Again with the Amulet of Yendor? Let's Play Brogue!

Hey kids!

Let's play Brogue!

If you're on Talking Time, I'll give you like 85% odds you know what roguelikes are. There's two LPs of NetHack, an LP of DCSS, LPs of Desktop Dungeons, both alpha and beta, there's Angband and DoomRL and even ADOM, incredibly enough... basically, this place knows what roguelikes is.

Brogue is what I consider The Roguelike. More than any title I've mentioned there or that you care to come up with, Brogue is as close as you can get to the original spirit of the game Rogue while still being not only playable, but really fun. And not just that: this is the prettiest game in which everything is represented by ASCII (and occasionally Unicode) you will ever see. Here, lemme show you.



Welcome to the Dungeons of Doom. Like Rogue, or NetHack, your goal is simple: get the Amulet of Yendor, get out of the Dungeons of Doom with it. Unlike those games, in which most of the game takes place in dungeon rooms punctuated by halls, Brogue's dungeons have all kinds of natural (and unnatural) features to them. First floor, and already we're seeing massive gaping chasms, grassy fungus with bushes, and little ponds.



As for our character, Brogue takes a very minimalist approach to character progression. Everyone starts with the same life total, 12 strength, dagger, leather armor, darts, and bit of food. More importantly, there's no levels or experience points in Brogue. Advancement is determined solely by the cool loot you find. Of course, you can still work with the basic gear you have, and darts in particular can do some very creative things.



Speaking of cool loot: incendiary darts aren't it. They're certainly not BAD, you throw it at a thing and that thing catches fire. Fire is much more natural, and thus dangerous, in Brogue than in other games. That grassy stuff over there will catch on fire, causing a giant conflagration if we wanted. Likewise, that water would extinguish anything that goes into it, although water poses some unique hazards of its own. Not drowning or anything like that, but... well, you'll see later.



Ahoy, a monster!

The beasts of the Dungeons of Doom are generally going to leave you alone. However, any enemies within your stealth range, displayed under your strength and armor, have a 25% chance to notice and start hunting you for each action you take.



Since the torches behind us illuminate the hell out of us, the kobold notices us and starts hunting.

Getting rid of pursuant monsters is HARD in Brogue. Enemies will pursue you across levels via the stairs, and won't falter if you go out of line of sight. There are ways to get enemies to stop hunting you, but none that we have at present. This being a kobold, it's not a big deal, but it will be in the future.



For now, we just shank the poor thing. This doesn't give us experience, as mentioned, but killing enemies is the most thorough way of making sure they don't become a problem for you. Not always the best, though: oftentimes sneaking around an enemy is far more effective.



Ambient light levels play a role in our stealth range. Since we're hiding in the shadows now, we can only be detected by enemies very close to us. If we were to stay perfectly still, then that would decrease our stealth range further. This is one way to evade pursuant monsters: if they ever get three times your stealth range away from you, then they stop hunting you.

Also: that jackal over there is probably the earliest monster that legitimately counts as a threat. It moves twice as fast as a kobold (though it attacks at normal speed) and frequently travels in packs. Early on, though, they're usually found solo, and thus easily handled.



Rats are even less threatening than kobolds. But this one gives me a chance to display another useful reason to keep monsters from noticing you...



Attacking enemies that haven't noticed you will always hit and do triple damage. This means that stealth characters, who might not be able to take enemies in a fair fight, can attempt to ambush targets to instantly drop them.



Moving on (with autoexplore, which some of you might know from DCSS), we come across a few magic items. Namely, a scroll and a wand.



As in most roguelikes, magic items start out unidentified. We know all the magic items in the game from square one by checking our discoveries screen, but as to what exactly we have on us, we have to come up with means of identifying them. Brogue has a pretty good ID game, but for now I'll just pose a quick question: going off what you can see here, which should we try using first: the scroll or the wand?



The answer, of course, is the scroll. Scrolls are by far the safest items to use-ID, with only two bad scroll types among them, one of which is a relative non-issue and the other of which is best ID'd early anyway. Plus, there are two key scroll types which we want identified as soon as possible.



Scrolls of identify, of course, are the first. With it, we ID our wand.

In contrast to scrolls, wands are the most dangerous items to use-ID. Not only are the worst-case possibilities potentially game-ending even this early on (let's polymorph that rat into a dragon!), but wand charges are exceptionally hard to replenish to boot, and with most of them, you want every charge you can get. Domination is a prime example: it's basically a Poké Ball. Use it on a creature wounded enough, and that creature becomes a permanent ally. I'll discuss allies in more detail shortly.



Another wand on depth 1? I'm not happy with where this is headed.

Not long after, we find a staff. Staffs are, like scrolls, pretty safe to use-ID. They have charges, same as a wand, but unlike wands, they recharge over time, and provided you're not fighting something horrifyingly powerful, use-ID of a bad staff won't hurt much. They're the staple of any casting character.



A quick zap of the staff identifies it as discord. NetHack vets will find the ring of conflict a good comparison: whatever you zap with the staff will be tagged as discordant, and both attack and be attacked by anything in the dungeon. It's absolutely delicious against summoning enemies or packs, but there's certainly better staffs to find.



One advantage to discord is that zapping an enemy with it won't cause them to notice you. Some staffs will, for obvious reasons, but discord isn't one of them.



As we enter this cavern, the floor begins crumbling away under us!

Your character has a small fixed chance to notice any traps or hidden doors in their vicinity. You can manually search as well, which has a much higher chance. Since this many pit traps appeared just by our stepping in the room, I deign to start searching quite thoroughly.



Nothing of note was in the cavern itself, but I do note this walkway going up to a seemingly ordinary wall. A bit more careful searching, and...



Welcome to the vault.

This is Brogue's answer to character customization. You will periodically encounter miniature challenge rooms as you explore, like that collapsing pathway we found. Solving the puzzle of the day will usually grant access to a room full of treasure, partially identifying items like wands or staffs, and ensuring that none of the equipment within is generated cursed.



