Professor Tio
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 100
Registered: 01-30-2019
IP: Logged

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I've made some headway! I'm thinking to redo tower G now before starting on attempts at Tutorial 2's Nexus Stage.

____________________________
Hold stuff I guess!
I had an avatar at some point but then the thing stopped cooperating, ah well-

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
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File: Clear screen.jpg (228.3 KB)
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Since I'm lazy, and you guys knows stuff:

What do I do when I hit the first clear screen where I don't seem to be able to progress further?

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

You're done with that tower. Either undo a bunch and try to get a better score, or return to the main menu (one of the buttons in the bottom-right). Towers don't have an "exit" that kicks you out. You just quit the tower manually.

Looks like you earned a bronze medal and 1 sunstone, so you'll see those show up on the main menu screen, and they will be available in all future runs of any tower.

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

Is there any disadvantage to stepping on a clear space? That is: can I step on the same clear space later on, and it counts the highest score?

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
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No disadvantage. Step on it as much as you like.

But note that deeper clear spaces have a higher stat multiplier.

Basically scores work as follows:

* 1 point per HP
* Each Atk and Def is worth points equal to your level, and then multiplied by 1, 5 or 10, based on the clear square.
* Keys are not worth anything.

---

[Last edited by kieranmillar at 09-20-2020 07:33 AM]

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

kieranmillar wrote:
No disadvantage. Step on it as much as you like.

But note that deeper clear spaces have a higher stat multiplier.

Basically scores work as follows:

* 1 point per HP
* Each Atk and Def is worth points equal to your level, and then multiplied by 1, 5 or 10, based on the clear square.
* Keys are not worth anything.

Thanks!

I also really appreciate your map. I felt as if I was overwhelmed already on the second tower. Turns out I was in pretty decent shape, after all .

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Blondbeard wrote:
I felt as if I was overwhelmed already on the second tower. Turns out I was in pretty decent shape, after all .

I feel off-balance in this way most of the time I'm playing any new area or floors. That is, maybe by design, it's really hard to tell how well I'm doing until I hit a score point, and usually not even then also.

I finished one tower, or rather reached the first or second score point, with just 572 HP. IIRC, I was supposed to get, like, one million points in order to get a medal. I managed to get a silver even after that. Pushing on is sometimes the right choice. I guess you never know...

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 09-22-2020 12:45 AM]

Blondbeard
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1486
Registered: 03-31-2005
IP: Logged

mrimer wrote:

Blondbeard wrote:
I felt as if I was overwhelmed already on the second tower. Turns out I was in pretty decent shape, after all .

I feel off-balance in this way most of the time I'm playing any new area or floors. That is, maybe by design, it's really hard to tell how well I'm doing until I hit a score point, and usually not even then also.

I finished one tower, or rather reached the first or second score point, with just 572 HP. IIRC, I was supposed to get, like, one million points in order to get a medal. I managed to get a silver even after that. Pushing on is sometimes the right choice. I guess you never know...

Definitly! I am a true beliver in free information, and am using the map of kiearanmillar. Even then it is very hard to know how I'm doing. I just completed Tactical Tower D (bronse medal, pure nexus), and for the longest time it felt like: I will absolutely NOT be able to even clear the level!

I really like the clenliness of TLP (as you may know). Tactical Nexus in relation to TLP is like hoard-management rooms in relation to lynchpin rooms for regular DROD. It's just a massive hoard, and you have to kind of go by instinct a lot.

There's too much information to parse in a totally calculated way.

This, to me, paradoxically feels like both a good and a bad thing. I'm confused (both by the game and by how I feel about it). I rather like feeling confused (in safe ways) from time to time.

Zingarina
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 16
Registered: 04-07-2019
IP: Logged

Hi everyone!

Seeing how excited you all are with Tactical Nexus, I tried playing the demo and completed the first tower. Knowing that I haven't played any game of this kind before, I'm having kind of a hard time to understand where the optimization/replayability comes from, because from what I felt, it's more of a trial and error game than anything else (I mean, if you take a decision of the 2nd floor of the dungeon, like killing an enemy or using a upgrade the wrong way, you'll only know about that 5 floors later, which means you couldn't have predicted this).

What am I missing here? Should I approach the game in a different way?

