Egoboo's Brother (SoulFu)

[bgbirdsey]

The food does not need to be "fixed". The game is supposed to be hard, and you have to play strategically instead of hack and slash.

Also, you need to be careful which badges you get because some of them place serious limitations on you. For instance, the easiest medal to get (courage, I think) halves your xp rate.

There is no reason at all to get any of the badges unless you know that you can get past level 5.

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The one thing that is broken is the spells. For instance, characters can only ever get the second charm spell (not poison, not holy, not demonic). Having a completely unbalanced spell system like that makes players feel cheated. The sad thing is that it was by accident, since Aaron fixed the integer sizes before the game was finished.

[Shade]

For instance, the easiest medal to get (courage, I think) halves your xp rate.

No, that one was dilligence. Actually, I do now remember all the badges and their exact effects.

Courage: Increases by 1 for each enemy you kill (possibly more for bosses). Decreases by 10 for each life potion, by 20 for each super life potion and by 100 for each wunnup's cup you use. The badge disallows you to use any life potions or wunnups cups.
Dilligence: Increases by 1 each time you enter a new room, break a container or open a chest. Decreases by 1 every time you visit a room you already were in (unless dilligence is 100), by the amount of unlooted/unbroken things left in the room every time you leave a room, and by 5 each time you break open a chest instead of opening it with a key. The badge permanently halves the amount of EXP you get.
Compassion: Increases by 1 each time a helper or other player picks up one of your hearts (only as a healer) and by 5 each time a helper or other player uses a healing item you gave them. I don't think there's any way to decrease it again. The badge disallows you to get any further new helpers.
Faith: Increases by 1 each time you pray. Decreases by 20 each time you eat meat. The badge disallows you to eat any meat.
Honor: Increases by 1 each time you hit an enemy from the front. Decreases by 1 each time you hit an enemy from behind, and by 5 each time you strike an enemy lying on the ground. The badge makes any of your attacks from behind or against downed monsters always miss, thus doing no damage.

I agree there is no "need" to fix the food thing, but it is a problem in combination with the fact that you often need to farm hearts in order to not die. If it was somehow possible to cure heavy wounds other than by collecting hearts dropped by monsters - as I already said - the food probably wouldn't be much of an issue anymore.

[PurpleSquerkle]

The food does not need to be "fixed". The game is supposed to be hard, and you have to play strategically instead of hack and slash.

Obviously hunger should still be serious, but it just seems to me that you had to eat way too often, especially with all the backtracking that goes on in the game. I remember several games where I basically spent every penny I got on food, and I would still run out at one point or another.
That's why I initially suggested it only be increased by 50%... but maybe something like 20% would be better? I dunno, it just seems a little... off. I think it could be improved.

Care to explain why you think so? There's only three towns after all, with several full levels between each of them. Even if there was some way to cure heavy wounds in towns, you would still have to backtrack a lot to get there, and since monsters respawn after a while, you might still get killed on your way, and most importantly - the way is long and it consumes food, which would probably discourage players from running to the towns for every little wound they get - it would just be something like a "last resort". Healers would still be extremly useful, as they cannot suffer heavy wounds themselves and can still cure others' heavy wounds anywhere - without any backtracking involved at all. It would just make the game slightly more managable in Single Player. I don't really see how that's a bad thing.

It just seems to me that there's plenty of ways to restore your HP already; I don't see much of a reason to make the game easier in that regard.
I don't remember backtracking ever being a huge problem for me outside of hunger. When there are only a few monsters they're easy to deal with... So it was usually pretty easy to get back to towns for me, except every time I did I had to eat four fish or something.

None of my hunger issues were ever related to farming hearts as far as I can recall. (If you haven't been able to tell so far, I haven't played in a while... I want to play it this afternoon if I feel like I have time)
I actually don't remember farming hearts at all; I played in a somewhat risky fashion where I'd just keep moving and try not to die, hoping that the next monster would heal me more than it hurt me.

