Let's Play DUNGEONMAN, The MicroLP too big to share a thread

Let's play DUNGEONMEN: Men of Dungeons

Hi, everyone! Let's blindly play an RPG of unknown length. This can't possibly go wrong!



DUNGEONMEN: Men of Dungeons looks really nice and I don't know a lot more about it. You can play along here if you're so inclined. The same authors also created another RPG that I might also LP if this goes well.

There's also a really classy manual you can read if you're into that sort of thing. I sort of skimmed it.

To start with, I'll need someone to suggest a party for me! Here is a list of classes and their passive, out-of-battle abilities.

Knight: Breaks locked doors. Without a Knight, you need a key.
Ninja: Disarms traps. I have heard the success rate on this ability is less than stellar.
Pirate: "Send parrot to shop." I guess this means you can shop from inside the dungeon.
Bard: "Save inside dungeon." I guess this means you can't save inside the dungeon normally.
Wizard: Warps out of the dungeon. Wizardry and Bard's Tale are listed as influences, so this is probably helpful.
Cleric: Cures diseases. Your guess is as good as mine!
Sage: Appraises items. Some items are unidentified when you find them, and presumably unusable as a result.
Samurai: "Forge arms in the field." Crafting!
Crusader: Radiates light. Without a Crusader, you need torches.
Hunter: "Make camp in field." I have no idea.
Illusionist: "No enemy encounters." Can this possibly be as good as it sounds?
Warlock: "Raise dead in field." I guess that means heroes auto-revive after battle.



FOUR HEROES. I will probably take the first party suggestion I get.

Pirate, Wizard, Illusionist, Samurai, so you have some interesting abilities to play with.

This looks promising from the choose-your-party screenshot! I may have to try it out.

Ninja, Pirate, Warlock, Crusader

Knight Wizard Hunter Cleric

Names: Northur, Southland, Easton, and Westing

Guys, this game is actually really great.

It turns out you can recruit additional allies at no cost, so I might show off more than the initial four. Armed with that knowledge, I started the game with Knight, Pirate, Wizard, and Sage, planning to switch things around once I got some responses. Initial thoughts:

- Knight can get you some really great treasures really early, but his success rate for door-bashing starts out really low. It's probably tied to his level. Since there are several doors in the castle, you can scum these doors if you want, or just try them before each time you use the inn.
- Pirate starts with Plunder, an ability that attacks and gives you $200 per use. This is really great at the start of the game, although it quickly becomes pocket change.
- Wizard has a really powerful magic attack with a free +INT steroid that I imagine is useful in longer fights. Really low HP is trouble, though.
- Sage has a pretty weak magic attack, but its free attack is much stronger. Unfortunately, that attack can hit you.

On the abilities I didn't pick: All of the abilities have a uses/day limit, and many of them have a success rate that's, again, probably tied to your level. For example, the Illusionist's ability starts out with a really, really short duration -- something like ten steps. Physical classes seem better than magic classes, but it's too early to tell right now.

Actual update sometime; for now, please enjoy more screenshots that are not from my playthrough.

Not pictured: the sacrificial maiden is 100% nude. The intro to this game is NSFW; you have been warned.



So, yeah. We've got an evil wizard returning, or whatever. The king is a lazy goof, so the princess gives us the rundown: four minions, four dungeons, figure the rest out yourself. Notably, she mentions that you'll have to decide in which order to tackle the dungeons. They are not created equal.



I get a game over while discovering this. DUNGEONMEN: Men of Dungeons does not play with the gloves on.

The first fifteen minutes of the game will probably be spent deciding how to outfit your party. This is because there are several dozen equipment options, ranging from slightly to very different. Light armor will reduce the cost of your spells, but it will also make your wizard die very quickly (SPOILERS: our wizard will die a lot). Two-handed weapons are more powerful, but cost you a shield slot. Hats provide extra health, but can reduce your accuracy. We will eventually give everyone the heaviest helmets, but it takes me awhile to discover all of this.



