Come to know capriphobia as I have! Let's Play Desktop Dungeons!

Hey kids!



Let's play Desktop Dungeons!

Desktop Dungeons is something of a roguelike developed by the South African game makers of QCF Design. It's still in development, and I think the final version is going to eventually be released on iPhones and the like, but they've released the current version to the public for free playing on the PC or likewise. It's kind of odd, even among roguelikes, since the entire dungeon is represented by a single floor about the size of a Minesweeper grid. In fact, I like to think of this as the Minesweeper of roguelikes: it's not terrible detailed or intricate, but it's easy to get into and can be played quickly and easily on a lunch break. The gameplay even feels a bit like it.

Anyway, let's get started. I'll be playing through the tutorial on this update. I'll also be using the default tileset, by some guy who made some game about caves and arrow traps or something.



Okay, let's get this party started!



Here's our playing field. Our character and his stats are all on the right, while the dungeon, explored or otherwise, is on the left. Right now, Pants has on his Class Jeans (his buddy Brandt suggested the idea) to give himself the appearance of a dwarf fighter. Class doesn't figure in too heavily to the tutorial, so I'll explain them at the end of this update, for reasons.



As you can see, mousing over the enemy displays its stats, as well as the outcome for what happens should you exchange blows. Given the goblin's low health and attack power, it'll only take two such attacks to down it.



As demonstrated here. One more hit should do the job nicely.



Cleanup in aisle one!



Yep. Two tiles later and we're back on our feet.

Incidentally, they're not kidding. Exploring is the easiest way to heal, but it's also a very important resource to manage. Damaged enemies heal when you explore as well, and once you're out of tiles, healing is significantly harder, although not impossible.



Here's our next foe, a zombie. They have a bit more health than goblins do, but goblins have the speed to always strike first. It's important to learn the various types of enemies you find in the dungeon, and what sets them apart. Also, the zombie is undead, but that won't matter for this update.



Here's the red orbs from exploring after fighting the zombie. They're a neat cosmetic effect, and since they only show up if you get healed, they're also a nice visual cue.



You don't have to tell me twice. That guy could blow a hole clean through us with his haughty stare alone.

The goal of a given game of Desktop Dungeons is to kill the level 10 monster in a given dungeon. However, the level of a monster is totally independent of the type of the monster. So we could face a level 10 goblin, zombie, warlock, or any other kind once we get to the game proper. Boss monsters have a unique name and pre-battle taunt, too, and often have an extra trick or two up their sleeves.

Incidentally, warlocks are known for devastating magic and their flimsy cloth robes. Or in other words, high attack, low health.



Here's the trick, though: if you only fight monsters of your level or lower, the average character will only be around level 7 by the time they've cleaned out the dungeon, and the boss can easily take them down. So to even the odds, you need to take risks and fight higher-leveled monsters. Killing a monster of a higher level than you grants bonus experience. The larger the gulf in experience, the greater the benefit.



In any case, we fight the meat man here (known for high health but low attack power) and gain a level from it.



Note that gaining a level fully healed us. This is also incredibly important. It means that if you battle a tough foe halfway to death, and then go steal a quick level up from a weak enemy, you can gain a second wind and come around to victory. Speaking of victory...



Horribly defeated is right.

Yeah, even though Desktop Dungeons is one of the easier roguelikes to pick up, it is still a roguelike, and the name of the game is random levels with difficult challenges and permadeath. The key to surviving is making use of all the tools at your disposal, and sometimes you make the wrong choice and die. On the upside, while some roguelikes can take up to months to play a character, Desktop Dungeons plays games quickly. Anyway, next tutorial level.

We've swapped our class jeans once again here. For the magic lesson, we will fittingly be playing a wizard. Of the gnomish persuasion, as it were. Anyway, you probably see that distinctly non-monstrous thing right next to our character, yes?



