Definitely true, especially with the smaller party. The HP scaling on different stats is something I’ve considered, especially in mental arenas. And I’m also planning on some further specialization-like abilities that require things beyond “Just maximize your HP and damage scaling.”
We’ll see though; I don’t want to introduce a ton of complexity just for the sake of being different either.
Currently, I don’t believe there are any mechanical effects (like gaining money) that are permanently miss-able (unless there is a mistake/bug). In your example, for instance, re-rolling as Rogue should let you complete that encounter.
If I do create miss-able benefits in the future, the goal would be that they would occur from deliberate choices and have some kind of trade-off rather than result from simply failing encounters. But we’ll see.
Sorry for the slow response. Perhaps you’ve figured it out, but in case not or for others who have similar issues:
Broad Tips
Check the Owl's effects and make sure your character's stats line up appropriately. And then look at ways the Saint class might expand your health pool.
More Specific Tips
Roll a Saint with high STR and WIS and minimum DEX and CON. Equip a Club and the Divine Shelter Radiant blessing. You can take this even further with the Holy Channel item from the Magic Shop, which lets you equip the Bless blessing as well.
That all said, based on your other comment, you may well be running into a balance issue I overlooked: The animal encounters actually become harder than I intended if you take them on when you are further along in the game and have more stat dice unlocked. It’s something I will be re-balancing; apologies if even the above tips are not enough to defeat the encounter.
There is always something written for each encounter, but it is brief and I would not describe it as “special” in the context of the game. Put another way, I would not recommend that someone specifically try to lose every encounter to see it all.
With the mage, the relevant code is changing a decent amount, so I expect any bug will have moved (or hopefully disappeared). Before the next release, I’ll make sure to try it out. Thanks again.
Unfortunately, it’ll probably be awhile; long enough, at least, that I don’t feel comfortable making a prediction. Your words are very motivating though, so thank you.
It’s a little tough to tell where you are in the Rogue arc, but if you’ve gotten the Rogue shop and aren’t level 2 yet, you probably need explore the Upper River District. Once you’ve complete the jobs there, you’ll have a few more chats at the Selky Pint which will give you another job and level 2 Rogue (obviously this is a top-level overview).
Some more specifics:
The job in the Upper River District is the Dunhaven Heist, which requires Rogue skills and Grenn (switching him into your party requires you to go to the party screen and double-click Lia's icon in the party order).
The Dunhaven Heist involves a set of evasion and mechanism encounters that are generally quite a bit easier than the Anemic Cat, but you have to do them all back-to-back. Checking out the estate beforehand can make it easier, and you might learn things on a run that make it worth rerolling/restarting the expedition.
If/When you complete the Heist, you’ll return to the Selky Pint to report your success, which should carry you further along the Rogue Arc.
The short answer is likely yes, you will probably need level 2 rogue and a second dexterity die.
Explanation
It may be possible to complete with 6 DEX & 12+ CON, but it almost certainly requires 1 STR & 1 WIS, which may be impossible if you already have two STR dice (something I overlooked during testing).
Once you have level 2 rogue, you’ll be able to increase the damage of Smoke Bomb still further with a talent point. So that + 12 DEX + 12 CON + 1 or 2 STR + 1 WIS should be a win.
Sorry it took a while to figure out where you were at. It’s definitely an encounter I’ll be looking at further; it’s scaled up a lot because you can bring a few multipliers against it, but obviously it’s a roadblock if you haven’t unlocked those multipliers yet.
Ah that’s right, I forgot that you needed a more specific item. Sorry about that.
Item details
The Rogue evasion items have damage types and the Cat is a "Focused" encounter, which means it takes more Obscuring damage but less Distraction damage.
The only Obscuring damage item at the moment is the Smoke Bomb.
I read about an approach for posting possible spoilers, so I’m trying it out here. Apologies if it takes a few edits to get right. But:
Tips on the Anemic Cat (click to expand)
It's an evasion encounter. So roll a Rogue with High Constitution & Dexterity and equip yourself with an item from the thieves' guild.
Like the other animal encounters, the cat scales its damage based on some of your stats. So your Rogue should have as low Strength & Wisdom as possible (literal 1's or maybe a 2 in Str if you have to).
Late Edit for posterity: The cat is a Focused evasion encounter. So it takes more damage from Obscuring abilities (i.e. the Smoke Bomb).