This also identifies the wand in our inventory, since it is, like the wand in here, a wand of empowerment. Empowerment is a staple wand of ally-focused builds. Since experience gain is nonexistent, having an ally from depth 1 wouldn't do much good by the time you hit depth 20. Empowerment significantly increases the stat benefits of the ally (or enemy) you hit with it, as well as enabling them to learn one ability from a defeated enemy. You can use empowerment on an ally as many times as you have charges.



Ordinarily I'd probably go with one of the armors, but since we've already got two elements of an ally build in our inventory, I go with the staff of healing instead. We can't hit ourselves with it, but we can sure as hell hit allies.

Staff effects have strength correlating with the maximum number of charges they have. Since our staff of healing only has 2 charges, its healing will be pretty weaksauce to start with, but there's a way around that.



All we need is an ally.

You can often find chained monsters being guarded within the Dungeons of Doom. The guards will beat the victim to within an inch of their life while bored, and attack you if you come near. We, of course, go free the monkey by murdering its captors.



Protip: don't try freeing an ally midfight unless you're willing to let them get instagibbed by their guard.



In any case, we now have a pet monkey!

Monkeys are not spectacularly great allies, but they are common on the early floors. Hostile monkeys will steal from you, but allied monkeys won't steal from enemies, even if they have an item on hand. That said, even a single charge from a wand of empowerment will help it, so we duck back to the vault for a bit.



You can only take one item from a vault, but there's nothing stopping you from returning your purchase (unless you lose it). So in our case, we set the staff of healing back down for a bit...



Then snag the wand of empowerment and zap it at our monkey. I don't want to use our own wand for it, not when I have domination on hand. I want to find something really good to charm.



Here's what our monkey looks like now. You can do this view for any munster in the game, so you always have an idea of how your current character will fare against a given threat.

I'll discuss what learning means later, but suffice to say that it is silly as hell.



We then drop the now-empty wand of empowerment on the altar and go get our staff back.

After that, we've just about covered depth 1 in its entirety. Note that autoexplore won't factor secret doors into account, and it won't let you go through hostile territory (like, say, wildfires), so it's not foolproof.



At the start of depth 2, I use-ID another scroll and get a central one: enchantment!

Enchantment scrolls are the main way that you improve your character in the game. Whenever you enchant an item, it just gets Better. Weapons become easier to wield, hit harder and land more often. Armor similarly gets better at protecting you and easier to wear. Staffs add an extra charge, which likewise speeds up recharge rate and improves the potency of its effects. Wands just add a charge or two, which is, of course, more than enough.

In short: ENCHANTMENT GOOD. DO ENCHANTMENT.



While I probably should enchant my healing staff of wand of empowerment, I'm not actually the biggest fan of ally builds and I like being self-sufficient, so I enchant the axe I've been carrying around.



Every weapon in the game requires a certain amount of strength to wield competently. Daggers like we start with only require 10, while an axe normally requires 15. If you try wielding something too heavy, it effectively counts as a negative enchantment, so you won't hit damn near anything, and it'd probably be for less damage than with a thing you COULD wield.

That said, our starting dagger is weaksauce, and we'll get strong enough to manage this axe before too long, so this'll be useful soon. Especially since axes, unlike our dagger, attack every space around us, even around corners (normally not possible).



Not long after, we find a scroll of protect weapon, which renders our axe immune to corrosion by hitting acidic things. This ensures that we'll probably be using it for a long while.



Our third wand is negation. Negation is an exceptionally strong effect, nullifying enemy abilities of all sorts upon hitting them. We haven't seen many yet, but if we shot our monkey with it, they'd lose the ability to steal. For now, it's not great, but this could be a lifesaver later on.



A little while later, I come across a small room with one door. This is the ideal environment to test potions. Mostly.

Potions are roughly evenly split between good and bad effects, but if you're in a place like this, you can contain the bad effects much more easily. And since potions, like scrolls, have two essential effects to exploration, they're worth use-IDing once you find a suitable location.



Our first potion is strength, one of these two effects. This would cancel any weakening effects we'd have, and on top of that, boosts our strength by 1. This lets us use heavier gear, like our axe, or slowly improves our effectiveness with our other gear if we can't find any.



For my part, I try on some banded mail (which I also enchanted earlier). This increases our stealth range, for obvious reasons, but also increases our armor, and frankly, having allies around will ruin our stealth anyway. Note that it takes time to fully equip armor. This doesn't hinder you acting or anything, but you do take time to get up to your full armor value, so you can't just swap between leather and plate on a dime.



The other potion contained caustic gas.

Gases are a pretty important element of Brogue, with most traps using gas in some form. This gas is straightforward enough: as long as you're in the area, you take damage. Thankfully, because we were testing in this small room, we can just walk out and wait for the gas to dissipate. This will take longer since it's in an enclosed area, but it's not like I need anything in there. Alternately, I could use an incendiary dart to burn the gas away, but then I might catch fire myself. Not worth the risk.



Shortly after, I come across a charm.

Charms are to potions as staffs are to wands. They come pre-identified as soon as you see them, and they recharge over time and can be enchanted to increase their benefits, just like a staff. What makes charms different is that they only have one charge, and this charge doesn't target anything, usually either affecting yourself or your immediate vicinity. In this case, it gives us a method of shielding ourselves.



New feature: bloodwort stalks. These grow pods that, when hit, emit healing spores. These are extremely useful for us for obvious reasons, although fighting enemies while using them will, of course, heal the enemies as well.



As we wrap up our exploration of depth 2, we encounter a hostile monkey, which steals our wand. Naturally, we give chase.

Fleeing monsters are usually encountered after something steals from you, or against monsters that rely on spellcasting or ranged attacks to defend themselves. There are a number of ways to deal with them, but with monkeys, your best bet is to use a ranged attack.