For my money, the easiest dungeon by far is this one: the marsh cave area. This won't stop me from having to go back to town a ton, but it will let me accumulate loot and a little experience. Ultimately, it matters very little: the dungeon itself is the greatest danger in this game. You can run from battles very easily, but traps will wreck you. Maybe I should've brought a ninja.

I didn't, though: my party is Knight the knight, Pirate the pirate, Wizard the wizard, and, um, Torzelbaum the crusader. (I don't think there's a way to rename your heroes.) Let's look at each one a bit.



Knight is essential. Door-crashing is so helpful, it's ridiculous. In combat, he's got some decent abilities, making him one of our better damage dealers as well as being the most resilient member of the party.

Pirate probably offers the least utility of the group. Being able to use the shop inside of dungeons comes in handy once or twice, but doesn't keep him from being the most replaceable member of the party. He starts with Plunder, which I've mentioned earlier as an easy way for a little extra cash while you fight, and his free skill is Avast!, which is basically the Final Fantasy Jump command. He learns a powerful self-heal at level 3, which is nice, but as the second-hardiest member of the team, he doesn't get much mileage from it.

Wizard is really great while he's alive. His Warp ability is wonderful in theory, but in practice, he's always the first to hit the floor, so I can't use it as much as I'd like. As long as he's on his feet, he's our #1 damage dealer, especially once he reaches level 6. More on that later.

Torzelbaum is totally sweet. I said the crusader ability replaced torches, but that's not quite accurate. Here's how the dungeon looks without a torch:



With a torch, your visibility increases dramatically:



But a crusader will give you full visibility in dark areas:



And if this sounds good, then it's better than it sounds. All of this comes at the cost of being a somewhat lackluster combatant. I was hoping the crusader would be a secondary healer, and while he does have a healing ability, it's only gone as high as 30 HP healed. Versus demons and undead, he does have a fantastic damage-dealing ability, but so far has little else to recommend. But like I mentioned, the dungeons are more dangerous than their denizens, so I think this is a worthwhile tradeoff.

Speaking of which, you can see me triggering a poison gas trap in that last screenshot. Traps are everywhere: the floor is littered with them, and about one in four chests has a trap instead of an item. The counterbalance is that chests also hook you up. 90% of your cash will come from chests, and most of your early gear does, too.



Meanwhile, Wizard dies.



The town is lovingly detailed and very well designed. It seems like most of the residents have some sort of quest for you. The restaurateur here, for example, accepts ingredients, and each ingredient adds a new item to the store.



If the regular chest loot is good, then the unidentified items you get from chests are downright amazing. This one turned out to be a ring that adds 50 to a hero's max MP, where our heroes are averaging about 20 right now.

Next: We take a peek at the other dungeons and clear our first stage!

Hmm.

Hmm!

Hmm!

Somebody likes mecha.

Ha, that's kind of cool. I figured there had to be something going on with the names in this game.



When we left off last time, we were struggling through the Daitarn Marsh. The overworld map has a few more points of interest:

• The castle-town. Obviously.
• An enormous stormcloud. This seems to be the location of the Final Showdown; it's currently inaccessible.
• A stone circle, which leads to a dungeon in the sky.
• A tower in a barren snowfield.
• A volcano in the desert.

Not content to stick to one dungeon, our DUNGEONMEN will be exploring the other three today.



Knights are great. Here, we see Knight smashing a door in the icy tower. He fails more often than not, but he succeeds often enough.



Disease strikes! I was dumb and decided to check out a pestulent puddle at the edge of this room. The specifics of disease vary by strain, but generally, diseases will gradually (and by "gradually," I mean "very rapidly") wear down a character's stats, then kill him. Sometimes, a disease will spread to other party members; lucky you!



The thing to do here is usually Warp back to town. You can rid yourself of disease at the church for a price, and since the price is lower for disease than for death, it's a good deal. If you don't want to lose your progress, you can use a relatively costly Panacea, but the item has a chance of failing. It seems like some diseases are more resistant to Panacea than others, but maybe that's confirmation bias.



