Pixel Dungeon

First ever ascension, very early plate armor, and unstable spellbook. Also, TIL that you can use alchemy a lot more than I previously thought by converting your potions to energy, and its dirt cheap.

Self explanatory.

I'm curious if there are people that consistently get this. And why?

Personally, it's pretty much a tie between this and the chaotic censer for my least favorite trinket. At +3, even in the demon halls, I felt the number of traps was lacking, in comparison to how useful other trinkets are. Maybe if the trinket also took trap area of effect into consideration and spread the traps out to provide more entire dungeon coverage, the current number of traps it increases wouldn't feel so meager.

Part of the problem is the trinket doesn't synergize as well as others. Even on a rogue and a talisman of foresight, it felt lackluster. I imagine it'd be more trouble than it's worth outside of those circumstances.

Or am I totally wrong on this and there's something I'm missing? I mean, the thing has remained unchanged since trinkets were introduced; about 5 months ago. Perhaps for a reason?

A suggestion: After you complete the Sad Ghost's quest with the Dried Rose in your inventory, a second dialogue pops up and asks if you want to hear more about the Rose (and learn if it's cursed or not) or go on your way with a token (a rose petal only available if you get the Rose before meeting the Ghost).

Since using the Rose requires talking to the Ghost, it seems like they might have such insight into the artifact. Just an idea. It crosses my mind every time the Rose drops before I meet the Ghost.

Please help, I can't find it.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon- v2.5.2, desktop linux version from github

On the android version from github, there is a counter at the bottom of the rankings, showing how many games you have beaten out of the number of games you have played.

On my desktop version (which does not have the same game history), I do not see any such counter. See the attached picture. Is this some sort of bug? Or is it meant to not have such a counter on desktop?

Thank you for your help.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon- v2.5.2, desktop linux version from github

I am playing v2.5.2 on desktop instead of v2.5.3. This is mainly because I do not like the removal of the stone of disarming (and also because I do not like bombs, which seem too high-tech for medieval fantasy IMO). So it is possible that this issue was fixed on the desktop version of 2.5.3, if it is an issue. However, since I am on v2.5.2, I have not checked whether or not the behavior is the same on v2.5.3.

The journal cuts off floor 1 at the bottom of the screen. See the attached picture. Is this intended or unintended?

Thank you for your help.

In the journal, the sprites of scrools (also ring and potions) are rendering without their symbol (the arrow on upgrade, butterfly on transmutation, etc.) Is this intended?

it went on like this for almost half a day. then I took a few steps and it started again. a fitting final version for a mod whose sole purpose was to break limits I guess

It's a Growing Champion-Golem.

As you can see, the current accuracy/evasion/damage boost of this Golem is 326%, and the current damage reduction is 76%. This means that this Golem is too strong that... God, please save me from this monster.

I filled the vents in the Toxic Gas room with water, and they stopped spewing gas into the room. I left one vent as as proof of that.

Currently Unstable Spellbook draws random scrolls from a list of 10 eligible scrolls with replacement. My suggestion is to change this so that scrolls are drawn without replacement.

This idea came to me after someone on Reddit claimed to have drawn a bunch of strings (a string of 4 and a string of 6) of the same scroll in a row, all within the same game. Generally when this happens it gets people out of the game and has them thinking there’s something wrong with how scrolls are chosen.

My suggestion, to draw the scrolls without replacement, would make longer strings of duplicates like this impossible. It would also make the Unstable Spellbook more strategic in its use because you could keep track of which scrolls you get and then be able to make plans for potential upcoming scrolls. To make this less tedious, you might consider allowing the player to see some of the potential upcoming scrolls, similar to how some versions of Tetris show you the upcoming pieces (though not necessarily in exact order like Tetris).

Some further notes and thoughts:

• Identify, remove curse, and magic mapping are all half as common as the other scrolls. This could be handled by having a deck of 17 scrolls, with 7 duplicates for the more common types but only 1 copy of each of the 3 above.
• If you do go with a deck type system, maybe the player could keep adding more scrolls (beyond the needed for each upgrade) to bias the deck in their favour. This would make the Unstable Spellbook into a kind of deck-builder minigame, like Slay the Spire!
• Another idea might be to remove the popup choice for upgrading scrolls you draw, in favour of allowing the player to add both regular and exotic scrolls separately, giving them separate distributions within the deck. This loss of control would represent a small tactical nerf to the usage of the book which would partially offset the strategic buff caused by letting the player know and have more control over the distribution of scrolls they get from the artifact.

