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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this what this is though? There are certain builds where if you follow them to a T, then the game is "easy" and you win almost always. If you just experiment then yeah you can win by some crazy stroke of luck, but most likely you will just have a bad time.

I had the same experience in Caves of Qud(which is great btw) - there are some builds that really really really work, and others which are unwinnable.

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No not really. Very few builds will let you win the game easily. Situational awareness is required. Relatively few enemies in the game are just melee brutes. Most of them occupy some niche that requires you to think. They can confuse your character, or lock all the doors, or summon, or irresistibly cut your health in half, etc. An exceptionally fortunate character, say, a kung fu octopode transmutated into statue form and wearing 8 magical rings of power can probably karate chop their way through 99.9% of the game without much of a worry, but may still lose in a 1:1 slug fest with certain lords of hell.

There are easier builds and there are harder builds, but if you aren't good, you will lose. Case in point, the bug described here effectively doubled damage output and win rates were still pretty low.

Although it's worth noting that there are different degrees of "winning the game". Only three runes are required to win, but maximizing your score and prestige will require you to get all fifteen runes. If you're just going for a three-rune victory, then there are more-or-less "safe" builds. For example, a Minotaur of any melee class, or a Berserker of any species that isn't completely inept at melee can reliably win a three-rune (not a guaranteed victory obviously, you still need to know what you're doing, and most importantly when to run away), although these characters are going to have a very hard time in the extended endgame without some sort of pivot.

There’s a great YouTuber named Ultraviolent4 who plays lots of “unwinnable” or maybe just really odd combinations, and watching his games really improved my own.

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