I haven’t played the newer version but I’ve never managed to win and kill all the monsters and get more than 1 block.
But I did manage to win last time by destroying 3 blocks but getting 13 health anyway. Because lately instead of taking wild guesses if I don’t have enough health to use it all up and still be completely safe, I’ve been using the walls to soak up the extra HP instead. It generally is just to keep myself safe and recoup 1 or 2 xp, because usually by the time the wall has soaked up 3 hits, I’ve moved well past the wall and so the revealed tile won’t give me any new information. Sometimes it does, though.
One last pattern I’ve found in the arrangement: The six walls are always in three pairs of two adjacent ones. This can help sometimes if you have two squares, and you know one is a mine or other big dangerous thing and the other has no monster, but you don’t know which is which.
Also, has anyone noticed that there’s an option to mark a square as power 12, even though there aren’t any power 12 monsters?
I have noticed the walls in pairs. I’ve also noticed that the gargoyles (4) also seem to be located next to each other, and the guardians (7) seem to be located not next to each other, but I haven’t proven it to my satisfaction yet, and it would be less useful than walls because then you’d have to remember if you’d previously killed a gargoyle or guardian.
They are guaranteed to be one in each of the 4 quadrants, as indicated by their shield. They can be next to each other, 3 of them could form a 2x2 square with the dragon.
I don’t think the Guardians are allowed to be right on the axes, either (those aren’t part of any quadrant), so they couldn’t be next to each other.
This is at the point now where I’m suspecting that every monster type has a trick to its placement. Anyone figured out anything for bats (2), skeletons (3), or minotaurs (6)?
Also, the Scroll of Clairvoyance will always reveal at least one mine, but I don’t think there’s any way to take advantage of that, because you’re always going to click that when you find it, anyway.
EDIT: Correction, the height of the board is even, so two Guardians could be adjacent, one just above the center and one just below.
I’ve gotten to a point where I can pretty reliably get a perfect score as long as I don’t kill myself at the very beginning blind-clicking around to find the egg. I haven’t managed the Rat Pacifist achievement yet, but I’ve earned the other three at least once.
The game still has me hooked, though, and I usually find myself playing a few rounds in the evening to wind down. It’s a fun little intellectual exercise figuring out what creatures are hidden under what tiles.
I really hope the developer keeps working on it - I’d love to see more difficulty settings, or bigger dungeons, or customization options.
One last discovery: Not only do the Gargoyles (strength 4) always come in pairs, they all face their partner (though up and down are indistinguishable), so if you find one, you can usually tell where the other one is.
I did check, and although the slimes are asymmetrical, there’s only the one sprite for them: They do not point towards the Slime Wizard. And I still haven’t found any pattern for bats, skeletons, nor minotaurs.
A couple of times now, I’ve managed a truly perfect game, where I got all of the XP chests, the egg, the sprite, and all of the mines before I needed the first healing scroll. When you do that, you end the game (after smashing all of the walls) with exactly 13 health left, enough to slay a second dragon.
Minotaurs always guard chests. There’s the same number of both, and the minotaur is always adjacent to the chest and either to the left or right of it (i.e., not above or below, but it can be diagonal). The minotaur always starts off looking away from its chest, but will turn around if you click its chest.
That’s now a pattern for everything except the bats and skeletons. Anyone found those?
So, what’s y’all’s fastest clears? I just got a perfect clear in 5:30, and the fastest clear I’ve been able to manage by killing the dragon as soon as I get to 13 hearts is 4:57.