Dungeon Rats - first impressions and general feedback

[IncendiaryDevice]

The most dangerous fight with ants was 3 warriors after scolopendra.
After queen I got 20 HP left, I didn't spent any bomb there (two saved bombs went to Roxane for her delicious 9 SP).
Early ants are bugged because they have stronger poinson than normal, or queen's ants bugged and her ants have weaker poison than supposed, because I was losing 1 HP from poison from ants in the beginning with 10 Con, and ants in diferent zone did 0 poison damage.

I noted down how much HP I lost to each of the insect fights by going back there with Roxanne & the Crafter dude instead of doing them prior to Barca. The crafter dude didn't do anything, just stood around & collected XP.

The three Scorpions: 0 HP lost
8 Ants, not using bomb in the hole: 2 HP lost
Ant Queen & her respawns, again, not using bomb on the hole: 15 HP lost - but this was mechanical, I could find no way to see in the UI how much Anitdote was left in each character's system & they both got poisoned on the interturn. I couldn't be arsed to reload this one tho, so even 15 HP lost here is overstating the threat.
The Claim Jumpers - 8 HP lost.

For a grand total of 25 HP lost (average of 6 HP per fight), no consumables used other than 4 Anitdotes. And the Crafting dude up to crafting level 7.5.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

For your HP loss, after you kill Reinhard you won't run out of HP anymore, going into DC refills your rations for free, and you have high Alchemy. The part before him should have been retouched, likely scares off new players.

That's where your over-experience gives you bad intuition, at least in my case. I'd say right up to hiring Roxanne is the best part of the game & once you arrive at that forge you really feel like your playing the game. Also, as you say, Roxanne's forge actually rewards you with stuff, which goes a long way to making it a landmark moment. The four fights leading up to it are all suitably difficult but also suitably doable. Even if a new player just scraped into that forge, they will be able to fully heal again & everything seems normal. It's the part between her forge and New Town which feels like a grind & taking out the next two forges is like miser's pickings. I guess what got me the first time around is precisely this sudden change in approach whereby both previous forges had represented hearty replenishment & reward whereas suddenly the game is expecting you to not expect a reward. It's like patting a dog on the head the first few times when it reaches up for a sausage but then, a few weeks later you start hitting it on the head for doing that. You know, how good games gradually teach you how to play them, even if they don't have a tutorial, you just gradually get the hang of stuff, whereas bad games are more... messy.

 

[PlanHex]

The most dangerous fight with ants was 3 warriors after scolopendra.
After queen I got 20 HP left, I didn't spent any bomb there (two saved bombs went to Roxane for her delicious 9 SP).
Early ants are bugged because they have stronger poinson than normal, or queen's ants bugged and her ants have weaker poison than supposed, because I was losing 1 HP from poison from ants in the beginning with 10 Con, and ants in diferent zone did 0 poison damage.

I noted down how much HP I lost to each of the insect fights by going back there with Roxanne & the Crafter dude instead of doing them prior to Barca. The crafter dude didn't do anything, just stood around & collected XP.

The three Scorpions: 0 HP lost
8 Ants, not using bomb in the hole: 2 HP lost
Ant Queen & her respawns, again, not using bomb on the hole: 15 HP lost - but this was mechanical, I could find no way to see in the UI how much Anitdote was left in each character's system & they both got poisoned on the interturn. I couldn't be arsed to reload this one tho, so even 15 HP lost here is overstating the threat.
The Claim Jumpers - 8 HP lost.

For a grand total of 25 HP lost (average of 6 HP per fight), no consumables used other than 4 Anitdotes. And the Crafting dude up to crafting level 7.5.

With the rations from all the ant meat, that puts you fairly ahead in the HP department then?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

With the rations from all the ant meat, that puts you fairly ahead in the HP department then?

I'm guessing yes, but no-ones posted stats of doing the insects first & then using the supposedly good armour to take supposedly less damage on the way to Roxanne. So...

 

[Fenix]

Btw, as game crashed in Ismail fight - can you tell me the outcome for three different choice you have there?
Wait for him softening scorps for you - you get all his equipment right?
But 0 SP.

The rest two? For Int 10.

 

[Parabalus]

Btw, as game crashed in Ismail fight - can you tell me the outcome for three different choice you have there?
Wait for him softening scorps for you - you get all his equipment right?
But 0 SP.

The rest two? For Int 10.

I got the same SP for all options.

