THE ENCHANTED CAVE 2
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About the Game
The Enchanted Cave 2 is a 2D indie roguelike published by Dustin Auxier in 2015. The player controls a single hero who must navigate through 100 levels of a procedurally generated cave to defeat an evil necromancer and his foul creations. Along the way, the player can develop their skills towards combat, magic, and crafting. The game introduces a unique set of mechanics to an otherwise familiar formula: the only method of leaving the cave for safety is by activating Escape Wings, but doing so will destroy the vast majority of the hero's equipment. As of February 2017, the game has Very Positive reviews from 175 Steam users. The free version on Armor Games has a rating of 96% and over 2 million plays.
Busted: No Escape Wings, No Deaths
Reading through comments and strategy guides for The Enchanted Cave 2, the assumption that many players have made is that they must use their Escape Wings often to return to the safety of town. This presented a natural challenge: a single continuous run from floor 1 to 100 with no deaths and no use of Escape Wings.
What are the aspects of the game that encourage the use of Escape Wings?
- Enemies scale up in difficulty very quickly as the player makes progress.
- There is no method of retreating to previously explored floors.
- There are limited options for restoring health and mana during a run, while Escape Wings restore them fully.
- Although most equipment is destroyed when Escape Wings are used, the game preserves character attributes, gold, and special artifact equipment, providing an advantage when lower-level floors are revisited.
Unlike many RPGs, this game uses a flat subtractive method of applying defense during combat: attack - defense = damage dealt. Thus, with the right gear, it is possible to completely negate an enemy's damage output. As the game introduces elemental damage and defense, the best gear loadout for a particular enemy becomes increasingly specific. On a given floor, the player may encounter one enemy with 260 physical attack, a second enemy with 40 wind attack, and a third enemy with a mix of physical, earth, and light attack. The saving grace is that with stationary enemies on a tile-based map, the player can (and should) reconfigure their equipment before any encounter.
The player has a higher defense than the bat's attack power, guaranteeing a safe encounter.
Eventually the player gains access to items that regenerate health after each battle. Using such enchantments against enemies that cannot deal damage, such as the bat in the image above, offers the player a consistent source of free health, mana, loot, and XP. I refer to such solved enemies as "positive", while enemies that can still deal damage are "negative".
Regenerative equipment must be assembled as early as possible. Once this is achieved, the strategy for the entire run boils down to three sets of decisions: how to navigate a given floor, how to prepare for new enemies, and how to allocate points when leveling up.
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Priority goes to the circled Salamander
in order to reach the treasure chest. |
- Every fifth floor features a forge, where equipment can be enchanted with a wide variety of interesting effects. Most of these effects can be ignored in favor of either improving defensive capabilities specifically to counter enemies that will be introduced in the levels ahead, or enhancing the player's ability to regenerate health and mana. When the majority of enemies are positive, crafting reagents should be saved for later floors.
- Upon leveling up, the player is given a free stat point towards health, mana, attack, defense, or magic, and three skill points to spend towards combat skills, magic skills, and crafting skills. The free stat point always goes to defense, without exception. There is more flexibility in assigning the skill points. After many unsuccessful attempts, my winning run relied on maxing out defense and XP gain as early as possible, then maxing out magic power to improve the efficiency of the Healing spell, and lastly improving the efficiency of potions.
As with many RPGs, while it can be tricky to assemble the necessary tools to get ahead of the difficulty curve, it is fairly easy to stay ahead. I was surprised to see that when the final boss fell, I still had several dozen unused health and mana potions. This suggests that a continuous run should be viable even with some unfavorable RNG or suboptimal decisions.
Design Analysis: Reinforcing Core Gameplay Mechanics
Perhaps the most salient takeaway from The Enchanted Cave 2 is how inherently precarious it can be to design a combat system with a flat subtractive method for calculating attack damage. One could argue that even as the player grows in strength and skill, no enemy should ever be completely harmless, because this turns combat into a chore rather than a choice.
However, there are certainly tweaks that could be made to rebalance this system without altering the core gameplay mechanics. The two major components that contribute to power growth are loot and character level. Loot from a single optimal run is more than sufficient to counter upcoming threats, and character level quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns due to slow linear stat growth -- neither of these characteristics achieve the intended result of encouraging the player to use Escape Wings and revisit floors. What adjustments could be made to rectify this imbalance?
The obvious but not particularly insightful answer is to decrease the frequency of loot drops, increase prices at merchants, and improve the scaling of leveled stats. This would make a continuous run less sustainable, but it would also make the game more tedious. I believe there is a set of changes that not only encourages the desired player behavior, but also increases player agency and the sense of accomplishment.
