Video Game / Barony

"Good luck, mortal. Muahahahahahaha!!"

—Baron Herx

Barony is a rogue-like first-person RPG inspired by Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. The goal of the game is to descend to the bottom of a dark dungeon known as the Devil's Bastion and destroy an undead lich named Baron Herx, who terrorized the peaceful town of Hamlet in life and is now harboring a curse against the land from beyond the grave. To aid you in your quest are friendly humans who have been eeking out a rough life within the dungeon for generations, as well as any friends you can bring with you in real life: Barony is the first of its kind as a first-person roguelike in that it fully supports cooperative multiplayer for up to four players.

---

This game provides examples of:

• 1-Up: Amulets of Life Saving will prevent you from dying once, and then break. They're very rare, unsurprisingly.
• Abandoned Mine: Levels 1-5 are the remnants of Herx' initial gold mining operations. Poor lighting and an abundance of skeletons are your biggest opponents here; Boulder Traps are also much more dangerous here than they are further down, as they blend in substantially better with the rocky gray ceiling, and your HP is likely too low to survive a hit from one.
• Achievement Mockery: Trying to eat food as a Skeleton will earn you the "Boneheaded" achievement.
• Adventure-Friendly World: You play as an adventurer seeking fortune, glory, or both delving into a dungeon infested by, among other things, giant spiders, skeletons, and if you're unlucky (or a secret hunter) Baron Herx's pet Minotaur!
• Anti-Hoarding: You have limited inventory space, and every item in it will weigh you down, decreasing your movement speed. Though as you character's carrying capacity is decided by their Constitution stat, most characters will have high enough carrying capacities by the midgame that they won't really need to worry about that part very much.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Despite being a fairly straight-laced Roguelike, and thus very unforgiving, Barony features a few things that alleviate some of the more gamey aspects of its pedigree.
  • Hunger and the Minotaur can be turned off if the player doesn't feel like putting up with them. This removes much of the urgency from the game, allowing the player to be more thoughtful and tactical with their exploration.
  • Monster races will be attacked on sight by any human adventurers or shopkeepers they run into. However, to ensure that monster players aren't locked out of shops entirely, Polymorph will always turn you into a human for a while, allowing you to interact with them without rousing suspicion. Additionally, any humans you recruit while Polymorphed into one will remain friendly after you return to your true form.
  • While the game largely uses RNG to determine what potions do as it generates them, there are some rules that they will always follow; for instance, Potions of Recovery will always be white. Potions are also among the easiest objects to identify, and even a modest skill in Appraisal will let you rapidly figure out what they do, which can be a life-saver when you're about to die and you just found a potion that might heal you or blow you up.
  • Scrolls can only have one possible effect per label. For example, a scroll marked "READ ME" turns out to be a Scroll of Fire; all scrolls marked "READ ME" found for the duration of that playthrough will also be Scrolls of Fire.
  • Magic staves have multiple different effects per color and model, but they are Color-Coded for Your Convenience. Blue staves can be either Ice or Sleep, green staves can be Poison, Digging or Locking/Unlocking, and so on. This allows the player to tell at a glance whether a staff they've found is even worth picking up, as they may well not need it.
  • If a boulder blocks off the player's only route to the level exit, or traps you in a dead-end passage, the game will destroy it for you, displaying a message about Sokoban aiding your path.
• Armor of Invincibility: The Artifact Set is the best suit of armor in the whole game. The defense bonus matches Crystal Armor, but each piece gives additional effects, such as permanent levitation, permanent enemy awareness, and so on; they're also all unbreakable. The downside is that obtaining the full set will require you to complete nearly every single Bonus Level the game has to offer (with 2 pieces unavailable on Classic Mode), as that's the only place you're going to find the gear.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Dominating a Cockatrice. Sure, it's a beefy follower with a strong attack (especially in Hardcore), a Paralysis attack and can fly, but it cannot sleep to boost its health regeneration, cannot eat to heal a bit, cannot wear anything to boost its AC and usually makes you waste a Life Saving amulet (unless you choose to whittle down its health first), so whether or not it's worth it to dominate the Cockatrice is dependant on the player's ability to keep it healed via magic or alchemy.