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Magic Tower games like Tactical Nexus and DROD RPG are analysis games. Towers have a mixture of short and long term decisions with varying levels of impact. The main gameplay loop of the game is to give things an initial try and then work out how to do things better. You make changes to the big long term decisions, then deal with the short term consequences of those changes on the fly, such as not spending a key ealry on some stats to try and save it for a bigger stat cache later, which will change how to manage and prioritise fighting monsters in the short term because for a while you will have lower stats.

You can call that "trial and error" if you want to, but to me trial and error implies trying things with no underlying reason behind it, that the consequences of the choices are totally unpredictable and conclusions are unreasonable to predict. Though there's no denying that some level of experimentation is required.

For example, maybe you got to the end of the first tower and thought to yourself "taking keys on level up later on caused me to forgo way more stats than taking them early, what if I worked out how many key level ups of each type I need, then take all those level ups first" or maybe "the penultimate floor had 2 life crowns behind 4 blue doors, that's a big boost, what if I tried to get enough blue keys to take that while rushing for it, and also leave behind the really big HP potions like Life Potions, Heavenly Potions and Drops of Dream Ocean until after I got these two crowns"?

Or... maybe the thought of that holds no appeal to you at all, in which case, well, maybe this isn't your cup of tea. Note that Tactical Nexus is a particularly hardcore version of a Magic Tower game and the towers can get very complicated and really really long, but on the other hand, its lack of leaderboards due to the varied starting setups combined with score goals with very big gaps between them means you don't have to worry about the small decisions anywhere nearly as much and can instead focus on figuring out what decisions are a big deal.

---

[Last edited by kieranmillar at 09-27-2020 11:06 PM]

Zingarina
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 16
Registered: 04-07-2019
IP: Logged

Thanks a lot for the reply!

Maybe I wasn't just getting this whole experimentation side of things. Maybe I'll try completing the tower again using pen and paper to be clear about what I can get better and see if I enjoy the game more.

Maybe it's just that I have to get used to this kind of optimization. I play quite a bit of Zachtronics games and I'm used to their kind of optimization, where you try something different and instantly get the feedback about how good that approach was.

Maybe with Tactical Nexus and Drod RPG, I just have to understand that one approach that I try may or may not be right, but I'll just have to wait longer to figure that out.

Zingarina
Level: Goblin
Rank Points: 16
Registered: 04-07-2019
IP: Logged

Oh, another thing that ocurred to me, is that since you mentioned that Tactical Nexus is a hardcore version of the Magic Tower game, would you recommend me to start in the genre with Drod RPG?

Is it an easier version compared to Tactical Nexus?

greenscience
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 148
Registered: 02-27-2015
IP: Logged

DROD RPG generally is easier for getting used to playing and optimizing Magic Tower games. The linear score formula and how resources typically remain at the same value throughout a hold makes it more straightforward to assess your progress. Plus how most holds share a common pool of monsters and the lower stats overall let you build intuition on what stats you want when fighting monsters.

The thread Beginner holds for DROD RPG has suggestions for which holds to start with or you can just sort the download page by number of rooms while watching out for difficulty rating. These are fast to complete and replay for optimization. Some of the smallest holds like Growing, One Way, and Washed Ashore have really weird gimmicks not seen in the typical hold so you could delay them.

For an experience closer to Tactical Nexus you could take a look at the levels 2018 Compilation's Exponentiate or 2016 Compilation's Perfect Cherry Blossom. These have mechanics that increase the multiplier so they help get a sense for timing multiplier changes with item pickups. Although the latter level is pretty hard.

Professor Tio
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 100
Registered: 01-30-2019
IP: Logged

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Randomly had the game break for the first time yesterday while I was working on writing out a memo guide for Life Tactical Lord (one of the Ch. 3 DLC towers) during my initial runs through the tower. I had highlighted a portion of one of my notes and hit backspace to delete it... which resulted in an "Error 7" crash. I actually went and asked on the Discussions page for the game if anyone else had such an issue, and I actually got a response back right from one of the developers this morning saying that they were working on fixing the issue! It still kinda begs the question of how do you mess up a text editor such that it can crash just from conventional use (albeit this was the first time it's happened so far), but at least they're working on it.

Either way, I've finally attained my 2nd Plat Medal!

