I haven't played Crypt of the Necrodancer in years. The Amplified DLC came out in 2017, and I definintely stopped playing before that.
Necrodancer holds a special place in my heart. When I was interviewing for my first job, I stayed at a nearby hotel, with nothing but a laptop to keep me entertained. From my immense Steam and GoG backlog, I wanted a potato-friendly roguelike that could be played in small bursts, and thus Necrodancer was chosen.
This game is good. Very easy concept, extremely hard to master. Move every turn in sync with the beat, collect gold 'n loot, and don't die from the hilariously bad music puns.
You can see how much it sucked me in from the timeline of unlocked achievements.
Going from finishing Zone 1 only to finishing Zone 4 took 10 days. Beating All Zones mode with Cadence took almost 3 weeks. More characters unlocked after that, and I started playing Melody, Bard, and Monk. I haven't beaten All Zones on Monk yet, and that will be my next goal. I think I played for a bit in 2017, and then got sucked into other games like Path of Exile.
I even bought the cute af limited edition Freddie Merchantry plush!
I reinstalled it this month after my sister started playing it and gave me that bit of nostalgia. And wow did my skill rust hard, as demonstrated by my many stupid stupid deaths in Zone 1 from poor positioning. I blame Linux for this, really. For some reason, numpad mappings can't be detected on Linux, so I had to play using arrow keys. That wouldn't've been a problem, except my down key's + insert that fits into the keyboard slot got damaged and half of it is ripped off. Accidentally pulling it out of the socket in the middle of hectic down key spam happened constantly, leading to many unfortunate rips. (Ok, maybe some of it was also skill issue.) I spent hours dying tragic deaths on Linux.
Then I switched back to Windows for a day, played for a few hours with my usual numpad control scheme, and got an All Zones run and the Daily Challenge consecutively. Big feelsgoodman pog moment.
I'll probably get the DLC and play a bit before uninstalling. Then I'll get the urge to replay it in a few months and come back to it.
Overall, my learnings for successful All Zones runs:
- Always finish zone 1 level 1 asap preferably with trapdoor. Checking shop is almost always pointless because gold income is too low to buy anything good. The trapdoor boss gauntlet is also guaranteed to be the lowest tier bosses since it's the first level, so it's super efficient.
- Gold weapons are really good in zone 1 and 2 for both weapon passive and gold generation. By zone 3 and 4, better weapons and gear are easily afforded.
- Explorer boots MVP in zones 3 and 4.
- Always aim for a lucky charm by end of zone 1 by killing boss while keeping 3x beat multiplier. It's extremely easy to spawn and failing the event is near impossible after getting clapped by the leprechaun a few times.
- Standing still and losing the beat multiplier to get better monster positioning is perfectly fine.
- Spells are meant to be used, always use when the opportunity comes up.
- Learn to play Bolt and other 2x speed characters with both hands on movement keys like Spootybiscuit. no carpal tunnel or rsi pls thx
This post has to end with Freddie Merchantry's most famous accompaniment to DannyB's music, please enjoy: