Path of Achra

finally got a mostly WILL only play through.
at 180+ dream stacks causes delays cus individual failed summon procs delays round. not a fast play through unlike FISTMAN builds but surely fulfilling if pulled off well with 100s of charge stacks.

pray to summon and heal to build up charges. stand still to set things on into astral shock. boosted heals from arbo is a good save.
vines are to slow down fast enemies and diversify damage.


get to 10 will, then 1K hp, 6 str, then all in will.

psych(1)>pc(1)>arbo(1-3)>vina(1)>pv(1)>arbo(4)>pc(2>4)

~1.5hrs

Finally got a win with the fists, this was a pretty simple build but i managed to get up to having somewhere around 900 repulsion on me, and the combo between dorok and the zealot carried me in the early game.

got that strat you were talking about ulfsire.

I dealt 48066 damage to red tower boss

I dont know if this is a glitch or just not showing, but the armour i should gain from the executioner prestige class is not registered on the UI, and i cant tell if it is affecting damage from hits or not

wait does higher cycles mean you can get abilities quicker but enemies are considerably stronger?

Imagine dying to psyconaught teleporting you into multiple gold demons

I finally beat it! When tanking, I find that once you get enough strength to pass encumbrance than you really don't need to worry about Inflexibility (especially if you find the Ice Helm). The main enemies I lost characters too were the stench drake, poison enemies, and the star brutes. I'm looking forward to the full release!

Just started it but i'm loving the powers, mostly blight, can't wait for the release

Just getting my feet wet with the game, but I think it's really cool so far. In particular, you really nailed all the flavor text for exploration and the like. Excited to see the full release.

Just wanted to tell you, the new UI looks very cool!

Also, what is the meaning of 'matching'? Dexerity says '+5 damage if matching your main hand weapon', what does it mean?

Just wanted to say this is excellent.  Have wishlisted on Steam.

Can't stop playing this. Will wishlist on steam!

I have finally won with ascetic Qamar after so many tries most of them dying to the final boss due to the inability to burst him down and/or him killing you with 2 hits before you gained enough stacks.
  

Speaking of stacks this build relies on gaining effects via standstills like focus from the Ascetic class and repulsions from psychokinesis and master repulsion to abuse Qamars ability twice per standstill to deal massive amounts of astral damage to enemies in a 2 tile range, while psychokinesis targets enemies at a much farther 5 tile range increasing the builds dpr and providing an early "long range" damage output. I chose Hadad because of the healing prayer and especially the +5 speed, Humbaba is also a good pick but Hadad is simply better because the focus increases the bleed damage is increased by focus, which is how I lost my last run before this one.

Purple mage head cap provides damage at infinite range targeting any enemy on the map as well as dealing more astral damage since it is a separate astral damage source. Purple blue sash is amazing since it not only deals a lot more damage but it also bypasses the astral and psychic damage resistances, but the strongest item equipped is the robe of the astral wanderer. As you can see from the picture the build completely uses dex (I'll explain why later) and the robe increases both astral damage and psychic damage by 3% per dex, meaning with 37 dex the damage increase is a whopping 111% percent more damage. The weapons are a bit unoptimal since I didn't get the icon of the mysterious order and I chose the robe of the astral wanderer over the icon of the astral wanderer. 

Now for the reason why this build chooses mostly dex is simple, you get more turns than your opponent due to your massive speed which means you deal more damage AND most importantly gain more stacks of repulsion and focus to trigger Qamar and increase all of your damage. At some point you will be able to reach 5 bars of effects  while destroying an entire boss level and not take any damage all just by standing still.

I just got the best run! One-turn killed the final boss with puglism 12, guard, 5 inflex, and rigid violence, so I could've done a 72 hit combo. With my psychokenesis and master repulsion  for extra damage, i killed the boss in only 30-40 hits though. I also have those red gloves for healing, and ice helmet for additional healing per point of inflex.