• Bag of Spilling: Invoked. Not forced, but dying in multiplayer will spill your entire inventory on the ground, forcing you to respawn naked if your pals can't collect your belongings, or potentially encumber themselves to help you out while potentially leaving behind other resources. In single player you simply die and explode into your carried treasure. It's as defeating as it sounds.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: The Monk class starts with a pair of brass knuckles; they can quickly become ridiculously tough and fast, beating down undead, beasts and goblins with their fists alone.
• Bear Trap: Appear as pickups and buyable items laying around the dungeon. They are particularly useful for setting up traps (or trolling), but degrade upon each successful uses. Decrepit ones often have a chance of straight up breaking.
• Bottomless Pits: Fortunately it isn't possible to just walk into them. However, losing the effect of your levitation potion with your hitbox anywhere above the pit tile results in immediate death, and items do fall down to become irretrievable.
• Bonus Level: Many of them; some of them hide an Artifact.
  • The Gnomish Mines, a labyrinth full of murderous gnomes with lightning staves, not to mention several trolls. It guards the Veil Of The Sphinx.
  • Minetown. Unlike the other bonus levels, Minetown is fully lit and monster-free; many friendly humans and numerous shopkeepers eke out a living in the depths of the dungeon here. Human adventurers can rest up, recruit companions, and do some shopping. Unfortunately, if you're something that's hostile to humans, you just walked into the wrong neighborhood.
  • The Underworld, a poorly-lit underground crypt with very few floors to speak of and some of the toughest enemies you're likely to see. The only points of interest here are the Artifact Bow, Khryselakatos, and a portal to the Netherworld.
  • The Haunted Castle, a suspiciously-deserted castle full of loot with absolutely no strings attached whatsoever! The Oracle's Treads, boots of the Artifact Set, lie here. They can be taken at will without any risk whatsoever. Pay no heed to the mass of frenzied ghouls that spawn upon looting its treasures.
  • The Jungle Temple, which is just as friendly as it sounds; if the multiple deadly traps don't get you, the goblins will do their best to. If you reach the end, you'll be rewarded with the Green Orb.
  • Sokoban, which is less of a bonus level and more of a puzzle. Solving it successfully - IE, without breaking any walls or boulders - gives you the Djini's Braces, the gauntlets of the Artifact Set.
  • The Minotaur Maze, which is a maze with a Minotaur in it. Hope you're a fast runner. If you can outwit or slay the Minotaur, the maze guards both Gugnir, an Infinity Plus One Spear, and the Red Orb.
  • The Netherworld, which is a Doom-esque journey through a realm of scorched red stone, an iron-gray sky, and more monsters than you can shake a stick at. Unlike the others, this bonus level extends for several floors, culminating in a boss battle against Baron Herx's master. Defeating him will still send you to Hamlet to face the Crystal Caves as always.
  • The Cockatrice's Lair is more of a puzzle level than anything else; there are numerous Kobold Cultists to contend with, but the real challenge is in navigating the confusing layout and figuring out all the levers and doors that need to be opened, since the game enforces No Fair Cheating here by disabling utility magic. No tearing down walls with Dig, no opening gates or chests with Open, no floating over Bottomless Pits with Levitation; you do it the hard way or you don't do it at all. The level ends with a battle against an enhanced Cockatrice. The Dragon's Mail, the Chestpiece of the Artifact Set, can be found in a side room here.
  • Bram's Castle is a linear jaunt through a master vampire's private residence, where you must contend with his skeletal army and his Succubi mistresses before facing the vampire himself, Bram Kindly. Slaying him will reward you with the final piece of the Artifact Set, the Wraith's Gown cloak, granting increased MP generation and permanent levitation.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Playing as a Human is this compared to the other races. You may not be able to drink blood, eat junk items, or freely use cursed equipment, but in exchange, you have no dietary restrictions, and other humans - including the extremely powerful Hero NPCs who randomly appear throughout the dungeon, and the Shopkeepers - are friendly.
  • The humble Sword-and-Board build is as practical here as it is in the likes of Dark Souls. Not only will it make you much more tanky against melee-oriented foes, you can get your hands on Reflect Magic equipment to become essentially immune to ranged combat into the bargain.
