Second Iron man run attempt, ToK.22c, again with a wand/spell character.
I left a lot of items, including the paladin's shield and a lot of books, at the stairs to the next level. I then went back later, but all the items were gone. Is this on purpose? It was in the "Hall Of Pain" level that I left those items.
For some reason, the game has felt substantially easier so far (at level "Upper Halls"). Maybe it is because I am spamming a level 3 "Ice Spike" spell against bosses that I cannot kite? Or different gear?
I have not found the boss that was imprisoned behind a lever. I do not believe I skipped anything. Is it random? I might have missed it after I encountered an obelisk that deleted the map I had of the level so far.
The "Pureblooded Bugman" again caught me by surprise and caused me a lot of damage, the first time I was in danger of dying. But I could comfortably jog away, stabilize, and then kite-spam "Ice Spike". I have learned the spell "Slow", but I forgot to use it in this case.
I am currently in the "Breeding Grounds 1" level, and I have just found the "Haste" spell. I am thinking of using it to move around the level more quickly, because I am taking more care to ensure that I have a clear escape route this time around. I also found a shield or fetish (I combined it with other items at a Golden Goblin) that gave mana steal percentage (the final item went from I think 7% to 5%, but the Golden Goblin transmutation also gave it faster attack speed). So, at this point, together with "Mana Shield" level 3, despite being a wand/mage character, I am now treating a lot of the basic battles as a melee character without kiting away. "Bloodlust" is at level 3. Boss battles can still very much be dangerous. Most of my inventory is filled with potions. I am being careful when approach new rooms and blind-firing using "shift", which just refilled about 1/4 of my mana without enemies getting near (I also have some "get mana on kill" items).
The "Breeding Grounds 1" level took a lot of time to clear and felt like it had a lot of enemies.
In "Breeding Grounds 2" level, it feels a bit that I am sometimes clearing rooms of enemies without ever seeing them by shift-blind-firing into those rooms. I can see that by my mana going up a lot and hearing "death" sounds.
I am leaving lots of potions behind.
I found a helmet that "Reduces all Physical Damage by 1". Does that refer to outgoing damage or incoming damage? I assume that it is the latter.
Finally completed "Breeding Grounds 2". That felt very boring, sorry. The same enemies over and over and I am barely ever losing mana due to mana stealing and mana shield being very efficient. And I have left behind lots of potions on the floor. I did not feel like there was much if any difference between 1 and 2 of "Breeding Grounds". Would it have been less boring if I had enabled the option at the beginning of the game to have fewer ability points per level? Any planned content? Did I luck out on equipment and spells, and have it too easy? I wonder how difficult the game is to balance.
Paladin camp seems nice.
Snake monsters.
The level "Lost Corridors" feels more difficult, and especially the "Truth Seekers" are adept at dealing damage from range. I am now spending potions, at least against bosses, since the bosses I have gotten so far was the very fast kind ("Temptresses"). I also suffer a bit of attrition from regular enemies.
There was a potion that I could not reach after temporarily dropping it:
Figured out how to dodge reliably the "Truth Seekers", which meant that I ended up gaining mana while ducking in and out near the entrance of a room full of them.
Will it be possible to have multiple quests at a time? Will there be UI to see an overview of them?
I went to an obelisk, and once I activated it, it said something like "The needs of the many cost one" (I do not remember). And my helmet dropped. I am not certain why - the helmet requires constitution. Did the requirements increase, or did I lose constitution? Something else?
Defeated the final boss and won the demo. Ended up "Ice spiking" her to death, and tried to take care not to run out of mana, since the mana shield spell is really, really efficient. I did not have my preferred helmet on, because I foolishly forgot to increase one extra point into constitution when I got a level up.
Only on Normal difficulty, not Hard, but still Iron man.
The last level was somewhat long, but more fun than the two previous levels, since I did not really have any attrition at all at those two previous levels, and I ended up mostly with not-that-dangerous bosses.
Final notes: This is not quite my type of game, but I did like some of the challenge and seeing if I could figure out how to beat the game without dying. In all cases I believe, I could just briskly walk away from the fast bosses (the only type of boss that was dangerous to the wand/mage build I was using, since I paid attention when fighting ranged enemies to see whether I was taking a lot of damage or not) while trying to figure out how to deal with the boss.
The quality and scope of the game is rather high, and there is a lot of different spells, I do not think I tried out even half of them. Probably should have on the levels that I had a large surplus of potions on the floor. I think it makes sense for the "shield" spells and the "booster" spells to only allow a limit of one at a time as you have it currently implemented.