To see what changes are necessary, consider the importance of the 11th and 15th floors. The 11th floor marks the first appearance of Goo, an enemy whose loot drop is Viscous Goop, the first crafting reagent that enables health regeneration. The 15th floor is the next available forge, where this reagent can be used to enchant gear. As long as the player can reach these critical floors with the tools they need, the continuous run is essentially solved, assuming best play. What are those necessary tools?
The tools necessary to achieve regeneration enchantments are now spread throughout the three major branches of the skill tree, and thusly cannot all be attained by the time the player reaches the critical 11th and 15th floors. In this rebalanced system, one of two sets of player behavior will emerge:
Perhaps the most salient takeaway from The Enchanted Cave 2 is how inherently precarious it can be to design a combat system with a flat subtractive method for calculating attack damage. One could argue that even as the player grows in strength and skill, no enemy should ever be completely harmless, because this turns combat into a chore rather than a choice.
However, there are certainly tweaks that could be made to rebalance this system without altering the core gameplay mechanics. The two major components that contribute to power growth are loot and character level. Loot from a single optimal run is more than sufficient to counter upcoming threats, and character level quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns due to slow linear stat growth -- neither of these characteristics achieve the intended result of encouraging the player to use Escape Wings and revisit floors. What adjustments could be made to rectify this imbalance?
The obvious but not particularly insightful answer is to decrease the frequency of loot drops, increase prices at merchants, and improve the scaling of leveled stats. This would make a continuous run less sustainable, but it would also make the game more tedious. I believe there is a set of changes that not only encourages the desired player behavior, but also increases player agency and the sense of accomplishment.
To see what changes are necessary, consider the importance of the 11th and 15th floors. The 11th floor marks the first appearance of Goo, an enemy whose loot drop is Viscous Goop, the first crafting reagent that enables health regeneration. The 15th floor is the next available forge, where this reagent can be used to enchant gear. As long as the player can reach these critical floors with the tools they need, the continuous run is essentially solved, assuming best play. What are those necessary tools?
- 60 defense to counter Goo. Consistently achievable if the player exclusively builds defense and is willing to trade health for XP.
- A high enough drop rate to gather a useful quantity of Viscous Goop. Guaranteed, even without any drop rate upgrades.
- The ability to enchant items at a forge. Guaranteed for free at the beginning of the game.
- Enough mana to enchant items with the Viscous Goop. Guaranteed, unless the player has been spamming the Heal spell.
- A few items to be enchanted that won't need to be replaced soon. Guaranteed thanks to the availability of rings, which don't scale.
- Crafting reagents whose effects help deal with inevitable damage. Guaranteed, even without any drop rate upgrades.
- The ability to mix those reagents into usable potions. Guaranteed for free at the beginning of the game.
- Loot/reagent drop rate: Start this at 0%, but increase the growth rate from +1% to +5% per skill point in the Crafting skill tree.
- Enchant ability: Place this in the Magic skill tree instead of granting for free at level 1. Allow players to pay a significant gold premium to shopkeepers to enchant gear if they have not learned the skill.
- Mana for enchanting: Cut the starting mana pool from 60 to 30, but increase the growth rate from +2 to +5 per level.
- Items for enchanting: Not inherently problematic on its own.
- Potion making ability: Place this in the Crafting tree instead of granting for free at level 1.
The tools necessary to achieve regeneration enchantments are now spread throughout the three major branches of the skill tree, and thusly cannot all be attained by the time the player reaches the critical 11th and 15th floors. In this rebalanced system, one of two sets of player behavior will emerge:
- If they believe the high defense/regeneration build is no longer the most powerful, efficient, or interesting option, they can be creative in their character development -- but the enemy scaling ensures that they will eventually run out of health, and must rely on Escape Wings for safety.
- On the other hand, if they believe a high defense/regeneration build is still dominant, they must use Escape Wings and revisit floors in order to acquire the necessary skills and reagents to achieve this build. But rather than simply enduring a tedious grind for XP, each new tool opens up a richer, more engaging gameplay experience, even when traversing familiar ground.
Bonus Content: The Blackjack Connection
When enemies can be characterized as positive and negative, a surprising connection emerges with Blackjack, a popular casino game.
Blackjack is a card game in which each player at a table is dealt two cards from a shuffled deck. The total of these two cards represents their score. Face cards are all worth 10, while aces can be scored as either 1 or 11 at the player's discretion. On a player's turn, they may choose to take additional cards from the dealer ("hit") or keep the total they have ("stay"). The objective is reach a total higher than the dealer's score, but if a player's score exceeds 21, they lose. In the case of a tie, the dealer wins, giving the casino a small advantage.