  • The Cleric, unsurprisingly; they combine decent starting stats and equipment with better magical aptitude than most melee classes. Their starting weapon is also a Mace, which is exceptionally effective against the skeletons who make up most of the enemies in the Mines. These factors make them quite helpful for beginners, but don't expect to be doing anything particularly flashy for a while.
  • Appraisal. The only thing this skill governs is how quickly you identify items, and which items you can identify.^Explanation  As long as you have an unidentified item in your inventory, you will repeatedly attempt to identify it until you succeed, no matter how many times you fail the attempt. If you carry around a gem, for instance, you'll likely be trying to appraise it for quite some time before actually succeeding. This is, needless to say, an INCREDIBLY USEFUL skill to have; given how quickly the game expects you to make decisions, knowing whether you just picked up an Amulet of Live-Saving or an Amulet of Strangulation is very necessary. This means savvy adventurers will usually be taking every single piece of equipment they find, identifying it, and dumping it into the nearest pit; the more items you identify, the higher your Appraisal skill gets.
• Bubble Gloop Swamp: Levels 5-10 are a thick, marshy, heavily-forested underground jungle. This area is better lit, and you can find both fresh fish and fruit, but the skeletons and rats of the mines give way to more dangerous, better-armed goblin troupes, as well as ghouls and spiders.
• Magic Missile: One of the non-elemental damage spells is called Magic Missile and is the more potent version of Forcebolt. Classic.
• Character Customization: As mentioned above, you can choose between one of ten different classes (complete with developer difficulty rating), several (cosmetic) races, male or female gender which does affect stats, and type in a custom name.
• Critical Existence Failure: With enough armor class or health pool with the warrior type classes, a trap boulder as tall as you are and twice as wide can drop on your head and not kill you. Cue that rat who squeaks just in time to make you swing your mouse violently as you crumple in a sad, defeated burst of treasure.
• Dem Bones: Skeletons are a common foe on the first four floors. The Myths and Outcasts DLC even lets you play as one.
• Developer's Room: The Hall of Trials hides the Master Wing, where you can find chests containing every item in the game and a lever that summons random monsters. Getting there is extremely tricky, though, and you unfortunately can't take any of the loot there to the dungeon proper.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Causes the chair, table, or door to burst into component "particles" but doesn't drop any loot, sadly. You can't even use the wood for torches.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Oh so many things.
  • Beating the entire game on Hardcore. All enemies are buffed, have quicker reaction time and engaging the minotaur is a straight up death sentence. The game is still very much beatable though. Bonus points if it was doen with a difficult class/race combo like a Vampire Mechanist, a Skeleton Wizard or a Goblin Mesmer.
  • On the other side of the achievement coin, beating the game under certain time limit (Herx under 20 minutes, non-classic game under 45 minutes). You would most likely be very underpowered, but if you do manage to do it, you'll feel like a boss.
• Easy Exp:
  • Identifying items using the appraise command nets you a sum of experience depending on the item you identified. Glass shards and gems look identical in the inventory, but gems will net you a respectable boost of exp when identified. This also improves your Appraise skill by 10% of the exp awarded, making subsequent appraisals faster and allowing you to identify higher-tier equipment.
  • If you have prepared enough rations, merely moving around watery terrain in the Swamps and raising your Swimming skill to 100 can net you considerable experience, as well as the additional benefit of Waterwalking.
• Easter Egg: The Hall of Trials. Every trial has a secret area in it you can access via inventive outside-the-box- tactics. The hub area also has one.
• Early Game Hell: Pretty much anyone will have a tougher time of it on the first few floors, but the Vampire is hit hardest by this. Unless you play with Hunger off, the only enemies who can drop blood for you are Spiders, Rats, and wandering human NPCs - and even then, your best bet to get blood vials is the Bloodletting spell, meaning classes who aren't great at spellcasting to begin with will have a hard time of it. Once you reach the later floors and begin encountering blood-containing enemies on a regular basis, this gradually phases out. This may be deliberate, since the Vampire is otherwise a very strong race.