Anyway, thoughts, opinions, suggestions? I personally love the Unstable Spellbook in its current form but I have talked to others who don’t like it at all. My thoughts around this suggestion are to attempt to bridge this gap and make the item feel less random while still preserving its random flavour. The tradeoff is that this suggestion would make the item a bit more complex, though I don’t see think it’s an unreasonable amount of added complexity.

Alchemy is quite a complex system in the game and many players don’t engage with it at all. Even at the most tricked-out “deck builder” version of this suggestion, it’s still quite a lot less complex than alchemy because the choices are much more straightforward: want to see more of a scroll? Add another copy to the spellbook!

I actually couldn’t tell you how many years I’ve played this game for, because it’s been so many, but I’ve definitely put somewhere in the 5000 hour range into the game during that period of time. This is (surprisingly) the first time I’ve ever encountered something that felt extremely unbalanced. This is bolstered by the fact that AFAIK trinkets were intended to be a middle-of-the-road type item that acts as neither a direct buff nor nerf but rather opens up opportunity for different build styles. I’m also going to point out what I believe to be an actual bug, but I’m unsure because it could just be some wonky RNG.

This isn’t necessarily a terrible game breaking thing because it requires having a +3 petrified seed and +10 sandals of nature to be efficient. It also requires playing huntress to obtaining rejuvenating steps from a meta scroll. I know that infinitely farming seeds is viable with this combo and a fair amount of luck, but the rate with which you’re able to get rune stones is really absurd. Once you have the items you just need one patch of grass, even if it’s only a handful of tiles. You step on them with rejuv steps and then aggro enemies to stomp the grass back down to rejuv again. The screenshot above isn’t a crazy amount but it took less than 5 minutes to get them (I don’t plan on actually abusing it for this run).

This definitely makes petrified seed a monster ours buff for huntress w sandals. It’s definitely not game breaking because it’s still going to be a very rare combo to see generally, but it feels unbalanced and I wanted to point it out. The 25% drop rate is what makes this viable I think; You get way too many dewdrops because of the rate increase which makes hunger a non-issue. Also the fact that the trinket can be dropped to farm seeds instead makes the items “downside” not actually feel like any downside at all.

Now to what I think may be a bug; floors are generating with an absolutely crazy amount of grass. I thought it was just lucky at first, but the last 5 floors since I got the trinket have seemed like straight grassy floors. I also encountered a dark (forget the actual term but I mean the level you need a torch for) floor and did not encounter a torch, which I thought was a given on those floors.

Sorry if this isn’t the place to post something like this. I couldn’t think of any other way to report this; and I also just made this Lemmy account so I’m also unfamiliar with the platform. Hopefully this can be of some help though.

I tried playing the game on mac but it minimises itself. It's the most recent version from itch.io as of today and I'm running on 10.15.7 Catalina if that helps.

Hey Dungeoneers!

I've just released Shattered Pixel Dungeon v2.5.3! This patch includes a few changes in response to feedback and gameplay data from v2.5.0. There is a new way to identify items, a few items have been buffed/nerfed, and bombs have been buffed across the board!

The dev has been on point for years but I'm definitely not a fan of repurposing the Stone of Disarming to help ID items.

The exploding trap item ID "exploit" is way overblown IMHO. It came at the cost of losing and not using or selling non-upgraded items in shops. It was also plausible that higher quality upgraded items are built better to withstand the explosion.

I've never had to rely on it as there's lots of ways to ID items and don't care if others use the trap as the game is all about having multiple ways to accomplish goals. If it bugs most players then ok fine... nerf it... but not at the cost of other very useful items. It's not like the trap is that common where it's game breaking though. You might not even encounter one before slotting the items you want to use for the rest of the game.

The change came at the cost of providing much fewer ways... and in some case the only way... to deal with traps. The biggest one is being forced to duke it out in summon trap rooms if you don't have a potion of levitation which mainly only drops to fly over other trap rooms. Another is running from a mob on low health and being stopped by a nasty undiscovered trap in a hallway with no other item or skill to leap over it. It also uses up items that players use to do and craft other things.

