POWDER: Time Enough for Love

I like POWDER. A lot. I would even say that it's one of the best roguelikes out there. Not the best, but that's because there is no "best in every aspect" roguelike (and if there was, it would probably be IVAN). But POWDER has most of the things I consider highly enjoyable. (And if you've already heard about POWDER, jump to the next heading.)

Sunfire melts everything nearby into lava...
by Kastrol over at Discord

I absolutely love how deep the interactions can be, how many strange thing it lets you pull off. Dip a potion of smoke into a potion of poison, then throw the concoction to release poisoned smoke. Or dip a sword into a potion of greek fire, creating flaming sword. Zap a door with a wand of invisibility to make them disappear, creating a secret door. Push a boulder onto a creature in a pit to bury it alive. Dig yourself out after an enemy does just that to you, but quickly or you will suffocate.

You can play with lava, water and steam. Some tricks may even border on exploits, but they break the game in a fun way, not stupid, tedious, or completely overpowered way. Before you ask, I use kiting only when strictly necessary (cockatrices and green dragons), because I can't be bothered to dance around every single creature just to get one free hit in. I'm not trying for an optimal gameplay, I'm trying to have fun.

Items are all useful and equipment diverse and interesting, even if armour can be a bit boring. Heavier armour gives higher AC and other stats don't matter. Only one god cares about the noise you make in heavier armour, and stealth is not elaborate enough to really take your armour into account, AFAIK. Some weapon skills are also much harder to use effectively than others. But there are very fun magical weapons and artifacts, and interaction among other items I have already mentioned above. Identification is easy enough that it's fun rather than tedious like in some other games.

Dungeon is quite diverse - classic dungeon, broken rooms, mazes, large rooms and hallways, caves... Add in many hand-made rooms with strategically placed out-of-depth monsters. Make the floors small enough that they are quick to explore and hard to use for easy escapes and infinite resting. Limit the dungeon to 25 floors.

This is actually one of the main reason I really like POWDER - it's short enough to make dying bearable, diverse enough to make every new game interesting, so you don't even mind dying, and yet long enough to let you explore your options and make your character grow. It's also very hard and deadly. Great combination, if you ask me.

And of course there is the god/class system, very unique and interesting. You always have a choice and can change your mind. Nothing forces you into some playstyle or other, and everything is available to you, should you need it or want to try it out. You can change from a barbarian to a mage with some effort, and sometimes you will have to because of good random drops or bad luck.

Speaking of mages, spells in POWDER are simply the best. I think Mr. Lair somewhere mentioned that you should only add a new spell to a game if you will need a substantial amount of new code to do so. Spells in POWDER are true to this - each is different, interesting and useful. Probably only Mage Guild, a roguelike specifically oriented on playing a mage, can compare in the selection of cool spells. Even for the most basic spells, POWDER gives you Fireball which explodes on hit, Frost Bolt which can create ice bridges, Lightning Bolt which ricochets from walls and Poison Bolt which does no damage at first, but allows you to stack deadly damage over time. Later spells in POWDER are stupendously powerful, and can even allow you to reshape large parts of the dungeon.

Given that it's available for about half a bajillion platforms (including Android and iOS), I always return for another game when I have a little time and my phone.

I sadly have no screenshots from my run,
so here are some by the courtesy of Google.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

I've won POWDER a couple of times, the very first time as a pure barbarian. I like to call it a berserk challenge, even though it's not much of a challenge. I would recommend this to anyone trying to learn the game - go with H'ruth and don't look back. Do not cast spells, get speed boots if possible, and you'll be all right. Once you have enough of the mindless slaughter, you can try other gods, spellcasting and other strategies.

But I also tried going for other pure classes. Warlord (pure fighter) is nearly as easy as berserk. Maybe even easier, as you have one spell slot for something like Teleport. Pure rogue (I'm not sure what to call it, because Quizar offers a bit of a thief, a ranger and a swashbuckler) is a great mix of might and magic. Both death knight (pure necromancer) and priest (pure cleric) are very powerful if you can somehow deal with their strict requirements in the early game. Chaos knight (pure cultist of Xom) is just a rollercoaster of luck, but can be the strongest build in the game. I have yet to try wanderer (pure adventurer, aka atheist, aka why-would-you?), but they should be possible, even if weak because of the slow growth of HP and MP combined with no divine boons.

