The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk - parodic fantasy tactical RPG - now with Back to the Futon DLC

[ValeVelKal]

Yeah, there's a bit of a difficulty bump between epic and legendary, still beating Wheel of Misfortune on the first attempt is impressive. /respect
I had to restart it 3 or 4 times to change starting placement, and ended up tweaking gear to make certain the Priestess acts after the Charmer-girl to dispel her charm from the Barb.
And have to agree, it's one of the best tactical encounters ever, not limited just by this game.

Yeah, I did not expect to meet a charmer, but I had put my Barbarian in "play at the end of turn" when he usually plays fist, so actually while the charm allowed the AI to deal damage to me, I could immediately retake control of him at the start of the next turn.

There are 10 enemies are the beginning (3 orcs on the left, 3 goblins [1 range, 2 grenadiers], 1 wizardess, the charmer-swordswoman ["Victoria" I think ?], the troll and of course the goblin-announcer). First turn I managed to backstab the riflegoblin and throw the Dwarf in the middle of the orc group, killing one and putting 2 other low HP. The dwarf (with the Magician) kept the 2 remaining orcs busy and the dwarf mostly remained in contact with the wizardess (so no spell), so I had 6 characters against 5 characters including 3 "boss".

There were quickly chickens everywhere and though they don't really do any significant damage they block movement and attract the attacks of the goblins. The goblin-announcer remained clearly focused on my guys with his AoE though. Happily enough, Victoria does not remain away like the announcer does and actually rushes to melee with high speed when her charm is not available. The troll also tried but with chickens everywhere occupying tiles and his limited move speed he just could not reach my support and was stuck in melee versus the Barbarian.
Victoria is not immune to being put on the ground, and the Ogre has just that kind of move in his arsenal, so she could only cast her charm a second time after her opening charm before she was killed by the Ogre, Elf and Ranger (+Barbarian who disengaged from melee against the troll at some point), turn 5 or 6. After that, all those people bum-rushed the troll, who was almost dead when the reinforcements arrived. By that point, there was only one orc and one goblin left from the beginning (the Dwarf and the Magician had killed the Wizardess and the other orc while the Rogue had removed one of the goblins), so the reinforcements were quickly dispatched (I think by turn 11) and then it was focus on the goblin-announcer, which took me a good 6 or 7 more turns to kill.

Well, that's the "abridged" version where I pretend I had a strategy and sticked to it. The reality is more that everyone from all sides were darting in fire accross the battlefield while also being poisoned, foes, friends and chickens alike kept slipping on the beer and the Ranger and Elf were zigzaging between the ZOC trying to heal people, give them a pat in the back and send them back to combat.

Dwarf throwing is just so great.

 

[agris]

Yeah, there's a bit of a difficulty bump between epic and legendary, still beating Wheel of Misfortune on the first attempt is impressive. /respect
I had to restart it 3 or 4 times to change starting placement, and ended up tweaking gear to make certain the Priestess acts after the Charmer-girl to dispel her charm from the Barb.
And have to agree, it's one of the best tactical encounters ever, not limited just by this game.

Have you or ValeVelKal ever played Dungeon Rats, Blaggards or Silent Storm? The way you’re talking about this game makes me want to look past the horrible modern aesthetic and give it a try, but I’m curious as to your experience with tactical games.

 

[Nortar]

Well, I thought that I play pretty much all TB tactics I can find, but I have not heard about Blaggards.
Silent Storm is among all time favorites, although it's been ages since last time I played it.
And Dungeon Rats is an incline, so looking forward to Colony Ship.

As for Dungeons of Naheulbeuk the art-style is the worst part of the game that creates wrong cover-look impression.
The combat mechanics is pretty complex and all combat encounters are manually prepared.
Imho it's a must play for any TB-combatfag.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yeah, there's a bit of a difficulty bump between epic and legendary, still beating Wheel of Misfortune on the first attempt is impressive. /respect
I had to restart it 3 or 4 times to change starting placement, and ended up tweaking gear to make certain the Priestess acts after the Charmer-girl to dispel her charm from the Barb.
And have to agree, it's one of the best tactical encounters ever, not limited just by this game.

