Dungeon Crawlers

I came in this thread expecting everyone to be shitting all over these games and type of games. What happened, I thought most people on Holla Forums had garbage taste?

Depends. It requires uplay and runs like shit on a quad core qirh 16 GBs of RAM and a 560 Ti. It's supposedly a return to classics (as opposed to M&M VI-VIII, which played more comfortably in real-time, even though they allowed turn-based play), but I'm yet to verify that as I don't have several million eggs to fry on my GPU to try M&M X.

Holy shit, I'm not that drunk. That was supposed to be "with:.

Not if you get the drm free version.

The big draw with Stranger of Sword City was custom character portraits.
I didn't like it much, but I've been spoiled by Wizardry 8.

I'm going to copypaste something I wrote about GR2 a while ago

While it is a VAST improvement over the already-excellent Grimrock 1, it unfortunately carried over many of Grimrock 1's problems, mostly in terms of balance and planning. I do not advise playing the game on Iron Man for your first playthrough, because there are many situations where savescumming is less a way to cheap the game out and more a way to not get completely screwed by it. Grimrock, like most dungeon crawlers, is deeply rooted in resource management, but there is one resource where it is not entirely clear that it is limited at first: gold keys. Every other key you find in Grimrock is either necessary to continue through an area or at the very least is only used in one specific place for a secret, but gold keys are in limited supply, and there are more locks than keys. If you use these keys poorly, you can expect to miss many valuable treasures, including one of the best items in the game, the Crystal Shield. Anyway, quicksaving before opening a gold key door is advised because you might find that what lurks behind the door is not actually very good. Enough about bitching about gold keys though, the actual game is a lot of fun. I especially like the streamlining of the skill system; now everyone gets access to all the skills instead of some classes only getting some skills; this lets you make more unique parties if you want to; noncaster classes can even use magic if they invest in magic stats, although they have to use a focus and can't cast barehanded. I'll say it again though: MAJOR balance issues. The default party is a (badly optimized) human fighter, a minotaur barbarian (who will carry you through most of the game), a human mage, and a ratling alchemist, which is more than good enough to beat the game on normal with, but let me tell you, the classes and skills really should have had another once-over before they released the game. Let me give you an overview

BROKEN CLASSES:
They get +1 strength per level, and most of the best melee weapons (and all of the throwing weapons) in the game are strength-based. Strength also increases your equipment load, so that's nice too. They also have the largest health bars in the game. The only downside to Barbarians is their pathetic energy bar, and that can easily be made up for or even ignored if you have magic users in the party to use special items. It's also worth noting that Barbarians are probably the only class that can really get any benefit from the Ring on a String; for everyone else it's basically just a small health and energy boost, but for them, it's a health and energy boost and +1 strength.
As long as you have at least one herb of each type in an alchemist's inventory, you'll just keep receiving more of them. This basically allows you to continuously drip-feed your frontliners health and buff potions, your mages energy potions, and everyone with resurrection potions. Considering that you can now take body wounds which can only be healed by a health potion (or healing crystal), having a steady supply of potions is very very useful. In addition, Crystal Flowers (rare as they are) can be used to brew potions that increase your stats permanently. They don't propagate very often, but they do, giving you the ability to take your party's stats much higher than they have any right to be. To top it off, their health bar is almost as good as a Fighter's (10 less starting health, 1 less health per level) and their energy bar is almost as good as a Battle Mage's (1 less per level). A party without an alchemist is, IMO, something that should only be attempted on a challenge run.
Oh, you think I'm joking? Secretly, farmers are actually the best mages in the game. The fact is that you'll ALWAYS have way too much food, especially after you find that one item that makes one party member immune to starvation, plus you can grind for more food if worst comes to worst; so many enemies drop it that you'll never ever have to worry about starving, even if you're overfeeding your farmer to deviantart levels (although if you want to power-level a farmer, the best way to do it is to challenge the Herder's Den boss, kill the spawner in the right hand corner, then leave all the other spawners alive and kill the herders as they come to you). Even though farmers start with no skill points, they level up so fast that you'll make that up in no time. They don't have the special abilities to be ideal as melee or ranged fighters, but as mages, they absolutely wreck everything; magic is skill-based and does not scale with any stat, not even willpower (willpower just gives them more energy and faster energy regen) so a character that's constantly racking up skill points is just amazing as a mage. Unlike the other two broken classes though, you should only have one in your party at once, for obvious reasons. Also, try and save as much food as you can until after you acquire a Spirit Mirror Pendant, and make sure that your farmer is always wearing it when they eat; there are two in the game, and the fastest way to get one is to cross the lake and open the Glass Vault. Oh, and make sure to choose Human with Fast Learner and Skilled; none of the other Traits really help you all that much, except maybe Aggressive, and even that pales in comparison to the simple ability to level up faster.