But only yesterday I had a nearly successful archmage run (pure wizard). That is a challenge, because Belweir does not give you any HP - you start with 15 and that's it, unless you manage to raise it by other means. Not that easy to survive past very early game, especially if you get hit by some spell.

I started that run with a tome of fire and earth, basically giving me access to some of the best spells I could ask for - Sticky Flames for damage while I run from the monsters I can't take a hit from, Sunfire to nuke everything and everyone (once I have the necessary MP), Dig to circumvent impossible monsters and create shortcuts, Entomb to be safe while resting for MP.

Already a good start, it turned into an awesome start once I found an utility staff on floor 2. This gives you the must-have spells for surviving a slow, careful run. Especially Possess is invaluable, allowing you to dominate any monster and make it fight for you or kill itself while you're (relatively) safe. It also gives you Teleport (get out of jail free), Preserve (permanent food) and Stone to Flesh (more food, plus you can survive cockatrices and kill golems).

I did quite a bit of kiting and resting to have enough MP for damage, teleports and Entomb, but I was surviving. That was a nice change given my previous attempts at pure wizard. Unfortunately, casting that many spells really pisses off H'ruth and eventually, he started to let it show. At floor 5, I was hit with his poison punishment. With 15 HP and no potion or spell to cure it, I ran in a mad hope to find something that could save me, or at least praying (not literally, because praying will not help in POWDER) for a divine intervention. Otherwise, I was dead.

No, the tileset is not childish, it's adorable!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Spells

I entered a room I wasn't in before. It was one of the pre-made rooms, with a unique lich and two of his buddies trapped behind some boulders. Promptly, one of the liches hit me with Poison Bolt. Now I had hardly any health left and was Deadly Poisoned, so I had a single turn remaining. Nothing better to do, I cast Possess on the unique lich - and he failed his saving throw! Suddenly I was in the body of a unique lich named Tr'lrd'dl, with about 100 HP and 160 MP - better than my previous 15 HP, right? I also had the two new pet liches, as the buddies of Tr'lrd'dl remained tamed after me stealing his body.

I was in a better shape then before, but not safe yet. I was living on a borrowed time as my unconscious body was probably already dead from the poison. When the possession expires, you normally get returned to your original body, but I had no body to return to...

So I tried something called Kender's Body Hop. I teleported to my dead old body, took the utility staff, thus giving my lich body access to Possess spell, then possessed one of my buddy liches. Body hopping capitalises on the way the game tracks how long before it should return you to your body - I was in a different body when it tried to take me back to my old corpse, so nothing happened and when the second possession expired, I permanently returned into the body of Tr'lrd'dl.

This, of course, was an incredible power-up. From 15 to 100 HP, plus increased mana, plus all lich abilities and spells, plus I was still worshipping Belweir and thus technically still on an archmage run. The game became a bit of a magical power trip as I started to crush the dungeon and its denizens.

 

Braindead!

With the kind help of a wand of polymorph, I was able to access most of the various spellbooks and learn all the useful spells. Thankfully I had a ring of fire resistance, so the vulnerability to fire that normally threatens a lich was not such a problem to me. The silver circlet was a helm of telepathy in this game, much inferior to a helm of warning if you ask me, and thus not a loss. I even found an amulet of unchanging soon after, protecting me from the pesky cockatrices.

I descended deeper, amassed artifacts (notably a short sword that granted me reflection, which I dual wielded for the rest of the game with my staff), blew stuff apart with Sunfire and Lightning Bolts, and made Belweir happy. I got all the way down to the Cretan minotaur, the first boss, killing him with a single casting of Chain Lightning. Good times.

