Oh yep I see the longer reply. Yes there was at least a month of reading the subreddit and wiki every day before I got to that level, but for me the learning was fun. Would not recommend spending all that time and energy unless it’s part of the fun. For people that watch streams, I’d expect there’s a good educational one, I don’t watch streams though.

More ways to identify is a good example; there’s several methods of explosion to destroy gear that isn’t +1: bombs, explode rune, dungeon trap. Custom rooms will guarantee one of the potions on the same level is the solution to that room. The number of strength potions per dungeon type is fixed (3?). The ? rune is good once you use that meta-info to increase your odds of a good potion guess. Wands are generally safer to ID, just don’t be on something flammable or water.

Wands are pretty overpowered, and you can recharge em by throwing them into an activated electricity trap, or the energy ring. The way rings become overpowered in their own way as you feed upgrades into them is another aspect of replayability.

I really liked SPD because it felt like I could (eventually) approach 100% win rate, and the bad luck just made things more interesting. In that game, it’s not about what you’ve got so much as when you use it; and careful tile movement. Playing each room like a chess game and not a dungeon crawler was a fun way to play.

Ultima 7 was the first game I could build a house from logs in the pre-existing world, before Ultima Online and Minecraft. I had lots of fun exploring their hand-crafted world. Did my best not to steal from people :)

Oh yeah I forgot about StarSector. Purchasing that game was a bit non-standard. I definitely had a blast playing through the main campaign, then set it aside instead of getting into player mods. It’s a nice community and I hope to revisit whenever the “1.0” release comes out.

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley on itch.io was uh something special too, a hilarious hour of slightly interactive game demo.