Yep. Spells in Desktop Dungeons are found as glyphs while exploring, and can be picked up by anyone. Some classes work better with glyphs than others, though, and our wizard is a natural with them. The BURNDAYRAZ glyph here is the basic attack glyph, and the only one guaranteed to be generated in a normal game (although not always generated in an easy-to-reach place).



As it says, the goo blob here won't counterattack us if we just BURNDAYRAZ. Goo blobs are actually kind of hard to find in the normal game, but I'll tell you why later. We transmute it into a different kind of goo and move on.



Something to note: while health increases as you gain levels, mana does not. There are ways to increase your mana capacity, though, one of which we'll be touching on in just a bit.



Seen here is the ENDISWAL glyph, a useful tool should you get stuck with no safe way to explore, but a bit expensive. And as you can see, right now we have plenty of mana, but nowhere else to go. So let's bust down this wall!



POW! HAHA!



Something they don't mention here: while this character can convert glyphs into mana potions, others can use them for all sorts of things, depending on their race. Gnomes turn them into mana potions, and the other races... I'll tell you about those later.



Bottoms up!



And that potion gives us enough juice to finish off the goo blob without dirtying our hands at all.



For today's theology lesson, Pants here dusts off his Priest Class Jeans. The gods of Desktop Dungeons work a lot like those of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup. In fact, a lot of the game borrows from that particular roguelike in design principles. So let's move on to this altar here and see which god will be tutoring us today.





There's no penalty for just praying briefly at an altar, so if you see a god you don't know, by all means go take a closer look. You'll get some flavor text indicating what kind of god they are, and you can use that to guess what actions annoy them and what ones please them. Taurog here is as straightforward as they come: he likes killing, but hates magic.



The gods do assorted things once you start worshipping them. The harsher gods will usually inflict some kind of penalty, while the more benevolent ones offer a reward if you follow them. In the case of Trog (er, sorry, Taurog), he'll test your might by severely hindering your ability to use magic.



Once we do that, the various boons light up and we can examine their effects and costs. All of these reduce your maximum mana by some amount, usually by 2, but RAGE takes it down to a maximum of 1. Fury increases your attack power, Command grants experience, Mageshield makes you more resistant to magical attack, Penetration reduces any physical resistance your foes might have, and RAGE kicks up your attack power by an insane amount.



And as you can see, because we have mana burn, not only do we lose all our existing mana, but we no longer gain mana by walking. If you recall the mana potion's description from the magic tutorial, we can use one of those to heal mana burn. Gaining a level does the trick as well.

And just like that, the world seems a bit more vibrant. Destroying the glyph awards us some piety, which



Yeah, that. You can spend piety at the altar on the aforementioned boons. These two, together, make for a sort of solidifying of playstyle depending on your god. Certain classes are better suited to certain gods.



Yeah, going south isn't an option, thanks to that gorgon. Gorgons, like goo blobs and goats, are a bit odd compared to the rest of the enemies we've seen so far. Again, I'll explain how later. Right now, we got weaklings to slaughter in Taurog's name.



HOO-AH!



It's true, the Command boon would make us strong enough to fight the gorgon. But in our case, the Fury boon should do the trick just as well. So hey, why not.



RIP AND TEAR!



As you can see, our newfound power gives us the strength to take down the gorgon in a single hit.



We get a level out of it, as well as a nod from Taurog.



DAMN YOU, GOAT. Anyway, for our last tutorial, we're playing as the last of our available classes, the thief. Let's see that tile next to him, eh?



One thing I like about Desktop Dungeons is that the graphics have this sort of generic feel to them, so if you want, you can imagine that the powerup tiles are the kinds of things you might find in a more detailed roguelike. For example, maybe we just picked up a +2 buckler.

Or we can just pretend they're gaming abstractions. That's cool too. Speaking of gaming abstractions, how about that blue tile?



And this hand axe here?



Yeah, this is just gold. Gold is gold is gold.