All we have that fits the bill are darts, and I don't want to waste an incendiary dart on just a monkey.



Projectiles are destroyed if they hit enemies, but left intact on a miss. There's no way to improve that, so enchanting darts or the like, while it can be done, is usually a waste.

Depth 3 opens with a lake. Lakes can be pretty dangerous, partly due to seafaring monsters, and partly because swimming in them has a good chance of washing your gear away. Floating gear moves in a random direction each turn until it hits shallow water or a shore, but monsters won't follow you into water unless they fly or swim, so it can be a good escape option.



New weapon class: maces! Maces are heavier than axes, and considerably more unwieldy, taking twice as long to attack. However, maces hit much harder than any other similar weapon, so they make for excellent choices for stealth characters, who ideally don't want to give enemies more than one turn anyway. Me, though, I'ma stick with the axe.



I use-ID a scroll of teleportation. This does exactly what it sounds like. Additionally, since I've kept my monkey alive long enough, I've got a telepathic bond with it, letting me see it and the eight spaces around it at all times. Nifty!



We find a new and fairly dangerous monster type shortly after, and our first spellcasting enemy to boot: the goblin conjurer! Goblins are notable for traveling in tribes, carrying spears (a weapon type that can hit two enemies in a line) and having terrible hygiene. Conjurers aren't as capable as fighting as normal goblins, but they can summon spectral blades. These blades take only one point of damage and deal similarly low damage in return, but they can summon a lot of them, and they last until destroyed.

Goblin conjurers are also the first enemy we've found that naturally carries items. Our monkey still can't steal from it though!



We get so upset over this fact that we crack open a potion of life, full healing our nonexistent injuries and increasing our maximum life permanently. They're the sister potions to strength.



Also: a potion of telepathy. Works like our monkey, but for every creature. Note that X under the water: this indicates a submerged or otherwise hidden enemy. Shall we go say hello?



Eels are DICKS, and the first major indicator for most players that killing won't solve all their problems. Thankfully, they only attack creatures in the water, and can do literally nothing outside of the water (usually done via teleportation). Even so, this is Reason Number One to watch out for lakes, because eels can easily ambush you and then submerge to avoid retaliation. We're in pretty good shape though, so we can fight this one.



We wrap up that floor and move onto the next one for a little bit, revealing two new monster types of great importance. First, the bloat: a very flimsy enemy that self-destructs as an attack, releasing a massive cloud of caustic gas. We're talking a good 15 tiles in diameter here. Kill at a distance if you have to kill it.



More importantly is this captive ogre. Ogres are the big brutes of the early game, scary enough to ward off all but the most clever or foolish newbies. And this one is captive plus we have a wand of empowerment. I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING NEXT TIME!

Next Time: Unstoppable Strike

Hostile ogres are Brogue's way of saying "you have been using your enchanting scrolls, right?"

It's probably worth mentioning that the game rigs the item generator to ensure you get enough of four key items to have a shot at winning. Food is necessary for obvious reasons. Potions of life increase your maximum health; drinking one is similar to leveling up. Potions of strength make it easier to use heavier gear, though physically-oriented characters can also spend enchantments to use good gear sooner (and make it more powerful). And finally, the scroll of enchanting is the central way in which you become stronger. When you haven't been finding enough of one of these items, the game fudges the random generation so you're more likely, or even guaranteed, to find more. In particular, it usually becomes pretty obvious which scroll is enchanting, because it's quite common.

A big part of this game is deciding how you spend your enchantments. You can afford to spend some floors accumulating gear before you start burning through your enchantment scrolls, but by the time hostile ogres and vampire bats show up, most characters will need something potent to deal with them. It could be an enchanted attack staff, or enchanted armor to withstand their attacks, or a good weapon to kill them quickly, or a renewable means of escape, but you need something.

Brogue is an everchanging beast. Back when I ascended, there were levels, and you gained them by killing things.

I have mixed feelings about the direction the game has taken since, but it is still The Roguelike.

This has changed a lot since I last downloaded it. Potions of life? Empowerment? Interesting.

I'm not the best roguelike player, as some of you know, and the best I've done in Brogue is about level 21. I look forward to this LP! Maybe it can inspire me to ascend after I go grab the newest version.

Ooh....this looks QUITE FASCINATING...I can't say it'd be the kind of thing I'd play, but watching other people play traditional Roguelikes is always fun.

I have never played Brogue, but now I'm inclined to try!

Maybe not everybody knows "Yendor" is just "Rodney" backwards? There, I contributed something to this thread

Roguelike + Kalir = the best of times.

I'm literally beaming ogre this LP!

Yay, a new roguelike LP! This news delights and intrigues me.

And I don't know much about Brogue. Looking forward to hearing more about it.

I've never been one for playing roguelikes (except the occasional foray into Mysterious Dungeon console games), but I love reading about them, for some reason. This should be fun.

Brogue is the most accessible PC roguelike. (Maybe even the most accessible roguelike for any platform, depending on how broadly you define the genre.) You can play it with your mouse. It explains all of its mechanics in easily understandable terms. It has a small number of highly distinct monsters. You can win in a couple of hours (even if you're more likely to lose in a couple of minutes).

If you admire roguelikes but have always been intimidated by them, try Brogue.

These replaced health potions around the time experience levels went away.

Speaking of accessibility, you can even alter the screen size via the PgUp/PgDn keys at any time. Ranging from classic Rogue sized...



...to "so colossally huge my computer can't even see all of it".



Meanwhile, back in not-silly town, we begin our exploration, and the goblins guarding the ogre start having fun.



We find another charm a ways in. This is ridiculously helpful for magic-using builds, but we only have the two staffs, only one of which we'd need charged on a regular basis. We'll still TAKE it, but it probably won't see much use with that recharge time.