Hey, I just wanted to say that the browser version is not such a good experience as the game is on a whole, because of the lack of saving (but this might be a problem on my end). This game focuses on character builds, a major portion of which comes from the three things we can select at the start, and the problem is, we need to unlock them by playing the game.

This would have been fine if we could choose what to unlock next, or if those things stayed unlocked, but everytime the browser reloads, everything resets.

Again, this could be a feature, that unlocks are also temporary, so that you are forced to use different combinations in different sittings, but, every playthrough is very long, takes like 1/2 hrs, and so unlocking many things at once is very difficult. And if you do not get synergic unlocks early on, the gameplay can become mundane...

This is a great game, but these things have prevented me from experimenting with the classes much (like you intend players to do)

Got here in just a few tries, first tried out basic summoning strat, didn't get to the other side, tried pugilism since i love punching, came pretty close just died to the golden demon because of their insane damage. And finally the build that got me there, The Burning Juggernaut. The build mostly consists of burning heart and pyrokinesis with Hadad to just heal an insane amount that the only thing that came close to killing me was the golden demons but they weren't enough either, every other fight was just a really long slugfest where they try to damage me but i just healed back up instantly, added by the fact i was wielding the fire axe that dealt psychic damage when i dealt fire damage with the robe that increased both fire damage and lightning damage based on the weapon size and pants that dealt 50% of lightning damage as fire damage the build does good damage and has insane survivability. But the best part is when i was against the king of colors, the final boss. He was healing all the damage i dealt to him and he was summoning more enemies as i kill them so i decided to use the fully charged third prayer and it just killed him. It did so much damage that the fight was over. Games really fun and you can make so much builds in it. I'm gonna be playing this for a while. 9.7/10

this is probably a me problem but my game is going to slowly :`(
Well, on a brighter note, my fifth run!

So I don't want to leave things on a sour note here, because the last post I made feels like a very negative post for a game that I honestly love. I still love the game that hasn't changed and if anything I only love it more than when I first discovered it. I'm just going to be posting in the comments a lot less because all of my feedback is going to be going to the discord rather than on here. If anything I'll probably occasionally post builds on here for new players to try out because sometimes this game can get a bit overwhelming with the large number of combinations you can have for a character.

I will restate that this game is probably one of the best games on itch, period. It's a real hidden gem on the site. Currently the dev is really good about taking any feedback you might have for them and they are constantly updating and tweaking the game which means any complaint or criticism you see in my past comments has actually been addressed or explained. The game is phenomenal and I really can't state enough how much fun I've had playing it (or how many hours I've spent playing it). Some games on this site feel rather disposable, something you can pick up play for a couple of hours and then forget. Path of Achra is not that, I'll be driving home or doing something else and I'll think of a build I'd love to run in the game and despite how quick a session might go I have a hard time trying everything out that I want to try just because of the shear volume of different potential builds you can play.

Long story short, if you like a game with rich build variety and tons of options or you like seeing how ridiculous you can get with a character this game is second to none.

It is me I am back again, I've sunk another 12 hours or so into the new build of the game. It's in a few words: a mixed bag. There are some really great things to it, there are some rather bad parts to the changes. So I'll get that all out of the way, I will say that the game is still fun though it doesn't feel as good as it did before the changes but we'll get into that.

The good
The way removing level up bonuses and just making them bonuses from increasing stats is great. I wish this had been around from the start, it really makes me want to mix stats, though will really doesn't get enough in any sense of the word I wish will added something else even if it was just minor bonuses to other stats, though admittedly will always provided very little. The bonus to will was that you didn't need to be close to the combat. The fact that I can dip into dex to get my speed above 10 or 20 is really nice, it means that I'm not stuck with a build that either hard invests in speed or actively wants 1 speed, though that's still a thing. I do kind of wish that still gave a small hp bonus maybe half the points you get from purely investing in hp (or further increase the bonus you get from just investing in hp because stats are still always going to be worth more). I love how all of the classes and races provide more (including speed and health which again means you'll more easily be able to reach a speed over 10 if you want that.

