A ridiculously easy game which only ended prematurely due to bugs. :(
So, after playing as Warrior and Sorcerer, I wanted to give the Rogue a try and had a heck of an easier time than the other two classes. Having a ranged weapon with limitless ammo in a game where 90% of your enemies have melee attacks is ridiculous. It gets extra ridiculous when you factor in the fact that the Rogue's bow gets a damage boost from Dexterity, so I don't have to bother enhancing any other stats; I can just pump everything into Dexterity to boost damage and to-hit chance at the same time! And even if you don't factor that in, the Rogue definitely has a much higher base to-hit chance than the other classes. I don't know the exact numbers, but I remember really struggling to hit my enemies with my staff in the Sorcerer game, at one point having 5 consecutive misses. Compare that to my Rogue getting 17 consecutive hits despite the fact that the character screen indicated a lower to-hit bonus! And that was all against enemies that were far from me and couldn't hit me back.
For a good chunk of the early game, I was using a bow that conferred knockback, and as much as I complained about the drawbacks of knockback in the Warrior and Sorcerer games, it's much better when you're knocking back with an infinite ammo ranged weapon; any time I encountered a room full of enemies, I could just hold my finger on the F key until they were all dead, without worrying that any of them could touch me. Even moreso, once I got a bow that had enhanced speed on top of the Rogue's already enhanced bow speed, and those groups of monsters seemed to be moving in slow motion as I picked them off one by one before they could react. The whole game really lacked any challenge compared to the other two classes.
My memory of the original Diablo is hazy, but it may have been like this too, so the ridiculous imbalance may just come from copying the original. To balance things properly, the Rogue needs some kind of nerf, like reduced accuracy at longer range, or faster degradation of the bow, or reduced damage per hit, or having to purchase ammo for the bow. Maybe we should get TheLaptop on the Devteam; he's all about nerfing. :)
In the end, though, I was unable to win because I encountered a buttload of bugs. (Details below) Short version is that I was unable to win, but I didn't want to just quit, because I still wanted a mortem, but I didn't have any means of suiciding, so I scoured the early levels until I found a Hidden enemy that I had missed and I let him kill me. :P
(What follows is a description of bugginess I encountered which may only hold interest to the Devteam)
So, it started when I decided to test the Guardian spell, which I cast using a scroll while in a room full of enemies. It summoned a Hydra, like it's supposed to, but the Hydra didn't shoot the enemies like it's supposed to and the message log filled with error messages. I think that something the Hydra was doing was causing the game to go into infinite loops or something, because every action I took, the game froze for several seconds and then spit out another error message. I tried going back up the stairs, thinking that if I could get off the floor with the Hydra, maybe the problem would go away, but I was unable to use the stairs! And when I used the look command on the stairs the description had a single word, "False." So I tried clearing the room of monsters with my bow instead, thinking that maybe the Hydra would stop screwing up once there were no enemies to target. This took a long time, since the game would freeze for several seconds after each shot I fired, but it didn't work and it continued freezing after each action, even after all enemies were dead, and I still couldn't use the stairs and I couldn't access a Town Portal I had cast either. :| I tried (still very slowly) continuing on the level, hoping that the Hydra would disappear with time, since it's only supposed to be there for a limited time to begin with, but it persisted a lot longer than it's supposed to. I even tried shooting the Hydra to see if I could get rid of it that way, but it seemed to be invulnerable.
So, I tried saving and reloading the game to see if that would help and when I reloaded, the Hydra was gone and the game seemed to operate normally... Until the next time I went downstairs, entering the Cave levels, when the game crashed. I started up DiabloRL again and it seemed the game had saved itself before the crash and when I loaded it, I was in the Caves... only there were zero monsters and no staircases, up or down. There were plenty of items, but there seemed to be no way to continue the game. :( I tried using a Town Portal to get back home, which worked, and tried re-entering the Caves from the stairs again and it crashed in the same way and again, when I reloaded, I was in the same stairless Cave level. I tried exiting and re-entering through the Town Portal again and something interesting happened; the game didn't crash, but it froze, without me being able to move or access the menu, but the in-game music was still playing and I could still access my inventory and character screens, and when I tried to forcibly close the game, instead of closing, the game suddenly dumped me back into the Caves again. (Really weird!) That's about the time I gave up entirely and decided to seek some means of killing my character to end the game.
