If you get swamped by enemies at the entrance to a level -- and this seems to happen a LOT in certain maps -- you can draw them to the stairs and go back up. Only the ones around you will follow. You can dispatch them there, then rest, then return. Frankly, some maps only these guerilla tactics work.
Plus the special levels for the Barbarian seem to be linked to the Arcane Tower, which is a dark joke, trying to combat blinking scattered enemies with range attacks.
Barbarians are nerfed in this edition -- they can't use spells. I have no idea how to get through the levels with packs of magic-users and bow users without crowd control abilities.
Can you answer whether a Barbarian can cast acquired spells? It doesn't seem like they can, as the game doesn't register any manna they might have -- they have four bars displayed already. Also, cf. the Barbarian, linking Power Strike to Rage really hurts the class, especially in the higher levels when it's unlikely to make enough kills when you really need that ability to work.
Nope, barbarian cannot use spells due to the mana. I think a lot of these X class is underpowered are more down to personal play style since it seems to vary from player to player. According to the logs generated during 4 months of testing (something like 2000+ recorded games), barbarian has the highest win rate by quite a large margin, so I'm hesitant to change him without more data.
Slasher1118: Levitation allows you to float above lava and I think avoid vines burning up or the shock effects of electricity hitting water, or the critical hits you take for standing on those things. But the health reduction for the boots is really high.
I keep going deep into the temple and losing almost all my Manna bar. Once, the game seemed to fix itself, but my current run all but 3/3 got sucked away.
I'm a huge fan of Rogue Fable II. The added wrinkles in this one are fun, but the game is very difficult. I've only finished with mage classes and, huh, only when I find the Ring of Learning to let me level up faster. In Rogue Fable II, the key was dealing 14 points of damage a round, to clear out the maggots. If you could do that, you could win. Here, you're going to get swarmed by insane monsters eventually. I see no way for a melee class to succeed at all. So far Enchanters and Necromancers were best; the Confusion/Charm spells and Summon Skeleton did the trick. I generally miss mixing different classes by finding books, which happen rarely with this one.
Some great tweaks and additions. Love the charms and refilling health and manna. I really dislike the variable damage. Part of the tactics in Rogue Fable II included knowing how much damage you could do a round. I also wish the mage classes would have initial wands devoted to their power; advancing a fire skill doesn't increase a magic missile wand damage. Generally I'm finding the mid-levels much harder than the last iteration. If you don't luck into a stronger weapon or other means of dealing damage quickly, you're screwed.
Thanks for the feedback! Variable damage was added to remove the massive power steps that occur with non-random damage, particularly with regard to weapons. With strict damage, getting a single mod on an item that causes an enemy to go from taking 2 hits to 1 hit or 3 hits to 2 hits is just an enormous spike in damage. The strategy in RFII tended to just be to max mod / skill / talent to get your weapon damage up and then just click your way to victory. I wanted to go with a much bigger emphasis on ability usage in this one (abilities are significantly stronger). This is also where the rest to regen came in, since it encourages more mana / cooldown usage. Mid-levels are likely harder than RFII simply in that you can't really rely on just raw weapon damage anymore and need to make much more use of abilities, consumables and charms. Elemental starter staves are back with latest update.
It's not clear that the Hints on the Challenge level are not just limited to each level, but all the levels. I wound up wasting a couple because I didn't know how they worked.
Seems like by the time you hit the late levels, if you can't do 11 points of damage a round and don't have an area of effect spell you're probably screwed.
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Nope, barbarian cannot use spells due to the mana. I think a lot of these X class is underpowered are more down to personal play style since it seems to vary from player to player. According to the logs generated during 4 months of testing (something like 2000+ recorded games), barbarian has the highest win rate by quite a large margin, so I'm hesitant to change him without more data.