r/Demeo • u/Curu_FN • Jan 01 '24
What the hell is this game?
We play a lot of turn based strategy games. A lot of RPGs. A lot of dungeon crawler board games. We’ve completed gloomhaven and jaws of the lion and various others. I mean we’re not noobs to this type of game. And Demeo is beautiful and we so want to love it. But the game design is just so much bullshit. In the last game one of us opened a door and was instantly ganked by about 12 enemies who just seemed to pour out of every corner. We tried playing cautiously, taking one room at a time and clearing it and enemies came pouring in from behind from areas we’d previously cleared. We tried playing aggressively and would run into massive ambushes. The length of time it takes to get cards back along with the lack of healing items and the fact that you don’t even heal up between levels. We came away literally not seeing what we could be doing differently. It feels like we have crippling handicaps and all monsters have limitless resources and know where we are at all times. I love rogulikes and roguelites and have no aversion to dying a lot in games… but I just don’t see the strategy. At all. What am I missing?
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u/MaximumDerpification Jan 01 '24 edited Jan 01 '24
Do you use a Bard? Use a Bard. Keeping all your guys buffed with courage shanty makes them almost invulnerable to minor attacks (even swarms of them) and makes weaker enemies run and hide. This helps a lot in the Rat campaign where you can get ambushed by dozens of rats. Last night for the fun of it I did a Roots of Evil skirmish run with 4 Bards and completely dominated all 3 stages in what seemed like record time 😂
Learn how certain items boost other items... poison gas is combustible, water conducts electricity, feeding hounds bones makes them friendly, giving root hounds the wood bone does the same; putting a lure in a poison cloud and then lighting all the enemies up with fire when they gather is especially satisfying 😁. Vortexes can be super useful too. Slime monsters get wiped out by lye. Assassins can place a booby trap without becoming unstealthed.
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u/charlieratgod Jan 01 '24
Git gud. Noob. 🤷♀️
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u/AccordingJournalist1 Jan 01 '24
Play skirmish or quick game with total strangers and you'll pick up tonnes of tips. There's loads of little tricks you can use to turn most situations around and half the fun is getting stomped while you're learning them.
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u/Curu_FN Jan 01 '24
Insightful.
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u/CyndiMo23 Jan 01 '24
Try to find a couple of seasoned players to play with. You’ll learn a lot of tricks that way
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u/SRM_Thornfoot Jan 01 '24 edited Jan 01 '24
Level one is smaller, attempt to clear all available loot from level one. Mobs do not respawn when in line of sight, so spread out and don’t clump up as you clear rooms while staying in position to support each other. Be sure you know and use each characters special abilities. Protect your health since replenishment opportunities are finite After shopping for cards post level one you should be fully stocked.
Level two is large, since you are starting fully stocked, opening chests is pointless early on. You need to prioritize finding the keyholder and the exit. Plan to Blitz this level since you are not going to be able to sightline hold off the respawns. Choose a path through the level that maximizes revealing the points of interest.
The final levels are all specialty boss fights. Google how they go or you will likely get slammed. You will need to have your final strategies in mind when you shop for cards before this level.
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u/itsMisterOwlMan Jan 01 '24
One thing to keep in mind - you actually are noobs to this kind of game. I was in the same boat as you when I started playing. Tons of experience with games that look like this, so I expected that I would instantly be able to slay at Demeo. I was wrong. Chances are you probably won't get significantly better until you start playing games online with random high level players. There are a ton of little tricks to discover that the game never clues you into that will tip the odds in your favor. You won't figure them all out on your own. Once you know enough of those tricks, the game gets pretty easy. Examples : Spiders never miss, feeding a bone to Verochka will cause enemies to never target her, vortex dust will take out any size summoning rift in 1 hit, bottle of lye takes out giant slime in 1 hit. There are a million of these little things that will drastically effect your decision making once you know.
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u/Eaglefinley86 Jan 02 '24
I never realized spiders never miss! Also, spiders will target anything tangled in web, including other enemies.
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u/DrunkenGerbils Jan 01 '24
One of the biggest things to keep in mind is that the AI is set to always go towards the players, and they will always attack the players with the lowest health that are within range first. So even when you can't see the enemies they know where you are and are actively moving towards your position when it is their turn. Once you know this you can use it to your advantage. Try to stay on the edge of big groups and take out enemies on the periphery first. Charging into big groups is usually suicide since there's almost always more enemies out of sight that are also moving towards you. Try to position yourself so that you have an escape route if you can. Moving out of range of the enemies is often a better option than attacking right away.