Taking the y-rune guarded by the minotaur with me, I went to the caves. Here, the large open floors with lots of enemies actually forced me to play slower and safer. While I still had no real trouble defeating them, iron golems, kobold assassins or large turtloids are powerful enough to make even an archmage like I was take a pause. Except when you drown them all in lava, of course.

The most worrisome monsters proved to be soul suckers (Curse them!). Imagine an exposed brain, floating towards you through the gloomy cavern, twitching its loose spinal cord impatiently. Then a strange lightness hits you in the chest and you vomit up a tiny spark of light trapped in a stream of oily black smoke. That was the souls sucker casting Soul Suck on you, stealing a sliver of your soul and all your skills and spells with it. You loose all your powers (temporarily, thank Belweir), and end up amnesiac and confused, while the soul sucker now has access to the whole breadth of your abilities. Expect to be pelted with your most powerful spells immediately afterwards.

Well, I was prepared this time with a secret trick up my sleeves - I learned Soul Suck too! I just had to be quick enough and steal their memories immediately when they entered my line of sight, and them it was a jolly old brainslaughter as the poor soul sucker milled about, confused and incapable of doing anything at all.

Tridudes!

 

How to Lose Friends & Alienate Self

Anyway, I arrived on the dungeon level 20, where something special awaits. Remember that y-rune I picked up from the cold, dead hands of the minotaur? There is an extradimensional portal on floor 20 that lets you through when you have this rune. And through I went, to a strange, otherworldly, even alien place. Specifically, this portal leads to a spaceships of the tridudes, bizarre three-armed alien creatures somehow tied to the mad god Xom (or rather ><0|\/|, as it calls itself). This special, somewhat dangerous level holds the second of three bosses in POWDER, the golden tridude.

Massacring through its underlings, I was thinking about the best way of how to tackle it. The golden tridude is immune to most elements and has reflection, so magical assault is difficult. It has relatively good armour class and very strong attacks, so only a true warrior should challenge it in melee. But as I neared its lair (or I guess the command bridge of the spaceship), I realized I still have the spell that saved my skin on the very start of this game. I waltzed to the room and cast Possess on the golden tridude.

It resisted, which was a bit anticlimatic, but by then I had enough mana to cast again and again. After several attempts, I was controlling the boss, a massive 2x2 creature, and could do whatever I wished to! So I killed all the other tridudes in the room to protect my dormant body, dropped all the artifacts and other gear the golden tridude carried, forgot all of its spells so that it could not spew acid at me, and then got the brightest idea ever. It was fun walking around in a huge body, and I could reach the portal...

I released my possession to drop the y-rune on the ground, then possessed the golden tridude again. I grabbed the rune in my big stolen body, trod to the portal and went through. Experiment successful, you can use stairs and portals in a possessed 2x2 body! There were some monsters left in the cave so I had fun hitting many of them at once thanks to my massive body, until a thought struck me - the possession will time out sooner or later. And my body lies in the spaceship, on the other side of the portal. And you can only go through the portal when you carry the y-rune. The rune that my possessed golden tridude carries. I dashed back to the portal, because I only needed to get the golden tridude back to the spaceship, where I could possess it again or kill it to get the y-rune back. The possession timed out when I was two squares away from the portal...

And so I was returned to my body in the spaceship, the portal permanently impassable. There was nothing I could do, no way to fix my folly.

The Golden Tridude by kennydalman

 

The Forever Man

I killed every last tridude on the ship, then revived some as zombies and skeletons to keep me company. I even managed to hit one purple tridude with Ghastify and carried enough spare magic items and artifacts to make it completely invulnerable. And of course, I was still a lich, so inediate and immortal. I had my own spaceship, a demigod lieutenant and an army of the dead, a room full of various spoils of my conquest, and a bleak eternity of soaring among the stars, forsaken and forgotten.

So that is the story of Tr'lrd'dl, the Lich Among Stars. May he spread the gospel of Belweir to whatever strange worlds his spaceship will drift to in the eons to come.

Edit: I have fanart!
 

by Kastrol / kennydalman
(click for full resolution)