BROKEN SKILLS:
You find tons of herbs throughout the game. Even without an alchemist in the party, SOMEONE should be investing in alchemy so that you can turn them into delicious potions. Make sure to level it all the way to level 5 so that you can get resurection and perma-stat potions.
Let me put this to you all straight up: the magic in this game is unbalanced beyond belief. For some reason, Fire Magic is the only school of magic that even has a 5th level spell (although you also need 3 air magic to use it). Basically, for a pure mage, there is no other option than Fire+Air. Water+Air can be useful for its freezing abilities, but Fire+Air is much more potent overall.
Although casters can make good use of this because more energy is never bad, and you need it to use high power magic tools and cast amazing utility spells anyway, consider taking this on noncasters as well. Fighter classes have tiny energy pools, so 20 makes a lot more difference than you'd think if you want to use lots of combat abilities, and the ability to cast utility spells like Shield, Light, and Force Field (as well as use special magic items) is very helpful
The most powerful weapons in the game are heavy weapons. I have no idea why there are 4 legendary heavy weapons and no legendary light weapons, but whatever. Always have at least one heavy weapons user in your front line.
Yes, this is a very specific combination, but if you have someone in your party that can cast Invisibility and someone else in the party that can backstab, the damage you can output is unmatched by anything else in the game, especially if you're dual wielding. Go for a minotaur using strength light weapons if you want a late game build, or a ratling (front line) or lizardfolk (back line) using dex light weapons for something that's a bit more effective in the early game. Do NOT go for this combination if you've never played the game before, however, because although good heavy weapons are plentiful, good light weapons are not. You'll need to specifically seek out light weapons, which means knowing where they are and how to get to them. The Venomfang Pick can be acquired especially early if you know how to cross the lake, and the Moonblade is very easy to get once you gain access to the pyramid; it'll be a while until you can venture into the desert and grab the Serpent Blade and Sickle Sword.

BROKEN RACES:
Gets bonus points in the most relevant stats and has the best racial skill in the game, headhunter. I'm pretty sure you could solo the game with a minotaur barbarian if you were careful. The food penalty is a non-issue because as previously established, food is easy to come by and you get an item that stops one character from needing food altogether midway through the game (although unless you have a farmer in the party, you won't even need that).
The other races are pretty balanced, honestly.

It's still early in clapistan.

USELESS CLASSES:
Basically loses to the fighter and barbarian in every way. The only time I'd consider playing a knight is if I wanted to build them as a dodgetank because of the shield evasion bonus. I think that somewhere along the line, they were going to have you gain +1 Protection PER LEVEL instead of just 1 at first level, but that got dropped for some reason; even then I would consider them not ideal. Also, dodgetanks are much less viable in LoG2 than in LoG1, mostly because there are WAY less evasion-enhancing armors in the game. It's still possible though, if you're min-maxing with a lot of dexterity and know where the Crystal Shield is.
Not so much "useless" as "badly optimized". Their enhanced energy pool does not make up for their pathetic health pool; after you get out of the starting area, you'll be able to find a lot of Etherweed hidden underwater, which basically means that your designated caster can basically be drip-fed energy potions. As mentioned before, magic does not scale with willpower, so the +2 willpower is pretty much pointless. Battle Mages, Farmers, and even Alchemists do their job better than they do, mostly because they don't die so fucking fast.