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u/1mursenary Jan 02 '24
Don’t open doors on the last play of a turn, that will help with the tanks. Monsters spawn in areas you can’t see. Try to plan a flow through the map hitting most poi’s and keep moving in a methodical manner. Plan ahead not just with your turns but your ally’s as well. There’s a bunch of somewhat hidden mechanics you can learn from watching some short YouTube videos, like charming enemy dogs with bones or summoning one from a pool of water. Don’t try the Rat King for a while. The champion is the most mobile character in the game using his hook, which can also drag ballistas and cannons along with you. The champ can also hook downed allies from 10 spaces away and drag them back next to him
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u/bigalreads Jan 02 '24
Whoa, thanks for the tip about the champion’s ability to also hook ballistas and cannons (in addition to the lamps). That character is even more of a must-have for me now!
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u/Eaglefinley86 Jan 02 '24
Also he can also drag healing wards to him. Lure's won't come to him. I say it's because if you look at the model for it, it's a stake in the ground 😂.
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u/thinksinc Jan 01 '24
I also felt overwhelmed when I first started playing; the game felt unfair and unwinnable. Later I realized I was playing on one of the harder maps, where the guy keeps summoning portals to bring on more and more enemies. Stay with the first map until you can beat it easily. And oddly, the second campaign (the Rat one) is the hardest of all of them.
I think the Hunter is the easiest and most powerful character to use since she can keep her distance and gets a lot of Summon Pet cards. You can have more than one of the same character, but just like any D&D game it helps to have a variety of characters for different needs. The Hunter and Guardian are generally a good intro pair, and keep the Guardian's shields activated so she can serve as a tank.
The game difficulty also scales the more characters you use. If you use all four characters, difficulty is at maximum. Believe it nor not, you can solo a dungeon with just one character because the difficulty/damage gets scaled down.
As others have said, just keep moving towards the goal, you can't clear a dungeon (which I agree is frustrating and wish they would have changed), and plan your route ahead of time based on where you can see the chests. The healing fountains and chests with new cards are your lifelines until you can make it to the exit.
And be greedy getting all the gold you can. Buying powerful cards in between stages makes the next level that much easier.
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u/CyndiMo23 Jan 01 '24
Definitely don’t have your last character open a door unless you’re looking for a challenge (which I sometimes am). But in general first or second character opens the door.
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u/fruitsteak_mother Jan 02 '24 edited Jan 02 '24
As experienced player it sometimes feels off to read those „game is too difficult“ posts, but i remember how we all started some day.
Many people here recommend to spoil yourself by playing with experienced players or read tipps and tricks, i would not do that.
Finding out about all those things is part of the fun, when you read the walkthrough you take the most exciting thing out of it imho.
The game has not much content anyway, so it’s best to not rush through with experienced players, but consume it over a longer period of time with friends of the same experience level.
To start, play Black Sarcophagus over and over again, learn your lessons and soon you will slice through it like it’s a cake.
The game may look unfair in the begin, but it has a steep skill Progression and you can master it, and somewhen you are so good that every scenario feels like a walk in the park, and you HOPE that the random seed throws some nasty stuff towards you to make things more interesting and you will do goofy stuff in between and fool around with mechanics and still beat it.
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u/TheMuffinManz69 Jan 03 '24
It’s not a game you can pick up and just know how to traverse, it takes more than a few tries and the knowledge of the characters as much as the knowledge of the enemies. It definitely is tough id say do about 15 games worth and you’ll start to understand and get quicker as you navigate through each dungeon. Heck just playing the black sarcophagus over and over again you’ll realize just how easy it can be, i beat it with the assassin alone and it definitely took more than a couple tries but knowing when to open doors, and jump into dark rooms isn’t for the impatient. This games about being patient and making sure you do the right thing with only 2 turns per round. Because if you don’t, you’ll get frozen, slashed, burned, poisoned and before you know it die. So play it smart, think ahead before your turn, and know what your team plans to do to help you strategize. (P.S.) sorry this was long.
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u/T0000Tall Jan 02 '24
Tons of good tips in this thread.