 

[Serus]

All this "discussion" made me want to play it. I finished (and liked) AoD once but never got to play DR seriously. Rolled an axe/block (8/6/8/5/5/8). Playing on tough bastard difficulty so I'm not expecting it to be too difficult. First couple of fights went smooth, so far so good.

 

[Fenix]

Thanks, I checked too (this time without crash luckily) - looks like you can get all his stuff only by waiting.

 

[Black Angel]

In simple terms, outside of DC (and the prologue I guess) you can always leave and come back later, you can't run out of money or consumables.

Yeah, I get what you mean. However, I feel like it's not fair to compare Underrail to DR both as a whole. If you're talking merely about combat difficulty, then I still stand by my previous argument that UR is still harder simply because it takes time to grow your character, while in DR you can definitely start crippling limbs left and right even if you only have decent to mediocre THC.

Meanwhile, as you just said, in UR you have a lot of options, but the most important thing that UR have that DR doesn't is noncombat gameplay options that'll allow you to avoid combat altogether, or tilt the tides of battle to your favor from the start, and because of that *of course* Underrail's gonna come off as easier.

What fight would you consider hard in UR?

Let's see:

• The whole Depot A encounters where there are mutated dogs. They can be such a bitch when I initiate combat while there are multiple mutated dogs or if more than one are close to the ones I'm targeting. Can be made easier by abusing doors in certain section, but like I said, I don't really like doing it like that because it waste my time despite of having maxed combat speed slider.
• Burrower-infested bunker near Junkyard, where the entrance is guarded by bleeding Cliff. Tbh, all of Burrower encounters are relatively harder for me, but this one takes the cake especially if you're trying to tackle it at earlier level. Even if I leave it and come back at midgame, I remembered my stealthy PSI still have troubles because Burrowers off-sight hatched eggs and I didn't get to destroy the eggs on time and then got swarmed. Hell, I even rushed to Jenny, and luckily arriving at Jenny got me teleported outside of the bunker while I leave a swarm of hatchlings down there.

Tbh, it's been a while since I played UR, so I can't exactly remember much of the fights. Also, like I mentioned that UR have noncombat gameplay options unlike DR, I'll admit that I'm not the right person to ask what fights are hard in UR because my only playthroughs so far has always been stealthy character, especially the last one is a psyker. And usual sneaking and even psychic power are not something that's present in DR.

 

[Fenix]

Now is this a bug? - I could drunk antidote before the fight, in placement phase, but after few turns it disappears, at least its icon on a portrait. Wasn't hit by anything poisonious.
Vault Dweller is it bug or intended?

 

[Parabalus]

Now is this a bug? - I could drunk antidote before the fight, in placement phase, but after few turns it disappears, at least its icon on a portrait. Wasn't hit by anything poisonious.
Vault Dweller is it bug or intended?

Another (or the same) bug is that antidotes clear on save/load, but not combat end, ie. you can roll a single antidote through several fights if you never reload, otherwise it vanishes.

 

[Fenix]

The only fight that couse troubles for now was Yingvar fight.
There spearman just fucked out all brains with his nets.
To survive you need to run in the deadend rightwards - then Yingvar start to throw shit at you while char in the net, but that absolutely safe, that at least allow to survive net without HP loss.

Or post another tactics, those who rely on tactics not reloads and god RNG.

 

[Rivmusique]

Seeing the ego-wounds this game has inflicted recently makes me want to replay it. It's on the list after a few backlog games I've never played.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Seeing the ego-wounds this game has inflicted recently

&

The only fight that couse troubles for now was Yingvar fight. those who rely on tactics not reloads and god RNG.

Ego wounds... no reloads...

uh-huh...

Upon reload... In the following screenie, the game thinks it's 'quality' to have the bloke you're rescuing throw a bomb at you when the Scorpion he bombed only had 4 HP left & the person attacking it will act before the Scorpion, while not bombing the Scorpion with 42 HP left that can be bombed without harm to any PCs... Damaged ego? Damaged game more like:

Upon reload, in the following screenie, it can't even keep it's own AI alive, it doesn't even know how to play itself. The Scorpion always moves towards Ishtar after it's had Liquid Fire dumped on it:

Upon reload, one can plan for all the game's incompetence:

By damaged egos I'm assuming you're referring the developers & fanboys?

 

[Tigranes]

"DUNGEON RATS: The game you just can't stop playing!"

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

"DUNGEON RATS: The game you just can't stop playing!"

Uh-huh...