USELESS SKILLS:
The amount of protection granted by this skill is minimal, and the only other benefit is removing the evasion penalties for wearing heavy armor; you can wear the armor and get full benefit from it even with no points in this skill. Unless you're building a pure dodgetank, evasion only has a minor benefit; take this skill only if you have nothing else to spend points on. Dodgetanks should avoid it altogether because they're going to want to wear the Rogue's Set, which requires no armor skill.
3 evasion per level? Fucking seriously? The speed buff at level 3 is kind of nice, but is it really worth 3 skill points?
Doesn't scale with any stat, has a chance of malfunctions until level 5, the ammo is unrecoverable, you don't get any of the good guns until really late… yeah this skill is complete shit. The only reason you'd want this is so that you can use the Hand Canon, and the ammo is so limited for that gun that it's really only useful for stomping bosses, and you've got potions, bombs, and magic items for that. If you INSIST on taking firearms, for the love of god, do NOT have the same person who's using Alchemy use Firearms, even though that's what's implied you're supposed to do. Late game firearms shoot VERY rapidly but do crap for damage, so you need points in Critical and Acuracy to make up for that and you'll be spread far too thin if you try to put points in all of them.
Oh hey, a throwback to Grimrock 1! While it's true that Earth Magic can be cheeseable by doing things like poison-clouding through grates and poison clouding a guy, then immediately locking him in a force field (which I like to call "The Auschwitz Method"), you'll generally do much more damage with fire magic. Poison is also resisted by more enemies than any other element (while fire is resisted by less than any other). You need 1 point in it to get Ice Shards (although Frostbolt doesn't require it, and is generally a superior spell, even though you can't use that until you get 3 water, 1 air magic) and you need 1 point in it to get the special attack of one specific light weapon, but in general, it's just not worth it. You get the only good Earth spell, Poison Bolt, for free anyway if you have 2 concentration and have expored the Hamlet Sewers.
Mostly more boring than useless, but still pales in comparison to other skills. It's not required for any weapon or other item, 20 health is not nearly enough to justify a skill point, and the carrying capacity bonus is really only useful if you're doing some kind of solo-challenge run or something. If you want something to increase your defense, even Armor is superior to this generally.

So yeah, other than the imbalances, fun game. Clever puzzles, fun exploration, rewarding treasure hunting, awesome secrets, interesting flavor and atmosphere… good stuff.

Oh by the way, don't even CONSIDER dual-wielding unless you're playing a mega-min-maxed rogue. The damage that light weapons deal is low enough already, and dual wielding will make it much harder to pierce enemy armor if you don't have big damage already. Crits and backstabs help too.

This is in the share thread, doe anyone have some gameplay webms?

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I'm glad they did. Better for them to never make another game again so there's no chance of ruining their legacy. Good things should die.

Whenever I'm really engrossed in coding I can forget what month it is. Just saying.

But they gave out all their tools, user.
It's up to you to make Grimrock 3.

If it's a realtime blobber with grid based movement then it's fundamentally flawed because you can exploit the grid to circle and never take damage. Terrible.
If you have a real time blobber, the only things that will fix the fundamental flaw is for it not to be grid based. The second option is to have the game become turnbased like wizardy on a monster encounter.
TLDR: Grimrock and Grimrock 2 are fundamentally broken.

Wizardry and Might and Magic are top tier

Ok

Grimrock 2 copes with this mechanical setback by introducing enemies that interact with the grid in a non-standard way, and by having enemies that require you to use the grid based movement and its relevant mechanics to succeed.

The guys behind Age of Decadence are releasing a dungeon crawler called Dungeon Rats soon

This is because the height of Dungeon Crawlers was during the 80s, when Computer Gaming was split between Atari, Commodore and Microsoft and their various Computer models. The normal Gamer today may know some Cult Games from the DOS Era, but Games that were prominent on Atari or Commodore machines are mostly forgotten today and difficult to get into, because you either need the original hardware or a emulator. And getting people to install a emulator of a old computer to play old computer games, is more difficult than to get them to install Linux.

Define first what you understand by "good", because Dungeon Crawlers came out during a time, when RPGs were brutal and developers first had to figure out how to create good Game Controls with the Hardware and Software they had. There are some Dungeon Crawlers with amazing Stories, but their Controls are so ancient and their RPG systems are so complex, that playing them today feels like torture. Meanwhile there are Dungeon Crawlers that are fun to play and have good puzzles, but their story is less complex than Doom.

80s games are worthless without their box, manuals, maps and other accessories.

Krautanon, pls, don't capitalize every noun.

The fundamental flaw remains and that is a flimsy way of masking a broken game.

The "fundemental flaw" is just the basic strategy that you need to set up in some way to use (ie advanced strategy) or learn some alternative strategy when the game makes it entirely impossible.

In other words it's not a flaw at all, it's a feature. You might as well be calling the ability to roll in dark souls a "flaw" because you can just dodge everything, in spite of the fact that (just like in grimrock) you literally can't.

