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[zorbus_overdose]

A demigod ending is the normal, should be enough for most players. God / overgod -endings are just an extra challenge for the die hard -players. Still, there are players that manage to dethrone the overgod in just one run.

Tip:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Search around in the Zorbus level. There are hidden, prisoned creatures that have antipathy against the ruling pantheon. When freed, they usually kill a god or two. Of course they don't like you either, but you can usually stay away from them until they're weakened.

[Nopenope]

So I assume they manage to kill the overgod by challenging the gods one by one in the same run? That's probably doable but you're bound to burn through a lot of consumables just to resist their various attacks. The secret spoiler may help but that's still going to take a lot of time. I already did a demigod ascension and beat a god, not sure I want to make it to the Zorbus again just for this. I've had my fun and will probably return in a couple of updates.

Anyway, super awesome game. It combines DCSS's quality of life and interface, InfraArcana's atmosphere, Incursion's intricacy and Nethack's brutality and attention to detail. Looking forward to additional updates.

Bit of feedback:

-Blink, Summon Animals, Acid Cloud and Holy Burst are very strong. They really make the difference between struggling at the early levels and steamrolling everything. The lazy (read: DCSS dev) solution would be to nerf them, but it would be more interesting (and more in line with the "make enemies smarter not just dumb with lots of stats" spirit of the game) to have enemy spellcasters be really aggressive with those spells as well. Currently spellcasters blink out only when they're about to die but they should be doing this way more often. Enemies who see you cast spells like Acid Cloud or Holy Burst should drink potions that resist those effects, and those potions should be more numerous (so that you're incentivized to drink them when spellcasters start spamming clouds at you as well). Spellcasters should also be aggressive with Banish when they see you summon the usual pack of bears or celestials.

-Regarding blink, there should be more anchoring effects (arrows or orbs) and enemies should be more aggressive with them.

-The faction management aspect is a bit underutilized. It's really cool to recruit a bunch of companions and have parts of the game turn into full-fledged battles with equal numbers on both sides, but most of the time you can't really recruit more than a couple of people, unless you're purposely building a character that maxes out spirit. A solution would be the addition of hirelings at Carillo (or at random parts of the dungeon, whatever), that periodically take gold instead of caring about Spirit and don't level up. It'd be a sort of intermediary solution between permanent NPCs and temporary summons like spirits.

-Encumbrance is a pain in the butt and I have no idea how picking up an item makes you encumbered and dropping it still makes you encumbered when you weren't before. Maybe a bug? Anyway raising the limit a bit would make item management less of a pain in the butt for spellcasters that don't have much Body.

-Definitely agree with stuff like the Abyss, the nine hells, the 666 levels of pandemonium or whatever would be nice. Maybe make them optional for those players who want to do an overgod victory while you can still do your standard demigod run in 5 hours or so.

[Mkok]

I just used some savescumming to get my half-troll to zorbus again, and I defeated everything in there, except for overgod, who I probably could have probably taken out if I had used blink before healing potions a few more times (I still had like 30+ healing/stamina potions, and 20+ blink potions). Now that anchoring and withering is a thing, taking out all the gods if quite easy if you have strong char, which requires a bit of luck I guess (I had lots of elixirs as well as some good items). This are my stats just before I challenged the overgod, after drinking every boosting potion I had left after taking out all the gods 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I guess the reason enemies dont use anchoring/withering that much is cause they are new effects and not yet fully implemented for the AI? The most striking this was in the Zorbus, where not a single god used them... But I still had a lot of trouble from withering in my run, as I was counting on my high health regen. So if enemies start using these more, then we will probably need few more items to counter these effects.

I feel like this game might gain more replayability by making it so that we can somewhat choose the path we take towards Zorbus, like in FTL or slay the spire. Like do you want to go through a level controlled by titans, or dragons? Or a level shrouded in mysterious mist where anything from lowly goblin to ancient dragon might be found... But that might take quite a bit of work.