Anyway, the ice tower seems to be the next easiest dungeon after the marsh, but it's also hard to navigate, so here we are in the Sky Garden. Torzelbaum hits level 3 and gains a new ability! This casts a fire spell on all enemies. It's not too powerful, but it is our only real multitarget attack for now. Wizard can cast Fireball, which deals heavy damage plus some splash damage, but the splash damage is too low to consider it a real multitarget spell.



A trap forces us to retreat. The flames trap reduces all living party members to a paltry 1 HP. While you can run from battles easily enough, this trap renders you prone to dying from other traps or damaging floors. There have been several occasions where I'd lose Wizard and then find one of these traps on the other side of a lake of acid. This basically forces you to expend healing items so you can make it back to town.



Knights are great. Here, Knight has smashed down a door in the castle, yielding a metric crapton of gold. This is actually helpful: the best equipment is smithed by spending gold and ore. Lots of gold and lots of ore. Weapons upgrade a little differently, but gold is still part of the equation.



Our party is back to the marshes after a not-pictured trip to the volcano. It's hard to say which is the more difficult area between the volcano and the sky dungeon, but it seems like the volcano has tougher monsters.

In this picture, you might notice a hint of a treasure chest in the southeast corner. One of this game's creators famously put a treasure chest into a different game that required you to trek across a long passage of acid; the chest was highly visible, but it was clearly very punishing to obtain.

The chest was empty.

Now, this chest doesn't make you cross nearly as much damaging terrain, but in a game where many of the chests are outright harmful, this gives you pause.



The results give me mixed feelings: this chest didn't try to kill me, but the accessory gives a paltry +5 ATK.



Further along in the marsh cave, we find a foreboding passage. One easily overlooked feature in this game is the flavor text. Pressing L at almost any place in any dungeon gives you some context-sensitive flavor text that in some cases provides clues as to traps or secrets. There are several areas where the descriptions seem to be mismatched, but it's still really cool.



Inside the cavern, I find a glowing staircase. I brace myself for a boss fight, hold my breath, and walk north...



...and I finish the stage. (Not pictured: fireworks that are really hard to screenshot for some reason)

I should explain that each of the dungeons is divided into stages. Three stages and then a boss seems to be the flow, though it's not clear whether the boss gets its own stage. Now that I've finished the Ancient Cave, I can bypass it when I come back to the marsh. Think, like, the strata in Etrian Odyssey. I like how this works, especially with the nonlinear structure of this game.



We briefly dive into the next stage of the marsh, only to find the monsters a little too tough and the floor a little too acidic.

Next: Knights are great

Wow this game looks cool, and the flavor text is wonderful. On the other hand those graphics are kinda assy. Is every floor dark or just certain ones? It seems like a Crusader is indispensable.

This is horrible and should be in more games. Someone get Atlus on the line.

Hmm... Best way I can put this is that the entry map to each area is lit, but if you have to enter a door, it's probably dark inside. For example, the watery/grassy area in the marsh is lit, but the cave area is dark. The Sky Garden is completely lit, but the ice tower only has one lit screen.

The Crusader ability doesn't last forever. It lasts a long time, though, and certainly long enough to spend most of your dungeoneering in the light if you end up returning to town as often as I do.

I was at first reminded of The Elder Scrolls, which has a line of creative-sounding diseases, but they usually boil down to "-2 agility" or something dumb like that. In the next update, we will see the flavor text for one of the diseases, which -- well, let's just say that if you've liked what little flavor text I've shown off so far, you'll either love or be completely repulsed by this.

They kind of can't decide whether they want to be 8-bit Dragon Warrior or a more modern 16-bit, but IMO they look pretty good in action. These screenshots hide the animation that gives the graphics a lot of their charm.

Haha! I was way off. Looks like that's still two updates off.



Knights are great. Here, Knight bashes down a few more doors in the castle. As I proceed in the game, it's increasingly clear that keys are at a premium, to the point that I'm not even sure how I'd complete some of the dungeons without Knight. (I mean, I'm sure it's possible. I'm just not sure how.)



I fumbled around the ice tower a little more, but to no avail. Making no progress there, I chose to explore the Sky Garden, which yielded results. To the north is a glowing teleporter.