• Empty Room Psych: Especially potent when you're new to the game. The low light levels in the mines don't help matters.
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: The ring or amulet of warning will place red dots on your minimap for every enemy on the current floor. Friendly NPCs only show up as purple dots if they're in your or a friend's party and shopkeepers are purple dots as well. Other players are always shown as blue dots.
• Equipment Upgrade: You can find scrolls of weapon and armor enchanting in the dungeon by identifying random scrolls each run. Depending on their quality they will upgrade from one to five of the six pieces of armor you can equip (between boots, gloves/wrists, chest, helmet, shield, and cape) while more powerful weapon enchant scrolls have the potential to add either one, two, or three pluses to your currently equipped weapon.
• Everything Breaks: Except for the Artifact equpiment found in the dungeon, every item either has durability limits or is single use. Magic rings and amulets can even break if they have a combat-triggered function like reflecting magic or preventing poison.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Friendly faces are few and far between in the depths of the dungeon. They can essentially be narrowed down to members of your own race and any other races that your race is neutral to. In exchange, just about everything else will be hostile. So you're a Vampire, and other vampires are friendly? Yay! Every human you meet will now be trying to murder you, including the shopkeepers. Boo.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Well, this is a classic roguelike, after all. These are the three basic classes available, with others filling in intermediaries between them; for instance, the Cleric is a Mage-Fighter hybrid.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The three elemental damage spells fit the bill - Fireball, Lightning, and Ice. The others mix it up, with Bloodletting, Forcebolt and Magic Missile being non-elemental.
• Game Lobby: The game support lobbies for convenient multiplayer sessions, which can appear on server browsers. Players can invite others at will from any platforms conceivable, be it other PC storefronts or consoles. However, drop-in/drop-out multiplayer is not supported (sessions are locked once everyone are prepared to descend Barony), making public lobbies often unavailable.
• Glass Cannon: The Wizard starts out with the very-powerful Fireball spell, meaning he can shred through pretty much anything, including Trolls - as long as it doesn't get close to him. If something DOES reach you, you are going to lose; even a lowly rat can easily take over three quarters of your HP away in melee before you can beat it to death with your quarterstaff. Skeletons can kill you in two to three hits.
• Here We Go Again!: Several of the ending crawls imply that the player character is well on the road to becoming the next Baron Herx, but the Vampire/Skeleton ending unambiguously states that they rise to power as a terrifying necromancer and take over much of the known world, inciting rumors of a hero who will rise up and slay them in turn.
• Hit Points: It wouldn't be a rogue-like rpg without them. More for warriors, less for mages, and just about meaningless against the Minotaur!
• Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat: Downplayed. You can indeed find perfectly edible, fresh bread, fish, meat and cheese lying around the dungeon, but much of what you find will be past its prime, running the risk of food poisoning if you eat it anyways.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Crystal weapons are the best ordinary equipment you can get in the game. If you happen to find enchanting scrolls they can become very powerful, but they'll always lack the unique perks and infinite durability of Artifacts.
• Infinity +1 Sword:
  • Artifact weapons. Even without any enchantment scrolls, they begin at +8 naturally when you appraise them, are indestructible, can have special effects like Dyrmwyn burning undead that survive its blows, and they have unique, awesome models.
  • Artifact Armor. You have to clear the bonus levels to obtain them, but they are well worth it, able to turn nearly any class into a Lightning Bruiser Magic Knight. They also look badass.
• In-Game Novel: There are an assortment of lore books in addition to the spell tomes one can find in the dungeon. These range from fiction works inside the game world, such as "The Lusty Goblin Maid," to Baron Herx's own journals, explaining more of why he's such a Big Bad Sorcerer and how he got there.
• Item-Drop Mechanic: Enemies will wear the same equipment you are able to, though it's commonly cursed, and will drop all their equipped items upon death, just like the player. Non-humanoid enemies like spiders and rats instead drop poison and food, respectively, though at random qualities or freshness. The equipment can be identified and there are scrolls of uncurse to make the items much more useful if say, that skeleton was wielding a cursed steel shield and yours is iron.
