Dragonsweeper
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Is there a ranking yet of the fastest speedrun (while only trying to conquer the dragon)? My sons best so far...Aaauuugh!! I was on track to a 300+ point victory, then got screwed over by the orb scroll. I had already found and marked the mimic with "11" so I could avoid it, but when I used the orb scroll it revealed the mimic's square as a chest and erased my marker. I clicked on the chest without checking and ended my run. So frustrating! I feel like the game shouldn't preserve your marker if you placed it on a treasure chest square, pretty unfair way to end the game.
It is possible, and relatively frequently tackled. You have to scroll down a little to find it but we even mathed the theoretical highest score possible while also doing a three-stamp run. It's 325, but you need to not use a single health scroll until 9 hearts, and corner the gnome BEFORE you reach 10 hearts as well as all the chests. It is very difficult, but with some luck, possible. JUST doing a three stamp run at all, though, is still hard but doable, especially if you can luck into finding Rat King early.
Level XPBank XPGain Extra XP2Lvl
1 0 +5HP -4
2 1 +5HP -5
3 1 +6HP -7
4 0 +6HP +5chest -9
5 2 +7HP -9
6 0 +7HP +5chest -10
7 2 +8HP +5chest -12
8 3 +8HP +9gnome -12
9 8 +9HP -12
10 5 +9HP +9HP -15
11 8 +10HP +27mine -18
12 27 +10HP -21
13 16 +11HP -21
14 6 +11HP +11HP -25
15 3 +12HP +12HP -25
16 2 +12HP +12HP -25
17 1 +13HP +13HP -25
18 2 +13HP +13HP -25
19 3 +14HP +14HP -25
20 6 +14HP -20(-25 to level up)
Total 325
This is an example of a 325 Three Stamp Run giving as much room as possible for the chests/gnome. You see its still REALLY tight.
Got a perfect clear with no orbs used. I suspect it’s 80% early dumb luck, 10% early rat king and 10% strategy. Plus the rat king revealed the eventual location of the bomb scroll as the other corners had rats in them. I think detonating all the bombs as soon as you get to 10 hearts is an important step to a perfect clear.
One strategic insight is that it’s best to start with the squares around the dragon, as they’re more constrained than everywhere else. One has to have the egg, and the squares that are directly North, South, East or West of it can’t contain 7s. Essentially that means if you click all the squares around the dragon and clear them, you’ve probably got a good layout for this challenge.
Early on you’ve got to expand in whatever direction you have good information for, and I suspect that if this goes in the opposite direction to the King Rat area then it might be best to restart. The rat reveal is essential for two reasons: 1. The rats give you much more flexibility in using up your hearts, 2. The information you get from killing them is even more useful in this run where you’re very constrained by not using orbs.
Finally got board clear with 13 hearts remaining, which I think is the best possible run for board clear. To do this, you need to all the free XP before using any heart scrolls (egg+chests+defused mines+gnome). You use the first scroll at 11 health.
Need good RNG in regards to getting egg/treasure chest and quickly locating slime wizard/rat king. Basically need to have as much board info as possible ASAP to remove empty squares in order to get the gnome (this also requires careful analysis of squares).
Took me about 30-40 attempts, restarting when initial RNG didn't look promising. Had about 5 serious runs before finally getting it, having to blind guess between mine or gnome (25-50% success chance) and failing until the last attempt where because of good enough RNG, didn't have to make any blind guesses.
Probably took around 4 hrs total, went slowly to avoid any mistakes and was clenching whenever I had to make completely random guesses. Fun challenge, though can't imagine trying to speedrun it, would be so stressful.
Well yes, I'm aware that map changes and that there are patterns. One of those patterns is gargoyles looking at each other, it was the case in literally every game I played so far except this one case I posted. I posted it so the developer can see for himself what happened: gargoyle was looking at a skeleton rather than at another gargoyle. Hopefully that will give him a better of what happened when his game generated this map and fix it.
For the Clear Board stamp, there is no direct game rule requirement for to get all the XP before using a single health scroll.
In the current v1.1.18 version of the game, there will always be three +5XP treasure chests in the game.
The theoretical latest that one would have to use a health scroll is when they run out of HP with 11 heart containers. This playthrough would lead to 13 HP left at the end with a max clear. I've never got that much, my record is 10 HP left at the end. So the game is quite generous with extra health for the Clear Board achievement.
The gnome +9XP is very late game, getting that before having to use a health scroll would require tremendous luck. I typically get the gnome XP about the time I have used one or two health scrolls.
Typically I get the egg and one, or if lucky, two +5 XP chests before having to use a health scroll, and do so at about 8 health containers.
The mine king kill is generally easy to get immediately upon reaching lv10, to maximize the health gain there.
Another but subtle change in recent versions (current is the same 1.1.18) gives you way more hearts to play with as rexact points out. Took me a while to realize having been conditioned from earlier versions. Some spoiler space for hints...
When does the game end? ...
No really, how many clicks until the game ends...
Killing the dragon is not the last action you take.
Here's my walkthrough (game v1.1.18), with which max clears are easy. Intense spoiler heavy (probably will only want to read after completing everything yourself):
- What I love about this game is that it is like a mini-version in the spirit of FTL and Into the Breach."The game is to learn the game." So below is what I have learned about it. With the walkthrough below, the joy of discovering the game might be taken away (at least if I had read this before playing, I would feel having lost something), so read at your own peril.