Have you or ValeVelKal ever played Dungeon Rats, Blaggards or Silent Storm? The way you’re talking about this game makes me want to look past the horrible modern aesthetic and give it a try, but I’m curious as to your experience with tactical games.

Do it men. Do it.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Blaggards

He meant blackguards, by the way.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Yeah, there's a bit of a difficulty bump between epic and legendary, still beating Wheel of Misfortune on the first attempt is impressive. /respect
I had to restart it 3 or 4 times to change starting placement, and ended up tweaking gear to make certain the Priestess acts after the Charmer-girl to dispel her charm from the Barb.
And have to agree, it's one of the best tactical encounters ever, not limited just by this game.

Have you or ValeVelKal ever played Dungeon Rats, Blaggards or Silent Storm? The way you’re talking about this game makes me want to look past the horrible modern aesthetic and give it a try, but I’m curious as to your experience with tactical games.

Yeah I played Dungeon Rats and liked it, but did not go very far because I have this weird thing that I need to play games in order (eg W1 before W2, ...), up to the point that I never played the recent M&M because I tried to plow through M&M1, 2, ... and just did not manage to do it.
So I first wanted to play AOD... but I did not like my first attempt ; at the same people tell me it is the new perfect game so... I want to retry AOD and then play DR.

I really like Silent Storm, never heard of Blaggards.

I played most of the classic tactical games (XCOM, TOEE, JA1 & JA2, nuXCOM, Mutant Year Zero, ...), but also indie ones (Age of Fear, Warbanners, ...) or obscure stuff even people here have never heard about like recently Pathways (shit), Warsaw (shit), Broken Lines (meh), I am not a Monster (excellent)- I mean check my signature.

Dungeon of Naheulbeurk is one of the best tactical games I have ever played, and for fantasy probably the best since TOEE, thanks in particular to the strong AI and excellent manual encounter design. Apart from the humor that you may or may not like, there is nothing else great or even good about the game, which is also slow as f**k on my computer due to terrible optimization, but that Tactical part => Awesome

 

[ValeVelKal]

Going further, I think the game has a lot of good ideas that just work well together :

- Turtling does not really work, as overwatch is directional and is interrupted if the overwatcher takes damage, plus the other side usually has his own range units, whether archers, grenadiers or spell-casters,
- Missing on 90% TH chance, or enemy critical successes are not as frustrating as they increase your "Randomia" gauge, which allows you to do cool stuff,
- Parade and Dodge chance are halved every time they trigger in the same round, so you don't have those frustrating encounters where that one low level enemy dodge 4 attacks in a row - if you see him dodging, you know his chance decreased for next time,
- "Assist" (several units around an enemy) does not give a flat bonus but a bonus that depends on the Charisma of the assisting units, which is convoluted but makes some units dedicated team fighters, and some less so ... and makes Charisma NOT a dump-stat,
- You can heal units back to life during combat, but you have a limited time to do it (3 turns, 2 if the unit is poisoned / on fire), and the more you bring them back to life the more they take "Wounds", making them less and less efficient during the combat itself,
- You can use expendables (grenade, potions), but you can only use those equiped on your belt during combat, and you have some belts that store 1 and some other that store 3, so really do you want your tank to carry three potions, or is one enough, allowing the support characters to have a full complement of grenades ? All in all, it makes you use your potions and grenades, since it is pointless to store them more than you can bring in a battle for an eventual boss fight (and given how difficult are the combats, you should use them),
- There are lot of environmental elements, but they usually have to be attacked twice to be triggered, which avoid all of them being blown up in the first turn, but also means that you can really plan around those, and that with the AOE or the, err, less than accurate Elvish archery, a lot of these are going to still be blow up on accident anyway,
- The good damn chickens, play the game and you will understand,
- Further to this, amost all covers can be blown-up,
- There are nice combination, like units that leave a ZOC trigger an attack of opportunity, WHATEVER the reason for leaving is, and since there are effects to push enemies around ...

