dd shit

- what is this game?
devil daggers.  it's 5 bucks on steam and it's pretty sick, played it back a couple years ago (one of the dustforce devs, m4ttbush, is a part of sorath who created this game) and got back into it recently since i have a bunch of free time and was looking for something new.  it's fun!

basically it's an arena shooter where the goal is to survive as long as possible,w no other gamemodes or etc.  the game has a spawn set of enemies that is consistent every run (spawn locations are random, though) but enemies have random behaviors causing tons of variance in runs.  it's kind of like a roguelike but also it's just kind of not.  also has ingame replays and a leaderboard where you can shit on your friends and stuff.  not much to say other than it has a really cool aesthetic and probably the best sound design in any game i've ever played.

as far as mechanics, you start out at level 1 and by collecting gems you level up.  gems are dropped by all of the larger enemies (except skulls 4s). leveling up slows down the game for a brief moment and more importantly gives you a very substantial buff - note that it doesn't actually increase your damage, but rather increases how many daggers your hand shoots.  starting at level 3, you unlock homing daggers, which do exactly what you think they do.  essentially at this point you start stockpiling gems, and using homing depletes your gem count.  at level 4, which requires 220 gems (assuming you don't use level 3 homing daggers at all), you essentially cap out and any additional gems only add to your homing stockpile.  on top of being really, really strong, level 4 also gives your homing daggers splash damage which is really nice for taking out certain enemies (gigapedes).

since the only way you scale past level 4 is via your stockpile of homing daggers, it's still important to be collecting every gem possible.  shotgun is very effective at taking out single target enemies, but blasts away gems which will vanish over time.  shooting a stream of daggers also stops them from flying towards you, but they can still be collected.  spiders, while active, will pull in all gems in the arena and will eat them if they fly into their face.  this causes them to shoot out an egg which will eventually spawn into spiderlings (which basically just grounded skulls that are more aggressive), but the real threat is the loss of gems rather than the eggs.  therefore, spiders are basically top priority to kill.  that's basically it for important game mechanics though.


- why are you leaving the squids alive/why are there so many skulls?
squids periodically shoot out skulls if they are left alive - this includes skull 2s or skull 3s, which drop a gem on death.  therefore, you can farm gems in the early game.  frankly it is a drop in the bucket, though - each homing dagger costs 3 gems, and ultimately it'll be more effective to use less homing rather than upping your farm if you're concerned about your homing stockpile.  still, farming helps you level up faster, and also makes the early game a fair bit more interesting - if you killed every squid as they spawned, every run would start with about two minutes of waiting with occasional shooting.  as far as why there's so many skulls, things get out of hand pretty quickly and eventually it's more about kiting a swarm of skulls rather than killing them all.  skull 1s aren't very smart and are defeated by walking in circles.

for my farm, i usually leave everything alive until 130 (when the centipede + spider spawns), and then i try to get level 3 off the centipede after killing the spider and then clean everything up.  squid 2s i usually kill off whenever it's convenient, leaving them all alive would be ideal but also having to turn around constantly to kill skull 3s chasing me usually leads to getting owned by shit directly in front of me.  either way it's pretty comfortable to do all of this and have everything cleared out right at 230 which is when the game throws a bunch of shit at you before triple gigas.  this gets me about 200 gems by triple gigas, so i hit level 4 after the first scrape and can do all the spider waves with level 4 which makes everything way less painful.


- what are noteworthy parts of the waves of enemies?
not much before 230 matters, just farming and dealing with occasional centipede and spider waves.  at 230, the game gives you 6 squid 1s, 3 squid 2s, and the first squid 3.  these need to be cleaned up quickly for the triple gigapede spawn at 260.  during triple gigapedes, you get 2 waves of spiders (two spider 1s and a spider 2 each wave), a wave of 3 squid 3s, and then 3 squid 2s.  after this, there's a bit of a pause until leviathan starts spawning in at 350.  leviathan is the "boss" of the game, he will periodically send out a red wave which causes all alive skulls to fly towards the center of the arena and fly inside him, after which they enter gamer mode (tm) and get massive buffs to HP.  transmuted skulls also sound fucking horrifying.  the strat for leviathan is to kill him as fast as possible, after which there is a brief pause before the red orb inside of him becomes active.  the orb will send out constant waves to cause skulls to fly in to enter gamer mode (tm), unless it is being shot at - as soon as the orb is spawned, it's generally a horrific idea to shoot literally anything else.  the orb takes 40 level 4 shotgun shots to kill, and ideally it dies in the early 400s.

after a few waves of squids, a gigapede, and spiders, the first ghostpede spawns.  ghostpedes fly around high in the sky rather aimlessly, but will eat ALL homing daggers fired - if any ghostpedes are alive, your homing daggers are useless.  this makes them extremely high priority to kill, but i'll often leave the first one alive for a bit since homing isn't really needed until mid 600s (ideally you dont use homing til like 700 but lol im shit) and the arena is usually a mess whenever they spawn but you get downtime pretty soon afterwards.  also thorns start spawning at this point, which spawn in sets of 3 randomly throughout the arena.  they do nothing besides having a lot of hp (requiring 2 level 4 shotguns + a bit extra), and take up a lot of space and cause enemies to get snagged.  they don't sound very threatening but since the arena periodically shrinks, all space is important.  also gigapedes get stuck on them, they can block important shots... kill the thorns.

after the first ghostpede spawn, you enter the loop at about 480 or so.  the loop is:
squid wave (i think uh, 5 squid 1s, 2 squid 2s, and then a squid 3) -> gigapede/ghostpede -> spider wave (two spider 1s and a spider 2) -> thorns (3x) -> two spider 1s -> repeat.  this loop gets progressively faster and faster the longer the run goes.

after two gigapede waves, the gigapede is replaced with a ghostpede.  since ghostpedes take a lot of time to kill, it is VERY important that nothing is on the arena at this point.  therefore, dump homing, kill the spiders, kill the ghostpede, and then kill the last two spider 1s before dumping the shit out of homing to clear the squids that are coming up.  tl;dr, watch the loop for a bit and you'll understand why homing is so valuable and why ghostpedes munching them all out of the sky makes them first priority to kill.  homing also tends to be make or break point for the run - once the homing runs out, the run will end shortly after.


- what is your PB/goal?
my PB is 926, probably going for 1000 over spring break + following weeks.  my current PB is kind of bad and blows a homing shotgun on accident (-30 gems) right after levi and just bleed gems all over the place.  the next hard wall to work on will be killing the ghostpede that spawns at 930ish and then stretching the run out to 1000 (next ghostpede spawns at 980ish which will likely be my cue to ignore his ass and focus on surviving).  idk if i'll go much further beyond that, diminishing returns are a thing but i am still having a lot of fun with the game.  there's other stuff i want to play though, lol.


- why stream without a game listed on twitch?
i usually do this for less serious/focused streams, kind of don't really want an audience expecting consistent streams from me for a variety of mostly personal reasons.  devil daggers discord has a stream bot that posts whenever anyone goes live with the game and would like to avoid that lol.  still i don't mind people chatting or hosting or whatever, i just want to avoid (for lack of better words) stream monsters or people actually expecting to give a shit about my stream.  basically i assume if you decided to watch my stream without a game listed, we're probably already buddies so whatever.