dotplot

There is a room with a sentry and a chest. I think I am supposed to clear the room by using a potion of haste to outrun the sentry.

The sentry seems immune to absolutely everything. But I want to kill the sentry. How do I kill the sentry?

Thank you for your help.

There are two rooms and only one key. One key leads to 3-4 things for the player. The other leads to a single item contained in a chest?

The room with 3-4 things always seems like a pretty good deal, as opposed to choosing a chest. After all, how do I know that what is in the chest is worth as much or more than those 3-4 things?

Under what circumstances is it better to choose the mystery chest over the 3-4 rewards? Why would anyone choose the chest instead?

So I am running around with a wand of warding +3 and a wand of warding +2 on a gladiator file. It is a useful wand, but is it really the top-tier wand that some people on the internet seem to say it is? The Greater Sentries can be killed, and they even lose health by firing. I could see them being OP if they did not cost health to attack. But the way they are now, if you want them to survive, at least at deeper floors, you have to feed them charges to try and maintain their health. You could have spent those turns directly attacking the enemy instead.

Is there something that I am missing on how best to use the wand of warding? What are the best strategies to take advantage of it?

Is there some aspect of this or the math behind it that I do not understand? If it reduces the damage that you take, that is good, right? Or does it only reduce damage to me if I would otherwise get a mortal attack against me?

I am watching RunningFromCake try out the beta 2.5.0 (see https://youtu.be/NCTfD8LTG3U and others). He is playing as duelist/monk. So he is able to try out all the duelist/monk buffs that are coming in version 2.5.0.

It looks to me that Duelist is now simply a better warrior. The duelist has weapon abilities, most of which are guaranteed to hit. That is much better than some pitiful shielding from the warrior's seal, particularly in early-game, when the extra accuracy can be quite useful (and the warrior's seal is at its weakest). That in itself makes duelist seemingly better than warrior. But the subclasses also seem better for the duelist. The berserker's abilities seem to be quite difficult to make use of, since rage does not build fast enough. The gladiator is a more viable class. But the monk's abilities seem to be better than the gladiator's abilities, considering that RunningFromCake can hit a 70 with a dragon kick. And the champion is obviously better than the berserker. So why would warrior ever be preferred over duelist?

RunningFromCake also criticizes the buff to the stone of intution at 2:04 at https://youtu.be/NCTfD8LTG3U. It gives more of an endorphin rush when guessing wrong the first time loses the stone. I agree with his reasoning here. Stone of intuition is very weak, but it does help with the addictive quality of the game.

Also, the transition from v2.4.2 to 2.5.0 resulted in his trinket showing as unidentified in his menu. You can see this at, for example, 20:43 in the video. Idk if this bug has been reported to the developer or not.

Anyways, do you agree with these observations? Why is duelist getting such a buff if it is just an OP warrior?

I did not know if upgrading this tier 4 weapon a lot eventually makes it better than an upgraded tier 5 weapon. The in-game text is not clear on this. According to the fandom page, it appears the answer is no- https://pixeldungeon.fandom.com/wiki/Shattered_Pixel_Dungeon/Weapons#Runic_blade

Given that, I would like to know the reasoning behind this game design decision. Is this weapon supposed to incentivize players to wait until tier 4 weapons to start upgrading weapons with scroll of upgrade? Or is this weapon supposed to incentivize players to upgrade runic blade instead of upgrading a tier 5 weapon? The latter seems to not be the case, since tier 5 weapons with the same amount of upgrade seems to be stronger than the runic blade. However, the former may not be the case either, because if the beginner player does not know to wait on using scrolls of upgrade until they get high tier weapons or armor (instead of throwing them all into worn shortsword like I did originally), then the beginner probably does not know that this weapon exists either. So what is the game design decision regarding the effect of this weapon?

Thank you for your help.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon v2.4.2- android, github version

I am new to Shattered Pixel Dungeon. I am playing it on degoogled GrapheneOS. I get the apk from github via Obtainium. I am hoping that I can back up my save games / badges / rankings or even transfer them from the android version to the desktop version.

But I have a problem. I am not using the google play version, since Google is spyware. So I cannot transfer badges via Google Play. The other option seems to be to root my phone and use adb to transfer the files. The problem with that is that I am using GrapheneOS. GrapheneOS does not allow you to root your phone for security reasons. It is believed that that would ruin the android security model.

So I need a third method to do this. How can I back up my save games / badges / rankings without google play and without rooting my GrapheneOS phone?

Thank you for your help.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon v2.4.2- android, github version

I am new to Shattered Pixel Dungeon, and I am confused about the Huntress playstyle. The Huntress is able to go through grass without trampling it. Is there some sort of tangible benefit to being able to do this? Is there a stealth advantage as long as the Huntress is in the grass? I do not see some sort of active condition in the character menu when the Huntress is in grass. Otherwise, what is the tangible benefit to the Huntress not being able to cut grass?

Also, what exactly is the game plan for Huntress / using upgrade scrolls as Huntress?

For Warrior, I was struggling a lot since I was upgrading my original weapon instead of upgrading higher tier weapons. I did not know that upgrades go higher on the higher tier weapons. I saw on the internet that I should save my scrolls of upgrade for tier 5 weapons and armor, so I followed that strategy and managed to get a win.

For mage, I saw on the internet that you can go battlemage and put the scrolls of upgrade into the staff that you get by default at the beginning of the game. This makes the beginning of Mage a lot easier, since I do not have to hoard my scrolls until the end of the game. Otherwise, Mage feels harder at the beginning of the game than Warrior does. I managed to get a win with Mage by dumping all the scrolls of upgrade into staff and staff bashing the whole game. I was also lucky enough to imbue wand of fireblast into the staff.

For Rogue, I saved the upgrade scrolls until I could get a tier 5 melee weapon, then put most of the upgrades into the weapon. Rogue felt like the easiest class to win with so far. The Demon Halls are a lot easier when none of the enemies can see where I am.

For Huntress, however, what is the game plan? The spirit bow does not take upgrade scrolls, so I cannot upgrade it like I could upgrade the mage's staff. The starting weapon is very weak. The early game seems particularly hard, but I want to save my upgrade scrolls for a tier 5 weapon instead of spending them on weak weapons in early game. So what is the game plan here?

Thank you for your help.

edit: thank you for your comments. very helpful.