You really should have used a better example then the roll in DS user

Lunatic Dawn passage of the book got translated recently, sadly I cant find a torrent or anything anywhere to download it

its a shame really, looks pretty interesting

only place I see you could get it is on steam, is on sale right now on top of it fuck I only have 7.39$ on the wallet instead of 7.99$ and no cards left to sell

nobody here wants to take the bullet and buy to and put it on the share thread?

forgot pic

I didn't like Grimrock 2. It pretty much requires you to be active in combat and I never wanted to start kiting and circling enemies because that's not fun. I played about 10 hours of 2 before I stopped, I looked up the ending and the final boss fights seemed like they'd be incredibly tedious. So sick of hidden buttons as well. Has to be the shittiest design ever to just go "lol lets put a button to open a mandatory gate on a random wall in a dark corner" and LoG2 is filled with it even more than the first one or at least it feels like it.

Vita has a ton of DRPGs. A lot of them are coming to the PC as well. You could check out Stranger of Sword City. Personally I like Demon Gaze a lot but it's only on the Vita. Etrian odyssey games are supposedly good and you can emulate them on your phone or PC.

Can't decide if I want to try again and finish Grimrock 1, or just go straight onto grimrock 2. I got pretty close to the end the first time, but it has been 4 years. I really doubt I'll have the attention span to finish both though.

I remember playing Dungeon Master games and still not being able to exploit the grid based movement. It's enough if the monster(/s) turn around faster than you circle strafe around them.

I had lots of fun with this free Dungeon Master clone:
ragingmole.com/RTC/

Well luckily most of that stuff has been scanned and you can find it online.

The whole movement/dodging mechanic is part of how the game is intended to be played, and they tend to design encounters and levels around it to keep things varied and challenging. Very rarely are you able to simply circle a single enemy and avoid all damage, not without planning your way around whatever traps and tight spaces they've put in your way at least.

Buttons are total bullshit though, I'll give you taht.

I know your pain, been indecisive on that ever since Grimrock 2 was announced. Also don't have my Grimrock 1 save anymore.

Just go with grimrock 2, its a seperate story and its basically a straight up improvement of 1.
Its still worth it to play 1 later because they are both great gaes

I'm glad I'm not the only one.
I was expecting combat to be sort of like an ATB RPG encounter, like the dungeon crawlers I'd played on Vita.
Based on though, that's just my fault for not researching the game properly though.

The difference is that games on handhelds are allowed to have older game mechanics, because of the limitation of their technology. Meanwhile Grimrock tried to introduce to and update the Dungeon Crawler Genre for modern PC Gamers, hence why the game also came with a construction kit.

BTW does anyone know good mods for Grimrock 1&2? Never had the time to really search through them.

ToH for G1 is pretty good. It's far from perfect, mind you.

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You're a fucking retard. As long as you understand what G1 stands for (and it should be obvious if you've followed this thread) you should be able to figure it out right away with a single search query.

Ah, apologies, I've been reading some old /tg/ shit and got carried away. "Tomb of Horrors".

While you're not incorrect it was rather inconsiderate.

Im talking about the ToH

Yes and I'm talking how a single google search let me know that he was talking about Tomb of horrors. "grimrock 1 toh mod" was what I searched for and it was the first result. You're just an idiot, plain and simple but that doesn't matter since you already got spoonfed.

I seem to be the only one who prefers Grimrock 1. The puzzles were harder and the levels felt more densely packed with stuff. I also don't think the overworld in 2 really added much other than requiring you to walk around more.
I also didn't like the new skill system, it was supposed to allow more variation but somehow it just felt more restricting. A lot of the skills were pretty useless, and they each only had one or two levels that did more than just increase a number. And I'm still disappointed that they removed the unarmed skill, so I can't make a monk type character any more.

Wew lad, who pushed a stick up your ass. I didnt ask about mods, using abbreviations when talking to someone who has little to no knowledge in the subject is just poor form. If I overreacted like you then this would be the part where I call you a massive retard for not knowing what IDs are

Or it doesn't matter at all if you can use google since it'll decypher the abbreviations that you seem to think are some magic riddles that need to be explained.

Sounds like you'd feel more home somewhere that has a set guideline on how to act that tries to prevent this "poor form". Some sort of "etiquette" system that all users abide by like mindless drones. perhaps so far as to combine the name of their website with the word itself.

Lol

grimrock devs are pretty cool

So a few guys listen to their buyers? That's good business, especially when the demands of your buyers control the entire market.