P.S. There is also a minor issue with potion giving search bonus. If you clean a floor drink the potion, and press E to find a secret, then pressing E again enters the secret, which usually leads to a fight, so you can only find few secrets as the potion runs out during those foghts. Thus it is much more optimal to press E, and block the found door from autopilot before pressing E again, which allows you to find most/all of the secrets on the floor, but is a bit tedious to do. (but still a good thing you no longer have to manually run around each wall )

[zorbus_overdose]

Thanks for the feedback! Good stuff.

Some answers:

• Wizards used to blink away immediately when in danger. Players were super annoyed by this. In general, many were annoyed by the fleeing enemies.
• Spellcasters also used to always use the "perfect" spell for the situation. Immediately tried to restrain or poison you when you were free of those effects. Immediately tried to banish your summons. There has been cooldown counters for these for some time now. There always seems to be a flipside to every solution. If a spellcaster would immediately banish your summons, you could use the summon animals talent or wand to spam creatures, he would keep banishing them and would eventually run out of Stamina without a single offensive move.
• Giving creatures lots of resistance potions can lead to situations where they sometimes end up dead before using any / most of them, and then the player gets huge amounts of these potions. It also takes a turn to drink a potion which could be used for offensive tactics. But I'll try to think of something.
• There's a percentual chance that a weapon / ammunition of an enemy creature is coated with anchoring / withering effects, so it varies between runs. But of course I forgot to add this to some of the gods!
• Anchoring is implemented for the AI, 2 of the spellcasting gods have it. Withering is implemented for the AI, but currently only some of the most powerful undead monsters have it. Have to check if these work properly.
• Checked the mentioned encumbrance bug, and indeed, in some autopick-cases, encumbrance wasn't recalculated. This bug has been in the game for ages. Thanks!
• The True Seeing potion problem is indeed a bit annoying, but not sure how to handle it.
• I like the idea of hireable mercenaries.
• I'm starting to like the idea of alternate paths to Zorbus more than the separate demiplane-levels, but I guess both could be added at some point.

[Nopenope]

I don't really get why people are annoyed by enemies fleeing. Maybe because it deprives them of their precious xp? In that case you could make it so that when you go down a level you receive all the xp equivalent to the max fraction damage/total health you inflicted upon each enemy on that level (only keep track of the max so the player can't farm xp by waiting for enemies to recover).

A solution to the blinking wizards problem is to make anchoring accessible (as a common spell?), and not a precious commodity to save for godfights. This way you can choose whether you want to commit to the fight or not but at least there's real decision-making involved. Another solution is to have effects that drain stamina, like anti-magic weapons (or orbs of draining, etc.) in DCSS. Or a withering effect, but for stamina.

While I agree it's unfair that spellcasters immediately know what you're vulnerable to and spam it, a way to mitigate it is to make resistances more accessible. DCSS has these random artifacts that provide a bunch of resistances (and sometimes negative effects), and you can buy them at shops as well. Enemies could of course wield them to make things extra spicy.

Drinking potions should be a free or almost free action imo. Otherwise there's little tactical incentive to use them when it matters, i.e. in the middle of a tense fight.

[zorbus_overdose]

Release 50   (25-Jun-2021)

• An alternate grid path for ranged targeting is now calculated and used if the first path is blocked. Also affects reach attacks and Charge-talent. Ranged attacks should now be symmetric, meaning that if creature A can target creature B, B can also target A. There are still some cases where you can see a creature but can't target it. Ranged attacks use Bresenham's line drawing routine to traverse grids, while the field of view algorithm does not.
• New command: Continuous autoexplore, default key (CTRL) + (E). Keeps exploring until a hostile creature is seen, something is detected, a trap is sprung, or until the whole dungeon level is explored. Can not be used when in low Health (controlled with "Health flash percentage threshold" from the settings).
• New command: Autopilot to next unlooted container, default key (CTRL) + (C). You can now autopilot to next unlooted container directly from the main game mode.
• Autopilot-screen shows the contents of peeked containers when the cursor is on them.
• Lidless / opened containers are automatically marked as peeked when an area is fully explored, unless the area has creatures that get gradually more hostile. Peeked means that you know the contents of the container.
• Hopefully fixed a bug where the autopilot-screen displayed wrong amount of unlooted containers. (thanks to Mkok for mentioning)
• Fixed a bug where encumbrance wasn't recalculated in all cases where items were picked up. (thanks to Nopenope for mentioning)
• Die Hard talent now heals the same amount as Health Surge. (thanks to Mkok for mentioning)
• Limited the amount of simultaneous similar sound effects when looting or dropping big amount of items, and in some other cases as well.