Blackjack is a rarity among casino games in that, due to the high volume of cards that are dealt before decks are reshuffled, players can use the cards they have seen to determine valuable information about the state of the remaining cards in the deck. They can then adjust their hit/stay strategy accordingly, whereas dealers are required to play using the strategy on every hand.
One system to take advantage of this is High-Low counting. Each time a low-valued card is revealed, the player adds +1 to a running tally. Each time a high-valued card is revealed, the tally receives -1. When the running tally is high, say +4, the player has a slight advantage and can capitalize on this by betting larger amounts. Conversely, when the tally is low, the player should bet more conservatively.
In The Enchanted Cave 2, the game's 100 floors can be divided into blocks of 5, separated by levels which contain forges. In a given block of 5 floors, the player will encounter 6 different enemy types. Consider a variable which I call "favorability", which characterizes the likelihood of exiting a floor at full health. Each positive enemy (see above) gives +1 to the overall favorability of the block, while each negative enemy gives -1. Thus, the favorability of a block of floors will range from +6 to -6. During a block, the player's strategy should vary according to the favorability. One example system:
Upon reaching a forge or shop, the player's strategy should vary according to the favorability of the upcoming block:
In both systems, discrete gameplay units are randomly distributed that not only affect the current state of the game, but also provide some insight into the favorability of future game states. The optimal strategy is to play aggressively when the count is high (larger bets, clearing all floors) and conservatively when the count is low (smaller bets, using consumables). While this strategy does not guarantee perfect results on any given hand or floor, it does guarantee the best possible play when applied consistently across many game states.
Blackjack is a card game in which each player at a table is dealt two cards from a shuffled deck. The total of these two cards represents their score. Face cards are all worth 10, while aces can be scored as either 1 or 11 at the player's discretion. On a player's turn, they may choose to take additional cards from the dealer ("hit") or keep the total they have ("stay"). The objective is reach a total higher than the dealer's score, but if a player's score exceeds 21, they lose. In the case of a tie, the dealer wins, giving the casino a small advantage.
Blackjack is a rarity among casino games in that, due to the high volume of cards that are dealt before decks are reshuffled, players can use the cards they have seen to determine valuable information about the state of the remaining cards in the deck. They can then adjust their hit/stay strategy accordingly, whereas dealers are required to play using the strategy on every hand.
One system to take advantage of this is High-Low counting. Each time a low-valued card is revealed, the player adds +1 to a running tally. Each time a high-valued card is revealed, the tally receives -1. When the running tally is high, say +4, the player has a slight advantage and can capitalize on this by betting larger amounts. Conversely, when the tally is low, the player should bet more conservatively.
In The Enchanted Cave 2, the game's 100 floors can be divided into blocks of 5, separated by levels which contain forges. In a given block of 5 floors, the player will encounter 6 different enemy types. Consider a variable which I call "favorability", which characterizes the likelihood of exiting a floor at full health. Each positive enemy (see above) gives +1 to the overall favorability of the block, while each negative enemy gives -1. Thus, the favorability of a block of floors will range from +6 to -6. During a block, the player's strategy should vary according to the favorability. One example system:
- +6 -- Clear all enemies to maximize XP and loot.
- +4 -- When at full health, attack negative enemies, then recover on positive enemies. Clear all enemies in this manner.
- +2 -- Prioritize enemies that block access to areas containing loot, as new gear may improve favorability. After gear has been gathered, use +4 strategy. Use potions as a last resort.
- 0, -2 or -4 -- Only attack negative enemies that block access to the exit. Use potions liberally.
- -6 -- Use Escape Wings.
Upon reaching a forge or shop, the player's strategy should vary according to the favorability of the upcoming block:
- +6 -- No need to improve gear. Conserve reagents for more unfavorable blocks later on.
- +4 -- Still no need to make improvements. Damage dealt by negative enemies should be recoverable by positive enemies.
- +2 -- Spend resources conservatively to assemble gear that boosts to +4 or +6.
- 0 or negative -- Spend resources aggressively to regain positive favorability.
In both systems, discrete gameplay units are randomly distributed that not only affect the current state of the game, but also provide some insight into the favorability of future game states. The optimal strategy is to play aggressively when the count is high (larger bets, clearing all floors) and conservatively when the count is low (smaller bets, using consumables). While this strategy does not guarantee perfect results on any given hand or floor, it does guarantee the best possible play when applied consistently across many game states.