While fighting a toad later on, we get hit and start hallucinating. Toads are not particularly threatening themselves, but they have enough health to take a few hits and land their hallucination effect. This randomizes the appearance of all creatures and items you see in the dungeon, although you still won't attack allies. However, it does make aiming staffs a much more risky proposition, since you could potentially hit an ally that way.

This also makes the dungeon much more shimmery!



As NetHack teaches, the real threat of hallucination is from not knowing what opponent you're facing. That bloat we spied earlier manages to approach us in melee, at which point I hit it because it is hostile and next to me. Thankfully, this is not a lethal mistake, just an annoying one, but as we encounter more monster types, hallucination will become increasingly dangerous.



Before long, both the caustic gas and our hallucinations go away, leaving us to continue on our noble quest to save the ogre!



Goblins are marginally tougher than jackals, and even more likely to travel in groups, but still absolutely not a threat for us.



Hell, I could totally just eat a meal in the middle of this fight and be fine.



Eating food only takes one turn in Brogue. Like most roguelikes, Brogue uses hunger as a mechanism for ensuring that you keep moving. Farming doesn't have much incentive anyway thanks to the nonexistence of experience, but it does dissuade you from backtracking to vaults to swap out treasures at a moment's notice.



Before I actually free the ogre, I take note of the swamp. Swamps, like lakes, are a threat that can hide things like eels, but the more relevant danger is the swamp gas itself. If this catches fire for any reason, it will straight up explode. Explosions HURT, and will damage things normally immune to fire. No matter how tough you are, an explosion will always eat at least 50% (I think?) of your health, and it'd probably just kill us outright with our health. Naturally, this means if you don't care about actually entering a swamp, you can throw an incendiary dart in, then run off laughing.



I point my staff of healing, but it's out of charges, so nothing happens. This does waste a turn, but thankfully we're in no danger.



Shortly after, I remember that I have a recharging charm. Well, bottoms up!



And shortly after THAT, I manage to figure out that the banded mail I enchanted once because I like armor is completely ordinary by all other standards.

Like Angband, you can identify gear you're wearing or wielding by simply using it for enough time. Weapons do this after a given number of kills, while armor and rings (of which we have found none) do so after a number of turns.



Potion testing site found! Let's fail alchemy!

The first one is speed. While hasted, you both move twice and attack twice, where normal critters would only get one of each. There's no way to stack speed, but there IS a way to tell if you're going to get a turn before an enemy gets to act again: if they have a status displayed as off-balance. For whatever reason, this means that they will not act when you next take an action.



The next one is hallucination. This lasts much longer than the toad-inflicted variant, and throwing hallucination at enemies does nothing, unlike every other bad potion in the game. So the only point to them is if you want to make a bunch of drug jokes.



And this is why the ideal potion testing ground would have a pool of water nearby, but I'm not patient enough for that. Incineration blankets the area around it in flame, which ignites both me and whatever ally was close enough. Thankfully, the flames will wear off if we get out of the area, and they are survivable.



See, we're fine. Now to try this last potion...



Aha! It was detect magic!

Detect Magic is the potion that really opens up the ID game of Brogue. Once you drink this potion, all items on the current floor and in your pack are determined whether they are blessed (good), cursed (bad), or non-magical. Kind of like a floor-wide altar drop in NetHack. This gives us a general idea of what to expect from our stuff, if perhaps not a perfect one.



For example, all our armor and weapons, barring the stuff we're wielding, is non-magical. However, our two scrolls are bad! And not just that, but there are exactly two bad types of scroll in the game!



With this info, we can use the call function to rename all scrolls of that type to whatever we want. Now we know that as long as the scrolls are not called badscroll, they are safe and beneficial to read. Yay!



I leave the two badscrolls and my dagger behind. That is definitely what you're looking at here.



Detect magic also lets you see where magic items in the dungeons are, and are excellent on floors with vaults.

I decide it's high time we got some actual healing potential going on in here.



I also take some time to see the prettiest swamp you ever did see.



The next floor has the stairs in plain sight, although separated by chasms.



Who remembers what you do when there's no clear path to continue?



"Pissing off the GM with Monty Python references" is the wrong answer. Go to your room.



Now acidic monsters pose absolutely zero threat to us!



Also: there are only two food types in the dungeon. Mangos are the same as food rations but a bit tinier. There is otherwise no defining mechanic to them.

Our hallucinations finally stop halfway across the rope bridge, thus robbing us of our chance to meet the Goddess of The Future and travel to the Smoky Deadlands. Oh well, guess we'll never see that in this LP ever.



Oh no, an arrow turret!

Turrets are a class of enemy that sits in walls and fires things at you. They all count as inanimate objects, so things like domination will have no effect on them. They do, however, have another weakness, which I won't be able to showcase just yet. Thankfully, this one is in close quarters and breaks easily.



The next floor has something REALLY interesting, though.



That key over there will unlock a vault somewhere on this floor, but to get it, we need to solve the puzzle. The mirrored totem here is our obstacle.



Whenever we step on those glyphs on the floor, it casts a beckoning spell, identical to that of the wand, and teleports us next to it. We can't get anywhere close enough to the key as long as its around.



Since it's using magic, negation would be ideal, but it reflects the bolt from our wand effortlessly.



And, of course, we cannot smash it.



I'll come back to it later. For now, let's find a second staff of discord. As mentioned, discord isn't the best staff, so I don't bother keeping the second one. If this was something really good, I'd consider carrying two.



Another challenge shows up shortly after: the altar starts with a monkey on its space, who immediately snatches up the key and starts running! YOU CHEEKY MONKEY!



I try to pursue it, discord included, but a toad jumps me and it gets away long enough for this vampire bat to show up.

Vampire bats are mean as hell. Fast, evasive, unpredictable, and they drain health on hitting you. And unlike ogres, they have no problems turning up in packs this early on. Fortunately, we've already got decent gear as well as allies, so we're fine.



A bit later, we find a scroll of identify. Now, I COULD use this on my armor or potions, but identifying our staff of healing will let us know unambiguously how many charges are in it at any given time, and since we'll be dependent on allies, that could come in handy.