____________________________
Hold stuff I guess!
I had an avatar at some point but then the thing stopped cooperating, ah well-

greenscience
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 148
Registered: 02-27-2015
IP: Logged

Text editors can be surprisingly complex if you want to properly support different encodings. In this case I think the problem is that the developers' tools are heavily biased towards supporting Japanese. Their programming language, Hot Soup Processor (HSP), seems to be predominantly developed and used by Japan.

Looking at some sample code it looks like there is builtin support for building GUIs. When using the memo others had noticed that the bottom of many letter seem cut off like line spacing had been calculated assuming squarish glyphs like Kanji rather than taller glyphs in Latin languages. When typing symbols on number keys what shows up corresponds to Japanese keyboards rather than my Latin keyboard. It is likely that the builtin GUI is configured to assume Japanese keyboard input by default among other things. Given the relatively niche use of HSP the developers may have trouble figuring out ways to configure the builtin GUI for other languages, find libraries for doing so, or even have to configure and wrap native Windows components themselves for the functionality.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Professor Tio wrote:
Either way, I've finally attained my 2nd Plat Medal!

Congratulations!

I'm having trouble getting from gold to platinum on the first Tutorial. I need another 204k score. Can you provide some hints?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

greenscience
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 148
Registered: 02-27-2015
IP: Logged

Reaching platinum on the first Tutorial is just a matter of spending medals on some high value items in the Nexus. For example taking the 8 Life Potions on Nexus floor 3 adds around 50,000 score at the end.

Professor Tio
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 100
Registered: 01-30-2019
IP: Logged

On my run, I had grabbed both the Life Crown and Golden Feather on N2F, then used my remaining medals for stat boosts before the initial Junior Fighter. I do see the use of holding your medals for later trades, so I guess what you wanna do with any leftovers is up to you.

____________________________
Hold stuff I guess!
I had an avatar at some point but then the thing stopped cooperating, ah well-

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thank you for the hints! I'll try that out, but I doubt I can get that much more from items, because I can get just over 1.2M on pure nexus, and 1.35M with medals. I doubt I can get another 200K without doing something fundamentally different. Likely, I have something amiss in my build or my routing. What I'm doing is Any other pointers?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 10-28-2020 05:35 PM]

blorx1
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 920
Registered: 07-18-2009
IP: Logged

By far the most important piece of advice in tutorial 1 that you might be missing is to

If you're doing that and you still don't have plat, it's a lot easier with more sunstones since the extra stats really help with pushing things earlier.


____________________________
If you need to think outside of the box, then you didn't build a good enough box.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thanks, that probably is what I'm doing out of order. Now that you mention it, since the hold game is so short, the additional score provided by picking those up later surely vastly outweighs the benefit from their atk/def stat boosts. Looking forward to trying this again!

Edit: well...that strategy got me 99% of the way to platinum. Bummer. I ran all the way to the boss as a pure nexus run, and that was likely a mistake (though I picked up a lot of 340% HP at the end).

Edit: Picking up the crown in the nexus was what I needed. I restored to an endgame save and obtained it just before defeating the boss and picking up 1M+ HP, and that provided another ~70K net HP. Yay! Acquiring it right at the beginning of the run would have yielded even better results, but not enough to matter to achieve anything further in my case.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 10-29-2020 04:27 PM]

Zmann
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 241
Registered: 04-21-2003
IP: Logged

Glad to see this found an audience here -- thought y'all would appreciate it.

For me it sits in a place sort of like Factorio, where it would literally eat all my time if I let it, so I had to stop playing for my mental health

Part of what makes it compelling for me is that it is the kind of game I would never try to design. I don't even know how they reason about their level design. Feels like I'd need a math major or something.

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[Last edited by Zmann at 02-13-2021 08:16 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Zmann wrote:
it would literally eat all my time if I let it, so I had to stop playing for my mental health

Funny thing -- I reached this point too.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

File: tn 100 hours.jpg (150.6 KB)
Downloaded 805 times.
License: Public Domain

I don't really play Tactical Nexus anymore and haven't for a while, for me the towers quickly became a little too long and complicated for me to be comfortable with a the game ended up feeling like a time sink.

