f13.net

Probably by now some of you have heard the angst about this new release (and if not, start here (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/10956-Dungeon-Keeper-Mobile-Review-Wallet-Reaper)).  I finally got around to downloading it, and yeah, for someone who adored DK 1 and 2, it's fucking weird having to wait 2-4 hours to clear one square of your dungeon.

But then, that's the point of this game: it's by and large a really, really nice F2P cash shop conversion of Dungeon Keeper.  As if it was blessed by Zynga itself!  Could you play without paying any cash?  Absolutely.  Just don't expect to get a ton of shit done in a single sit-down session.

The guild feature is interesting though.  And I like how I can play on my tablet at home and keep working on my dungeon on my phone while I'm out delivering pizzas.

Anyone else take a stab at this yet?

I'm playing. i haven't got to build the Guild HQ, but that looks like it's on the schedule for next week. I'm having a shit ton of fun with this.

(You should also look us up on Clash of Clans if you're playing that. Check the thread.)

I gave it a shot a month ago or something like that.  I was playing through the tutorial (which seemed awfully long) when my internet went out (as it does frequently) and the entire game just hung.  Tried it again later, played a few minutes, internet went out again, game hung again.  Uninstalled.

Maybe the always online requirements make more sense after you clear the tutorial, but I never made it that far, and for the part I played, it felt like a pointless annoyance in what was basically a single player game.

The tutorial does cram a lot into the start.  Having played DK 1 or 2 helps a bunch, since its pretty much a copy/paste.

The multiplayer aspect comes into motion in raiding other people's places and defending yours, a la Clash of Clans.

I feel like there's a up and coming Tomagachi trend lately (at least this and Star Wars) where you just open the game, press a few buttons and close it for a few hours (unless you pay).  I'm not really enjoying these at all, I'd rather a game let me do something significant in a 5-10 minute session than to spend 1 minute planning for something significant to happen while I'm "afk"

Well it certainly isn't for everyone, but it works for me. I get to set shit to build during the day, and at night I can do my raiding till I run out of cash or patience with losing. If you're treating it as a purely underground house builder, yeah, you're gonna get bored.

The time-based cockblocking has been around in "casual" games for a while now. Zynga games, for example, were notorious for this sort of thing (they also had currency and social cockblocks as well). EA is actually late to the party for this sort of thing.

This is shameful shit.  Never pay EA.


Never

I'll add my voice to the chorus of disapproval.

However, it got me itching to play Dungeon Keeper again, and I discovered an engine redo: Dungeon Keeper FX

http://keeper.lubiki.pl/html/dk_keeperfx.php (http://keeper.lubiki.pl/html/dk_keeperfx.php)

Hooray!  (original disk required, or some fiddling to make it work with GOG)

You know, it's weird, I never liked the actual original game that much, just the idea of it. Or at least that's what I remember. Did it have a sandbox mode when it first came out? I remember that it didn't and that irritated the fuck out of me. The sequel did, though, I know that much.

GOG is giving the original away for free this weekend.  Requests are getting hammered though.

We have a Bat Country here yet?

Not yet, I don't think...was gonna make it as soon as I got my guild hall online.

You aren't allowed.

 :why_so_serious:

Bat Country up and running. Red tear on black background. Public join, so feel free to hop in.

I'm in.  Guess its by dungeon name and not name-name.  I'm Anvil.

Ah, awesome.

I gave this a whirl but the interface and constant microtrans begging pissed me off so I deleted it.  The stench of EA hung too heavy on it.

Part of me thinks they'll make some positive improvements in the coming weeks as downloads decline and they perhaps learn the errors of their ways.  Having played this before ever playing Clash of Clans, I find Clash to me much more friendlier in QoL and gameplay.  I :heart: the DK franchise too much to give up completely on this yet.

Another part of me hears the first and says "yeah, they'll either improve, or just shut it down due to not being anywhere near The Simpsons Tapped Out, which was EA's #1 revenue game last year."

I haven't spent a dime on it, and I'm havin a blast. Once you get past the tutorial, the begging goes away. The only thing that really bothers me about the game is the range wizards have. There also seems to be a neat bug that lets them squeak halfway into a block, giving them another space of attack. Fucked me up a couple times. Otherwise, it's no worse than Clash of Clans as far as money stuff goes. It's also easier in this one to get gems simply by digging.

I like that you get to pick what minions go in your guild house. That's a nice advantage over Clash of Clans. Also leveling up the guild to get perks is pretty sweet.

Highly recommend trying to get to a lvl 5 heart as soon as you can.  The mines can be upgraded to lvl 8, which brings a great deal more money per hour along with having to check in less often.

Also, don't spend your gems on anything other than expanding your imp crew.  For every imp you get, you double the duration of the 2x speed they work at per slap.  With 4 in my crew, I only have to slap them every 2 hours.

Yeah I still haven't got there yet. Saw one guide that recommended staying at H3 and leveling everything up, but a single ghost will wreck your shit. Shifty fuckers.

New update.  Reinforced walls are no longer invincible.  In exchange, you can build a hell of a lot more of them, and upgrade them.  