• Jack of All Stats: While most classes are tailored for a specific playstyle, and any class can reach this status with the right equipment, a few classes tend to be more suited for a wider variety of circumstances.
  • The Cleric class is even noted as being, "well-rounded adventurers". They have basic proficiency in several skills and a starting inventory that combines a mace, shield, and summoning spells. Their stats make them lean more towards Mighty Glacier territory, however.
  • The Joker and Shaman are notable for having an exactly equal growth chance for all of their stats.
• Killer Rabbit: Rats are a common enemy in the Mines. They're almost harmless to any melee class. However, if you're a squishy adventurer or run into them while you're low on HP, you'll quickly realize that they're fast and small enough to avoid spells and arrows, and like to hunt in packs. One Unique Enemy, Algernon, takes this up to eleven, being an even faster rat who can open doors. Did we mention he has more HP than a Skeleton?
• Level Editor: Barony does include a level editing utility, which allows players to make their very own dungeons.
• Limited-Use Magical Device: Scrolls, although they're something of a gamble. You found a magic scroll; great! It may do anything from upgrading your equipment to spewing out a cornucopia of food to setting you on fire! Having a good Appraisal skill will take the guesswork out of using one, thankfully.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Played fully straight, as you would expect from the genre. Warriors focus primarily on smashing and slashing their way through the obstacles before them without much gameplay variation, but they're hard to kill. Wizards are about as durable as a paper boat, but they have great damage output, and by later levels of the game, they'll have a spell for just about every situation. This allows them the kind of tactical flexibility Warriors can only dream of. This is however zigzagged in regards to more advanced classes like Monk, Sexton or even Joker, which has growth potential to both become adept at magic and smashing others.
• Locked Door: Played with. There are locked doors that will bar progress occasionally, though most chambers will have more than one entrance. All locks can also be picked by anyone with a lockpick with or without high dexterity though having higher dex will increase success. Or you can just smash the door to splinters.
• Luck Stat: There is a Luck stat that gives a small increase to the success of basically every action. Not losing magic charge levels when using staves, opening door and chest locks, not puking when eating less than fresh food, and identifying an item without a curse to name a few.
• Magikarp Power: Several examples, befitting a roguelike.
  • The Wizard starts off as a Glass Cannon. He has fearsome damage output, but in exchange, he has a small pool of MP and an absolutely pathetic HP pool; the only enemy he can kill in melee is the humble rat, and even then he'll be near-death when it's over. If you survive long enough and learn some spells, however, the Wizard rapidly snowballs into one of the most overpowered characters in the entire game.
  • The Merchant claim to fame is a high appraisal skill. This doesn't sound very useful, but their appraisal starts at 50, meaning they can easily and quickly identify everything they pick up (except gems) in the mines, and they'll quickly snowball to 100 appraisal just by identifying everything they come across. Being able to see what items are useful and what items are not is surprisingly powerful, though they'll become less useful as they go deeper (where every class will start to have high appraisal by necessity). By that point however, their trading skill will have risen high enough such that they can buy out shopkeepers’ entire inventories.
  • The Joker starts with questionable equipment - a slingshot (which does little damage to skeletons), a blindfold, a Confuse spellbook (which costs considerable mana), pies, a food scroll, a luckstone (which reduce inventory weight), among other trinkets. They are the base game class most susceptible to Early Game Hell, but with the ability to levitate (aided by their starting levitation ring) and an equal stat growth potential, they are able to find good equipment in unreachable locations, potentially growing into one of the most favorable classes by midgame.
  • The Vampire's early life in the mines is tougher than any other race; they can only feed on vials of blood, and blood can only be dropped by rats and trolls. Even then, it's not a guarantee, although you can up the odds of it happening by either using Bloodletting, which you start with, or a stealth attack. This makes the early levels of the game exceptionally difficult. However, if you survive into the Jungle, where every enemy can drop blood and you'll have some levels and skills under your belt, the Vampire's natural spellcasting advantages make them exceptionally adaptable, and their ability to cast Levitate from the get-go means they can easily level Casting and Magic to Legendary status before you can blink.