- Overall, fantastic game! I wish for a harder New Game+ mode with new monsters and patterns that one could attempt after completing a regular board, where one would really have to pause to make only the most calculated moves.
- You've probably learned all the monsters RPG patterns, many comments about those already. Knowing about the monsters is not really needed to get a max clear (but of course makes the game much easier). I did my first max score before picking up on that the board was not random.
- From the start, easy way to get past the first "missing XP to level up" hill is to explore immediately towards the egg. It is semi-easily locatable free +3xp, and helps avoid using a heart scroll at early game.
- Whenever board permits, speculate the play direction towards where the wizard's lair could lie. Since it is kind of big with its 2x3 cell pattern and always on the edge, its location is quite constrained. After finding the edge/corner, sniping the wizard is super beneficial for uncovering information, since it reveals the 2x3 cell and P5 enemies. Makes ruling out rat king easier as well.
- Plan so you never need to bash the walls (+1/3 xp per heart only) until at the end of the game when whole board is cleared. It won't be the end of the world if this happens, but it can't happen more than a few times to get a max clear.
- Do not kill an enemy if it does not provide new board information (unless you absolutely have to in order to avoid wasting hearts before leveling, or to avoid denomination problems, see below).
- Prefer to open board squares that cost least lives first. The game is all about paying hearts to buy board information, so you of course want to buy as cheap as possible. (there are tradeoffs of course which makes the game interesting, see below)
- The very moment you reach lv10, you should kill the mine king for the boost to XP. (as corollary, the game objective is to identify where mine king is before lv10 is reached) . If you have 10 hearts and use a heart scroll, while mine king is still alive, the play was suboptimal.
- If you don't know which corner the mine king is when you reach lv10, then if you want to live on the edge, you might calculate how many >P10 unidentified mines + mimic chest remain that could live in the corners, vs how many unknown squares exist, and if the odds are exceedingly in your favor, then just take a calculated guess and pick a random corner.
- If you have a choice of killing e.g. a P5 enemy or a P2+P3 enemy, there is an interesting complex tradeoff to be made:
a) do I prefer to kill the P5 enemy, so that I ensure that the lower denominations of 2 and 3 will remain available, to leave less chance of wasting hearts later on (due to not having the exact denomination to kill), or
b) assuming that the P2+P3 are both at the boundary of information, do I prefer to kill those two enemies rather than one P5, since the two enemies will provide one more square of board information for the same cost.
Early on in the game, a) seems to be more important.
At first I thought that a) would have always been more important (i.e. optimal play is bottlenecked on denominations throughout to the end), but after playing several max clears, it is apparent that in the middle game and later, one will already have plenty of P1, P2 and P3 denominations available to kill when needed, so then b) is more productive.
- Another example of a denomination tradeoff is e.g. when pondering if to kill a P4+P1 or a P3+P2. Assuming produced board information would be indifferent/equivalent, it is generally better to kill P3+P2, to keep the P1 for later to help with a denomination problem. (of course one can "read ahead" to the health bar, to know which denominations will be needed)
- Never commit to batch kill multiple enemies at once, but always re-evaluate the new board state after each kill, and only then make another move. (don't mindlessly commit to mass murder thinking "I've got 7HP so I'll kill those P3+P3+P1"). Maybe after killing the first P3, you realize that you don't gain info from killing the rest. Kill the enemies in the descending order of most info to least info.
- Before deciding to open a given board square, pause to think what new board information opening that cell can provide. I.e. ask "If I knew what number was in this cell, would it even help me deduce the power number of any adjacent cell?" If not, then opening that cell is not immediately productive. Prefer to open those cell squares first that do expand the information boundary, and leave the cell squares that do not for later.
- Use monsternomicon's "monsters of each type remaining" info to deduce complex two-cell patterns. Sometimes the monsternomicon's numbers fully reveal what two adjacent cells summing up to X will have to contain. (although not which one is which)
- Use Venn diagramming to deduce which cells cannot be empty, to give min-max power levels that a cell must contain. For example, this can be used to deduce the location of a Minotaur's chest, if your game is about to come crashing down:
- At very early game, I like to build up small denominations to have available when needed. Towards the middle game, denominations won't be a problem, so maximizing boundary information is more important instead.
- There will be times when one has to guess. Some guesses are nonlethal ("whatever lurks here can't kill me"), and other guesses are lethal ("I might die if I click here"). Naturally make only nonlethal guesses, in the descending order of "most board information gained."
- In an unlucky run, one might have to make a lethal guess, but that does not seem to happen that often, which is a testament to the balance of the game. When going for the lovers+rats+egg stamp victory, this happens way more often, since the rats easily get in the way.
- At the very end, when all board cells have been identified, one will typically still have lots of monsters alive on the board, something like this:
From here on, it is a mop up game, given that there are plenty of P1 and P2 and P3 still available to steer clear of running into denomination problems.
- There are always more hearts on the board than are needed to clear everything. My record is 10 hearts remaining at the end of a game.
The key is definitively the egg at the beginning! Thanks for the tip. To ensure a max score run, what I do now is to start by randomly clicking in the spots where the egg can be at the very beginning, and if I don't get it, just restart. Once you find it, then you can give that run a try, and it's almost guaranteed to be a max score run :)
First off, I like the game enough to have beaten it fully on both the original version and the updated version. I've found that I can consistently get a perfect score, so it would be great if there was a way to make the game more difficult (easier said than done, I know). However, I know that Minesweeper is very easy on expert mode, so maybe it's just the difficulty ceiling of this type of game... Great job though!