mrsemi

Having the reward for a puzzle room be a single ration, or far, far worse, a key or other solution for a DIFFERENT puzzle room. Highly aggravating.

I thought I had it in the bag this time, with Swiftness glyph on armor and Ring of Arcana +7 (pretty sure I broke the sound barrier), I was able to use 3 scrolls of Foresight for the entire run from the demon halls to the surface.

For the halls themselves I always conserve 4 magic mapping, I fully explored floors 25 and 26, and on the ascent I left no square uncovered or even blue from revellation. I circled each floor at least once, found several hidden rooms I'd missed on the descent. I definitely fully explored every boss room as well.

I do some modding of Shattered for my own use and my current project is adding rares for each enemy type. I'm curious if anyone has comments or suggestions on that topic.

What I'm thinking about so far:

Sewer Viper - poison on hit, guaranteed drop of starflower seed on first kill

Gnoll Poacher - ranged attacks, drops tier 2-3 ranged weapons

Swarm of Blood Flies - atracks drain life, drops seed of sungrass

Elder Crab - moves at normal speed but attacks twice per round and cripples, drops 3 mystery meat

Unstable Skeleton - explodes similar to a bomb or explosive trap when killed, drops a weapon with +1 tier probability

Guard Captain - chain pull also roots, drops armor with +1 tier probability

Malfunctioning DM-100 - immobile, continuously sparks electricity around itself that paralyzes while still also making ranged lightning attacks, drops scroll of retribution

Bloodletter Bat - attacks inflict bleeding, drops potion of purity

Gnoll Warlock - same as dwarf warlock but retreats after applying debuff, drops wand of corruption

Cave Trapper - attacks inflict poison, blind, and cripple, does not retreat after applying debuff, webs to block escape, drops potion of paralyzing gas

Dwarven Ghoulkeeper - ghouls revive with full health instead of 5 when a ghoulkeeper is nearby, and the ghoulkeeper periodically heals and buffs nearby ghouls, drops unstable brew

Senior Warlock - if alone, summons a pair of ghouls, otherwise uses regular warlock attack that also cripples, drops unstable spell

Siege Golem - attacks knock back, throws bombs, drops shrapnel bomb

Enchantress - attacks inflict blind and vulnerability as well as charm, drops exotic scroll of siren's song

All Seeing Eye - ranged attack pierces walls and barriers, can always see and target the hero within 3 tiles (blind doesn't help), charging up gives the hero mind vision on the eye, drops potion of mind vision

YWO-UYT-LOQ

I searched this seed for a vampiric weapon (armored statue on floor 1, VERY hard to kill) and ring of arcana (chest on floor 7) to see how hard I could push the vampire lifestyle.

Ended up becoming made of steel as well. With this outfit I no longer eat, instead healing even starvation damage with vampiric attacks. I'm sated in the screenshot due to using a healing well to uncurse the imp's ring to sell for more money.

Seed: DGB-BVY-DTX

This was... Quite a run. Struggled early on with no armor, managed to get by with a +2 quarterstaff, +2 wand of fire blast and +1 mail deep into the caves. Upgraded plate twice at the blacksmith then dumped scrolls into it.

A few arcane stylus popped camouflage, and things got significantly easier. Ring of arcana upgraded to +4 meant 18 turns of invisibility for touching grass.

Then it got crazy. A scroll of metamorphosis got me the huntress' ability to raise tall grass from short grass or embers, every five turns, which meant just being near grass got me 18 turns of invisibility... Every five turns.

Then I got a +1 war scythe, transmuted into a great axe... And my one stone of enchantment popped blooming.

So. Invisible to guaranteed one-shot kill, which procced 2-3 tall grass...one step into the new grass, repeat. Completely untouchable.

The only little bit of difficulty I got was on Yog's burning fist. Oddly, the talent to pop tall grass from embers stopped working once it spawned, and for the rest of the fight. I kept trying and getting burned to the point I needed to pop a healing potion before I gave up and used my cloak.

Even after yog died none of the embers in his room turned to tall grass when stepped on. After picking up the amulet and starting the ascent though, it worked fine.

I really wish this piece of shit were more in line with the difficulty of the rat and the crab. As it is when I encounter the sad ghost on floor 3 I have to decide whether the cost of food/health, not to mention the sheer annoyance factor, is worth the slim possibility of a good reward.

Having the best choice be just not to engage with one of the dungeon's challenges doesn't seem like good design.

The fact that he's more difficult to handle than Goo is rather insane.

Edit:

#BRUH

Y'all, I can handle the fucking gnoll trickster. This isn't about "oh this dude keeps ending my runs", okay?

It's just that, especially in comparison to the other two minibosses in sewers, he's fucking EXHAUSTING to deal with. Even reading all of y'all's advice it still amounts to "yeah he's a big stupid pain in the ass but if you just carefully and precisely tweak his nipples in exactly this fashion you can beat him".

I am complaining that he is out of line, challenge-wise, with the other two minibosses. That's all. Even bringing the other two up to his level would be satisfying, because then he wouldn't be such an UGH moment.