While we do that, our monkey decides to try learning something from the vampire bat.

Remember back when empowering allies granted them a chance to learn stuff? Well, he's taking it now. I could cancel out the study by moving into the monkey's space, but vampire bats have pretty useful stuff, so I'll leave it be.



While that goes on, an acid mound turns up. Acid in Brogue is a binary threat: if your gear isn't protected, then each time you hit the acid mound or it hits you, the gear in question gains a negative level of enchantment.

Thankfully, this acid poses no threat to you as a player, so provided no other enemies are around, the best bet for players without allies (who don't use equipment) or projectile attacks is to strip naked and punch the acid mound to death.

YES THIS IS A GOOD IDEA WHY WOULD YOU EVER QUESTION THIS.



And now we've left Kansas.

Flying creatures can travel over water or lava without a care in the world, and don't trigger traps in the process either. This makes flying allies pretty dang useful!



Continuing in our pursuit of the monkey, we pass by a normally-innocuous statue that then starts cracking open!

Statues can, on occasion, house monsters like this. Telepathy will reveal any such hidden monsters, which is good, because normally they're going to be a considerable threat.

...Here, not so much.



The monkey fled into here, and was swiftly cornered and beaten down. The key it dropped is a cage key, which is self-explanatory. Cages are the ally equivalent to vaults: we can unfortunately save just one of the creatures in here.



We choose to save the goblin mystic. Like conjurers, mystics are a spellcasting type of goblin, but unlike conjurers, they have little to no offensive capability, instead relying on their teammates to do the work. To aid them, they can cast spells of protection. Pretty nice to have as an ally if you don't mind your exploration being interrupted by constant castings.



I do, but that won't stop me buffing up the goblin mystic anyway.



Captive monsters that could normally generate with items still do, and drop them when they join you. So hey, even if the goblin mystic dies, that's still free banded mail.



Mostly free.



There's the vault door. Let's see about solving that puzzle now, why don't we.



Unfortunately, I'm not actually sure I CAN solve it with my inventory, so I start trying potions at random. This was the wrong choice.



Creeping death starts an infestation of lichen that poisons anyone that goes through it. Poison overrides a creature's natural regeneration and deals them 1 damage per turn until the poison expires. Get poisoned badly enough, and the game will tell you "yeah unless you get healing in the next few turns you're toast". Potions of life, or bloodwort clouds, both fix this problem.

The lichen of creeping death spreads quite aggressively, though it won't go through water. Worst case scenario, it could blanket the whole level. Fire is a pretty effective method of taking it out, or failing that, you can levitate over an infestation. This is why I always try to test these potions in sealed rooms.



Okay, that didn't work. But from here on out, if these potions have a negative effect, I want the totem hit with it too.



Paralysis is self-explanatory: you can't act while paralyzed, and attacking a paralyzed enemy is functionally the same as attacking an unaware one. Paralytic gas, thankfully, burns very quickly, so if you're facing down a cloud of it, fire is an ideal solution (or just going somewhere you won't be noticed).



HERE we go. Descent potions take out the floor in a decent area around where they're opened, dropping all non-flying creatures down it. This puts the mirrored totem on the next floor, where it ceases to be a problem. Unfortunately, same goes for us. Still, descent potions are among the best negative potions in the game, making a top-notch escape tool or problem remover.



And we land right next to a creature I'd happily use my wand of domination on.

Pink jellies are creatures that don't hit very hard and have no regeneration. However, they take MANY hits before dying, and any time they are hit, they split in two, dividing their remaining health equally to both jellies. Since we can just heal up a jelly after it splits, we ignore the main problem of such a jelly, and get only the benefits of a massive swarm of allies to crush enemies with.



After my allies divebomb into the area, we reduce the number of jellies to one, and I Poké Ball it!



I immediately follow up with my last charge of empowerment, and promptly get freaked out by a bolt of lightning from down the hall.



Oh.

Goblins don't always travel around: occasionally they like to set up totems of worship, with bedding and what have you as well. These totems are enchanted with spells of lightning and haste, which it uses to support its worshippers if we get too close. The lightning is the big threat right now though: with this long narrow corridor between us and it, it can snipe us and hit me and my allies with a single bolt.

They won't shoot us through enemies, thankfully.



Once I get close enough, I can just tag it with negation and spare our new jellyfriend any further pain.



And everyone else just rolls over the goblins supporting them.



Bloats are now a much larger threat than before, since they can potentially clean out all of our jellies in one sweep.



As is, only our monkey is dumb enough to stay in the caustic gas.



Not dumb enough to DIE in it, but even so.



We take the stairs back up and decide to go review our handiwork with the mirrored totem.



The key is now completely unguarded. Yoink!



Meanwhile, our monkey continued to be a dumbass and got whittled down by the arrow turret while flying over the lake. Flying creatures can't be hit by waterbound ones, so normally the monkey would be completely safe, but the turret was another story. The monkey didn't even try to dodge it either. Bah.



HEY GUYS I KNOW WHAT PRIZE I'M TAKING

Normally, gear that outright tells you its enchantment level and runic are solo prizes in vaults, but here we have one just waiting for us.

Runics are basically extra effects that weapons or armor can have. The effectiveness of a runic correlates to the weapon's enchantment level, but heavy weapons, like that war axe, will rarely, if ever, generate with runics on them. If the game hadn't told me that sword had a runic, I'd probably go for the staff of firebolt, because fire good.



This sword is just too good to pass up, though.



Let's just take this nice view of the lakeside and then move on.



If you destroy a bloat with fire, in theory they're supposed to not emit a cloud of caustic gas. However, I had a slight oversight on this plan. One: incendiary darts suck. Two: clouds of flame that hit open water become steam, which functions very much like caustic gas.



This wasted time and an incendiary dart. Lame!