Add to this that the AI is smart and uses both the environmental effects and its special attacks very well, as well as countering your tactics (eg try to attack your overwatcher with weak expendable attacks to interrupt it, use his golem to blow-up the cover of your support so the rest of the goblins can overwhelm them, etc etc - it makes for an incredibly deep tactical RPG .

 

[Nortar]

Blaggards

He meant blackguards, by the way.

Makes sense.
And I voted for Blackguards 3 in "your most anticipated rpg sequel" thread...

 

[Cleric of Asmodeus]

Going further, I think the game has a lot of good ideas that just work well together :

- Turtling does not really work, as overwatch is directional and is interrupted if the overwatcher takes damage, plus the other side usually has his own range units, whether archers, grenadiers or spell-casters,
- Missing on 90% TH chance, or enemy critical successes are not as frustrating as they increase your "Randomia" gauge, which allows you to do cool stuff,
- Parade and Dodge chance are halved every time they trigger in the same round, so you don't have those frustrating encounters where that one low level enemy dodge 4 attacks in a row - if you see him dodging, you know his chance decreased for next time,
- "Assist" (several units around an enemy) does not give a flat bonus but a bonus that depends on the Charisma of the assisting units, which is convoluted but makes some units dedicated team fighters, and some less so ... and makes Charisma NOT a dump-stat,
- You can heal units back to life during combat, but you have a limited time to do it (3 turns, 2 if the unit is poisoned / on fire), and the more you bring them back to life the more they take "Wounds", making them less and less efficient during the combat itself,
- You can use expendables (grenade, potions), but you can only use those equiped on your belt during combat, and you have some belts that store 1 and some other that store 3, so really do you want your tank to carry three potions, or is one enough, allowing the support characters to have a full complement of grenades ? All in all, it makes you use your potions and grenades, since it is pointless to store them more than you can bring in a battle for an eventual boss fight (and given how difficult are the combats, you should use them),
- There are lot of environmental elements, but they usually have to be attacked twice to be triggered, which avoid all of them being blown up in the first turn, but also means that you can really plan around those, and that with the AOE or the, err, less than accurate Elvish archery, a lot of these are going to still be blow up on accident anyway,
- The good damn chickens, play the game and you will understand,
- Further to this, amost all covers can be blown-up,
- There are nice combination, like units that leave a ZOC trigger an attack of opportunity, WHATEVER the reason for leaving is, and since there are effects to push enemies around ...

Add to this that the AI is smart and uses both the environmental effects and its special attacks very well, as well as countering your tactics (eg try to attack your overwatcher with weak expendable attacks to interrupt it, use his golem to blow-up the cover of your support so the rest of the goblins can overwhelm them, etc etc - it makes for an incredibly deep tactical RPG .

Thanks. I think I will give this a try.

 

[Gregz]

This game was such a pleasant surprise.

 

[agris]

Blaggards

He meant blackguards, by the way.

It’s the untranslated name of some source material iirc, I picked up that name from Roxxxxxxxxxxor

 

[Whisper]

- "Assist" (several units around an enemy) does not give a flat bonus but a bonus that depends on the Charisma of the assisting units, which is convoluted but makes some units dedicated team fighters, and some less so ... and makes Charisma NOT a dump-stat

Having more than 100% accuracy is useless, except for 1 skill on long cd for rogue and 1 skill for elf. But elf ranged skill do not benefit from charisma support anyway, since it is ranged.

Charisma IS dump stat unless you take Priestess/Ministrel.
You can get 100% accuracy easy mid-game with 1 buff, or 100% a bit later without buffs at all. So you dont for sure need charisma at all.

Going further, I think the game has a lot of good ideas that just work well together :
- You can heal units back to life during combat, but you have a limited time to do it (3 turns, 2 if the unit is poisoned / on fire), and the more you bring them back to life the more they take "Wounds", making them less and less efficient during the combat itself,

Most of wounds effects can be ignored like -Int on your dwarf. Even in -stat wound do not matter much since penalty is small. -movement (and maybe -hp) wound matter but they are rare.

