[QUOTE=Arrogance Ex Machina;14960447Shame all her dexterity is useless, on the other hand. Dex only helps with accuracy, and missile weapons auto-hit, so what she really should have is strength as counter-intuitive as that is.[/QUOTE]
I know it’s a fantasy rule that elves and other slight, acrobatic types are good with missile weapons, but IMO it’s ogres and other big, strong types should be the ones that rock as archers.
I had a look at Grimrock on Steam and got Dungeons of Dredmore instead.
Dungeon level 9 is the first level where when I found out how to do the puzzles, I thought “this is bullshit!” instead of “of course!”:
First, I would never in a million years figured out I need to slash the flags down - no other walls react to attacks.
Second, if you leave useless stuff lying in where you found them (three different alcoves separated by very long walks through an area filled with respawning, tough monsters), the dungeon doesn’t progress.
Third, two different puzzles require items not found on the same level, so if you don’t have them with you be prepared for a long walk:
You’ll need a skull, an arrow/crossbow bolt and a rock, also one item that you’ll be carrying with you in any case.
I hope level 10 will be better.
It’s definitely more Dungeon Master than it is Ultima Underworld. My only complaint about it is that the magic system is a little anemic. There’s only four types of spells. The levels are well-made, though, and the graphics are a charming mix of limited retro style meets cutting edge quality. I’m not sure how much appeal it’ll have to people who don’t have the nostalgia factor for it, but I’m geeking out on Grimrock pretty heavily.
I wasn’t interested in these kinds of games way back when, but I find myself enjoying it immensely. Once I hit the spiders on level 4 things definitely got harder - but also more interesting.
Seeing the above, I have definitely missed with missile weapons before, although they seem to have a hefty hidden accuracy bonus or something. Also, every now and then I seem to lose a missile completely. Is this normal, or have I somehow missed locating one. It doesn’t happen often, at any rate.
I’ve found the warrior-types lagging slightly in xp gain. Sice they tend only to do damage to enemies in melee, and also usually a little less per hit than my mages, theyr’e gaining more slowly. Add in that I considered going for heavy armor first would be quite valuable, and they’re not getting quite as many hits inGetting those special attacks really helps.
I don’t think you can lose a missile except for firing it into an unreachable area and for one potentially game-breaking part of the endgame. If missiles drop into a pit, you can go in after them, and if they hit an enemy, you can loot them when the enemy dies. If you’re shooting skeleton warriors, make sure to look under their dropped tower shields.
My warrior and rogue were only behind my two mages on XP gain for a middle chunk of the game where enemies tended to come in clumps and the mages were going nuts with their shiny new area effect spells. The rest of the game, the melee were ahead…but I was overly paranoid about food consumption and didn’t rest my mages up as much as I could have.
Interestingly, while she started out the weakest, towards the end of the game, the warrior started just smoking everyone else in damage output. The minotaur headhunter bonus, the artifact weapons, and the special attacks from skill levels all add up to some serious oomph. My dagger rogue, on the other hand, went fairly heavy down the evasion defense skill and consequently spent most of the game as more of a tank than damage dealer. Weird, but neat that it was actually successful.
I thought I was doing a good job of hunting out all the nooks and crannies, but the end-game stats said I missed 3 treasures and ~20 secrets. I’m already tempted to go for a completionist replay 
Hmm… I didn’t get any end-game stats display. Maybe it was because I fell into a pit after dealing the deathblow?
So yeah, finished this as well. Besides level 9, I think most of the game was good and the puzzles logical, though it’s a bit too easy to build your rogues and mages all wrong. Definitely worth the low price. Go Finns! 
Finished this on Tuesday, would buy again!
So much of this game was taken from Dungeon Master that I felt right at home with some of the puzzles, though many of them near the end were rather obscure. I didn’t think that some of the notes you get from one level applies to things in another level, so for example in that long ass hallway on Floor 10, I had to look up the puzzle solution. There were a couple other ones that weren’t intuitive either.
Minor gripe about the game. I know the graphics are better, but the old VGA graphics of Dungeon Master actually made hidden buttons stand out better. I could usually spot them when I walked past them and didn’t really have to turn around. Now the walls are more textured and have way more detail, so I think I missed a bunch of buttons. I forgot about the stats, so I didn’t see how many secrets I missed.
For RPGs, I’m usually an incredibly sick hoarder. One thing I liked about Dungeon Master was that there was a hallway starting on level 9 that essentially linked you to all of the later levels once you unlocked that hall from the other floors. I would dump my extra inventory there in case I needed them, including extra potion bottles, weapons, and food. I was disappointed this game didn’t really have that, so my obsessive hoarding was compounded by boring repeats to past levels. For example, on the level Trapped, level 6 I think, there’s a respawning snail room where you can get extra food. You don’t really get much in the way of food until level 10, so I had an entire hallway filled with snail meat that I farmed. I had to make several trips back and forth to get this food and it would have been nice if I could dump it all into one easily accessible corridor
Another thing that I did that came back to bite me in the ass is torches. I know you get the Light Spell midway through the game, but I like my torches. I took and kept every single torch for a while until I couldn’t carry any more. I started leaving almost burnt out torches on the wall sconces because on the wall, even a half burnt out torch gives you full light. But by the time I beat the game, I still had about 2 dozen torches. It would have been nice if I were able to use them up more instead of having so much left over. If you play a normal game and don’t farm like I did, and picked up every torch, you’d easily have 30 or 40 torches by the end of the game unused.