The bad
Block is better but it's still not great, I did successfully build a block armor build thanks to the bonuses you get from wearing hand armor and using shields though I might suggest that giving the block % a bonus from inflexibility might be useful as well even if it's just a small additive one. Block still struggles because some things add one kind of block and others add other kinds, though the elimination of the defense stat is generally good and I applaud doing so. The 

The ugly
The simplification of the damage system is...rough. Where as the elimination of level up bonuses makes me want to spread out my stat points the elimination of stat scaling on weapons and powers has done the opposite, it has also notably killed will or builds that use will. Powers don't scale very well and are for the most part to expensive to invest in them as much as you like, you can no longer really afford to spread out your powers as much as you could and are more rewarded for grabbing 2-3 powers and investing only in them. Even more so a pure martial build is the most powerful option you can choose. The mubarizum build is almost untouched except that it has a worse dodge and speed making it so it doesn't get as far into the void, the strength build struggles for damage end game because str doesn't really add much for damage, and will builds are dead. Summon builds are slogs because you can't support your own summons with damage and if something is heavily resistant to what you do you can sit there for minutes waiting for your summons to chip them down. The kinesis powers are terrible for damage without heavy power point investments and if you kill everything on your way to the obelisk you will end up with 23 glory or 28 power points to spread around and you need to make sure you're investing in your heavy damage dealers because putting points in a power is where the damage comes from, not stats. The only stat that makes any amount of difference for damage really is dex and even then at most you're probably going to see a 1.5x increase in what you do. While the changes may make things simpler, I think it is to the detriment of other mechanics.

The mixed
I don't know where else to put this because it's neither ugly nor all bad nor all good. The new level up system is a bit of everything. It definitely has problems but it also fixes some problems. Getting a build off the ground is much easier and you aren't as incentivized to kill everything in the room, but the increase of required experience points to level means that while the early game is easier because you level up faster at first, the late game is much more demanding and can turn into a slog, compounding with the other problems. With how damage scaling now works I almost think that the old experience scaling can still work with how starved every build is for power points now that powers are the main source of damage.

The overall
The game is still fun though I think it could get frustrating. The change to how stats works makes some powers and a lot of weapons not worth taking or using. The builds that were strong are all weaker, some far more than others. Other than the old mubarizum build (invest everything into dex, focus and vitality. Look for the ash sword, the shifting green shield, and or the dualist's claw depending on what damage you want to focus on: slash, bludgeon, or pierce. Look for the pants that make each of those better respectively). The builds I've listed thus far are mostly irrelevant (which I would expect when the game grows and changes).  So far as I can tell martial is the most powerful power tree. Str builds are tanks, Dex builds are damage, and will builds don't currently work. I'll post more after I've played more if I have more to say, still enjoying the game even if some of it frustrates me and looking forward to what comes next.

So it's been a few days and I've really been going over builds to see what works and what doesn't. I feel like I'm missing something though cause I still have a hard time getting very far in the void. Still, despite my hardships in the void I feel like I find myself falling into a dominant strategy and it's hard to pull myself out of it. Even more, playing unconventional builds feels not fun. Sometimes getting past the first screen can be a bit of an rng fest even for a solid build but if your build comes online late or is experimental it is like trying to win the lottery.

First the solid builds I've found: Lochra Warrior of Hadad (or Humbaba but ironically Hadad plays better), Kull Mubarizun of Humbaba (like warrior you'd think Hadad, but Humbaba benefits it more), Naqui Zealot of Mehtar (already posted about this one as a solid prayer/summon build), Stran Amir of Ashem/Eresh (a good starter build to get glory flowing as mentioned earlier, Eresh can be fun but you can end up with a domina effect that wipes out all your summons with little effect).