You can also haul your guild minions into attack a la Clans.

This update has baroquen my ability to attack on my phone. Tablet works fine, but if I try and attack on my phone I get disconnected bout halfway through the hit. Annoying as hell. New changes are working out pretty cool though.

Joined bc.Fun game this and the Simpson's have trapped me at home this weekend.Highly addictive

The wall changes are nice, but they need to take the next step and nerf Bomb Wall to just kerploding 1x1 squares instead of 3x3 when upgraded.  

Also, the ability to unclaim mines would be nice.

Have a pretty solid mid level dungeon now. I can beat the survival raids with ease and thats a quick 500k stone n gold. Most folks cant hurt me too bad without spending gems which is comical. The loot differance between this and Clash is really apparent. I dont have to spend near so much time to gather the same amount of loot here, whereas in Clash, I dont have cash to keep my builders going. Still like both games, just liking this one more.

Awesome update. Guild wars coming soon, now have league loot bonus which is actually a sizeable amount, (as oppose to Clash's measly offering) and you get gem awards for beating opponents on revenge attacks, as well as a ten gem bonus per day for a full ten win streak. This is almost no longer a pay to win game. The new changes are pretty great.

I just made a new dungeon with only two mines claimed and that's all I'll ever claim, largely because of 3x3 Bomb Wall making it almost impossible to defend all of them.  Having no issue getting enough resources so far.

If yer not in bat country yet, look us up.

I'm in and joined the clan, can't recall my dungeon name right now.  Any tips on building a dungeon that doesn't get instasmashed by every raid?

I'm in it twice. ;)

Coruscant and Chimera

Awesome Thrawn.

Grebo, ghead and look at my setup. Currently I'm only getting nuked by players that are ridiculously high level. The AI can't touch me.

A big thing to remember is that trolls are dumb as fuck. If you can lead them away with cannons or what not, they'll go after traps before they go through doors. You can use this to smash them before they become a problem.

Anti air is your friend. Disarm trap is evil.

Thanks.  Yeah, I was starting to get the feeling that setups that led minions over traps or got them to stay there was the way to go.

Having more fun with this now than Clash.  Last update really did a nice job of improving things.

I'm having an awful time with raids and what minions prioritize though, I don't know if I'm doing it all wrong or what.  I'll for example send in a bunch of skeletons, trolls, necros, warlocks and they will spend 30 seconds killing a treasury ignoring all traps and rooms that are killing them, will ignore the heart that is in the next room over to wander off to some other random room, again while getting killed by other rooms the entire time.  Bleh.

It's about timing and sending the right troops.  You can't send everyone en masse like Clash.  Traps are prioritized by your trolls, and you can help them by using the disable trap keeper spell.

But they will still sit and beat on a treasury while traps in that same room kill them.  So they will get mostly wiped out killing a level 10 room before they even go kill the traps in two seconds.  That's the kind of stuff that keeps screwing me.

Troll AI changed recently. Used to be they would skip treasure rooms to go after trap and damage rooms, now they don't. Don't know what the reasoning was behind the change.

Ah, that explains why I feel like raiding got so much harder.  Seems like a bad change to me, but I plan on redesigning my dungeon to pretty much force minions to sit and beat on rooms while traps kill them.

I'm trying this out, it's not as bad as I had anticipated given the initial gnashing and wailing when it was released. My main gripes are over quality of life stuff, and how this game pales compared to Clash in that regard. The loading times, and the sensitivity of the interface both feel poor. Half the time when I try to move around I end up digging out a rock. Trying to move anything is overly difficult, and the omnipresent icons telling me that I can upgrade rooms and such add unneeded visual clutter. Most annoying though is the difficulty associated with re-planning a base. There is no equivalent of the 'town edit mode' that exists in Clash, and so it becomes a tiresome process whereby you have to dig out every bit of rock, shuffle all your traps into a corner (which is a pain, given the aforementioned sensitivity issues) and then slowly move all your rooms around like one of those move-the-tile games. Then you have to re-fill the dungeon. I don't even have that many rooms yet, I don't know how you do it with more extensive layouts.

Other than the quality of life stuff the game has a good feel, and the spells make the raids more interactive (something Clash could do with). I'll keep playing for now, since it's not a massive time investment, but I still prefer Clash out of the two.

I agree with you on base rebuilding.  I think that's something they'll be addressing soon, now that they've taken care of the higher-priority stuff. 

Absolutely correct on the rebuild stuff. I also find the game loads extremely slow and has some serious energy sucking problems. However, they've done a lot of things better than Clash in my opinion. I feel like in Clash, if you're willing to spend the resources, you can pound bases you normally wouldn't be able to. This one takes quite a bit more strategy to three star a base. I like that your League bonus for a win is actually meaningful, and that you get a second bonus for having a win streak. Much easier to accumulate cash when you want to than Clash.

I'm not sure I agree on the paid power aspects; Clash has no equivalent of the paid boosts you can get in Dungeon Keeper (Reveal all hidden traps, make your minions x% more powerful, etc). Otherwise I agree, I like the reward structure better than Clash, and things like the AI multiple wave mode is a fun minigame in itself.

