. You can single-guild (e.g. take pure Warrior to sky-high level), or you can multi-class (recommended). You can play as 1, or up to a party of 4.

12 (!) years of balancing, ffs.

It's brutal as hell sometimes, you can run into mobs that can *permanently* drain your HP's for instance if you're not ready for them (you need to level up to regain HPs, but that's slow). Mobs that drain your ability stats (as early as say level 6 of the dungeon). Mobs that turn you into a statue a la Medusa (as early as 5). Mobs that behead. Mobs that *age* you (yes, you can die of old age - but that's very unlikely unless you're very stupid).

It has flaws, too, like rage-inducing "random quests", having to micro-manage your party to get similar shares of XP, and backward interface (e.g. having a bank with limited slots for storing items, at the same time as being able to create infinite mules) but they're compensated by the good things.

Some consider "real-time combat" to be a flaw (it's actually phase-based, like that same mode in Wiz8), but in my mind it's a tremendous advantage for this type of game. It's *fast* and if you wanna do something unusual (like cast a fire spell to kill a slime, or a mass destruction spell to get rid of a group of mobs), it's easy to do.


Overall I've spent ~300 or more hours on this game and I don't remember having that much fun with any RPG crawler game for a long while. And there is still a *lot* to do if I want to finish the game.

Sadly no, and decklin was kind enough to give me a key as I had originally purchased the original Artifact Entertainment Demise + Mordor pre-order bundle, but even back then I never played it much.

A few years ago I did embark upon playing Demise and plaid it for quite a while, but eventually stopped for a variety of reasons...

Never tried MP/online...

Fun/deadly/simple dungeon crawler... would've been even more fun w/random dungeons but I'd read of people playing their Mordor AND Demise chars to insane levels for INSANE amounts of playtime that, that would require...

[EDIT]
Demise, I was offput by the dillweed that wrote the original game flipping the bird at teh original AE owners, so for a long time I sade fuck'em!
[/EDIT]

 

[tindrli]

Fun/deadly/simple dungeon crawler... would've been even more fun w/random dungeons but I'd read of people playing their Mordor AND Demise chars to insane levels for INSANE amounts of playtime that, that would require...

[

can't agree with that one mr. cutter. played damn demise for almost a decade and dungeons are ok as they are now.

 

[cutterjohn]

Fun/deadly/simple dungeon crawler... would've been even more fun w/random dungeons but I'd read of people playing their Mordor AND Demise chars to insane levels for INSANE amounts of playtime that, that would require...

[

can't agree with that one mr. cutter. played damn demise for almost a decade and dungeons are ok as they are now.

er, WTF?

[EDIT]
Anyhways this COULD be a fun game for people who like dungeon crawlers in a static HIGHLY unforgiving environment with some sort of MP(never had the opportunity to try it myself yet given dipshit's tizzyfit with AE)

Beyond that it IS fun as a SP game IF you like hardcore and roguelikes IMNHO, although it's not TB IIRC(haven't played in a while and my upgrade key lies fallow and I feel sorry for decklin so may just buy another key since he actually did something with THIS property, NOW IF he's only do SOMETHING with Devil Whiskey, say at least syncing the linux version to teh Winderz version...)

(i.e. blah blah blah...)
[/EDIT]

 

[ArcturusXIV]

The pinning system sucks, and I didn't much find the plot compelling enough to continue, but the gameplay elements were interesting. I can only hope for more puzzles/secrets as the game progresses.

I actually had a decent lot of fun with the Japanese Wizardry port to PSN this year, despite the Weeaboo elements. It wasn't dumbed down much past what you'd expect, and you could even lose levels.

Still, Dark Souls sold it for me.

I am waiting the next patch, as my game map failed to upgrade after I installed the newest update. :/ Not sure why..!?

 

[mondblut]

I didn't much find the plot...

I don't think anyone has found the plot in Demise, compelling or not. Must be hidden on some very secret level :D

 

[tindrli]

I didn't much find the plot...

I don't think anyone has found the plot in Demise, compelling or not. Must be hidden on some very secret level :D

yep.. like that TEA ROOM!!!.. cost me 3 months to find it!!!

 

[cutterjohn]

Same old, same old dungeons get fucking dull ... I played Demise AND Mordor, got bored after seeing the same f'ing levels ALL of the time...

Now those games with RANDOM dungeons would be UBER AWESOME, as they are, it's an acquired taste of the, apparently, unimaginative....

[EDIT]
Same reason that I'll NEVER play Legend of Grimrock again... been there done that, don't give shit about the slightly different mobs that I might see, etc. all the same in the end...
[/EDIT]

[EDIT2]
I suppose that I should say that noobs might like the dungeons, but after playing for a while and you get to know them, even with random mobs/drops it's just not fun after a certain point, and this game tries to address that by being insanely hard once you get to certain "depths" of the dungeon...

It comes to a point where yer a stat freak, or you just say I don't give a fuck any longer.... I am in the latter camp as I don't have endless amounts of time to grind away at levelling my guys to go to yet another even more insanely difficult level, although I've read umpteen thread of people apparently spending unimaginable amounts of time levelling their chars to like 999/999/999(or close and IF you know these games that's an INSANE amount of XP + REAL TIME playing....) just crazy...

Oh yeah, the "expansion, from what I recall you'll HAVE to spend ALOT of time just getting to it, as AFAIK it starts at the old last level + 1, which was INSANELY hard to get to...

(MAN I hope that decklin gets around to fixing Devil Whiskey, which is kinda the same but not as insanely hard, but the linux version is just broken ATM(forget the bugs as it's been years since I tried and even then was with "patches" beyond what was "officially" available that are now gone and I've lost... plus they brough the linux version up to compatibility with Windows for "mods"...)
[/EDIT2]

 

[Tpm36]

I just created an account to talk to you guys about this game (Decklin's forum doesn't seem to be taking newcomers). I hope i'm not too late to this party..

Does anyone here have any ~100 lv characters? I've been playing solo for a couple of weeks now and would love to join an online server.

 

[Overboard]

Yes, but no I don't play MP due to lack of time. Two or three runs is about as long as I have time for when I play.