38 year old here who played all these crawlers at release. Might & Magic 4 (and linked with 5, although imo 5 isn't that good) is the one I enjoyed most. I'd strongly recommend you play it. The world is packed with interesting stuff, so much so you'll find the game difficult to complete because you keep getting distracted by stuff to explore. It also held up pretty well.

You can change the UI in 3 hours and 15 mins?

What are the best Dungeon Crawlers that aren't first person ones? Shit sucks.

Gonna have to 2nd this, or at least some games where its kinda like Crono Trigger where its timed?

iirc it was an old ui that the dev just readded as a toggle

>you play the good bad guy
>you get to rape culturally enrich the good girls guys

What is wrong with all of you? Are you that intimidated by modern games?

say no more fam
unrealworld.fi/

No thanks, user. I'd rather play games with depth perception.

lol

hentai games with no character creation are the ultimate cuckold mockeries

I feel your pain. Shits gonna be bad for a good long time, but if you have forgotten the old good shit:
BG1, BG2, Swordcoast, NWN1, NWN2, If you haven't played them all, try some of them. They are shitty and slow, as they are complex as fuck.
If for some reason you want a "good game" play:
"Divinity Originals in" or something.. Game is good.

divinity is actually really shit, unlike baldur's gate series

DA:I Is the best dungeon crawler to date.

Welp, because of this thread I just went and played through Grimrock 1, finishing it this time. Pretty disappointed in the end though, especially the fact that my ending level was 14 which was just BARELY enough to max out a single skill with no points in anything else, the only character who actually got that far was my unarmed (front line) rogue. Being so limited doesn't really leave much room for character building choice.

Other than that the game was still pretty entertaining. My first time playing it I stopped on either level 9 or the start of level 10, which I knew was near to the end which is why it took me so long to try again, not that I regret going through and actually doing it.

The character building in Grimrock II was revamped quite a bit.

If you guys have yet to play it The Quest is pretty decent as far as dungeon crawlers go there is a pc and mobile version if i recall correctly. It starts out a bit slow but once you know what you're doing and get the hang of things the game starts to shine. It also has a very addictive card game that you can play at the taverns and inns, the cards in your deck reflecting the class you chose to play as.
Anyone have the mega for it?

Problem with farmers is you aren't actually going to get that many skills on everyone. You finish the game level 13-15, best you can get a farmer to is 19 and probably lower. So you are going to have 1-3 extra points at the cost of a very rough early game and no useful class bonuses. They shine most mid-game, once you grind out their levels above everyone else and before everyone else catches up. Although if I'm not mistaken having a farmer might speed up everyone else's leveling by not needing to share xp.

Fast Learner is HORRIBLE btw. 10% extra xp won't add up to even a single extra level, ESPECIALLY on a farmer.

You severely underestimate evasion, even in small amounts. Not leveling armor means your frontliners are going to be squishy as fuck. Leveling it for heavy armor is equivalent to gaining +50 evasion.

Knight does get 1 protection per level, but it's still not worth it. Front line that extra protection probably won't make up for their lower health pool. A barbarian is just better offensively AND defensively.

As far as Races. The most broken I would say is actually the Lizardman. 25% all resist default, another 25% from a single perk. A party of 4 lizards will have a little less damage than your minotaur but can practically ignore some of the biggest threats in the game, ESPECIALLY if you happen to have a mage who can shield against whatever element you are facing.

??/

I ran a lizard evasion knight with the reed armor or whatever, he was okay but you had to seriously maximize everything that gives you dodge for it to work well. Not a versatile character.
Throwing weapons are a pretty good skill for alchemists because IIRC bombs benefit from it (might be wrong) and it doesn't need other skills to synergize with to be effective, just stats.

I'm about to get into the Eritan Odyssey series but I remember that there was one that was supposed to be bad, which one was that again?

Same. Found 5 skulls and 70 of 71 secrets. Was that all out there?

For some reason I can't screencap the statistics window.

Where you see a flaw I see a mechanic.
If you can exploit the grid then it will reward you for thinking outside the turn based box.

Google searches say no. Bomb damage is NOT modified by Throw skill. You CAN throw 2 bombs at once with the throw perk, but that's it.

Personally I'm running my Alchemist with Missile Weapons instead. That way she scales with dex instead of str. Because of the high dex Accuracy skill isn't nearly as necessary as it is with throw. None of my other characters scale with dex so any dex gear (like the rogue set) goes to her.