Later on, hitting monkeys with our sword reveals the effect of the runic: it turns me into a Smash Bros. character.



Force isn't a gamebreakingly powerful runic, but it is fun, especially around environmental hazards like bogs or lava. The more we enchant this, the farther and more often we'll launch enemies. Could be worthwhile, but I want a better staff of healing first.

Hm. Need to keep up on identifying potions, we're running out of inventory space.



The white potion, which I had two of, turned out to be invisibility. Provided you have a bit of time before something gets up close and personal, invisibility is one of the best evasive tools in the game, setting your stealth range to a maximum of 2 and preventing enemies from anywhere outside it from tracking you.



This lets us pull crazy useful ambush tactics, of course. Runics have a much higher chance to activate if you perform a sneak attack, by the way.



After the scuffle, I notice a trap.

Traps are fairly common in the dungeons of Brogue, and function much like traps in any other game. This trap will emit caustic gas. What makes these traps different is the fact that you can trigger them from a distance by throwing darts (or anything really) onto the pressure plate. Finding traps not only helps you avoid them, but gives you the chance to spring them on enemies that are after you, which can be devastatingly powerful.



Gold doesn't let you buy things in this game, it's solely an indicator of score. You can ignore gold outright if you want, but then what's the point of even going to the Dungeons of Doom? Scrapbooking?



Rather than engage this ogre myself (much), I figure it's altogether safer to send my allies after it.



This works out quite well.



I think I'll wrap up at the onset of this floor. That centipede over there can weaken us with each hit, lowering our strength by 1 per hit. I'll be wanting to hang onto that strength potion for myself, looks like...

Next Time: Replicated Burst

Been awhile, but can't you bypass the mirrored totem by putting another creature between you and it?

Yep. The most straightforward way to pass mirrored totems if you have pets is to position yourself so the pet takes the beckoning spell for you.

Barring that, your best bet is often to drag a monster from elsewhere on the level to the totem's room.

I think you all know why I didn't update these last few days.

Let us speak of it no further.



Anyway, centipedes. To give an idea of how scary they are, we'll delve into strength mechanics more precisely.

If you have just enough strength to wield something, then you get the item's benefits as read on the label, so a +2 sword of force, for example, is treated as a +2 sword of force. However, for every four points of strength you exceed an item's weight by, you get an effective extra +1 for all intents and purposes. Rad, right? Especially since enchanting items makes them lighter!

Heavier items aren't so straightforward. Lacking the full strength to wield an item adds up very quickly, I think with the first point below counting as an effective -2 to the gear. Centipedes will lower your strength by 1 every time they hit you, for a pretty long time (as much time as you'd need to rest to fully heal, I hear). If you're on even terms, statwise, with a centipede, it will probably slaughter you in a fair fight.



As such, I decide to resort to the time-honored tactic of KILL IT WITH FIRE.



Not only does this work in wonderful overkill fashion, the fire instantly burns away a secret door! Fire is useful! Yay, fire!



Fire does have a downside in that you can't explore past it sometimes, and I'd rather not go play with that bloat just yet.



While my jellies survey the territory and I wait for the fire to burn out, one of them starts eating the centipede.

Enemies have different text for both attacking and learning. Our ogre, unsurprisingly, clubs people, while our goblin mystic, lacking a weapon, relies on slaps.



So, having a jelly that saps strength when it hits sounds absolutely devastating, right? Especially since it could get hit and turn into multiple jellies that sap strength. There's a slight catch there, but I won't be getting to that for a while.



First, panic.



Okay, we're good.

Net traps are pretty simple: they drop a massive net in the area around the trigger, and anyone who is in or moves into a netted square has to burn a few moves to escape. On top of that, anyone automatically hits netted targets (though not with extra damage, thankfully). Since our jellies cover so much space, we clear out the net in record time.



Down south, we find a more deadly trap: the paralysis trap.

Unlike the caustic gas traps, paralysis traps come in two components: the vents, where the gas comes from, and a separate trigger, seen here. Stepping on the trigger is the part of the trap that is dangerous, and provided nothing else does so, you can play on the vents all day long.

This was a nerf implemented to paralysis traps after it became apparent that lategame paralysis traps, which functioned identically to caustic gas traps, could end the run of even the most skilled adventurer simply by virtue of being an unnoticed threat that could potentially kill you before you got another turn. New paralysis traps can still be similarly fatal, but the distance of the vents gives you a fair chance to get the hell out of dodge before the gas hits you.



Jelly-on-jelly violence is not only horrible, but confusing.



Honestly this run is going to get real confusing, real fast. Don't get me wrong, I like being able to just swarm enemies and prevent them from ever being a threat, but half the time I'm going to miss loot by virtue of jelly.



Okay, here's the reason why centipede-eating jellies aren't instant win buttons.

As of the latest version, jellies that split off do not keep inherited abilities from their parent jellies. This one split off from the strength-sapping one, so it can't learn things like all the other jellies, but it doesn't have strength-sapping.

I understand the point of this nerf, but if you ask me, I'd have the jelly instead keep the potential to learn a trick, rather than inheriting or not. That way, you don't go around the dungeon with lightning-spraying teleporting strength-sapping invisible jellies everywhere, but empowerment still feels more useful than "here have a stats". And hey, enemies are a limited resource (not to mention a few particularly anti-jelly enemy types we haven't seen yet).



Speaking of anti-jelly enemies, bloats kind of count. Caustic gas doesn't split jellies, and it covers a wide area, which can severely cripple if not outright kill a jelly group.



But it saw me, and I'm killing it before it makes much progress.

I thought you dips cleared out the net!

The message about feeling a sense of loss, naturally, means that an ally died. I dunno if that means the original died in the gas or what.



Next floor, so I drink that potion of detect magic. The results are promising.



My inventory, not so much. I lose the two armors that are cursed and swap to the blessed one, even so.



And now we have jellyvision, which does apply to all jellies that split off from the original.