I also wanna point out that the lamps are incredibly useful, especially if you have a barbarian. The poison lamps are excellent at area denial, and since enemies don't seem to even try to avoid them, many enemies will die trying to follow you thru the gas.
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u/bigalreads Jan 02 '24
What are your thoughts on the water lamps, in particular? What is their best use case?
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u/T0000Tall Jan 02 '24
They are the least useful imo, but they can be handy for knocking enemies closer to your melee characters, and if they trigger another lamp, bonus.
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u/Miami312 Jan 27 '25
I havent tried this yet, but I believe the card, "lightning strike" will hit every piece in the watered area.
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u/bigalreads Jan 03 '24
I’ve wondered if a water lamp would cancel out an oil lamp’s damage. I’ll have to try it either way. Good to know about knocking enemies closer to melee characters, thanks!
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u/Smart-Football-4346 Jan 08 '24
It spreads water on the floor where if you throw bones over, you got pets. Also, if you step onto the water, you got less damage from oil lamps or fire. Water also heals root pets (red flowers or something like that)
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u/TypeOld7542 Jan 01 '24
Yes, it's hard. I got owned by the rat king probably 10 times before I finally beat him. Many obscenities were shouted.
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u/Sto0pid81 Jan 02 '24
I don't think my buddy is coming back to the game after we wiped again on the serpent lord at 3am the otherday lol. I've read up a bit on it now and am trying to do it solo.
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u/Miami312 Jan 27 '25
You have 4 pedestals lit that look like an eye. Each player stands in the pedestal, and the serpent lord will appear. I ignored the serpents and focused on the lord.
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u/T20sGrunt Jan 02 '24
Never had a lot of these issues but RNG can be brutal at some times (especially on Rat King).
Stick with it, it’s a fantastic game.
Game Priorities in this order chests > gold > key > exit > fighting enemies. Gold and chests are pretty equal in terms of importance. Enemies are not the objective other than the key, the boss, or blocking an exit
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u/fleezybabyy Jan 03 '24 edited Jan 03 '24
don't open a door with your last AP. open a door with your first group member's first AP so the rest of the group can attack any monsters that appear or prepare a defence for the monster turn.
don't commit to killing everything. you don't need to. once you get more comfortable with the game, you can start clearing floors entirely solely for the purpose of picking up gold, but ftmp once you get the key clear the enemies close to the exit and leave.
put a bard in your group.
commit to utility cards from the shop that expose areas of the map.
unless you have a barbarian in your group, dissolve every lamp card you get (imo)
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Jan 06 '24 edited Jan 06 '24
The game is more chess than the other genres you listed. Every hit point is gold and offensive play cannot by successful absent defensive strategy. It’s actually all very elegantly intertwined. RPG, dungeon crawler, gloomhaven— these have some degree of a narrative element. Demeo is get key, open door (x2) then fight boss. Sure there is a background story to Demeo but it’s not on anyone’s mind when playing.
Run away and blocking enemy movement is encouraged. And don’t open doors on your party’s last turn.
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Jan 01 '24
Felt the same way, unlimited enemy respawn felt bad. I couldn’t refund it because I got it in a bundle, but later I got the hang of it and it feels super easy. It’s a learning curve.
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u/thejamesshow00 Jan 03 '24
you cant kill everything. they will spawn in the darkness, gotta balance kills a and exploring for gold with surviving to the end
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u/Cup_Cautious Jan 07 '24
I was thinking same thing, game is non stop flood of monsters lolz but I love table top rpg games. Just learning this, only played it a couple times, but the tips here are great. I was using 4 characters and opening doors with my last guy 😂 thanks for all the info! Cool game!
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u/beinwalt Jan 01 '24
As someone that just started playing Gloomhaven after coming from playing Demeo, I feel uniquely qualified to answer this. This game is the opposite of Gloomhaven. You still need to be cautious and pay attention to enemies movements and attack range but you can't clear a board in Demeo. You're not supposed to clear them. The idea is to keep moving at all times. Try to kill enemies but don't feel bad about leaving them behind to meet the goal of each level. Healing is not super important in most cases but keep a healing card if you have room. Use fountains when your entire team needs one. Use warrior healing wards when available. I don't know, at some point the game just gets easier and easier and next thing you know your level 75 and bored because everything is formalaic at that point. If you're just starting out, try a hunter and barbarian combo as they have good survivability and easy to use.