Mewgenics - Edmund McMillen's biggest game yet

[Gimmick Account]

my favourite video game genre, Cats

 

[anliteralidiot]

I just had an insane interaction with Maisie. I used a necromancer with Reap, and targeted a kitten. She swapped, as usual.
and it one-shot her

 

[funwithshemales69]

I fucking hate Dybbuk, its hard getting to that motherfucker in the first place just for him to jump around and possess my cats. And I was here thinking the cave spider was bad. At 26 hours in, Im barely 10% complete and had 1 fight with Dybbuk.

Edit: I also have not unlocked any of the other classes after Thief and I fucking hate it. I want to try the other classes man.

What's the maximum population of cats that you keep at a time? Is 20 too many? Maybe that's where I'm fucking up, too many mouths to feed.

Florian Himsl, the original coder for Isaac and one of the playtesters for this, has the highest record with 400 cats at a single time.

 

[BlazikenLover]

I am trying monk for the first time and trying to figure it out, is he meant to be a fighter with some ranger thrown in?

 

[Bnuny]

Just absolutely dunked on Guillotina 3 using a PCP fighter who was a bigger threat to my team than she was, by far.

 

[anliteralidiot]

I just had an insane interaction with Maisie. I used a necromancer with Reap, and targeted a kitten. She swapped, as usual.
and it one-shot her

On further playing, it seems like Reap ignores the transformations of everything. So, if it can one-shot the enemy, the enemy won't go into the second phase.

I fucking hate Dybbuk, its hard getting to that motherfucker in the first place just for him to jump around and possess my cats. And I was here thinking the cave spider was bad. At 26 hours in, Im barely 10% complete and had 1 fight with Dybbuk.

Edit: I also have not unlocked any of the other classes after Thief and I fucking hate it. I want to try the other classes man

I got lucky, and beat Dybbuk my first try... What really helped was a mage with a wide-range fire spell, and an ability that double-cast it if is only used one spell the turn before. I'd center the spell on him, and he'd hop into one of the hits on the side.

and right now I'm stuck because I feel like I can't go to the sewers anymore (the big sharks. shit's unfair.), but I don't feel ready for Act 2 and I need better breeding setups

 

[Kane Lives]

and right now I'm stuck because I feel like I can't go to the sewers anymore (the big sharks. shit's unfair.), but I don't feel ready for Act 2 and I need better breeding setups

Why not? I didnt think the big sharks were particularly hard, though obviously you want to run at least one ranged DPS or bring ranged weapons for the sewers.

 

[Dr. Ricearoni]

@Cats would've loved this game I think. If he were still around he'd be in this thread showing off his fucked up inbred cats.

 

[Stains Davidson]

Something that might be easy to miss about a lot of the big shark maps are the 1-tile chokepoints on a lot of them that the big sharks aren't able to pass through. Otherwise those fights are just 1) don't get hit with bleed at all or you're gonna have a bad time, which ties to 2) DPS check and if you fail you were doing badly anyway, so they did you a favour by ending your run.

As for Dybbuk, he's largely neutralized just by having a decent cleric so you can afford to spend the turns/attrition trying to chase him into a corner without everyone dying. Cleric also serves a second purpose of giving you someone who's gonna be consistently Very Useful but not very Strong, so you can last hit Dybbuk with it and then dunk on it.

 

[Gimmick Account]

@Cats would've loved this game I think. If he were still around he'd be in this thread showing off his fucked up inbred cats.

I think that goes without saying. But yeah, every time I hear Them Kitty Bones I think of him.

 

[Cryogonal2]

I don't know why I decided to do the face butt quest without a Cleric. This is painful. I don't know why I took a Thief and a Mage (with frenzy) to this. My reliance on Thief is killing me. This is also the first time the game has posed any difficulty.

 

[psycho motor retard]

I am trying monk for the first time and trying to figure it out, is he meant to be a fighter with some ranger thrown in?

Monk skills are more or less split between melee, ranged, damage caster and tank archetypes. They can be really strong, but it's hard to predict if you'll get what you need or want. Using them as pure melee brawlers seems a little difficult, because they get neither speed or constitution out of the box and armor is often (but not always) haram. The usefulness of the ranged tree seems a little diminished by the existence of hunter. They're very fun, though.

 

[Kane Lives]

Been taking butcher out for a spin. Definitely feels like a better fighter, especially with the built in hook and free meat drops. Might use it for my eventual moon run. Still unsure what to take because I'm not confident of any team composition making it through crater intact yet. Definitely at least a cleric though, with all the bullshit status the shit there seems to shit on you.