Haha! Feel the wrath of a frail dead bush!



Oooh, interesting.

I didn't bother to look at it immediately, but that altar holds a crystal orb. Crystal orbs, in a nutshell, are used to summon powerful magical allies. Of these, one would be obscenely useful, one is a respectable choice but not really vital, and the other is borderline useless.



That said, an altar just sitting in the open with no sign of traps is, itself, a giant alarm bell.



A cursory search of the area reveals a vent or two, which are, of course, alarming, but I won't know the true nature of the trap until I trigger it.



Which I do, of course.

This trap is straightforward enough: unless I find a way to lift the portcullis or a way to shortcut out of here, such as descent, then we'll die a slow and horrible death. Fun!



I've encountered this trap type before, though, and swiftly find the lever that opens the portcullis.

That door further in would have gotten us out of the path of the gas, but it would likely be a dead end too, so I'd rather not take it.



Allies can be weakened too, though this usually doesn't hurt them as badly as it does you. It's still usually a better alternative than you fighting a centipede if you're not wielding something good enough to oneshot them or avoid multiple attacks.



As I look around for secret passages, I notice the goblin mystic trying to learn the centipede's trick. This would be wholly pointless, since mystics avoid close range combat at all costs.



You can prevent allies from learning techniques by moving into their space. It helps if you imagine yourself shouting "B BUTTON!" while you do it.



Well, this is moderately annoying.



I get separated from my allies, partly due to an obsession to explore everything ever. I dunno if I could take on that ogre over there, but I'd rather try than not.

Or that can happen, that's good too.



Upon landfall, we make an intriguing discovery!

Rings are the last type of unidentified magic item. Unlike all the others, they can be equipped, and their effects are not intrinsically good or bad, but rather positive or negative determined by enchantment value. So, for example, a -1 ring of awareness lowers your ability to detect traps and hidden doors, while a +1 ring of awareness would increase it. Rings can do crazy useful things and I'd really like that one. But first things first. Let's get back upstairs.



As you can see, stairs will automatically reveal their location on one floor if you've seen their counterpart on another. This makes pit traps much less of a hassle for exploration, since unless you trigger multiple such traps in sequence, you'll be able to easily get back on track.



Which I do. And paranoia prompts me to keep searching around the area before I travel much further, which proves to be a good idea.



AND THEN THIS ASSHOLE SHOWS UP.

Dar (read: deep elf) blademasters are midgame goblins. They're exceptionally dodgy foes and possess a blink ability, which lets them warp around the map like they don't give a damn. This one thought a kamikaze rush onto a trap would be a funny way to ruin my day.



Paralysis is, oddly enough, not the worst possible result we could have gotten. Still BAD, but there's far worse.



Dar of any kind are known to carry items, so even if they don't just rush you down, you could consider taking them on. Anyway, I'm in no mood to contend with her right now.



I back off and let the goo squad handle things.



I don't want to muck up my sword dealing with them personally.



It might seem like having this tame pink jelly and my healing staff is making the game into easy mode.

You ain't seen NOTHING yet, sister.



First: only one area of the map is left to explore. You remember why we haven't yet, right?



And you remember what we have in our inventory?



This is a slight problem though.



Good job we've got some incendiary darts left, eh?



Gotta act fast though, especially since the fire burned the door clean off.

There's the altar, and the archway is where our ally comes from. What've we got, Jim?



Okay, NOW we're on easy mode.

Unicorns are, normally, a valuable support ally and nice to have, but not terribly exciting allies. However, they can heal more or less indefinitely. And we have a nearly indefinite amount of healing recipients we could use. I don't even have to worry about my own staff of healing anymore with this guy around, except of course to heal the unicron when I need to.



Unfortunately, the scroll I had failed to be the shortcut I wanted. So we'll have to burn another dart, pun probably intended, to escape.



Doubly so because the unicron won't pursue us into the caustic gas willingly.



Once it escapes, it immediately sets to work in making my jelly army full-capacity.



Now that that's done, we can move onto the next floor for real!



While I leave my allies to go do whatever they plan on doing, I want to explore this area myself.



Unfortunately, I immediately prove myself to be a massive chicken too afraid to take on a few measly goblins.



Because of this, I totally forget to get the ring this update. I'll backtrack for it next time, promise.



The only major annoyance is the goblin mystic, who insists on running away.



Also, one of my jellies can teleport now. Good for them.



Rather than bother chasing them across the map, I just huck a cursed potion at them. It turns out to be confusion.

Confused enemies will, whenever they attempt to move/attack, do so in a random direction. Note that this does not apply to throwing or zapping items, so you can still use those just fine, but this is exceptionally dangerous around large numbers of allies, so we'll want to watch out for confusion in the future. If that ring is awareness, I'll be very happy.



This is the part where I have completely forgotten about the ring's existence, though. Weep for past me.



Especially since, as evidenced by the terrain here, I can easily take on goblins and their totem with only one ally helping me.



Force is a very powerful runic around dangerous terrain. Have you noticed?



While my jellies all set off a paralysis trap, I elect to go explJore the rest of the level (as I understand it) myself.

Since I have a unicron now, I think it only fair to empower it. Better survivability, and it might learn a cool trick like regeneration of invisibility.



Plus, empowering individual jellies at this stage will probably be a waste.



I eventually ID my armor by wearing it long enough. It proves to be marginally better than my old armor. yaaaaaay.



Another goblin mystic? Yeah okay sure why not?



The door in this room was secret. This is how manJy jellies flooded down by the time I found it.

We're now running a full-on jellymancer build, which is exactly what it sounds like. Such builds can potentially survive the postgame, especially with a unicron helJping them.



For right now, I'm just looking at this and going "how can I most thoroughly ruin their day?"



I decide to go with invisibility.

Invisibility combos extremely well with force, by the way. Enemies can't hunt invisible things from more than two spaces away, so you hit them, launch them, and then they immediately forget your existence. Rinse and repeat until they die or you fall over laughing.