Going further, I think the game has a lot of good ideas that just work well together :
- You can use expendables (grenade, potions), but you can only use those equiped on your belt during combat, and you have some belts that store 1 and some other that store 3, so really do you want your tank to carry three potions, or is one enough, allowing the support characters to have a full complement of grenades ? All in all, it makes you use your potions and grenades, since it is pointless to store them more than you can bring in a battle for an eventual boss fight (and given how difficult are the combats, you should use them),

Grenades are used on thief (=Bomberman skill), all other heroes put healing pots. So no real choice "grenades or healing" is here.


Didnt read further, you clearly have no clue what you are talking about.

 

[Harthwain]

Having more than 100% accuracy is useless, except for 1 skill on long cd for rogue and 1 skill for elf. But elf ranged skill do not benefit from charisma support anyway, since it is ranged.

It's useful, because some skills lower your accuracy (including your own skills) and enemy can have dodge.

 

[Cleric of Asmodeus]

Played a bit of this tonight. Seems pretty decent so far.

Combat has some nice tactical depth with the positioning and orientation. Feels a little board-gamey, almost like blood bowl or a miniatures board game played on a grid, can’t put my finger on why yet though. Right now the characters don’t have a lot to distinguish them from each other but I expect that gets more interesting as we add skills and crap (maybe items have active abilities?)

Kind of a shame that the game looks like a mobile game because the combat is incline and most will probably overlook it

 

[Whisper]

Having more than 100% accuracy is useless, except for 1 skill on long cd for rogue and 1 skill for elf. But elf ranged skill do not benefit from charisma support anyway, since it is ranged.

It's useful, because some skills lower your accuracy (including your own skills) and enemy can have dodge.

Another clueless one in thread?
Dodge is separate check. Your accuracy has no effect on enemy dodge chance.

 

[Harthwain]

Dodge is separate check. Your accuracy has no effect on enemy dodge chance.

I checked the game and apparently I misunderstood what the tutorial section tried to say. It's explained much better in the Tips and Encyclopedia. Mea culpa then. It turns out dodge is even worse than I thought it is.

 

[Whisper]

Dodge is separate check. Your accuracy has no effect on enemy dodge chance.

I checked the game and apparently I misunderstood what the tutorial section tried to say. It's explained much better in the Tips and Encyclopedia. Mea culpa then. It turns out dodge is even worse than I thought it is.

Game lacks info.. For example you cant know (and never will) enemy % chance to hit you. Just no information for this.

 

[ValeVelKal]

Didnt read further, you clearly have no clue what you are talking about.

You sound like the kind of dumbass who believes the way he plays and builds his team is the one way to do it.

Having more than 100% accuracy is useless, except for 1 skill on long cd for rogue and 1 skill for elf. But elf ranged skill do not benefit from charisma support anyway, since it is ranged.

Charisma IS dump stat unless you take Priestess/Ministrel.
You can get 100% accuracy easy mid-game with 1 buff, or 100% a bit later without buffs at all. So you dont for sure need charisma at all.

Having more than 100% accuracy helps you against the status you have when you have lower health (that gives you -5%/-10%/-15%), against Wounds, and if you use the alcohol to buff yourself, which I do a lot...
More importantly, you could easily get to 100% accuracy ... by increasing agility, which you probably did. OR you could have the had same result (>100% accuracy) with less invested point in Charisma and more than 1 support, allowing you to free points for, for instance, strength.

The calculation has two limits : it does not work for range attack (which almost all characters have), and agility improves dodge and/or parry. Nonetheless, I found it worthwhile to improve Charisma instead of (only) Agility on my Ranger, who never fight alone, so I could improve his Strength and fix his weakish damage.

Now almost all stats are going to be dump stats for this or that character, but at least here they made it a bit useful - thought indeed not strong enough that I used it for anyone else than the Ranger / Elf / Minstrel.