  • The Automaton has a very fast hunger drain to compensate for the fact that they can eat almost anything in the game. This makes their early-game rather tough, forcing you to strike a balance between saving items to identify or scrapping them to eat. If you live long enough to learn the Dig spell and/or find a Tinkering Kit, however, the Automaton will never run out of food, and can freely spam powerful gadgets like Spellbots and Sentrybots. Rocks are edible, and tearing down a wall with Dig will allow you to gobble up the remains to fuel your Boiler, meaning you'll always have a readily available food source at hand. Additionally, unlike the other "renewable" food source of Scrap, Rocks *can* superheat your boiler to full capacity, and have no other use beyond throwing at enemies or triggering traps. Doing so boosts your HT generation rate to one point per 3 seconds, or one point every 1.5 seconds, which is *the maximum possible for organics*.
• Magic Knight: You can become one if you invest into both melee and spellcasting, but certain classes are more suited to it than others. The Monk and Sexton in particular start with proficiency at both magic and shields.
• The Many Deaths of You: Not as many varied results as one of those older point and click games, but still plenty of beasties to do nasty things to you. Not to mention the game isn't easy by any means. You will die.
• Musical Spoiler: Coming close enough to an enemy to be detected will trigger a combat theme to replace the level theme. This can alert players of imminent attack or confuse them completely because enemies can see you through walls and there are areas that generate behind solid walls that must be mined to access, pouring on the paranoia fuel.
• Money for Nothing: Unless you're playing as either a Human or an Automaton, Shopkeepers will try to kill you on sight, making Money largely useless unless you can find a Polymorph Potion or spell.
• Monster Adventurers: The two expansions allow the player to play as one of the game's monsters, including goblins, insectoids, skeletons, and vampires.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The dungeon itself is called The Devil's Cradle because it houses a portal to the circle of Hell that Baphomet oversees.
• No Hero Discount: Played painfully straight. It doesn't matter that you're a hero trying to stop the Big Bad from corrupting the entire region, the Shopkeepers will not cut you any slack - even if you just rescued them from a band of goblins who took over their shop.
• Only Smart People May Pass: The Maze of Sokoban. While the rock-pushing puzzle isn't difficult if you pay attention and take your time, it is easy to get one of the last few boulders lodged into a corner or against another one in an unwinnable situation. Clearing the maze of all the grey rocks (without just smashing them with a pickaxe) nets you several gold coin bags and the artifact gauntlet.
• Our Liches Are Different: Herx, Orpheus and Erudyce have struck a deal with a devil to turn into a lich, instead of carrying around a phylactery.
• Our Minotaurs Are Different: Baron Herx has a pet minotaur. As early as the first floor, and on random chance, he will set it upon you. You'll get a warning taunt from Herx mentioning either "his pet" or "the beast" and you have between ninety seconds and three minutes to find the exit, gather your party, and GET GONE!! You can't hide from the beast. It will just smash down whatever wall and even walk over bottomless pits to get to you. Exaggerated in the Minotaur Maze, a secret area that can be found in the desert section of the Devil's Cradle. Here, the Minotaur is released once you or any of your allies are a certain distance into the maze, and its find the exit or die. You could also locate two hidden switches in two very far from one another dead-ends to open the central cage containing Gungnir, the legendary spear of Odin.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: Encouraged by the game design, in true Roguelike fashion. You could go and find the lever that opens the gates on that bridge over the chasm - or you could just use Levitation to walk over the gap and through the door on the other side. You could find a way around that boulder trap - or you could deliberately trigger it and break it as it rolls towards you with a pickaxe or a Dig spell. Want to visit Minetown as a monster, or do business with a shopkeeper? Use a Polymorph spell and disguise yourself as a human for a short amount of time.
• Player Versus Environment: How the game is meant to be played. But...
• Player Versus Player: Friendly fire is enabled by default if it is your first time hosting a game, and there's even an achievement for killing a fellow player.
• Pressure Plate: Side-stepped. This is how spike traps activate, though the trap itself is the plate and only mechanically, not visually.