I've gotten to the void with all four of these builds, ironically the melee ones are actually the easier ones to reach the void with and the Mubarizum is the only one I've gotten remotely close to reaching the end of the void with. I have yet to find a will build that doesn't rely at least somewhat on summoning to stay alive. Each of the attribute builds have a weakness to them:

Strength can survive hits but unless you invest heavily in vitality you will die a death of a thousand cuts you also have to be somewhat careful of your encumbrance because you can't afford for it to be too high because you need speed to hope to make it . Speed is key for any melee build and you want to have over 20 at least for melee though over 30 is better. This also limits you on inflexibility but less than you would actually think. Tends to die from the fact that your best defense is armor and armor is mostly worthless late game because most enemies do non physical damage and you won't have enough armor to handle that. Unlike most other builds though, strength builds don't really need to every change out their items and can get by with what they start with if you go warrior.

Dexterity is a massive powerhouse, it starts off somewhat weak and hurts for damage in the early game. It depends heavily on items and rng to get off the ground: dodge starts out weak and is a very rng defense to begin with but is the best defense in the game because it can completely negate an attack and works equally well against everything but AOEs. You need items though to deal appreciable damage and your items are limited, because the best your strength is going to be is 5 if you took humbaba so you need to make sure they're light and have effects you care about. They're major weakness is that AOEs ignore dodge and kill you instantly if you get caught in them in the void and early in the void and aschra your dodges are not very reliable to protect you. They obviously rely on speed the most and you want a speed in the mid 60s by the time you reach the void.

Will builds very but getting them off the ground can either be a nightmare if you get swarmed early game or easy if you're playing the oozomancer. Their main defense is just having as many bodies on the field at the same time between them and their enemies and hoping it's enough, they also suffer if they have the wrong damage type for the job. You need to diversify and have as many different damage types as possible, you cannot focus in just one because not all damage types are built equal and you actually have trash damage for the whole game. Where as a melee character can run up against something that has a 90% damage reduction to their damage and still make it through due to the shear number of attacks they're pumping out, you can't. You put out one attack a round not including your summons and your summons might not be doing the right damage. Ironically Will builds care the least about incumbrance and inflexibility because you're probably going to have a speed of 1 anyway, so you can wear whatever armor you want but not whatever weapon you want because you need to hit and your accuracy is probably trash as well.

As someone said earlier - this game is truely a hidden gem! I'm really suprised, since I last checked out what's new on the internet you've managed to actually make 2 patches already ha ha! I wanted to suggest adding blood element, but it seems you've already implemented it into the game!

Despite sinking long long hours into the game, I do not feel competent enough to make suggestions in terms of mechanics, I've managed to beat the first final boss only 2 times so far and I haven't checked the current version yet. I'm simply probably not most efficient in build-making, I was playing around with different things and making some more serious optimalization for my favourite classes and the game itself is quite rng in its enemy encounters (which is a fun factor, in my opinion the randomness and the mystery of what's to come is a great replayablity factor, but also makes beating it harder :P).

From what I've experienced so far, there seem to be  4 gameplay archetypes in the game:

-barbarian gameplay, where you focus on melee attacks and str, using skills to either increase those or provide some form of regeneration/healing, working preferably with strong weapons and martial skill tree / on hit effects - if you manage to drop this head item, giving you healing for encumbrance level and stacking multiple layers of armor, you are nearly indestructible until you hit strong bosses 

-mage gameplay, where you have a big range of abilities to choose from scaling with willpower, hopefully some kind of range 6 staff to proc said effects, maybe Haddad religion for more effects

-summoner gameplay, where you can stand in once place summoning huge numbers of minions doing the main work for you - I somehow feel like the game is subtely directing player to do so, as there are many skills allowing you to summon minions / to buff those, there are races perfect for this type of gameplay - namely nomad Stran and plant people Arba, classes like Druid or Amir and multiple religions like Mehtar or Eresh - in my case, this gameplay lost a lot of its power at the lategame, also, if you bump into the beast monster healing himself and gaining stats for each killed enemy, you are in trouble :P 