It's a bit unintuitive, but wealth rewards are scaled down by the level of wealth you reach. Once you reach Solvent wealth, rewards of 3 or less do not increase your wealth anymore.
Rerolls then (are intended to) set you to the max wealth you would have reached if you got all of your rewards up to that checkpoint in a single run. Currently you should cap out at Solvent 1/10 or maybe 2/10.
The situation you describe is a gap/optimization you could try to take advantage of during a single run, where you spend down below a Wealth tier before completing a mission so that you receive an extra "unscaled reward."
This can give you slightly more buying power for that run, but the benefit of that is pretty limited; basically you can buy an extra tier 1 item or two, at a time when you should already be able to fill most of your active party's inventory with them.
Typing it all out, it definitely feels confusing, and I get how it feels like you "lost wealth" unexpectedly. I'll consider if there's a way to make it clearer; perhaps closing that single run gap is the best option, or maybe there's a better way.
That's great, thanks for the feedback. It's definitely something I'll be thinking on.
I went back and forth on having abilities "cross over" into other classes' arcs, and considered, for instance, making the arena fights nullify non-physical damage.
I wasn't too happy with that though, so eventually decided an easy encounter was your reward that finding an "outside set" of abilities that blew open something like the arena. That said, it's obviously a bit anti-climatic when you can just march through each fight, so I'll continue thinking on ways to mix it up.
To change party members, you double-click their icon in the party/stats screen.
Edit: In terms of info on development, you mean how it's currently going? It's been a slow couple months, as I've spent some time checking out Godot. I won't be porting the game over, but content development has been slow.
Your perspective on the genre/tags seems very reasonable to me. Personally, I view it as something of a mashup of interactive fiction and RPG with some incremental mechanics (e.g. unfolding complexity, multiplicative scaling, and "prestiging") mixed in, but I definitely understand the point of view that it feels different from many incrementals.
Thanks for the suggestion. I haven't shared much of my plans, because I think the unfolding discovery is definitely part of the experience. BUT making rerolls more mechanically interesting (and easier, especially as the number of dice go up) is definitely on the agenda.
Yep, rerolling resets your gold, so if you find you're current items aren't working for an encounter, rerolling gives you a chance to buy different ones.
The longer answer is that while I have a lot of ideas for how the game will progress, it has been growing somewhat organically, so it's hard for me to say with certainty where the fights/challenges will go. The goal is certainly that as the party grows and you unlock more options, you'll have more flexibility in tackling challenges. Having ranged PCs is certainly one of those options I'm keeping in mind.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it and thanks for the feedback. That is the end of the Selky Pint content so far; a note is 100% reasonable thing to expect there.
Interesting to hear about that button leading to the wrong location. I'll have to see if I can reproduce it, though things in the mission select code have been cleaned up a bit, so hopefully it's overcome by events.
I'll try to give some spaced out hints with specifics in strike through to give people a chance to avoid/limit spoiling something they want to figure out on their own.
I'm sure you've tried/noticed these things, but you need to put most of them together to win consistently.
1) You'll have just gotten a new strength die. A 12 strength + 11 constitution (or more) main character (MC) has a lot more leeway than someone with lower stats. If you follow all these steps, you don't need a perfect 12 12 roll, but it can cover for not having all the points addressed + make victory more consistent.
2) Both enemies do edged damage. Loading up your bruiser MC with Scale Armor will let them do more damage for longer.
3) The enemies have different armor types. Equipping your MC with multiple weapon types will help you deal the most damage (this + step 2 requires you to use fighter abilities to gain an extra weapon slot); you won't have space for off-hands + armor + 2 weapons, so grab the biggest two-handers of both damage types.
4) Plan for the enemy knock back. If you have no movement abilities, Lia should have a melee weapon to maximize her damage, as bows do reduced damage from the frontline. But the easiest victory is to use the three earlier clues and have Lia use the duelist specialization with a knife so she can help tank damage.
There are some other tricks that can be used to achieve victories, though the hints above give the most consistent path to victory. Namely, the Kite Shield or Lightning Potion can be used (with the other hints) to get a decent chance of victory, but not as consistently as the above method.
Awesome, thank you. As to your question, short-term, I'll being doing posts on itch when I do an update. I think I'll also start a Substack (or something like it), just so I'm not fully tied to itch as my only messaging; I'll include links to whatever I setup in the itch updates.
As to news on the next update itself, unfortunately July was a slow month. I've been dealing with some life issues (mostly dental and home-water-damage related), so I haven't been as focused as I would like.
