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Thanks to Geokinesis, I have a copy of Dungeons of Dredmor, a fairly well-known roguelike on Steam. However, I haven't played it before, and will be going into this basically blind, documenting as I go. What could be more classically roguelike than stumbling blindly, after all? Rogue and its first imitators got their start before we had any of these novel 'spoilers' and 'FAQs' and 'wikis' and 'guides'.

All I've really seen so far is the tutorial, and a couple "what happens if I just do shit" runs that ended when I intentionally killed myself by doing things like "convert all my HP to gold with this magic wand".

Let's Play Dungeons of Dredmor, Run 1, Part 1: First Impressions


Naturally, we're going for permadeath, because this is a roguelike. I'm also going to leave it on the default difficulty.


As near as I can see, this is the "race/class selection". Pick up to seven skills, and every time you level up, you can pick one to improve and get its next benefit, in order. Potentially I could try to make some sort of super-bruiser armored knight or traditional frail mage, it looks, but why do that when the game offers a bunch of weird skill trees to explore? I pick (in order) Communist, Maces, Sword, Dual Wielding, and... hell, I think I've run out of the theme already, so let's just take Artful Dodger and Master of Arms (which is heavy armor) for defense, then Perception because it talks about a to-hit bonus.



Story.


This is just south of the entrance, and I'm guessing guaranteed, since food and booze are your HP/MP quick restoration items and I've seen it all three starts. The other two, though, it had three paths off of it. I equip the hammer and sickle that (I'm guessing) Communist gave me, because they're better than my starting weapons.


I'm guessing this would be more meaningful if I'd taken Smithing.


This is a weird game. In one of my tests, I saw a "Horadric Lutefisk Cube", too, and I can't even guess what that was for.


Not a fan of how tall the sprites are. It can be hard to see paths at times.


I find a shop. Shopkeepers are pretty neat, visually, because the black-and-white checks stay where they are while he idly bounces his passive animation. Of course, he's limited himself to weapons I don't use, so I leave without buying anything. Potentially I could apparently haul a bunch of crap to him to sell, but I don't feel like doing that right now.


Every two rooms or so has its own name.


Wait, what? This previously-peaceful gnome takes no damage from a spell I don't think I cast and became hostile.


He dies in one hit.


I'll give the game points for not throwing goblins, kobolds and overly-suicidal rats at me on floor one.


Now this is a much nicer shop. More selection, if nothing else.


This game has kind of a peculiar sense of humor.


This looks like a puzzle. With no clues to its solution. I'll let it sit.


Breaking a statue of Dredmor gives me my first level-up.


I up my dual-wielding skill, to let me actually use my weapons together.


Have adventure y/n?


...Sure. I've actually already seen the monolith, so why not?




That's it? Apply item to spot, one-shot gnome? There's apparently three more gnomes to take, but gnomes are not imposing at all.


A good example of the graphics being in their own way. If I hadn't noticed the "!" of this diggle noticing me, it would have been almost impossible to see him.


Oh, there's the rest of the gnomes. None of them hit me. My reward is a sword worse than my sickle that ups my magic as a side-bonus, a stat which I don't use. Hooray.


This potion looks like a teleport. There are some wonderfully overly-expensive goods in this shop. How does this game treat level 2 shoplifters?


I'm outside the shop.


Am I? Property is theft, man.


As I start throwing fire at the innocent demon I just unfairly robbed, this fat red thing shows up. It pretty much doesn't matter, because the shopkeep does more than half my health in one attack.


I try using one of my communist techniques to attack, then go invisible, but either it doesn't work or the shopkeeper ignored it or got lucky or something, because I got killed the next round.


The end.

Next time I might try doing something less suicidal, but the lure of early loot was too much to resist.