One common complaint about this version of Desktop Dungeons is how gold is handled. The gold you collect is carried over between games, but the items you can buy between games are governed by a bunch of factors. The first problem is that some items are just so expensive that you can't hope to buy them without having some gold stockpiled from an earlier game. The second is that your wallet size, the amount of gold you get with each pickup, and the shop inventory all depends on the wins you have in both the normal and side dungeons. The upshot of the whole thing is that in order to make the most of gold and shops in a given game, there's an implicit assumption that you spend time doing runs just to gather gold. Fortunately, I think the devs are aware of this and are doing their best to remedy it.



Anyway, here's the shop. Selling a fine sword for only 1 gold. That's the deal of a freakin' lifetime. SOLD!



How mysterious!



Well, that's the actual tutorial part done. Now let's see if we can't exact some revenge on that goat, hm?

The first thing we find is an altar to a new god. This guy's called the Pactmaker, and I consider him/her/it the most boring god, but also the most versatile. We'll be working together a lot (when I don't have any better options), but right now I pass them up for reasons.



Heading north yields the BURNDAYRAZ glyph.



And after a bit of exploring, we see that all our paths are blocked by monsters.



So I take the natural approach to such a problem. Heavily wounded, mind you, but nothing a bit of exploration won't fix.



And there's another gorgon. This one, being only level 1, poses no threat at all.



Before I engage this meat man, though, I double back to the altar of the Pactmaker.



The thing about the Pactmaker is there's only two ways to gain piety with them. Fortunately, being absolutely BORING, the Pactmaker gives neither benefit nor penalty for worshipping them.



The first way is when you first worship the Pactmaker. Depending on how many tiles you've uncovered, you get piety for simply joining up. Most gods offer some starting piety based on your past actions, but they never cause you to lose piety.



The second way you gain piety for the Pactmaker...



Is a fixed 20-point boost on levelups. Not too bad, but most of the really good benefits from the Pactmaker cost a lot of piety, so it's best to worship them (or almost any god, really) early on for the most benefit.



There's the tutorial goat. At level 5, we can do a lot more damage than we could to a level 9 goat, but this one will still make mincemeat of us right now... unless we play it clever.



First, we BURNDAYRAZ a little bit.



Next, we go to browse the assorted boons. We want the Experience boon, which will grant us a level up with which we can launch another fireball.

As for the Pactmaker's other boons, Learning gives you bonus experience on every kill, and the two last boons give a sizable boost to the indicated stats, but the piety cost is way out there.

You might notice the "Conversion: Mystera" option greyed out there. Certain gods consider other gods allies, and if you are in good standing with your initial god, you may convert to another god by going to their altar and selecting a matching option. This is particularly noteworthy because you can use this to bypass the initial penalty from following a particularly demanding god outright.



Anyway, with the Pactmaker's experience fresh in our minds, we go to serve a second helping of burning goodness.



And that brings the tutorial goat within killing range! Booyah!

Another option you could probably do, if you leveled up before using a fireball, is to convert the glyph. Humans gain an attack boost upon doing so, so that would make that final stab pack enough of a kick to off the goat as well.



Okay, now is a good time to go back over the stuff I mentioned earlier that I said I'd get to eventually.

You noticed on the first screen how we had a bunch of gray spaces next to all our other choices for class and race? Yeah, Desktop Dungeons has a lot of a focus on unlockables. The reason for this is to make entering the game, for new players, as painless as possible, since the least complex classes and monsters are the ones you start out with, and as you start winning with a certain playstyle, new classes are unlocked to accommodate that playstyle, and new monsters are created to challenge it. And for skilled players, well, those unlockables won't pose much of a threat at all.

This does, however, pose a bit of a challenge as far as LPing the game goes. I could just use my normal profile with nearly everything unlocked, but where's the fun in that?



Let's explain how this LP is going to work, then.