& I've no doubt my final hours played will be huge, triple figures even. Most of which will be reloads, crashes, backtracking & staring at a crafting screen trying to decide whether 14 hardness is better or worse that 14 to crit defence & which of the 7 DR2/DR3 Armours to apply it to...

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Seeing the ego-wounds this game has inflicted recently makes me want to replay it. It's on the list after a few backlog games I've never played.

And now I have the urge to replay the fucking game. Fuck you for doing this to me.

 

[Parabalus]

Seeing the ego-wounds this game has inflicted recently makes me want to replay it. It's on the list after a few backlog games I've never played.

And now I have the urge to replay the fucking game. Fuck you for doing this to me.

Don't worry, after you finish the Dungeon Rats replay you will inevitably fire up AoD too

 

[Black Angel]

Don't worry, after you finish the Dungeon Rats replay you will inevitably fire up AoD too

Might be even worse in my case. If only I don't have a particular predicament at the moment, I might rape my laptop by finishing DR 2 or 3 times with completely different builds and party composition, and goes on to play AoD 7! more times like I did back in the day when I first bought the game.

my predicament

Basically, I'm always playing on this ~6 year-old laptop and I had to replace its cooling fan. After the replacement and another OS reinstall, I can still play games like Fallout 1&2 + the TC mods, Arcanum, Underrail, and the likes while still maintaining overall silky smooth gaming experience. Hell, before OS reinstall, for some reason I can't seem to run Arcanum with the newest Hi-Res patch 1.5, but now I can play with it just fine even though I'll occasionally gets stuttering every now and then. I even gets to finish V:tMB, Gothic 1 and 2 consecutively, with only Gothic 2 that stutter and that was because I installed some texture mods.

And yet, despite all that, for some reason both AoD and DR would stutter so bad, not even 10 seconds into beginning to play, although that's when I didn't fiddle with the graphical options at all. Just now, I finally got DR installed, and I tried setting ALL graphical options to lowest, and fortunately allowed me to at least play a silky-smooth 30 fps. Unfortunately, another predicament arises. Right after Ardomir fight, while I was picking the loot, my laptop suddenly turned itself off. It was most probably due to overheating, so no surprise there. After turning the laptop on once again, I booted up AoD, set all the graphical options to lowest, and just like DR I can at least maintain silky-smooth 30 fps but with occasional stuttering. And then, I noticed my laptop's getting REAL hot once again, so I exit the game before it overheats again.
And this is all while I have cooling fan and abusing my air conditioner to cool my bedroom.

So, yeah, the problem is obviously my hardware, but it's really odd that I can't play AoD and DR without having to set the graphical options to lowest, while I can play other similar games just fine. I realize the crux of my predicament is that I need to get a new rig, and I DO plan to get my own PC years in the future, but is there *any* way to solve my predicament, from software side? I know I can't get game booster apps, because those will obviously melt my laptop.

 

[Goral]

goes on to play AoD 7! more times

Holy shit! 7! is 5040, even I wouldn't play it as many times.

 

[Black Angel]

Holy shit! 7! is 5040, even I wouldn't play it as many times.

 

[Black Angel]

Alright, I booted up AoD and tried to push my limit. Fortunately, my laptop persisted and I can finally enjoy silky smooth gaming experience once again. Just steamrolled through Teron and committed regicide, and now my character is sitting prettily in front of Maadoran's Arena. At first, I got turned off by some cardboard-graphical NPCs resulted from setting (what I'd assume) texture detail to lowest, but I tried to set it to normal and got better look on those NPCs, and so far it's fine.

Unfortunately, DR isn't going easy on me. Booted it the second time, and just as I started the first ant fight, the laptop died on me once again. Is there no way for me to tweak my configuration so I can maintain silky smooth DR experience *without* overheating my laptop, or should I just abuse my room's condition and even buy an electric fan, put it on the wall and have it directed at my laptop to constantly cool it down?

I want to steamroll through the dungeon

 

[Fenix]

Dude, my notebook is 5-6 years old too, but it can handle almost everything with gtx850m.

 

[Binky]

Am replaying the game after almost two years thanks to reading the last few pages of this thread. I still love fighting human opponents, creature fights still bore me. Thing is, I don't remember there being a scolopendra in the ant caves. Is my memory playing tricks on me, or has there been a change?

 

[Fenix]

There wes an update that did that, actually a good change, while it made game a bit harder.
Less ants was what people asked for. )