Also, I saw that bombs don't work on wood walls in the stone of enchantment room anymore? Items that make fire are easier to get but it's annoying when you don't have something earlier in the game so you have to keep going until you find one then trudge back at the cost of satiety... and it may have dropped for a wood walled up door so you have to repeat the process.

Anyway, no complaints to add a new stone of detection rather than replacing a useful one which reduces the interesting and plausible ways to do things.

I've gotten to demon halls a handful of times, but always died in the first few floors. This is my first time making it as Sniper (or Huntress at all, actually).

I have a +6 Grim crossbow, a projecting spirit bow, a ring of arcana, a +2 ring of haste, and +1 plate armour of swiftness. I also have a horn of plenty which I intend to transmute, and rings of tenacity, might, and evasion which I plan to sell.

Which crown upgrade do I want? I'm not sure which one plays best for this build. Does anyone have any other advice for not dying in the Halls?

Update: Yog is dead. Thank you so much for the help! I went Hawk and dumped the rest of my scrolls into Haste for maximum kiting.

After playing for maximum score on 6 challenges forever, I finally bit the bullet and went for a 9 challenge perfect score run. This general strategy got me there in surprisingly few tries:

• Pick Huntress for the spirit bow. The combination of no armor and almost no healing means we can't afford to melee past sewers. Later we pick Sniper for extra vision and armor piercing bow, Warden is sadly gutted due to the Barren Lands challenge.
• Fish for a Ring of Haste as much as possible (always pick rings from crystal chest and pick the chest room behind crystal doors; transmute other rings).
• All upgrade scrolls go into the Ring of Haste.
• Once we've got haste up and running, kiting is the name of the game. Use vision (Rejuvenating Steps and Heightened Senses talents are amazing) and trick shots to deal with ranged threats.
• All healing potions go into energy, we'll use alchemy to get past Tengu, and the King of Dwarves. Keep an Elixir of Feather Fall around to safely do pit rooms.
• Skip sacrificial altars for the ascent, and save 3-4 Scrolls of Magic Mapping for the ascent as well. We'll turn them into Scrolls of Foresight and comb every regular floor for full exploration score.

Potions of Shrouding Fog trivialize Tengu, who is otherwise a huge obstacle for a 9 challenge run. The new bombs also feel great, they do decent damage and have good utility. I used a couple of them to beat down the final phase of the dwarf king. Finally, once you make it all the way down to Yog he actually falls wuite easily to the bow 🙂 One thing I didn't think of was to pick up the darts from the shops, and craft some blinding darts - they'd have saved me a lot of headache against scorpios and warlocks.

I will say that 9 challenges is a lot less fun than 6 challenges, so I'll probably go back to that. Barren Lands in particular feels like it makes the game less interesting, disabling plants entirely just removes so many tools from the player.

From a my perspective (pixeldungeon memes on lemmy🥲)

This is the last official version of Experienced Pixel Dungeon, Redone or otherwise. No more bugfixes, ports to latest Shattered, or new content. That's the end of the line.

2024 is anniversary to many things, including this mod, as 4 years have passed since the first release of that silly grinding mod with many things to do; but since then, the tumor has only grown larger...

You might have noticed, that large amount of content haven't really changed since its first year of 2020-2021. After that, I just fixed bugs and ported Shattered's new releases, with big things only happening once a year. It almost became an another job, that I did to keep its legacy going further and further, sometimes even at expense of project I actually enjoyed, like Summoning.

And then it really took off in 2023. My email started being flooded with reviews and emails about how it is the best game they played, or reported game breaking glitches. The legacy design didn't stand up very well, and breaking integer barriers is bond to make things wrong. But I kept going. For honor, for people, to keep the tumor alive...

I hated it, but I told myself, than I should do it. It's the most popular mod of mine, why I would cancel it? What would happen to those PD fans, that enjoyed grinding? But just like cancer, playing or making ExpPD results in never ending pain.

So I am ending it. For my own sake. You may not be happy. But I am happy. Than the beast is slain.

I could be missing it, but I feel like I've combed all through the journal, and don't see an entry for these in the new journal. I honestly even forgot these existed until I decided to randomly make a weaponized blandfruit since I had too much food.

(First floor.) Ration of Food blocks the door. Mage pretty much starts with everything you need to solve that room.

Edit: This seed is crazy, already with artifact and wand on the first three floors. LBX-MZH-SYDv2.5.2 (Mage; On Diet&Faith Is My Armor&Forbidden Runes)