Ah, I meant in respect to army structure. (All dragons, etc.)

6th imp on sale this week.  8 hours of not having to check in is  :awesome_for_real:

Don't know if I'm doing something wrong or what but I'm getting a little bored with attacking because every attack seems to be -

If I have full mana and Deegg & Dugger - Almost guaranteed win.
If I have one of those - Likely win.
If I have neither - Almost guaranteed loss.

My defenses seem to be similar, if they use a bunch of mana plus an immortal they usually get through, if they don't, they never do.

Is this normal or am I just not attacking correctly?  This means I can only really attack a little less than once an hour if I want a real chance at succeeding.

Right now is a great example, my Dark Library is under construction for three days and I feel like I can't even raid unless my Deegg & Dugger is good to go.

Yeah if your library is building your day sucks.

I don't have DnD. Using Tiny for a break works ok. Swampus with disarm trap works good I hear.

If you can use a mistress, and you aren't, yeah your attacking is going to be tedious.

I'm right there with you man. I said fuck it, opened up all my mines for the extra traps, and created a simple path to the heart, ala Clash of Clans to throw trophies. I attack when I want, I'm almost always on cave in, and nobody seems to take a ton of my loot. Trophies are neat and all, but fuck this shit is ridiculous. I'm hitting dungeons constantly I can barely crack 50 percent on with my standard hit. I have to use mistress and immortal to make any kind of decent gain. Tedious.

Don't forget that if you 50% the dungeon, or less but get the heart you are getting probably 1-4 trophies, but if you get 49% and lose you are losing like 7-12 instead.  :oh_i_see:

The difference in clan chat between this game and clash is like night n day. No chatter at all here.

I think that's mostly because the chat widget's not noticeable. It's buried in the clan menu instead of being pulled out.

This. And lord only knows if/when that might change as DK changes dev houses.

I want to like this more than I do, but just getting into the game is so tedious. I have a brand spanking new HTC One M8 and getting into the game can take over a minute. Sometimes the screen times out waiting for all the myriad loading steps to get through. Whereas Clash of Clans opens up in 10-15 seconds.

Yeah, I get that too, and I get frequent 'server not found' and similar error messages.

I like having a toy dungeon to play around with, but the mechanics just feel inferior to clash, and the gameplay doesn't seem to work as well. In clash I get raided at least once every 12 hours, in this game I don't think I've been raided in over a week. Resources are too easy to acquire, and the costs of upgrades and units are very low. If I do get raided I don't really notice losing anything. Aside from the spells, which are done well, I find the combat strategy far more limited, and the units are not as coherent or balanced as those in clash.

Also, the game lacks some visual polish. Rooms change slightly when upgraded but traps and units don't for example.

I don't really get the traps. They aren't the things doing damage for the most part. It's the rooms, in particular the library. Is there ever a healer unit?

Not that I can see.

Traps work because trolls are stupid. If you put a cannon at the end of a hall past a door, then line the road with spike traps, a boulder and a flame trap, they'll decimate a troll army because they'll walk past the door to go kill the cannon. Spikes hit, boulder rolls, flame lights, if they kill the cannon, then they have to come back over all the shit they just went thru. It's a good way to bait n kill.

So, I've been slowly digging out the hard rock around my dungeon for a bit less than 2 months now. I was kind of excited to see the message about a 50% reduction in digging time. But I was confused when I didn't see any reduction in time. I just chalked that up to something I had to pay for. Now I see today that my last bit of hard rock will take a day to cut through instead of the 11 hours I've gotten used to. Apparently that was something someone forgot to turn off several months ago?

Yeah, that particular free boost ended yesterday. Thankfully I've done over half of all the hard rocks in my dungeon while it was still active.

I've mined everything. They say a content drop is coming...hopefully sooner rather than later.

Yeah, this is mostly why I barely login anymore.  All I can do is raid a few times to get enough stone to maybe get 1 of my 6 imps working on something for a few days.  Just nothing interesting enough to keep checking often.

Update notes: http://forums.dungeonkeeper.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6966

tl;dr
- A lot of room/trap/spell req. got streamlined, adjusted, fixed
- Storage rooms got shunk, and you can only build new storage rooms if you claim the appropriate mines.
- A third currency, Combat Points, obtainable only through PvP, that can only be used to upgrade your Heart and purchase Immortals.

Might be coming out today.  Guild access and perks are offline with a message saying that they aren't coming back until the new version is out.

It's a big update, but I'm not seeing anything particularly interesting in there.

With the switch to needing to raid for these battle points to upgrade your heart, I've actually seen two attacks in the past day. That's some banner high water mark. I've been seeing one every week or maybe every other week.

Nice to have a 16 hour boost. Hope it stays.

The change to mine rooms is kind of interesting from a layout perspective. It used to be you were always close to a potential entrance, generally 3 tiles, and could get easily blow into with bombs. Now, you can bury much more effectively and pick an entrance then build up the path.

Which dungeon is yours? Wanna check your layout.

Halp! It's nothing genius and I think I need to shift the beginning deeper. It'd be pretty easy to blow into the room on the south side of the entrance.