http://www.zorbus.net

[AzyWng]

Hi. Saw this game a while back, and while I did play a bit, I never managed to get very far (sometimes I don't even make it out of the first room). Any tips in general for survival?

[zorbus_overdose]

Hi. Saw this game a while back, and while I did play a bit, I never managed to get very far (sometimes I don't even make it out of the first room). Any tips in general for survival?

Read the gameplay tips from the book in the first room / from the game's PDF-manual.

Try playing with the (dwarf) Warrior-archetype.
Dwarves have darkvision. Use F1 to unlit lantern, unlit area light sources, hide in dark areas, preferably corners.
The starting weapon is a staff, so you can make reach-attacks against creatures one-step away.
Change the starting weapon when you find anything better.
Don't try to fight multiple enemies at once, backtrack so that they don't surround you.
You can close doors with Alt + direction. Most animals and undead can not open doors.
The Warrior-archetype has the Shield Bash -talent, so equipping a shield automatically adds a second attack.
Use Health Surge -talent when in low Health.
Use potions of Blink to escape.
Recruit companions. If you find a portal to the shop hub, enter it. There's a random chance that recruitable creatures are created there.

Alternatively, create a custom character and choose the Silver Spoon -talent. You'll start with a better starting weapon, 4 potions and 2 wands.

[( Tchey )]

Hi !

On itchio, i see "release 47" in main menu ingame.
If i force check new version, it says up to date.

Did i miss something ?

Thanks

[zorbus_overdose]

On itchio, i see "release 47" in main menu ingame.
If i force check new version, it says up to date.

The download link on the itch.io page links to the homepage version of the game, so it's always the same.

If "Check for updates on start" option is checked in the settings, then when the game is started it downloads "Release.txt" file from the homepage to the main game folder. The file has the number of the latest release. If you already are at that release then the file is deleted. You should see the file briefly when the game is started if you have the folder open. Your firewall however might block the download (the file is downloaded with an external tool, "Update\curl.exe").

[AzyWng]

Random question - but are novice adventurers and kobolds supposed to work together? I ran into both and they both chose to attack me rather than one another... After dying and starting a new game, the exact same thing happened.

[zorbus_overdose]

Random question - but are novice adventurers and kobolds supposed to work together? I ran into both and they both chose to attack me rather than one another... After dying and starting a new game, the exact same thing happened.

They don't work together per se, but don't oppose each other either. Goblins and kobolds are angry because you're invading their home, the human adventurers are looking to rob you of your items. I had to limit which factions oppose each other, otherwise there would too much infighting.

[( Tchey )]

Well... On itchio i couldn’t update the game from the ItchApp on my computer.
I had to manually delete the previous version (47 for me), then DL the game again.
Now i see 50 in main menu ingame.

[zorbus_overdose]

Well... On itchio i couldn’t update the game from the ItchApp on my computer.
I had to manually delete the previous version (47 for me), then DL the game again.

Oh, I didn't even know that itch had an app! The problem is that I don't upload anything to itch.io, but just link to the homepage (www.zorbus.net) file. I think that the "Reinstall" button in the itch app should work since it downloads the game from the homepage.

[( Tchey )]

Ah alright, that makes sense then.

ItchApp is basically a better Steam in almost every ways.

No Proton, but it’s allowing WINE to be used for non Linux game if needed (i play Zorbus on my Linux PC, via WINE).