Evasion is a really good bonus. Even a small amount, like what you get from a shield and a little dex, is enough to dodge a decent fraction of attacks, which amounts to a pretty huge amount of damage. You don't want your frontliners to be negative evade. However, it's really hard to get enough evade to rely on it totally. Grimrock 1 it was much easier. I had an unarmed human rogue who never put points in dodge, ended the game with over 90 evade and massively outtanked my heavy armor minotaur warrior who DID put points in armor (to heavy armor spec).

I think you are exactly backwards about Magic, Fire is the worst, Earth is one of the better options.

The first thing you need to know about Mages is they are NOT straight damage dealers. Your fire mage with meteor won't outdamage your barbarians. If all you want is more damage you may as well run a party of 4 melee characters. You get roughly 150 damage per use of Meteor, which is very slightly more than a single basic attack at midgame, for the cost of 80 energy, plus the shots take time to fire leaving you vulnerable if you are dancing.

Mages are all about Utility and strategic value. Fire has absolutely none. Even Fire Shield is made obsolete by the Meteor Shield which can be obtained before you ever encounter a fire-using enemy (meteor shield special use casts Fire Shield with only 2 concentration as the requirement)

The best magic is probably Water. Water is the only school with (multi-tile) AoE with ice shards, but more importantly frostbolt can freeze, which buys you several seconds for your melee to damage safely, or heal or whatever you need done. Water also comes with Dispel, one of only two ways of damaging Elementals. Frost Shield is valuable relatively early game in the ruins of desarune.

Air damage spells suck hard, and early game lacks ANY source of shock damage to shield so Air competes with fire as the worst at first glance. HOWEVER, Air magic comes with the Invisibility spell, which could be either essential or worthless depending on your playstyle.

Earth doesn't compete in terms of utility. It can however outdamage Fire when used strategically (as you say, "The Auschwitz Method", but also poison+kite strategies). Earth also has not one but TWO rods available that buff its damage relatively early in the game. Finally, Poison Shield is absolutely essential if you want to farm the Herder Den for any reason.

And of course no matter which elements you use, you are going to want concentration 3 for darkbolt and shields.

It's one of the last few good CRPG's. While it may of ended with a bang, the series still went on thanks Japanese devs. Can't say their Wizardry games had the same depth as 8.

I don't suggest you buy it yet because it's heavily in-dev and probably won't be finished before 2020 (or at all). But I found Exanima pretty enjoyable, it has nice visuals and physics, dynamic lighting and shadows, etc. But the main thing is combat is entirely physics based. The end result is combat tends to look kind've QWOPish but its been much improved in recent update and is pretty satisfying once you get better at it.

Why is it that game companies that operate like normal businesses where consumers are sovereign is so rare? Video-games are the only industry I know of where the companies antagonise their customers and they just lap it up anyways.

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Bump

I just nearly finished Ray Gigant, a weeb dungeon crawler. Nichegamer gave it 10/10 so I thought I'd give it a shot. It's pretty fucking bad, I don't understand that score in this universe and time. I'm in the final dungeon and either stuck on finding some invisible switch or it's a gamebreaking bug and it doesn't appear, fuck this game. So just for OP don't play it.

One of the few games I preordered. No regrets

If Wizardry was Vodka then Ray Gigant would be the diet coke of dungeon crawlers.
Its only good if you haven't played any and even then if you love VNs.

Guess I was wrong on earth, just about everything is immune or at least highly resistant to poison and i think force field actually deletes the gas cloud now.

Force field however is clearly one of the best spells in the game with its ability to turn what would be a swarm fight into a series of 1v1s.

All of the shield spells were useful, and combined with my lizard party were able to give me 100% immunity most of the time. Frost and Poison are still the first shields you need, Shock doesn't come up till late in the game and Fire can still be replaced with the meteor shield found in the sewers past the ruins of desarune.

Ice Bolt simply didn't freeze often enough (it was quite reliable in Grimrock 1 with a long duration, Ice magic is by far the best in that game). Simply throwing a frost bomb when needed was both reliable and much longer lasting. Then again I never leveled water magic past 3 so maybe at 4-5 it becomes much more consistent. Ice Shards didn't do enough damage to be worth casting, even in swarm fights.

My advice would be to prioritize Concentration. Fire is OK but I still don't think a mage is going to be a good damage source. If I could only take ONE damage shield it would be frost, or maybe even lightning even though it only shines very late in the game.