Like the glowing stairs in the Ancient Cave, it signifies the end of the stage. Like the screenshot in the Ancient Cave, I failed to capture the fireworks.



Our party is pretty powerful at this point. Here, Knight deals 400 damage with a standard attack. He can spend some MP to boost that by 50%, which is enough to one-shot most enemies.



The volcano brings disease. I spend a Panacea or two to carry on.



I find the exit to the first volcano stage a little earlier than I wanted; there's still more treasure down there.



Here's an unidentified item. I've reached the point where unidentified items are no longer miles better than what the party currently owns, but they're still well worth the 1000 gold it takes to identify them.



Some combination of traps leaves Torzelbaum as the only surviving party member, so he hotfoots it back to the exit. Again, I fail to capture the fireworks.



The ice tower is the only dungeon in which I haven't managed to complete a stage. I wander aimlessly until this happens.



Knights are great -- most of the time. The basement area contains a lot of rooms with a lot of doors, most of them locked. In this instance, Knight has rolled a critical failure. His HP goes to 1, but there's no other adverse effect, so a few Herbs put him back on his feet.



It wouldn't be a proper dungeon without some horrifying disease.



Unfortunately, my jaunt in the basement leads me back to the area I was stuck in before. The ice tower refuses to yield her secrets to me.



I did find an interesting item down there, though, so I head back to town and give the Dumbell [sic] to the fat man. I smell a Trading Quest!



The fat man isn't the only one in town with weight issues. The skinny man takes the cake. (i'm so clever)



Of course, this ribbon makes a perfect accessory for the girl's dog.



This took me a little while to figure out, but the swineherd wants the perfume to mask his stench.



I thought it was a hairbrush at first, but of course the artist wants this paintbrush. Unfortunately, our quest ends here, since I have no paint to give this man.

Next: Torzelbaum has contracted the Black Dance

Great work saving the day (by running like hell), mini-me!

Well that doesn't sound good.

Sounds like you should swap out that pirate for a ninja.

Probably. My reluctance to replace Pirate springs from two Pirate votes versus no more than one for anything else besides Wizard.

The siren song of Cleric and its disease-curing and (presumably) health-restoring ways is also tempting, though. But since you asked for Ninja, I'll pretend it's a Ninja vote and try subbing one in soon. But read on for Pirate earning his keep in our current party.

This update is brought to you by the color sea green.



Still no luck in the ice tower, our party heads into the second stage of the marsh. Torzelbaum has dysentery or something, and I'm out of cures.



Either Wizard was dead (likely) or I didn't want to leave, so I sent Tradewing the parrot to shop for me. Fetching more Panaceas has been the best use I've found for the Pirate's ability. (I'm too much of a cheapskate to use Herbs/Potions with any regularity.)



Aaaaand I end up using most of the Panaceas I just bought right here.



Knights are great. Here, Knight rolls a string of critical successes, allowing him to knock down his weight in doors.



Last time, we saw Knight attacking for 400. That was pretty good. Here, Wizard casts a spell for a little over 600. What this screenshot doesn't show: that attack hits three times. So... 1800 damage.

If you're wondering why I hang on to Wizard despite his wet-cardboard defenses, this is it.



It takes some time to find the key for this area. In doing so, I find my first cursed item! The Paladin Shield advertised itself as having ridiculous bonuses, but when I put it on Wizard, it transformed into the Ghoulsh Shield (which, for the purposes of this LP, is a misspelling of goulash). The cursed shield put several of his defensive stats into the negatives, and the curse also prevents him from removing the shield.



Mere steps from the stage exit, our party finds another explosion trap. This has no real effect, given we can just walk out of here.



So we do. I fail to capture the fireworks again.



Back at the church, we get the curse lifted from Wizard. I hoped the Goulash Shield would turn back into the totally pimpin' Paladin Shield, but no dice.

Next: Wizard has contracted the Festers

Don't worry, I'm sure you only need to fight two hundred fifty or so battles with the goulash shield to turn it back into the paladin shield.