• Properly Paranoid: There's a human NPC in Hamlet named "The Conspiracy Theorist," who insists that the Mage's Guild is hiding something, that the Archmagisters were in cahoots with Baron Herx, and that the Hunter's Guild is hiding a dark secret. He's right about all three counts; Herx was indeed collaborating with the Archmagisters, and the founder of the Hunter's Guild, Bram Kindly, has become a Vampire Lord who can be fought as an Optional Boss.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Averted, as mentioned above. Female player characters have one more intellect and one less strength than their male counterparts of each class. Actually Inverted if playing as a skeleton, since skeleton players use the same model regardless of gender.
• Random Event: The Minotaur mentioned above.
• Randomized Title Screen: The biome and quote seen on the main menu are randomized every time the player starts the game, and just about all of the quotes are references.
• Reduced to Ratburgers: Rats are a common enemy in the first two sections of the dungeon.^note The Mines and The Swamp They frequently drop either pieces of cheese or hunks of nondescript "meat," and both of them are extremely practical food sources early on.
• Regenerating Health: Your hitpoints will slowly recover while exploring or standing still. This will deplete hunger, affected by Constitution, and generally takes a long time even with a small health pool.
• Regenerating Mana: Same deal, only this does not require hunger and increases in efficiency the higher your Intellect stat is.
• RPGs Equal Combat: Played with. The best equipment can be found both by defeating unique enemies carrying it and in random chests. Sometimes you'll find these "Legendary" weapons twice in one run, potentially eliminating combat challenge for melee characters or even turning a mage or rogue into a Battle Mage or Lightning Bruiser because of these weapons' power, especially in the early floors.
• Run, Don't Walk: Your character will always move at their maximum speed (except when using offhand equipment or sneaking), which is modified by Dexterity, when above a certain percentage of their carry weight. Once they begin carrying items and equipping more armor, their speed decreases at different rates some noticeable some not so much. Constitution increases their carry weight limit and raises the value of the weight that will begin reducing speed, so leveling up increases your net speed overall.
• Scoring Points: The value of your equipment, both worn and carried, will be added up when you either win or die. This, in addition to your skill experience gained is your score, recorded in the High Scores menu along with the character's name, portrait, and what killed them.
• Schmuck Bait: Using equipment without identifying it. Oooh, shiny! A nice new helmet! Let me just put this on, and... wait, why can't I take it off? Cursed!? Well, this scroll might help me out; let me just read it, and - IT BURNS IT BURNS IT BURNS-
• Shop Fodder: Downplayed - gemstones have no use besides being extremely valuable baubles to be sold at shops, but can be used as last resort thrown weapons. This is particularly true if you manage to identify worthless glasses early game. Meanwhile, nearly every other item in the game has a use if the player is inventive enough. Towels? Use them to bandage your wounds and stop bleeding, or wipe yourself clean. Scrolls that set you on fire or destroy your gear? The former supercharge your boiler instantly if you're playing as an automaton, and the latter can be used to destroy cursed gear that's stuck on you. Moldy custard pie? Throw it at an enemy to both humiliate and blind them. Cursed staffs that you can't unequip until they're burnt out? Using them still increases your Casting and Magic skills, with no MP cost. Literal rocks? Throw 'em ahead of you to trigger Boulder and Spike traps, or just bean your enemies with them. Books that contain nothing but Flavor Text? Very practical food sources for Automatons.
• Shoplift and Die: Continuing the proud Roguelike tradition of Shopkeepers being nearly as deadly as the final boss, store owners have Legendary casting skill. Enraging one, or being a member of a hostile race, will lead to you being bombarded by an infinite stream of Force Bolts. Fortunately, they stay in their shops and aren't very aggressive, so they won't pursue you for very long.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page. Some are to classic Roguelikes such as Zork and Nethack, while others are to more contemporary works; there are also quite a few references to well-known myths and stories, such as King Arthur and Merlin.
• Squishy Wizard: In classical fashion, the majority of the spellcasting-focused classes can't take much more than a stiff breeze before keeling over. Special mention goes to the Mesmer, which is not only tied for the lowest Constitution growth of any class^note the other classes with a Con growth of 1 are the Accursed, Rogue, and Hunter, but also has the lowest starting Constitution stat at a measly negative four.