Is still mostly accurate. Fast learner is a total waste. Even the +25% amulet isn't enough to provide a single extra level in the long run, so +10% is just garbage. Farmer really doesn't do much good at all. XP is NOT split, I was wrong about that. My ending level was 15 for completing everything. Grinding the herder den requires waiting until relatively late in the game to be effective, and even then the drops just aren't very impressive. Also, at level 15 and being fed all skill point books (I believe there were 3?) My Battlemage was able to get rank 3 in ALL magic schools, with rank 5 fire and rank 4 concentration by the end. Could have done rank 4 air just to have literally every spell, but there's an orb to cast lightning bolt, and it sucks.

On the subject of battlemages, I think if I ever play again I might do a second alchemist as my "mage" character. The lower energy can easily be supplemented by a few willpower potions. Maybe even just convert the first alchemist to mage if I think I can get by with just forcefield and frost shield.

Missile weapons pretty much sucked in Grimrock 2. Worse than magic even with no damage after early game. They might be better on a Rogue, with LOTS of crit, but Light weapons would be better in that case anyway. I have a really hard time believing that a fully throw-specced character would fair much better, they still don't have the numbers to compete with melee. IF you need ranged attacks you can always throw a couple bombs (unspecced), You shouldn't be in that situation too often though anyway.

Missile IS good early game. You pick up the Crookhorn Bow from the gold key cache at Forgotten River/River Tunnels, which is basically the best missile weapon in the game. Lightning bow does 2 more damage with a shittier special and the crossbow does about 2 more than that with a much longer cooldown, so there's no real upgrade from there.

The cannon is pretty good provided you want to lug it around and the repeater guns are useful.
Missile weapons scale really good with dexterity which makes em kinda OP but they still can't compete with a single blow from a minotaur with a heavy weapon.

Try this one.

You clearly did something wrong. I spent a little extra time in the Herder Den but not a huge amount, and my farmer finished at level 25. Are you sure you always put the Spirit Mirror pendant on him when he was eating?

Missile means bows and crossbows. Firearms is something else entirely that I haven't tried at all.

My missile weapon character had plenty of dex, everything I could afford to give them (27). It still didn't do NEARLY enough damage, to the point that later in the game I frequently just ignored the character entirely in combat. I was hitting for something like 40 damage on the high end.

Also, fuck minotaurs. Headhunter is NOT worth it. Your barbarian(s) will have PLENTY of strength, especially if you feed them strength potions, that +9 at endgame is nearly meaningless. Their extra strength and vit at the start come at the cost of dex and willpower, which means lower accuracy, evade, energy, and energy regen. I hope you like missing every attack early game and never getting to use Devastate. All that, and they don't even have a natural racial bonus to compete with the Lizard +25 all res or insect injury resistance, just an extra 2 attribute points overall.

Lizards are by far the best race. 25 all resist, another 25 from a racial trait for 50 all resist at the start of the game, and another racial trait giving them double heals from health potions and faster energy/health regen. Insectoids and Humans both have minotaurs beat as well, with +1 skill point and injury resistance/armor. Not sure if "Quick" is worth taking, "fast learner" definitely isn't.

Put it this way, to go from 13 to 18 requires 3x the xp of going from 1 to 13. I don't even know what the XP per level is after 19 but I imagine it increases even more.

Early game (1-6) farmers can keep up or just barely ahead of other party members. Thing is, XP from monsters increases as the game progresses, and you fight more of them. Food doesn't, you still get a good amount, but it's not more/more xp.

19 was a guess, that earning 4x as much xp as another party member might be doable if you grind your ass off. I have a seriously hard time believing that 25 is even in the realm of possibility. Even if it is, it doesn't even matter. You can get every spell in the game by level 15 (14 if human). Using a farmer for anything other than magic loses you the class bonuses that matter way more than raw level.

Grimrock 3 will never be released but skyrim got a remaster.
How does this make you peel?

Nolooserock/10
Isn't Grimrock supposed to be the player's creation through the map editor

user, why did you post a picture of Snake?

I don't see a link or a screencap with statement from the developers.

How about 7 mages and Ruzar The Lifestone? I've been playing 7 mages lately and while a very simple game still satisfies that dungeon crawling itch for a while. I haven't tried out Ruzar yet however, but I've heard good things about it in terms of character customization.