 

[Anonitolia]

Monk skills are more or less split between melee, ranged, damage caster and tank archetypes. They can be really strong, but it's hard to predict if you'll get what you need or want. Using them as pure melee brawlers seems a little difficult, because they get neither speed or constitution out of the box and armor is often (but not always) haram. The usefulness of the ranged tree seems a little diminished by the existence of hunter. They're very fun, though.

If you have a Druid, I'd highly recommend breeding Feral onto your prospective monk and trying to melee it that way. I got this monster the first time I tried the class out and actually had to reset after Dybbuk possessed him, because the fucker one-shot my entire team after I lost control of him.



He does not concern himself with worldly virtues like "not doing crack" or "staying away from fire," he's too busy kicking ass and sounding like a chainsmoker.

 

[funwithshemales69]

Finally finished act 1, dybbuks done, I was extremely lucky cause he took my cleric this time and my other units were alright, especially my fighter. He ended up dying to thorns and I was able to fuck him up with bramble. Very very lucky.

 

[xX_rAcE_wAr_420_Xx]

After I finally beat Dybbuk, and meditated on how he works, the boss fight is remarkably easy once you are familiar with it. Overall I'm rather surprised by how much my runs improve just through sheer game knowledge alone; my first actual run was a total wipe on Radical Rat, I had a mage with the "do elemental damage around you" passive which procced fire on a bomb next to him, blowing up my entire party. Now I'm just trivially fucking the stupid ghost's ass after only one loss to him, surrounding and gangbanging him works super easy, had a run where my Ranger and Necro both had summon skills and I just surrounded Dybbuk with leeches and fleas to hold his ass still.

On a related note, I think the Necromancer is very underrated. It gets +2 Con, and even though its basic attack does low damage the class is resilient the same way the Cleric makes your party resilient. It has some real bad skills, I'm not sure how useful any of the "more powerful when you're downed" ones are, but the raise dead one that resurrects things as zombies is stupidly good, same with the one that surrounds a unit with leeches. It's not a big damage win-more class, but it's a total workhorse that is good whenever a fight is otherwise difficult. Looking at the base attack specifically, it does ~3 damage where the ranger usually does ~6, but immediately after you deal 1 extra and heal 1 more, so if the thing survives until your next turn then you're getting more value than the ranger each attack. Plus, like the ranger, it has the rare quality that it's a "lobbed" attack that goes over units and terrain, which nicely covers for the fact that you shit up the battlefield quickly with corpses and summons.

Really, I'm starting to heavily favor classes based on their bonus to Constitution. The only exception is the Mage, which I also like for its ability to get around tricky things and have ranged attacks. Ranger is okay, I've been totally unimpressed with the Fighter, Thief is fun but I could take or leave it, Tank and Cleric continue to be fundamental unless I'm just memeing.

 

[Mad as a Swan]

Played a bit more with Butcher, Monk and Psychic; here are my thoughts on each of them:

Butcher: overall good class. Good damage AND sustain. Doesn't rely on some shitty spells or luck/build, pretty much any ability works and compliments the build. It's just like fighter, but beefier.

Monk: I like the class gimmick (switching stances) but it just ends up being a weaker fighter/ranger. Some abilities are neat (soduken, energy ball) but shadowed by actual decent classes like Tank and Ranger, who can dish out 3x the damage without gimmicks. The best spell is the mini-me summon and, goes to show you how shitty the monk is, having 3 clones running around does NOT guarantee a win. Lategame you need two stats to deal damage and half-scale off each stat, so it doesn't scale well...

Psychic: dead weight. Sure you can get decent spells for clearing trash mobs (i got the meteor+ and tk push, so I just pushed flaming boulders around) but basic attack is laughably weak and most spells are a waste of mana at best. So requires strong synergies (from allies) AND requires good luck AND generally useless against bosses AND damage is worse than cleric somehow. Whenever I get good spells yes he does better than a mage. Otherwise he's worse than a stray.