• Stalked by the Bell: The Minotaur hazard, which appears more and more frequently the longer the player takes to clear levels. After a short delay, you'll be chased by a three-block-tall man-bull who can smash down any obstacle, walk over pits, and outrun nearly anything else in the game. He packs more HP than Baron Herx, and knows exactly where you are at all times; upon spawning, he will proceed to bulldoze his way directly to you in a straight line. Unlike most instances of this trope, you can kill the Minotaur, as he lacks many forms of Contractual Boss Immunity; if you're a sufficiently-powerful wizard or a really tanky warrior, you might just be able to slay the beast. You might also get lucky enough to have the Zap Brigade appear and take on the Minotaur themselves.
• Swiss-Army Hero: Selecting the Mage class doesn't prevent you from using swords or shields just like selecting the Soldier class doesn't prevent you from reading that spell book of Healing. Though each class does have a different probability to increase each stat, so while you can choose playstyles outside of your class's specialization they probably won't be as good at it.
• Taken for Granite: The Stoneblood spell offers a variation - it petrifies blood veins, causing the Paralysis status effect, which can be devastating to both you and the enemies.
• Timed Mission: Some floors will have a Minotaur Warning - a flashing purple bull icon in the bottom left corner, along with Baron Herx helpfully noting that you'd better skedaddle before it gets there. If you don't vacate the level quickly enough, the Minotaur will show up and proceed to ruin your day if it gets its hands on you. This hazard becomes increasingly likely to show up if you take too long completing a regular floor, although the Minotaur Warning won't activate until the next floor you enter.
• Time Trial: There is an achievement for defeating Baron Herx in under twenty minutes, another for beating the entire game in under 45 minutes, and another for completing all the trials in the Hall of Trials in under 20 minutes.
• Token Heroic Orc: Zig-zagged. With the right DLC, you can play as a Skeleton, Vampire, Goatman or Goblin who's taken up arms against Baron Herx for their own reasons. Just don't expect the humans in the dungeon to distinguish you from all of your buddies. The heroic part is potentially subverted since there's nothing keeping you from unnecessary conflict with humans.
  • Outright defied for Succubi, Incubi, Vampires and Skeletons. The ending crawl states that the player-character uses the powers they've gained from rampaging through Herx's dungeon to essentially become everything the former aspired to be, taking over much of the known world and instituting The Necrocracy as a mighty lich. The only hope for humanity comes from rumors of a hero rising up to slay them.
• The Undead: Vampires, Skeletons and Ghouls all make appearances. Herx is a Lich, and the most dangerous thing in the game short of his master, and later, the arch-wizard siblings.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Freeing a Shopkeeper who's been taken captive by goblins won't even net you a "thank you," much less a discount of any sort. They'll also still freely try to murder you if you're a monster race, even though you just rescued them.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting:
  • The Polymorph spell, which comes in both potion and spellbook formats. Non-humans will always turn into a Human for a set amount of time, allowing them to interact with their "fellow humans" without risk of being spontaneously murdered. The effects are somewhat less reliable for true humans; you may get unlucky and turn into a Vampire right as you're starving to death and there's no source of blood around.
  • The Shaman class specializes in this, being able to transform into several different creatures that each offer different stat boosts and innate spells.
• We Buy Anything: Reaching Legendary Trading skill allows the player to indulge in this trope. Otherwise, the only merchants who will buy any type of item are General Merchants. All other merchants trade in specific item categories. For instance, Book Sellers will only buy or sell scrolls, books, and quills.
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Playable goatmen wake up the morning after what must have been a really wild night out. How they got all the way from their native lands to the surface of the Dungeon is anybody's guess.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: In true Roguelike fashion, you need to regularly eat or drink in order to survive. Combat will make you hungry faster. You can even find the Ring Of Slow Digestion, a direct transplant from Nethack, which does the same thing as in that game - namely, makes your hunger meter fill at a slower pace. Unlike in Nethack, you can turn this off if it bothers you.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: Just like the games it takes influence from, there are many ways to bring your journey to an end; polymorphing into a Vampire as you're starving and there's no blood nearby? Accidentally losing Levitate while over a Bottomless Pit? Try to jump into water to put out fire as an Undead? Check, check and check.

---