However yesterday they released a speed-designed tower and added it to the bottom of the tower list. Only 3 rooms, so I gave it a go. It's fun, short, not complicated, good stuff.

When I reached the 50 hr mark, I posted my progress. This small tower put me over the 100hr mark, so I thought I'd post my progress again. Worth noting I followed a guide for Hitofude dojo because it's such a horrible level and I wanted to avoid ever playing it again.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

It's interesting to me to see your progress and thoughts on some of the levels. I've had basically the same experience as you and it seems we look at things the same. You're a bit ahead of me at this point in sunstones, and I haven't been playing lately (since 2020, iirc).

It does feel like this game is tending toward a big, fractal time sink. At this point, it seems I'm playing the nexus and the metagame as much as playing the game, if that makes sense, and it breaks my brain. Towers of Hanoi comes to mind for some reason.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

File: tn 150 hours.jpg (187 KB)
Downloaded 681 times.
License: Public Domain

This game sunk its claws into me again. So I've already hit another 50 hours. There's been a number of extra updates, two more bonus towers for more sunstones, this cool summary screen that makes it easier to show your progress, and a really really big improvement: you can now browse through floors of a tower you've previously visited on a prior run with Pg Up and Pg Down, so no more having to consult the images on my maps site and type your stats to see what's on other floors and how strong the monsters are. This makes the game much better to play.

Here's my screenshot for showing off, not that anyone really cares, I have 3 diamonds now.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

I care. Wow! Impressive!

These game changes sound nice. Just what was needed. It tempts me to play again.

I have a line in the sand for myself that I'll be actively completing publication of the pending DROD releases before playing any more TN. Maybe that will be a motivator - win/win!

Edit: that's not quite true. I'm not unmotivated; I am time-starved. Hoping life provides a breather soon.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 07-26-2021 09:54 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Kieran, I'm trying to decipher the information that is showing up on your summary screen you posted above.

Does the "0/3", "1/4", "5/5" that shows up to the right of the sunstones indicate how many sunstones you've acquired in that area for medal and pure runs, respectively?

That is, the first/left number indicates how many "bonus" sunstones you've acquired, beyond any medal rankings, for really high scores for non-pure runs?

And the second number is how many sunstones you've acquired in the area for pure runs, for both medal rankings and also the "bonus" sunstones?

From your image, it looks like you can gain additional, distinct "bonus high-score sunstones", both on pure and non-pure runs, correct? That is, if there's a sunstone for every +100000 score, then it's possible to acquire it for every 100000 points scored, twice, for each of the pure and non-pure runs?

(I didn't realize it works that way, but I guess it makes sense, in hindsight. More opportunity to sink time into more runs.)

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 07-26-2021 10:05 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Yes, first number is medal (impure) runs, second number is pure runs.

The three bonus towers at the end only have an overscore bonus. This means you can't earn any medals, so impure runs also start earning sunstones at each score threshold.

The thing with pure runs is that if they beat your impure highscore, it counts for both your pure and impure highscore. So with these bonus towers if you do pure runs, you essentially double-up on sunstones, as reaching an overscore threshold ends up counting as both pure and impure, so you get a sunstone for each.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thanks! Makes sense now.

So, I tried out the new levels (I have access to Ruin, Mystery, and 24min) and completed them, each generally in 1-2 hours (not 24 minutes...). These have a lot going on, but I like the more focused puzzles, plus they don't require running around back and forth like crazy across multiple floors to pick up things here and there.

I find I enjoy the more bite-sized dungeons compared to the huge, sprawling ones that take hours and hours. Still, lots of content to look forward to, if the level designs are of good quality.

I ran through Ruin and Mystery twice after understanding more of what's going on and improved my score. I haven't reached your scores on any of them: I'm at ~4.5 sunstones on Ruin, 1.4 on Mystery, and 1.9 on 24min. I predominantly leveled up ATK, except where it made sense to grab HP at the end of 24min.

I feel I'm missing a hidden trick in each area. Still, it's nice to have another 12 sunstones (I'm at 38 now).

So, where to go next... I crashed and burned on Tactical Pop Lord, and besides completing tutorial 4, I'm intimidated to take on anything beyond Tutorial 3. Seeing all the 20-40+ difficulty ratings on size 10-25 dungeons feels supremely scary.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 07-29-2021 04:55 PM]