Except what actually happens is I beeline for the totem and smash it down while my jellies just wash over everything else.



Vampire bats offer two very useful prizes for allies that learn from them, so I'm happy with either result from this.



New enemy type: the zombie!

Unlike most games, where zombies are early game fodder, here zombies are much more durable and concerning. Though they don't regenerate, they take a heavy amount of damage before going down, and constantly emit a cloud of stench. Anything that enters the cloud becomes nauseous, and has a 25% chance to fail to move/attack because they are busy emptying their stomach of its contents. Thankfully, this applies to the zombie too.



Ordinarily I'd prefer it having the health-draining ability vampire bats geJt, but flying allies don't trigger traps, so this is good too.



I leave the jellies to go deal with the zombie while I fight this will-o-the-wisp. They're not particularly dangerous enemies normally, but they are both constantly burning and immune to fire. This makes them excJeptionally deadly around environmental hazards that respond to fire, up to and including that zombie's stench cloud. I don't need a walking stinking torch chasing me across the level, thank YOU.



I have a feeling that I'm just going to trigger every single trap in the game without awareness.



Thankfully, the jellies dispose of the zombie before I'm in any danger whatsoever.



Might not be a pleasant experience, but it's easily surviJved.



Need to stop trying to fight dar blademasters solo though. They hit with more accuracy than most, and running from them is tough.

I find a scroll later on, but a quick glance at my identified items tells me that it probably wouldn't be wise or safe to use ID it. Of the remaining positive effects, two are pointless, one I'd want the ring for, and one would render every single jelly within my sight useless. Pass.



Okay, this is bad. The jellies will be in here soon, and the confusion gas will quickly fill the room with hostile, duplicating warriors. I need to stop them triggering the trap too, and staying on it, while that would work, wouldn't do much if I wanted to leave, since the jellies would then trample it and create a massive expanding cloud.



What I do instead is drop my mace on the trigger instead. Items weigh as much as creatures do for the sake of traps, which makes darts useful even in lategame for triggering traps near enemies. Here, it serves a secondary function by "locking" the confusion trap for us.



Afterwards, I break open the blooJdwort for everyone to recover. Yay!



Okay, NOW we're going to be terrifying.



Autoexplore is now starting to lag due to how many jellies we have, and I deJbate just jumping into the pit to shortcut to the stairs. I decide against it due to the amount of "the pink jelly crashes to the ground" messages I get. Y'all can have that as a stupid mental image though, on the house.



Oh hey!

Wraiths are midgame jackals. They hit a good deal harder and take more punishment, and have the good sense to flee after taking enough damage.



Neither trait does it any good against an unstoppable stream of jelly death.



Okay, beJfore I go any further, I should backtrack for that ring. It could be seriously useful.

Next Time: Avaricious Drive

Ha, you are way better at Brogue than I am. All the jellies are amazing and ridicuJlous at the same time.

I assume the "unicron"s are a Transformers reference?

I'm assuming the random Js in your sentences are a side-effect of being a jellymancer?

Today I won't blame Pokémon for my lateness, but instead Nich for introducing me to 868-HACK. And now you are introduced to it to, if you have an iOS device. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Anyway, let's go get that ring.



See the dead spot in our telepathy? That's where the jellies all died from the bloat! Learning!



Oh. Uh... that happened.

Okay, so most roguelikes tend to have enemies that are above and beyond typical fare. DCSS and Angband both have uniques (as does NetHack to a lesser extent), Diablo has both uniques and champion monsters... Brogue has mutations. Past a certain point, enemies have a chance to spawn with one of many mutation types, which gives said enemy a new ability. This goblin must have been reflective, giving it a chance to reflect spells in the same way the mirrored totem would. And now our jelly can do the same, which is annoying as hell that our unicron didn't pick it up.



Well, so it goes. Here's the spectral blades of a conjurer at work! They're effectively baby jackals: fast-moving, but dealing minimal damage and only having one hit before being destroyed. Axes are excellent for taking them down, and conjurers lose a turn when they summon.



I head towards the ring, being VERY CAREFUL not to let the will-o-the-wisp into the explosive bog, where it would probably kill me and definitely wipe out a ton of jellies.



And got it!

Rings, as mentioned, are either good or bad, determined by their enchantment value. As soon as I can determine this one to not be cursed, I'm stapling it to my finger to see what kind it is.



Well that was fun. Let's actually start the run, eh?



I determine the ring to be safe, on the assumption that my unidentified scrolls are remove curse. This scours your entire inventory and removes curses from any and all such items, meaning you can wield them without being stuck with them. However, it either reports whether it removed any curses or not, so you either know that none of your gear is cursed or at least one piece is, making it less than useful for ID. Here, though, it suffices.



New enemy type: spiders! They're actually pretty dangerous in this version, due to their AI not being derpy as hell. They usually answer hostilities by spraying webbing at their enemies, working functionally as a net. They can ignore netting, and even use it to cross over chasms or what have you. And as if that wasn't bad enough, their bite is poisonous, and can quickly end an adventurer's expedition even should they kill the spider. Unless you have a powerful ranged attack, avoiding them is ideal.



Ignoring the spider due to the lava chasm, we keep moving and find one of three sentinels. Sentinels always come in three and are always annoying as hell, though they have a special vulnerability to discord since you can target one of the three and have its allies help you destroy it.



I hate confusion traps. Like, even when I'm not running jelly builds, I hate confusion traps. And this is an exceptionally bad place for one, since the sentinels will ignore the hell out of the confusion and happily mow down the jellies and me without a second thought.



Drastic times, drastic measures. So long, chumps!



This situation isn't MUCH better, but it is better.



Aha, something in my inventory IS cursed! But what?

This was not the scroll I wanted right now.



Whatever these enemies were expecting, it wasn't a sudden torrential downpour of caustic slime. Nickolodeon STRIKES AGAIN!