[bgbirdsey]

Have you ever played nethack? Starvation is a major part of the game, and for some classes like the vampire it is the most significant risk.

SoulFu is much closer to the idea of a 3d nethack than egoboo, so you should expect starvation to play as much of a role.

I think the problem is the idea that you can/should backtrack. The game is basically designed for you to keep going forward after you get out of the sewers.

The game is very playable (imho) until you have to start facing the dragons. Then it goes from playable to frickin' impossible. Though if I could get more practice with the dragons, I'm sure I could find their weakness, too.

[penguinflyer2222]

Hunger in NetHack is not like hunger in SoulFu. NetHack is better, in my opinion.

[Cimeries]

Yes, Food is less of an issue in Nethack because it is easier to come by. A lot of the monster's corpses are safely edible.

[bgbirdsey]

Yes, Food is less of an issue in Nethack because it is easier to come by. A lot of the monster's corpses are safely edible.

Yes, but there is a significant problem with poisonous corpses or corpses that have negative effects for eating them (some with positive, like the floating eyes). Also, lots of corpses spoil in a few rounds.

I can tell you that hunger has hardly ever ended a session of SoulFu for me.

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cure heavy wounds other than by collecting hearts dropped by monsters

There is. There are two types of heal potions. The mega heal potions heal wound damage as well as hp loss.

I believe that the mega mana potions have a similar effect and heal mana "wounds" caused by enchanting an object that might have been disenchanted by a monster's spell.

[Shade]

@Purple: Restoring my HP? That wasn't even what I was talking about. I have no issues with the amount of HP themselves, they're fine, and there's plenty of potions and stuff. Restoring wounds is the issue - the very only way to cure those in vanilla Soulfu is to collect hearts, or to pray (which is limited), unless I am mistaken. Now, that wouldn't exactly be that much of an issue if every enemy dropped a heart after their death, and if an enemy attack never caused more than one wound point - the latter is true most of the time, but I think I recall some enemies causing several points of wound upon an attack (the hatchet guys?). Now of course you don't get hit by every enemy, and you shouldn't. In fact, however, especially in larger battles or boss battles, you tend to get hit more than once, but the enemies can easily screw you over by not dropping any hearts at all. There's the barrels and stuff to break which may also yield hearts, I know, but those are only there once. You break them once and either get the heart you want, your get money, or you get keys, or you trigger a trap and get poisoned. I know Soulfu is supposed to be very hard, and I'm fine with that. However, not even Nethack had something like wounds - it just makes the game insanely hard if you already are royally screwed if you get hit five-ish times or something because the game prevents you from actually restoring your health. In fact, it makes the game so hard it's frustrating. Unless you're playing as a healer, of course, since those cannot get any heavy wounds at all.

@birdsey: There are some situations that basically force you to backtrack to a town. This is, for example, if you need to restock on food and/or (mana) potions and/or keys or if you want to get a badge for your virtues. I know there are altars in other areas than towns as well, but some of them are very hard or even impossible to reach (the one in the cave, for example, requires 30 dex to reach, which you most likely won't have).

The dragons, on the other hand, were hard, but managable. I think I once actually beat all of them without using a wunnup's cup.

About eating corpses in Nethack: Yes, there were harmful corpses as well, but despite some of them being harmful, the enemies actually keep dropping them like insane, and you can very well memorize which ones are safe to eat and which ones are not (or sometimes, you can even already tell by the name/type of the monster if you think logically). Also, characters that are immune to poison may eat almost everything in NetHack. In SoulFu, on the other hand, the monsters drop meat too rarely for the player to be able to rely on it - furthermore, if you have the faith badge, you can't get (or rather, use, but whatever) any useful food from monsters at all (lol, cookies).

Do you mean the Super Life Potions? They never healed wounds for me, "only" normal damage. Are you sure this was already implemented in vanilla Soulfu, or was it added in one of the mods?

