Four Ways to Enjoy Dungeon Crawlers Again
I don't really believe in Hack & Slash Dungeon Crawlers. Which is weird, because I've played quite a few over the years and have even occasionally enjoyed it.
For those not familiar with the genre, Hack & Slashers and Dungeon Crawlers are frequently overlapping genres of video game where the primary focus is usually on murdering hundreds upon hundreds of monsters and collecting the piles of loot that explode out of them upon death like grisly pinatas. It's an exaggeration of the usual style of Role-Playing Game, be it paper-based or in video game form, where goblins inexplicably vomit up plate armour and heroes are often only as great as the trousers they wear.
Time-consuming, repetitive, a lack of actual constructed content and an over-reliance on procedurally generated loot with all the heart and soul of a Wall Street banker should have turned me off such games a long time ago. But even now, I occasionally still get sucked in.
Sacred 3: Fallen Angel was my first and possibly still my favorite. Diablo 3 (back when Blizzard Entertainment was only just starting to turn transparently evil) I was hooked on for a while. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, Victor Vran, Torchlight 2, Path of Exile, even technical outliers to the genre like Vermintide... many hours frittered away playing them, only stopping upon the sudden realization that endlessly chasing virtual hats and halberds is about as fulfilling as picking lint out of a bellybutton and is a considerably less productive use of time.
Yet I'm at it again: this time playing a game I got some time ago, started playing and then stopped when the bellybutton alert light went off in my head. The game in question is called Grim Dawn, and as far as Hack & Slashers go it's a pretty decent one: decent gameplay, decent story, decent audio and a decent appearance if occasionally a little drab and repetitive in its color palette. I reinstalled it mostly out of idle curiosity and because the current crop of trending RPGs on steam I find incredibly depressing. Numerous hours later, I discovered to my amazement that I was still enjoying myself.
Which leads to the main point of this post: the five crazy commandments that I discovered could allow me personally to enjoy Dungeon Crawlers again.
One of the main people actually enjoy grinding is the meditative, relaxed repetitiveness of it. You just turn your brain mostly off, keep clicking buttons and look at the pretty colours of the game. In my most recent playthrough of Grim Dawn, I discovered my own perfect recipe to chilling out in a Dungeon Crawl:
The materialistic mad rush of Dungeon Crawlers is what is typically designed to hook you and keep you playing endlessly (micro-transactions optional), but if you push past that there is the possibility of an entirely different kind of fun.
1. If there's a loot filter, set it to omit almost everything. You'll miss out on a lot, but you'll also save so much time when you're not selling barely profitable vendor trash. Speaking of vendor trash...
2. Do a 'white-run' - a playthrough where you only use common or trash-tier items. I haven't tried this yet (although I certainly am going to), but I guess this likely requires playing on a lower difficulty seeing as the higher levels of Grim Dawn are currently making me have to (gasp!) concentrate. It does greatly increase the variety of loot that you could conceivably equip though, which leads right to the next point...
3. Choose your gear based entirely on how it looks. If you're playing purely to get the best stats this is not a good idea, but one of the pet peeves I have with Dungeon Crawlers is that if you only equip gear that has the best stats the result is often a horrible mish-mash of armor and clothing that looks like a indecisive cosplayer. Surrender I say! Make your character look the way you want them to, without worrying about that +1% resistance to stinging nettles or whatever. Hell, you could even...
4. Play naked! In-game I mean, but if you want to do it IRL I shan't judge. This is suicide and head-bangingly frustrating on any serious difficulty no matter the game, but if you want your barbarian hero to be shirtless: go for it. Don't let the game pressure you into wearing stuff if you don't want to. Which neatly segways into the final thought of the day...
At the end of the day, any game you play should only be holding your attention because it is fun, not because it's hooked into the addictive part of your brain that just wants to make numbers crawl higher and higher. Here's a few examples of Hacky Slashy Lootfesty games which I kept playing not just because of all the addictive shiny loot, but for other reasons...
Grim Dawn: Making a somewhat broken Druid build and getting a gentle serotonin buzz from going through trash mobs like a murderous kitchen blender with an angry briar patch for a wingman.
Sacred 2: Fallen Angel: Finding and doing all the humorous side quests and just exploring the giant, varied and silly world.
Vermintide and Vermintide 2: Mowing through Skaven from a first-person perspective with simple yet elegant combat mechanics is pure joy, regardless of the loot rewards.
So hopefully that encourages you (the reader) to go off and enjoy Diablo-esque violent lootfests in a new, refreshing way. And if it doesn't, make sure to go do something genuinely enjoyable that doesn't just fill in time.
And always remember: loot and XP isn't everything, but experiences are.