Next Time: I plan to beat the game with each of the twelve normal classes, and I also plan to show off the side branches and whatever special classes/races I can. In order to do so, though, I need to play with the starting setups. So this is where you come in. I'm going to do something between a vote and a queue here. Everyone can vote on their preferred class (I won't track races since each class only has like two good options racewise) out of the ones we have available, and the one with the most votes will go first. After I win (or lose, if you like) with that, I'll move on to the next-highest voted one, provided people don't change their votes to something different before then. So without further Apu, let's meet our contestants!



The fighter is the most straightforward of the lot. The ability to see monsters of their level and the extra experience gain means they can tackle the dungeon at their own pace, and the ability to survive a single killing blow is great if you slip up and make a mistake (or want to try tangoing with something a bit out of your league). Humans and dwarves (who convert glyphs into a health bonus) make the best fighters. Actually, they pretty much are good at anything.



Thieves are my favorite of the starting group. Between the extra powerups and their ability to use both potion types equally well, they're exceptionally versatile and have surprising endurance. The damage bonus on your first attack is a nice touch, too. Since gnomes and halflings turn glyphs into mana and health potions respectively, they both work equally well as thieves.



Priests are the tanks of the initial lineup of classes. The increased health and full effectiveness of health potions makes them a perfect fit for halflings (although dwarves can do all right as them), and the increased damage bonus specific to undead gives them a clear goal when it comes to fighting high-level monsters for bonus experience.



Wizards are probably the hardest to use out of the starting classes due to the attack penalty, but for learning how the various glyphs of the game work, there's no class better. They can see glyphs, carry more glyphs, generate more glyphs, use more glyphs... the perfect atmosphere for experimentation. Because of this, gnomes and elves (who convert extra glyphs to a mana bonus) make the best wizards, although you can make a case for playing a human wizard to overcome the attack penalty.

So, which Pants will we try first? Fighter, thief, priest, or wizard?

Wizard! Wizards are always the best choice.

- Eddie

I'll vote for wizard just to see more of the spells. Also, I don't remember any tutorial when I played this game.

Why are the fighter and the thief wearing ballgags?

Wizards are fun. Lets go with wizards.

BTW if Wizard wins his name has to be Jimmy.

- Eddie

Yeah, my version of Desktop Dungeons is obviously an older version, because I've never even seen a lot of this stuff.

Be a Fighter and worship mighty Taurog at every opportunity!

Also, I always find myself playing humans in DD for the attack boost. Stark contrast to NetHack and Crawl, where I kind of hate playing humans (in the former because of the lack of infravision, in the latter because of the lack of good aptitudes).

You should totally play a priest. As races go, I'm partial to halflings and humans.

Halfling thief...or any thief, really.

Priests seem like they would be less strategy and more run up and kill things, a simple straight forward starting character. I vote for that.

Current votes:
Wizard: 9
Priest: 2
Fighter: 2
Thief: 5
Wizard won update 1, therefore this post will wait for the next set.

Gnome-Thief, because it is the easiest possible character to play.

Fightin' Mang.

I think I'm kind of in love with this game, though the lack of a Mac port makes me a sad panda. Those character sprites are just lovely.

The thief looks a bit like baby Hitler.

Wizzard

The Wizaaaaaard!

Because I want to see what you do with a Blood Mage

I like Human Thief. You get more Glyphs (potentially) and you can use them to make more strength upgrades.

You can kill EVERYONE EVERYWHERE FOREVER!

In a video game with a wizard you should always be a wizard. THE WIZARD.

(named Jimmy)

- Eddie

Don't be silly. Everyone knows the real Wizard is named Lucas. How can he not be? He has the Power Glove, and it's so bad!

Wizard named Jimmy.

Thief. Make money now so you can buy mana potions as a wizard.

Thief: halfling or human.

Looks like the first update is going to be a wizard. I'll get right on that. In the meantime, MOAR VOTES! RAAAAGHJ!

JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMYJIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY
A wizard naaaamed?JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY
JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMYJIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY JIMMY
- Eddie

Sorry, names are locked to your profile, so all our characters will be named Pants.

You can pretend that's the last name of a fellow named Jimmy, though.