[Agent of Dread]

(the one in the cave, for example, requires 30 dex to reach, which you most likely won't have).

Actually, no. There's an invisible bridge between the platforms, hence the name 'Shrine of Faith'.
The Shrine of Courage has the shape of a sword and a trap full of Porcs, the Shrine of Compassion is shaped like a heart and has kittens and puppies running around, the Shrine of Diligence is like a maze with chests and boxes everywhere, and the Shrine of Honour... well, is blank.

[bgbirdsey]

The super life potions heal 1 wound point per potion. The trick is not to get loaded up on wounds. Almost all creatures can be killed without being hit except the vulture mages and the eagle archers, and the tanks.

By the timer you get to the lower levels of the dungeons, a fighter should have the max armor and the max sword with the max enchantment. This makes you pretty much invulnerable unless you are mass swarmed.

All the caster classes and the healer will have extreme difficulty in getting anywhere solo.

The gnome can be pretty easy, once you can learn to make something useful.

Again, I have only very rarely had any problems with being majorly wounded or running out of food. You can always sell loot equipment for food, and the P'Orcs or whatever drop monster meat quite often. Also, chests tend to drop lots more meat the farther you get into the dungeons.

On the other hand, it is pretty easy to have a caster that has LOTS of mana "wounds". The only real solution to this would be to have some kind of "blue hearts" that could drop from magical beings.

One mod that I wanted to see was that the healer could take extra hearts and eventually combine them into heal potions.

[PurpleSquerkle]

Have you ever played nethack? Starvation is a major part of the game, and for some classes like the vampire it is the most significant risk.

Have I ever played Nethack?!
I have no problem with having a hunger system. Hunger systems are great. And the one in Soulfu isn't bad, it just needs a little tweaking because of all the backtracking that everyone but you seems to be doing.
The most easily obtainable food item is fish, but it does not satisfy your hunger much, so you have to carry a lot of it. Meat is a little tricky to come by...

@Clonkinator: I know you were speaking specifically of wounds. They were just never a huge problem for me.


...It's odd that we all disagree so much about how the game should be improved, heh.

[Shade]

@AoD: ...I never noticed that. I never even knew the shrines had names.
Still, the courage one can still be tricky then, especially if you're low on health. (Normal) Porcs usually aren't very hard to deal with, but the arrow traps may catch you off guard. Then again, why am I even arguing, I know how to get to the shrine of courage unharmed. Whatever.

@birdsey: They heal 1 wound point? Well, good to know then, I guess. There's another problem with that, however - you can't buy super life potions until you reach the last town, and they're not exactly very common drops.

The max enchantment thing unfortunitally isn't that easy to pull off either. After all, unless you're a caster (or again, already reached the final town, but then you won't really need them anymore anyway), you have to rely on the chests giving you good equipment with useful enchantments - you may get such really early on, but you may also get such stuff only very late, or even possibly not at all. Requiring something random to always be successful in order to make the difficulty managable is a bad thing.

About the caster thing, I read somewhere that they can disenchant enemies (especially zombies) to gain their critical mana back AND harm the enemies at the same time. Don't know if that's true though, I never got a chance to try it myself. :/

@Purple: Do I really suck that much at Soulfu? D=
I always thought the basic gameplay of Egoboo and Soulfu was very similar... ...and I managed to beat the Benemo Cave with a Lv3 soldier, but I don't manage to "beat" Soulfu more than that one time where I got ridiculously lucky with an elf while others seem to do. The hell is up with that?

[Agent of Dread]

Hey, I can't beat SoulFu either.
I usually get stuck in Medusa's lair on my very best games.
Recently though I've never made it to a caves boss fight.
Also, you can enchant potions to make them super potions.

[Shade]

Also, you can enchant potions to make them super potions.

I know, but how do you expect a non-caster to enchant stuff?

[Agent of Dread]

Point taken.
Anyhow, what are people's highest scores?
Mine is somewhere around 6900.