 

[Blindeye]

My first Psychic was really good due to one broken combo: Reality Shatter, a passive that changes tiles affected by gravity spells to Floating Glass, and Vacuum, a gravity spell that affects a 5x5 area. Killed Throbbing King with him by changing half the map to glass, then dragging him around it until he had over 70 stacks of bleed

Gonna share my own thoughts on the act 2 classes:

Druid: Deceptively powerful, feels underwhelming at first since most of your individual actions are unimpactful, but the crow is amazing utility all the time even with nothing supporting it and no good stats on it, having a large aoe basic attack enables a ton of item synergy shenanigans, easy access to minions gives you a lot of board control via action economy and occupying tiles, it's a really strong support even with no good combos

Tinkerer: One of the most build- and luck-dependent classes, but it has such good skills, and such a strong/fun base gimmick, that it usually turns out good enough. Item spam is a really fun playstyle and you can get a lot of mileage out of it with equipment, it can run builds that sustain itself just off armor which alleviates some need for healing

Psychic: Also very build-dependent and I think it's primarily a support class, but it's very good at repositioning units which is one of the most useful things in the game, and it has a lot of great debuffs and cheap spells that have good range, so I've found it works really well with teams that primarily do melee damage. Being able to move an enemy over a little bit so your fighter can get past it to another enemy, or reach an enemy just barely out of their range, very often decides a battle, and it's good at applying debuffs that are particularly useful against big fat bosses, like Bleed and Bruise and Stun.

Butcher: This is the one that's been disappointing me, I might just be getting bad rolls for abilities, but all of mine have felt like a slower fighter with worse mobility that can usually only kill one thing per turn, and the hook isn't a good substitute for actual mobility, although it's still useful, but sometimes being able to use a different weapon would be better. The main thing it has going for it is the self-sustain which would make it a great candidate for a party without a cleric/druid, but ordinarily it's not hard to manage party HP anyway so the sustain ends up not very valuable

 

[Kane Lives]

I'm not sure how useful any of the "more powerful when you're downed" ones are

By itself half of the Necro abilities that proc off him dying is not very useful. BUT. There's an item that mitigates injuries on a specific cat, skills that down you on demand and if you're lucky, you can luck into a cleric that can resurrect from heals. Combined, it can be insane because a lot of downed skills seem to be balanced around the fact that you can only really do it a few times in battle.

Butcher: This is the one that's been disappointing me, I might just be getting bad rolls for abilities, but all of mine have felt like a slower fighter with worse mobility that can usually only kill one thing per turn, and the hook isn't a good substitute for actual mobility, although it's still useful, but sometimes being able to use a different weapon would be better. The main thing it has going for it is the self-sustain which would make it a great candidate for a party without a cleric/druid, but ordinarily it's not hard to manage party HP anyway so the sustain ends up not very valuable

I think Butcher suits my playstyle because he can act as a tank as a pinch, and he can draw a lot of aggro and still not die because of the sustain. If you run both him and either Necro or Tank you basically can play the board really aggressively.

 

[Anonitolia]

Tank and Cleric continue to be fundamental unless I'm just memeing.

I truly don't understand why everyone keeps saying Tank is a must. I find most of its active abilities pretty lackluster (mostly displacement with very low damage, which is annoying when your basic attack already doesn't do much and the displacement often includes a huge area that inevitably affects allies) and its niche is wholly usurped by a half-decent Necromancer or Cleric. It's to the point where Tank is my least-used class; I've even used Fighter more often, if only for all the Alpha-related skills that really help it pair well with Cleric. Tank is okay for really early game, but it's been borderline redundant every time I've tried to use it past that. Can someone explain the appeal? There's no need for a guy who sits there and gets hit when you have a guy who can sit there and get hit (while healing people) or a guy who can sit there and get hit (while sucking everyone else's HP until they shrivel and die, then resurrecting their corpse to kill their allies).

Thief is fun as fuck when you roll right, but it's such a giant glass cannon that it's very easy to spiral into injury after injury if you don't. It's like the ultimate double-edged sword. You either have the stealthiest assassin motherfucker ever, who will show up behind your opponents and smite them with a triple-damage crit in the same turn as they steal every coin on the map and gain enough movement to kill everyone else, or the most dead-weight piece of shit that will have 4 injuries by your first boss and do 5 damage while your Cleric is doing 15. I mostly bring it along for memey fun when I'm grinding furniture (rare) or feeling cocky (even rarer).

Played a bit more with Butcher, Monk and Psychic; here are my thoughts on each of them:

Butcher: overall good class. Good damage AND sustain. Doesn't rely on some shitty spells or luck/build, pretty much any ability works and compliments the build. It's just like fighter, but beefier.

Monk: I like the class gimmick (switching stances) but it just ends up being a weaker fighter/ranger. Some abilities are neat (soduken, energy ball) but shadowed by actual decent classes like Tank and Ranger, who can dish out 3x the damage without gimmicks. The best spell is the mini-me summon and, goes to show you how shitty the monk is, having 3 clones running around does NOT guarantee a win. Lategame you need two stats to deal damage and half-scale off each stat, so it doesn't scale well...

