Rogue Lineage
is an Action RPG Roguelike made in Roblox by Monad Studios.
The game revolves around the Permadeath mechanic, where your character has only three livesnote before all progress is wiped, forcing you to start from scratch. In order to make progress and learn new abilities, you have to scrounge up the silver to pay NPCs to train you and engage in combat with other players, many of whom aren’t exactly friendly and need kills to progress in their class.
Whether you forge a House with fellow players or go it alone, you’re in for a brutal experience, especially if you’re going solo.
The game was initially released on March 29, 2019 and can be purchased for 200 Robux. On December 21, 2021, a subdivision of the group would release Deepwoken, which serves as a Spiritual Antithesis to this game.
Contains examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features: As unforgiving as the game is, it does show leniency on a few things:
- Die in a way that's unfair and completely out of your control, like to most bugs, an exploiter, etc? So long as you have video evidence and a Discord account, you can get your life restored. The developers will turn on "global restore" for some time and restore everybody's lives if something happens to affect all players, like an update being pushed or Roblox's servers failing.
- Can’t open the door to the Sleeping Snall inn in the Tundra and on the verge of getting frostbite and freezing to death? Exiting close to it and rejoining the game will have the game surprisingly show mercy and respawn you elsewhere without losing a life.
- You’re given a forcefield when you load in for a minute or two, preventing cheap spawn-kills and allowing you to get your bearings without risk. Being forced out of one by another player (like by using Gate) and dying as a result is considered a strikable/bannable offense and the life is considered restorable should you record it happening.
- In response to the criticism of exiting the game to escape a fight being a Luck-Based Mission depending on how Roblox’s servers are acting, a menu button was eventually added in an update, providing players with a quicker and guaranteed escape so long as they’re considered “safe.”
- Despite lives working on a percentage system when you get to Khei, with whether or not you wipe being decided on RNG, you will never wipe until you reach at least three deaths, preventing unlucky wipes if someone were to only die once. The game still raises your chance to wipe, though. Similarly, if you're very lucky and somehow manage to reach nine deaths without being wiped, it will not increase again, making sure that you always have a chance of living another day.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: Heavily downplayed. Don’t want to give up your character just yet? For 1000 or 2000 Robuxnote in Gaia and Khei respectively, you can give yourself one extra life. Get wiped again and no amount of money will bring you back. If you're dissatisfied with your current race, you can pay 150 Robux to reroll and get a new, hopefully better one.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Don’t expect to square up against an Ultra class player as a fresh-spawn and win unless you get really lucky.
- Cycle of Hurting: PvP aside, it's usually a bad idea to fight multiple monsters at once since they can stun-lock you until you're knocked and killed. This can happen even if you're, say, only fighting two Shriekers or Zombie Mushrooms.
- Karma Meter: The Order/Chaos alignment system serves as this in Gaia. The former represents law, enslavement, and justice while the latter represents anarchy, freedom, crime, and murder. Jailing any chaotic players and doing Order quests will give you Orderly while gripping players, feeding on them as a vampire, or picking the Chaos options in quests will give you Chaotic. The majority of classes is locked until you raise your Orderly/Chaotic to a certain threshold. The maximum amount necessary for an Orderly class is 60 unless you plan on getting Solon's Sword, which requires 300 Orderly while you need to get 120 Chaotic (or 160 Chaotic for Wrath Knight) for their respective classes. In Khei, it's replaced by the Purity/Corruption system, which function similarly.
- Obvious Rule Patch: There used to be an exploit in Khei where sacrificing yourself to Flagellant's Spire wouldn't take a life if you were in a forcefield when you spawned in. Needless to say, the developers made note of it and the game punishes you big time if you attempt this after it was patched.
- No Fair Cheating:
- The game considers logging out while you’re in combat to be one. Doing so will have the game take one of your lives and all of your silver (as opposed to none or half of it after you die to an NPC or player respectively) while also giving you insanity and putting you on the brink of death.
- Trying to be smart with your spawn forcefield and attempt to sacrifice yourself on Flagellant's Spire for Purity while it's still active? You will promptly "die" nine times, leaving you with a 90% chance of wiping, which you most likely will at that moment. If you somehow hit the 10% chance of not wiping, you have to be extremely careful from then on.
- Permadeath: Lose all of your lives and that’s it. You only get one second chance if you’re willing to spend the Robux, but after that, you have to start a new character from scratch.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The one guaranteed defense against a more powerful opponent running towards them? Exiting the game completely or, more preferably, returning to the main menu before they can get a hit in and tagging you.
- Warp Whistle: The Gate spell serves as this in both Gaia and Khei. Azaels spawn with this and Snap Gate, and other races can unlock the spell if they find the incredibly rare Rift Gem and talk to Adralik in the desert. By interacting with obelisks throughout the map, you can teleport to various locations throughout the map. Snap Gate removes the randomness factor by allowing you to pick which specific area in a region to teleport to. Backfiring the spell can potentially teleport you to an area that outright kills you, like the All Dark.
- You Will Not Evade Me: The Pebble serves as this, allowing players to toss it towards their intended target to combat tag them when they’re out of range.
