I’ve been quietly addicted to Dungeon of the Endless since it was released through Early Access just before Christmas. Its mix of roguelike and tower defense mechanics is absorbing and more than one day has turned to night and back to day again before I stop playing. The latest release has added a new resource: science.
It’s going to change everything.
Science is the last resource you’ll collect in Dungeon of the Endless. At the start of each dungeon the game spawns a set of connected, modular rooms. The contents of each room is hidden behind a closed door, opening the door reveals what’s inside – it could be an item, a reward, or a spawn of alien monsters. Opening a door also gives you extra resources – industry, food, and, now, science.
Dungeon was a challenge with just industry and food to contend with, the former was used for building towers to buff your resource gain and defenses to protect them, while the latter was for upgrading your party or healing them. The new resource, science, is used to upgrade your towers and defenses, as well as unlocking new defensive options, like mines and healing pods.
The challenge has always been finding the best way to spend your resources. If you built only industry generators you could build lots of defensive turrets but your party would be woefully ill-equipped to fight the aliens, they just be too low a level. Go for food alone and you’d soon find yourself without enough industry to build more towers, crippling your means to produce resources.
With science now on the table, too, if you don’t research upgrades in the early game the end game will be brutally hard. Your resource towers won’t produce enough, your defenses won’t be strong enough, and your party will too low a level to complete the dungeon.
It’s become quite the challenge.
Plus, it’s not as easy as simply collecting science and getting upgrades. You can only research new upgrades at Endless Crystals. You find these large shards of crystal occasionally in rooms in the dungeon, each has a selecton of upgrades or new gear to research and it takes three turns for the research to complete, in which time you must protect the crystal. Again, this is quite the challenge.
It’s a great update for the game and if you’ve not played your copy recently it’s well worth rebooting.
Here’s the full change list
System
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Changed version annotation system
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Changed location of the diagnostics.html files: …/Public/Documents/Dungeon of the Endless/Temporary Files
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Changed keys configuration for specific keyboards
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Added a shortcut: you can now select a module in the build menu with F1, F2, F3, F4 or Z, X, C ,V
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Changed a shortcut: you can select multiple heroes with “Q” on QWERTY/QWERTZU (“A” on AZERTY keyboard)
Gameplay
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Added 3 new items with special skills
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Aftershave
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Hipster Scarf
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Ahhrrrmani Suit
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Added an area of effect FX for the “Claymoar” module
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Improved notifications:
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New item discovery
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New module unlocked
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Improved module tooltips
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New score calculation: it is now based on the number of doors open, FIS gathered, killed mobs, Dust lost, heroes lost and FIS left at the end; we decided not to take the time factor into account and continue to display it as a second value
FX
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Modified several VFXs and SFXs on skills and the Sewer environment
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Added VFX on superior levels modules
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Added VFX when you level up modules
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Added VFX when you suppressed modules
SCIENCE & RESEARCH
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Added a new resource: Science
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Implemented Endless Artefacts: you can now find artefacts in rooms that allow you to research new modules, in exchange of Science; this artefact needs to be defended during the research (3 turns). See Dev Blog for details: http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/content.php?386-DotE-Scientific-Progress-Goes-Woof
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Added levels on modules: you can now level up your modules with Endless Artefacts ; 4 levels per modules, for both major and minor modules
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Added 3 new modules:
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Science Creator I (major module)
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Tactical HUD (major module)
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Tear Gas (minor module)
BALANCING
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Increased the overall difficulty of the game
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Reduced the difficulty on level 1
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Reduced price and power of non-common items
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Reduced spawn probability of some powerful items
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Tweaked effects of support / debuff modules
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Reduced power of some modules, as resource production of major modules (but can be increased with level up)
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Increased hero levelling up cost (especially for the last levels)
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Increased power of some passive skills
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Increased merchant HP / defence
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Reduced the amount of minor slots in the last levels
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Increased the amount of major slots
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Reduced disparity between mobs speed (increased difficulty)
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Increased Dust loot in rooms
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Changed the defence computation: new formula of damage = attack power * (1 – (defence / defence + 100)) with new defence values for heroes, mobs, items, modules and skill (prevents invincibility)
We are currently working on the difficulty levels.
BUG FIX
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Fixed the effect of some passive skills:
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Repair
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Knee Deep in Blood
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Placebo
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Fixed several bugs:
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Chest stuck in doorway after a hero’s death
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Blocked hero in a specific room
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Rocks appearing in the background
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Fixed an exploit: free Dust from the Merchant