Psychic: dead weight. Sure you can get decent spells for clearing trash mobs (i got the meteor+ and tk push, so I just pushed flaming boulders around) but basic attack is laughably weak and most spells are a waste of mana at best. So requires strong synergies (from allies) AND requires good luck AND generally useless against bosses AND damage is worse than cleric somehow. Whenever I get good spells yes he does better than a mage. Otherwise he's worse than a stray.

Kind of agree here, with the caveat that I've only had like 3 psychics and 1 monk. Psychic being dogshit depresses me to no end-- there is so much potential for awesome psionic destruction that is just utterly wasted from what I've played of it. I rolled a psychic with some ridiculous passive that boosted Gravity-element spells, made them give positive effects to your allies when they were in range of one, and doubled all those stat bonuses (before being upgraded!)... and never got to use it, because I just kept rolling dogshit like "inflict 2 freeze for 8 mana" or "randomize every single unit's position for 6 mana" on every single one of his level-ups. The guy didn't get a single gravity-element ability in a three-act run. And I didn't have any kind of dice, so he was just completely screwed. His best attribute was being lucky enough to get a spell that let him give allies an extra turn, which made the aforementioned monk even more fucking busted and led to me one-shotting Radical Rat and Mama Maggot with a retarded feral crackhead.
The basic Psychic attack being infinite range is its best attribute, but even that is kind of screwed over by the class's low constitution encouraging less movement and the attack's reliance on positioning requiring more. Either your psychic has enough constitution to move closer to enemies without immediately biting it or you just have to deal with constantly moving people in one or two directions exclusively. Sucks.
I will keep trying to make Psychic work, just because I am a total sucker for alien mind-control shit (and there is a mind control attack, it's just stupidly expensive and wouldn't have worked with any of the psychics that rolled it), but it's not good and that makes me very sad. It has the same reliance on RNG that tends to kill Mages, except it seems even more unbalanced (because at least Mages get objectively better stat bonuses and can actually do anything before an upgrade or two).

Monk can be very good (as detailed above) or very bad. It seems to want to be both a ranged and melee class, but all the abilities I saw seemed to lean more heavily on melee than ranged and the former has far better DPS than the latter. It seems like trying to go both ways, as the class is intended to, just hurts the monk's overall viability... but I can't say for sure, as I've only used it once.

Butcher just obsoletes every single other melee class. It's not even funny how much better it is. It's to the point where, if you're choosing a Fighter or a Thief (or arguably even a Monk, dunno), you're arguably hurting your team comp. This single fucking ability, paired with a Cleric that has Cleanse, just destroys so much shit:

Even moreso if you got lucky, like I did, and rolled a bunch of passives that boosted your attack stat by other means too...

And then you add the free heals for every attack, a basic attack that isn't restricted to a four-way grid, a permanent positioning tool that can also be upgraded into a debuff-inflicting weapon and/or used to position yourself as well as the enemy...
I can't imagine this was intentional, since I think McMillen was making a big deal of how every class is viable in some way (and most of them are, even if some aren't as good as others), and I can't recall any other class being such a straightforward upgrade to another. People here argue Druid is an upgrade to Cleric/Mage, but I honestly think it's way too distinct and diverse to count. (It can do healing, summoning, buffing, terrain manip, DPS, even tank stuff depending on what skills you roll.)

By itself half of the Necro abilities that proc off him dying is not very useful. BUT. There's an item that mitigates injuries on a specific cat, skills that down you on demand and if you're lucky, you can luck into a cleric that can resurrect from heals. Combined, it can be insane because a lot of downed skills seem to be balanced around the fact that you can only really do it a few times in battle.

I've actually managed to roll some of those "down on command + buff when downed" skills before, and they really aren't worth all the tradeoffs. 90% of the time, if you're downed you'll revive at like 10% HP. Your Cleric isn't going to be healing that shit even to half before your second area unless you get really really lucky (or your necromancer just has shit constitution, which isn't likely given the class bonuses). Most of the skills you can use while downed do shit damage and don't inflict leeches or buffs/debuffs, which cuts out 2/3 of what makes Necromancer so great. On top of that, if you rolled any zombie skills and created any zombies before you downed yourself, say bye-bye to your Necromancer because that corpse is getting eaten by your own "allies" long before you can ever revive.

Every single "x when downed" skill is just not worth the tradeoff. I've tried to make it work. Best-case scenario, your Cleric is constantly sidelining other members to buff your Necromancer and keep it from keeling over at the slightest hint of damage. Worst-case scenario, your Necromancer is dying thanks to its own allies and not making it to the first mid-area boss due to your attempts to... play the class as it was intended to be played. That specific portion of Necromancer's kit needs either a serious rework or a serious buff.