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| Grim but fun! |
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| These pants, for instance, are probably smarter, stronger and more dexterous than their owner. |
Time-consuming, repetitive, a lack of actual constructed content and an over-reliance on procedurally generated loot with all the heart and soul of a Wall Street banker should have turned me off such games a long time ago. But even now, I occasionally still get sucked in.
Sacred 3: Fallen Angel was my first and possibly still my favorite. Diablo 3 (back when Blizzard Entertainment was only just starting to turn transparently evil) I was hooked on for a while. The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing, Victor Vran, Torchlight 2, Path of Exile, even technical outliers to the genre like Vermintide... many hours frittered away playing them, only stopping upon the sudden realization that endlessly chasing virtual hats and halberds is about as fulfilling as picking lint out of a bellybutton and is a considerably less productive use of time.
 |
| ... crap. |
Yet I'm at it again: this time playing a game I got some time ago, started playing and then stopped when the bellybutton alert light went off in my head. The game in question is called Grim Dawn, and as far as Hack & Slashers go it's a pretty decent one: decent gameplay, decent story, decent audio and a decent appearance if occasionally a little drab and repetitive in its color palette. I reinstalled it mostly out of idle curiosity and because the current crop of trending RPGs on steam I find incredibly depressing. Numerous hours later, I discovered to my amazement that I was still enjoying myself.
Which leads to the main point of this post: the five crazy commandments that I discovered could allow me personally to enjoy Dungeon Crawlers again.
I: Thou Shalt Relax
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| Why is this the first thing that pops up if you search Google Images for 'relax'? The whole world being flooded is not relaxing! |
One of the main people actually enjoy grinding is the meditative, relaxed repetitiveness of it. You just turn your brain mostly off, keep clicking buttons and look at the pretty colours of the game. In my most recent playthrough of Grim Dawn, I discovered my own perfect recipe to chilling out in a Dungeon Crawl:
1. Turn down the difficulty and stay off hardcore mode. I play too many games that require 100% concentration as it is, so grinding time is chill time for me. Playing hardcore (where character death is permanent and requires starting a new game) never appealed to my filthy casual self in the first place, and playing on a higher difficulty in a game where skill is less important than the time sunk into playing (and the resultant type of mighty trousers you wear) never made much sense to me anyway.
2. Make your build as lazy as possible, requiring pressing as few buttons as possible. My current Grim Dawn playthrough uses four toggled skills (ones you only need to trigger once and they stay active) and two active skills bound to the left and right mouse buttons. This enables me to play with my eyes half closed and my feet elevated higher than my head.
II: Thou Shalt Free Thyself from the Lure of the Lootfest
The materialistic mad rush of Dungeon Crawlers is what is typically designed to hook you and keep you playing endlessly (micro-transactions optional), but if you push past that there is the possibility of an entirely different kind of fun.
1. If there's a loot filter, set it to omit almost everything. You'll miss out on a lot, but you'll also save so much time when you're not selling barely profitable vendor trash. Speaking of vendor trash...
2. Do a 'white-run' - a playthrough where you only use common or trash-tier items. I haven't tried this yet (although I certainly am going to), but I guess this likely requires playing on a lower difficulty seeing as the higher levels of Grim Dawn are currently making me have to (gasp!) concentrate. It does greatly increase the variety of loot that you could conceivably equip though, which leads right to the next point...
3. Choose your gear based entirely on how it looks. If you're playing purely to get the best stats this is not a good idea, but one of the pet peeves I have with Dungeon Crawlers is that if you only equip gear that has the best stats the result is often a horrible mish-mash of armor and clothing that looks like a indecisive cosplayer. Surrender I say! Make your character look the way you want them to, without worrying about that +1% resistance to stinging nettles or whatever. Hell, you could even...
4. Play naked! In-game I mean, but if you want to do it IRL I shan't judge. This is suicide and head-bangingly frustrating on any serious difficulty no matter the game, but if you want your barbarian hero to be shirtless: go for it. Don't let the game pressure you into wearing stuff if you don't want to. Which neatly segways into the final thought of the day...
IV: Thou Shalt Not Feel Obligated to Grind Or Farm
Grim Dawn: Making a somewhat broken Druid build and getting a gentle serotonin buzz from going through trash mobs like a murderous kitchen blender with an angry briar patch for a wingman.
Sacred 2: Fallen Angel: Finding and doing all the humorous side quests and just exploring the giant, varied and silly world.
Vermintide and Vermintide 2: Mowing through Skaven from a first-person perspective with simple yet elegant combat mechanics is pure joy, regardless of the loot rewards.
So hopefully that encourages you (the reader) to go off and enjoy Diablo-esque violent lootfests in a new, refreshing way. And if it doesn't, make sure to go do something genuinely enjoyable that doesn't just fill in time.
And always remember: loot and XP isn't everything, but experiences are.
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