By the way, the Elf heal depends on Charisma, so it is not only the Priestess and Ministrel with secondaries depending on Charisma.

Most of wounds effects can be ignored like -Int on your dwarf. Even in -stat wound do not matter much since penalty is small. -movement (and maybe -hp) wound matter but they are rare.

- INT is by far the "weakest" wound, and while sometimes we are lucky with the Intelligence wound on the Dwarf, most of the times it is something bad (ACCURACY) or crippling(HP). Here is for instance the "wound status" of my team :

[Edit : I fucked up with the SC and the Magician has actually Precision - 20 and HP - 30]

Those minus 50HP on the Barb and Ranger make them not able to tank anything anymore, the Magician makes her killable with one arrow or so. Granted, the impact of wounds decreases as you progress in the game, and while devastating early game I suspect they will be nuisance by end game.

Grenades are used on thief (=Bomberman skill), all other heroes put healing pots. So no real choice "grenades or healing" is here.

This one is your most stupid comment, and indeed shows more than anything else you cannot conceive that people would build differently than you.

The Bomberman skills add damage "and other effects [never specified]" to the grenades, except the grenade damage are anemic, and they are useful for their other effects, in particular crowd control [Ice Grenade, Spider Grenade]. If you launch a grenade for crowd control or debuff, you don't care if the Rogue or someone else throw them.

The Rogue has high mobility, his own crowd control or other debuff, significant damage by mid-game and his sneak capacity earmarks him for moving to the back of the enemy line to remove the archer and support - so in many cases throwing a grenade with the rogue has a cost of opportunity versus other actions.

Now some characters are slow (=the Dwarf, a bit improved when he acquires his charge skill), or lack special abilities while not hitting really hard (=the Ranger, except the "opening" skills). If you give them special grenades, you have a lot more options with them. I gave grenades to the Dwarf, the Ranger and the Minstrel for that reason, I also gave grenades to my Bomberman Rogue but it turns out I throw less grenades with the Rogue than with the Ranger.

There are 4 characters with heal, I found out that I am OK with 1 healing potion by character, the Barb, the Troll and sometimes the Ranger and Dwarf have buff potions which I use in particular if I can't reach an enemy this round.

 

[Cleric of Asmodeus]

I’m in chapter 4 or something and the Barbarian is my favorite by far. Playing on Epic difficulty, feels just right.

 

[Cleric of Asmodeus]

I think the facing and flanking and stuff is a big part of what makes the tactics pretty good; I was expecting something more like the recent shadowrun games given the nuXcom description

 

[Cleric of Asmodeus]

Holy fuck the golem fight was tough. Took me 3 tries. One of them was an almost total wipe by the second turn. I eventually won it by deploying heavy to the right side and trying really hard to build a tarpit around the dwarf and ogre and keeping everyone else playing really cautious in the corner. I think I used a couple tactical chickens, too (heh, sigh).

It's kind of neat how the roles of tank, disruptor, healer, ranged etc really assert their influence on the combat. The encounter design is really good, too -- it manages to have some high priority targets and really significant terrain but without veering into feeling too much like a puzzle. That pressure when you are deciding if you need to focus down a golem, quickly snipe that suicide bomber fucker, or do something about the goblin snipers that are quickly picking off your team.

The grid and positioning kind of reminds me of Games Workshop board games like Space Hulk or Blood Bowl. It's the blocking more than anything.

Edit: Itemization is kind of shit, though. I hope that the space tactical mans game they are working on has more interesting loot.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

the Barbarian is my favorite

Good.

 

[fantadomat]

wound

You do know that there is cheap bandages that cure wounds?

 

[ValeVelKal]

wound

You do know that there is cheap bandages that cure wounds?

Of course but it is less expensive sometimes to heal everyone at the tavern for 100/150/200

 

[fantadomat]

wound

You do know that there is cheap bandages that cure wounds?

Of course but it is less expensive sometimes to heal everyone at the tavern for 100/150/200

LoL money is irrelevant in this game,later on you have like 50k and nothing to spend it on. Just spend it on bandages and potions.