I tried copying the contents of the error log into this thread and almost crashed my computer because the error log is 44 Megs of text! O_o I guess it was printing tons of messages during all the times it froze. I suppose someone from the Devteam can message me if they want to see it.
tl;dr: If you want to play this game, DON'T USE THE GUARDIAN SPELL!!! :P
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DiabloRL v 0.5.0 roguelike postmortem character dump
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Tormuse, level 18 Rogue, killed by a hidden in Catacombs, level 5.
She scored 401810.98 points, killing 0 hellspawn.
She advanced to level 18 gaining 581098 experience.
She amassed 2192 gold coins.
She killed the Butcher.
She purified the town water supply.
She retrieved Ogden's tavern sign.
She uncovered the Arkaine's Valor.
She learned the Guardian spell.
She cleared Halls of Blind.
-- Statistics ------------------------------------------------
Strength 35/35
Magic 50/45
Dexterity 95/66
Vitality 33/33
Life 92/0 Mana 116/79
Armor 0 ToHit 97
-- Spells ----------------------------------------------------
Firebolt level 5
Holy Bolt level 9
Healing level 6
Town Portal level 1
Flash level 3
Stone Curse level 1
Phasing level 2
Mana Shield level 1
Guardian level 1
Golem level 1
-- Equipment -------------------------------------------------
[ Head ] nothing
[ Neck ] Optic amulet
[ Body ] nothing
[ Wpn ] short war bow of Swiftness (4-8)
[ Shld ] nothing
[ RRng ] Snake's ring of Skill
[ LRng ] Gold ring of Precision
-- Quickslots ------------------------------------------------
[ Slot1 ] scroll of guardian
[ Slot2 ] potion of rejuvenation
[ Slot3 ] scroll of phasing
[ Slot4 ] potion of full healing
[ Slot5 ] scroll of town portal
[ Slot7 ] scroll of healing
[ Slot8 ] scroll of healing
-- Inventory -------------------------------------------------
2192 gold coins
Arkaine's Valor [29]
Harlequin Crest [1]
-- Kills -----------------------------------------------------
Gutshank the Quick
Boneripper
Bonehead Keenaxe
Shadowbite
El Chupacabras
Wrathraven
Foulwing
Warpskull
Deathshade Fleshmaul
Bloodgutter
Nightwing of the Cold
Chaoshowler
the Butcher
Snotspill
32 * zombie
13 * black death
55 * skeleton
79 * corpse axe
56 * skeleton captain
9 * corpse captain
80 * horror captain
44 * scavenger
120 * plague eater
52 * bone gasher
69 * fallen one
34 * fallen one
16 * carver
80 * carver
25 * devil kin
36 * devil kin
56 * dark one
6 * dark one
7 * fiend
52 * blink
121 * gloom
64 * familiar
3 * flesh clan
52 * stone clan
111 * fire clan
85 * flesh clan archer
52 * night clan archer
103 * hidden
13 * unseen
4 * overlord
73 * mud man
20 * horned demon
82 * gargoyle
79 * acid beast
79 * poison spitter
-- Messages --------------------------------------------------
The hidden misses you.
The hidden hits you.
The hidden misses you.
The hidden hits you.
The hidden hits you.
The hidden hits you.
The hidden misses you.
The hidden misses you.
The hidden misses you.
The hidden hits you.
The hidden misses you.
The hidden hits you.
The hidden hits you.
The hidden misses you.
The hidden hits you.
The hidden misses you.
The hidden hits you.
The hidden misses you.
The hidden misses you.
The hidden hits you. You die... Press < Enter >...
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