-rogue gameplay - honestly something only Mubarizun class is currently doing, allowing you to stack enough dexterity to hit with great power by steping near the enemy, using the fact you have x number of your own turns, in time of one enemy turn - in my opinion this gameplay is the most fascinating one, because it's less hm... automatical in what it does and requires this hypnotizing rhytmic movement from the player - play it is a real blast - at least a few patches ago, there weren't many synergies you can use here with skills, electric Skera skill giving you even more speed and bonus damage on slashing you do as a class ability was probably the most resonable one, though you could in theory do some combinations with martial skills or shamsar, 2 patches ago I've felt the power only from Skera - the build was also dependant on rng, if you are able to get items doing some sort of damage on slash damage from your class ability - this build is really fun, though to be honest it's really squishy and you need to get close, therefore ranged bosses or monsters giving you damage over time seem to counter it easily. I would like to emphasize once more, that at least for myself, this gameplay is a pure joy!

You've mentioned yesterday, that you would like to work more on some mixed attribute building. On 2 patch old version, I've also tried to do some atribute mixing builds, like for example str+dex warrior, acting like a barbarian archetype but with extra turns while lacking armor, or mage+summoner builds as Ascetic class, where you would bid your time to stack power while your minions are fighting. I've also checked out some dex+wil combinations, trying to do some on-move damage with different types of dropping gloves. Dex+wil seemed lacking in comparison to mono-attribute, because you can't really get skills procing damage from the skill tree and you were really looking for those glove drops, mage-summoner wasn't personally to interesting in gameplay for me, while I think different combinations of warriors with str+dex, though tricky were the most fun to play as, as you retained some of this sweet rhytmic control of rogue archetype, while doing some serious damage by hitting the enemy.

In my opinion, from what I've seen, the problem with mixed builds is that almost all abilities are based on wil or alternatively they do give flat bonuses based only on level of this particular ability. I'm aware that the base stat as wil is used as a way to balance things out, to avoid str/dex getting out of hand with their basic gameplay + even more additional buffs you can get from the skill tree. I would consider adding/changing some skills in the skill tree to have either str or dex as a base for the formula (possibly in a limited way or with far less efficient formula than if the player were to simply use wil, but still adding the possiblity), because currently only summoners and mages have variety in what to pick after gaining more glory to spend on said skills, while warriors and rogues do not have a real way to engage with those (there is a martial tree perfect for that, but not much besides that).

Personally, I like summoner playstyle the least - not because it's not fun to have hordes of minions fighting for you, but because in practice you often hide your character to let the minions do the fighting, and you simply lack field of vision to see those fights. :P If you do it that way, you simply skip turns waiting for the fight you do not see to resolve. If there was a way to actually see those big fights easier, I believe the playstyle would be far more appealing, at least for myself.
I do love your game man, in my eyes it's the game of the year, because it's really innovative, replayble and fun. I really can't wait to see the game on steam, because it really deserves more recognition! I plan to buy steam copy myself and I'll force all my friends to do the same - if they are not interested, I'll shove it down their throats as a gift ha ha :P (honestly, some people just refuse to play games with more simplistic graphical side, I on the other hand love those). Thanks for your work - I hope my rambling here is somehow useful as a feedback!

PS. I was focused on commenting the gameplay itself, so I totally forgot to say a few words about the atmosphere of the game! I love it to my guts - the music is amazing and I sometimes listen to it when I'm busy with some work without even playing the game. The music together with religions to pick from, and this general desolate atmosphere of the game give you those proto-civilization vibes, like if you were playing something sumerian/neolithic/byblical with this mythical the big flood atmosphere / ancient postapocalypse. :P It also have those Conan vibes, however one would describe those (there is some similar essence in Achra to it, can't pinpoint exactly what the essence is). Very cool and refreshing, from the usual old chestnut fantasy or more or generic sci-fi.