We join our DUNGEONMEN in the Hall of the Lizard God, or something like that. It's the third stage of the marsh. Here, a chest has given Knight a filthy disease!



And this one's poison. Not nearly as bad, and certainly much better than the explosion trap -- this one just ticks down health until you escape the cloud.



Now, here's a nasty surprise. Touching this statue made our party wander drunkenly, with the side effect of preventing us from opening the menu. The light-colored tiles around us are all arrow traps. With no way to heal or escape, the party nearly died here. The confusion effect wore off just in time.



Walking on this dragon corpse turned out to be a bad idea. Wizard picked up not one but two diseases. The chest in the center held a helmet that is mostly worse than what our party already has, though in fairness, this is because I've done a bit of helmet-smithing in an attempt to make Wizard a little more survivey.



The disease progresses. The Festers cause Wizard to lose health (and magic? I forget) with each step. He's at 1 HP already, due to some combination of traps. That means...



Best. Flavor text. Ever.

Anyway, a crueler game would make Wizard permadead with this, but he's actually just regular-dead. This is kind of an issue since, as mentioned, traps have reduced the party's health to 1, and the way out is over that lake of acid to the left. Getting out of here was expensive.

But I made it, and I revived Wizard, and I re-entered the dungeon, and...



what



oh COME on.

Yeah. You might recall that Wizard caught two diseases, and apparently, a messy death from the first wasn't enough to cleanse him of the second. Good thing I'm mere steps from the exit. Diseases don't progress when you're walking through town or the overworld, fortunately.



So, something I've mentioned a few times now is that the dungeon is more dangerous than the monsters. The fact that I'm spending such a large amount of the dungeon wandering around at 1 HP means that I am actually fighting very few of the monsters. I can't help but think this will come back to bite me.



Come ON, Torzelbaum. You just got over that disease! Clearly, these are not DUNGEONMEN: Men of Antibodies.



It's at this point I catch up with my backlog, so I add Loki as our team ninja. He may be level 1, but he's inherited Pirate's equipment, so he's instantly able to pull his weight.



Time to finally clear out the first ice stage, eh? Some close inspection (you can baaaaaarely see it in the screenshot; it's a bit more obvious in-game) shows a false wall. There's another one just down the road.



Hitting level 9, Torzelbaum acquires a new best spell. Sanctify doesn't do a whole lot of damage, and it doesn't heal for a whole lot, but it does heal the entire party, so I stick the Loremaster's Ring (+50 MP) on him and make this his bread-and-butter attack.



So... I think there's a bug with the 10-foot pole. It seems to be there as a replacement for the Ninja, but before I recruited Loki, I never got the chance to use one. Regardless, its success rate is pretty poor, so Loki is a good addition to our team even if the bug weren't present.

And speaking of presents, you get an item if you successfully disarm a trap! It's like Schroedinger's Chest: the item is there or not there, and you don't know until you open the chest.



Having made some progress, the game finally gives me the option to use the Ancient Book I've been carrying around since my first visit to this stage many game-hours ago. Doing so gives me the key to this stage as well as a few consumables.



Fireworks! I'm so good at this.

I've finally figured out how to tell if an item will be cursed, which is why you see me equipping this one in a town.

See, most magical items you find are modified versions of items you can craft. A helmet might tell you that it's a "Kabuto+2 +INT," for example. This means that it has the stats of a standard Kabuto+2, plus a bonus to Intelligence. Cursed items, however, don't list any base item in their item description. This has held true for every cursed item I've found so far.



And I get a nice haul from the appraiser. The Ring of Sisyphus is a better +HP item than the one I have on Wizard, and the armor goes right on Torzelbaum for a good upgrade as well.

Next: SATANIC SABRE TURNS ON OWNER!!

Hey readers! Has any of you picked this game up? It's free, you know! The authors are acquaintances of mine, and they'd love to hear any feedback -- positive or negative -- that you might have. Heck, they'd probably love to just hear you're playing it!

I know you said the Festers was going to be gross, but WOW.

Downloading right now. I'll let you know.