PS2. I have no idea, how hard or time consuming adding a feature like that to the game would be, but I think having some kind of memory of your past adventurers would be great. Would you consider adding this sort of ladderboard/hall of glory for previously played characters depending on how far they have managed to go?

If anybody is looking for a fun minion build try out Naqui Zealot Mehtar. Go into poison and grab oozemancy. You can get a pretty sizeable army the further you get in the game as you summon oozes when you pray, early game that'll be three, late game that will be 28. You will also end up with a sizeable contingent of phantasms. The weakness to this is that most things that you need something that does fire, ice, or lightning as most things that are strong against astral and psychic damage  are also strong against poison; especially around the time you reach the red tower. Grabbing a bunch of different elements is needed to cover your bases. This build also works with just praying enemies to death with all the offensive prayers you get.

A real hidden gem on itch and honestly possibly one of the best games available to play on the site. I've sunk dozens of hours into this already. I feel like I've gotten to the end (or at least what feels an intentional impossible wall) a number of times. I do have a few comments

After you finish the first map of areas and move onto the star map is it supposed to be such a massive spike in power for the enemies? I usually get killed on the first screen by demons that just pound me into dust no matter my build.

The fact that you can't change equipment in combat feels like you can end up in an inescapable trap, especially for elemental characters. After the first map, the demons you run into can have 100% damage resistance and if you can't switch equipment to change up damage types you're SOL.

Minion builds I've found really seem to struggle in this game. I've played a bunch of them but the minions die incredibly quickly and depending on the map they'll all get clogged up in rooms especially if ranged minions manage to be in front.

Most healing abilities feel like a joke, outside of the odd item that heals you #*will when you pray which can feel pretty powerful. Useful early game but late game cannot keep up with even the occasional chip damage from enemies.

The game heavily rewards single stat builds but so many things rely on will in the build that if you aren't playing a build that dumps a lot into it then most trees aren't worth dipping into.

I know this is a very early build (this applies to all criticisms of course) and a very good one at that, but I wish there was something to spend my glory on after I've unlocked everything. A glory shop would be nice, though that's a whole other thing and really just a suggestion.

Sorry if this is a bit much, don't get disheartened. I'm going to have my eye on this game and the moment it hits steam (or you finish it) I'll be buying it.

I love this so far. This is really like Rift Wizard, and honestly with more dev time, it'll probably be better. Rift wizard has a huge infuriating problem of locking you into specific builds if you want to beat the game, so please, I know it's hard but don't fall into the same trap.

Enjoyed the game. Two requests if it is not too much and one bug. 

The bug is that after selecting some spells, like 2 or 3, later on even if we have the points for other spells, they are very dark, and I think the select button is greyed out but I can still click on it. So it is only visual.

The two requests are, can you by any chance allow for a lighter background? If this would be too much effort for you to change all textures, can you allow us to change the screen tint? I must be the only dungeon crawler player that uses light backgrounds, the dark ones really tire my eyes (I wish dcss webtiles allowed this as well...)

Last request, maybe easier to do, can you also build a mac version? Maybe its not too important since I see that the browser actually kinda seemed to save my progress (I don't know how). At least when I refreshed it still had progress.

Love this game! The progression is great, and I love the exitement of getting the perfect items to complete a build. Ulfsire, you are a wizard of the gaming industry. I have been playing for WEEKS.

Here is a chunk of footage of this lovely little gem. 

Excellent game! Loving it! Feels really good to play. I like the allies you get, it's always fun to have team mates. The only thing I noticed was that the background (non-play-area) is black, but there's also black  "non-play" areas within the bounds of the map, which feels a bit strange. But all together I'm quite impressed. Keep up the great work! I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this title!