Ahahaha glorious. I love these desease flavor texts. More games should adopt this idea.

I know I ragged on the graphics but this is a great design. I love how they even added the arm on the chest.

OHRRPGCE? That surprises me. This looks very cool.

First death: got to an area in the marsh with one-way rafts over damage floors. The last one dead-ended at a treasure chest, so I used a Warp Wing. It phased me into the walls and brought me down to 1HP. I used my other Warp Wing and it did the same thing. I committed seppuku on the damage floors.

Onward!

What party are you using? Sounds like not Wizard.



We join our party of DUNGEONMEN for "oh, one of THOSE dungeons." You have to ride the golden eagles in order to get anywhere. Generally, they will travel in a straight line, but sometimes, they'll just do their own thing.

The chest pictured here gives us the Eagle Flute, which will summon an eagle to dump us out of this stage. This is mostly unnecessary, since A) attempting to ride the same eagle twice has the same result, and B) we have Wizard anyway, but I do get a little mileage out of it down the road.



Oh, Torzelbaum! *laugh track*



...A little explanation is in order here. See, one of the cursed items I found last time was this really powerful sword. I knew there had to be a catch, but it was so overwhelmingly powerful that I wanted to give it a go. This is the obvious result; poor Knight.

But here's the thing: the effect only occurs when you use the basic Attack command. If Knight uses Smite or Sunder, then he gets a really powerful attack with no drawback! Because I am an idiot, I will keep it on Knight a little longer.



And it's time to leave. Goodbye, eagles! It's been fun.



Good news, though: I found some paint in that dungeon! That means it's time to continue Trading Time. After WORDS WORDS WORDS, dude finally gives us a hat.

Give hat to bald guy. He's a little self-conscious.



If you didn't get the item in the pot before now, too bad! Baldy's in the way now. It was nothing important.



Of course the royal ratcatcher can use this flute. I'm not sure we really traded up here, though.



It took me way too long to figure out that a bag of rats is a perfect source of meat for the chef.

And Trading Time stalls out again here. I search the entire town, but no one wants a lollipop.



This is where I discover that you can't ride the same eagle twice.



This is where I discover that I am a dummy. I switch back to Knight's old sword.



This is where I acquire the Ring of Universal Studios.



And this is where I get stranded in front of the stage exit without a key.



Hooray, Eagle Flute!



I'm done navigating dungeons by eagle. I head back to the Cave of the Lizard God and find some loot. This thing looks important.



There's the exit, but... hmm.





That means that we need to collect two more medallions!



But that can wait. (Fireworks!)

We've finished all of the stages leading up to the boss of this area now! What happens next?



I head back to the last stage, of course. I'm really not sure what's up with this switch.



Knights are--



There we go. Knights are great.



We already knew about the three medallions. The more interesting bit of knowledge is that someone in the party reads reptilian.

Is it you, Loki? Are you a Parseltongue? I knew you belonged in Slytherin!

Join us next time when we try to fight a boss (and fail)!

Next: Gasgarion's Chamber

Knight, Cleric, Ninja, Sage. Cleric is worth his weight in gold. Ninja is nice for some elemental magic. Sage dies first every single time but does have some nice magic. His roulette has only ever hit my party.

????

One can only assume! I haven't actually fought him yet (OOPS SPOILERS)

I mostly like the game but I do have two complaints.
1) Walking seems really slow. The beginning of the game talking to everyone felt like a major chore.

2) What's with the weird delay after all my guys attack before the enemies do? It's like the game is ATB but there's no bar.

1) Yeah, I agree. I don't think it's an issue in the dungeons, but the town feels large relative to the heroes' walking speed.

2) That is exactly what is happening.

In that case there should either be a bar or they should just cut out the delay. You can have speed-based gameplay without a delay.

It seems like it'd help if the party members and enemies had more varied speed too. As far as I can tell, every class has the same speed and every enemy has around, if not exactly, the same speed.

So you get a long chunk of nothing, followed by all the enemies attacking all at once, followed by all your dudes attacking, followed by another long chunk of nothing. Spread the attacks out a little!