The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is a Uplay game, meaning you do have to log in and be online as you play it, since this is an online multiplayer game. There is no extra Uplay download or Uplay overlay like Windows Live. Some people hate Uplay and if you’re one of them, this game is flat out not for you. For everyone else, keep reading.
This is a surprisingly good Diablo style hack & slash game with unlimited content generated by players. The game is divided into two halves, the Attack half which is Diablo style, where you wander around dungeons from a 3/4ths top down perspective. You kill a variety of enemies, search for dungeon treasuries and mana pools and beware of traps. Each dungeon is pretty bite sized which is good. You level up, equip things and assign skills to your character that is one of your typical classes, Archer, Knight and Mage.
The other half is the Defend, because you see, you have your own dungeon. The game easily tells you what you need to do, with some very nice voice over. With your dungeon, you have a gold mine to generate gold when you’re not looting dungeons, you have a mana pool to get mana when you’re not looting. With the gold, you buy rooms for your dungeon and buy better weapons and armor. The catch is that armor and weapons are so abundant playing the game, you never really have to buy them. You will also get summon portals for monsters, a research facility, potion brewing station, blacksmith, treasury and mana reserve. Everything is upgradeable for either mana or gold. However, to upgrade to level X your dungeon heart must be at level X. Other areas have prerequisites too, but you’ll get the hang of it very easily.
Before you can make some ultimate dungeon, you really need to upgrade your dungeon heart and then your architect’s station to build more rooms. You start with a default of 3 cookie cutter areas (giant rooms) that make up your dungeon. You can quickly add another area, but your dungeon will not be giant, at least at first. Once you have your rooms / areas, you put your mana pools and gold mines. These are placed away from your heart, basically so players can find them when they play through your dungeon. With everything set up, you can buy creatures and traps for mana. Your traps require power supplies. Your traps and mana can have overall upgrades. You can even assign behaviors for enemies, such as charging cyclopes or ground pounding cyclopes. There is a nice variety of enemies.
The only way to let players play your dungeon is to test play and complete it yourself. Each dungeon has a star factor, such as destroy the mana vault and gold mine without dying to get one star. The game assigns a par time to your dungeon, which might be your own time beating the dungeon when you test it. Beat the par time and get another star or two.
Now for the downside, with all of the user generated dungeons, there are often enemy bottlenecks. It starts with a series of extremely undisarmable traps, followed by a giant pool of creatures in one area. Some areas go smoothly and its enjoyable to plow through everything. But once you get far enough in, there are just waves of giant monsters that block your path and take a while to kill, since everything is massed all in one area by most players. The archers kill pretty quickly, so they tend to be a priority. There are creatures that resurrect others or summon giant skeletons that make things annoying.
If you die, you either restart the dungeon or for a 100 gold fee (cheap once you get further in the game), you can be resurrected. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of exit from a dungeon. Well the button is there (open beta problem?), you just can’t click on it. If you are defeated, you lose crowns, if you win, you gain crowns. Crowns seem to be rankings of players that are currently playing. Such as if you find user created dungeons with 0 crowns, chances are their dungeons are just being beaten over and over again. Which lowers their crowns. Players with 100 – 200 crowns are actively playing at that moment.
There’s a very nice visual interface when you select dungeons. You can tell how difficult a dungeon is by looking at its stats or just by its level. If a dungeon is 2 levels higher than you, the game will warn you. The stats are nice. If you’re looking for gold, you can see how much is in that dungeon. If you’re looking for experience, it is all right there in the stats. Once you have really maxed out your dungeon and need to level up the dungeon heart, you need to level up your character, which is where the stats are important, I would rather go into 10 dungeons with 1,500 XP than 30 dungeons with 500 XP.
There are thankfully several non user generated dungeons including a boss dungeon of a region. While there is a recommended level for a region, it is not required. Regions are marked with levels like the 2nd region is for players 5 – 9. These official dungeons are marked with green on the selection screen while player dungeons are yellow.
This also leads to a competitive factor. If one player beats your dungeon, well then there’s a challenge to beat that player’s dungeon. It feels highly addictive if not highly competitive while still keeping a single player feel. There are even dungeon races to see who can complete the game with the fastest time. When you stop playing the game, your dungeon is ‘shielded’ for 8 hours. Others can run through your dungeon, but not get your mega earnings. So if you grind for 2 hours, max out on gold and mana, then leave for 8 hours, chances are someone will beat your dungeon and take all of your gold and mana. That’s why I highly recommend spending everything you have before you leave. You will still gain gold and mana from your gold mine and mana pools. You can and will be farmed if you are not ‘shielded,’ but when you are farmed, it resets your shield for another 8 hours. Thus giving your mana and gold time to build up again to be farmed again.
Now for some other downsides, this game is dark. There are exterior room areas that dungeons can use, but to be honest, light makes everything so much easier, so it is in a dungeon maker’s best interest to have an interior dungeon. Sometimes walls get in the way, even if there is transparency with them.
The controls don’t feel all that good. It is a very clicky game. Click to move, click to attack once. You do not continuously attack once an enemy is clicked. Maybe some prefer it that way, but I don’t. There are no key re bindings. Setting enemies in your dungeon is very tedious. Placing the enemies is super easy, but then you need to rotate them one click at a time. Having to click and drag to move your screen in your dungeon design also doesn’t feel good. I’d rather use the arrow keys to move the screen. Instead the arrows just rotate the screen.
The other problem I have are only 5 quick action slots. While I cannot imagine needing 9 skills, I need potions. In fact when you bind potions to a quick action, you only get to use 4 for that slot. Even if you have 99 potions. I can understand the logic in having only 4 potions per slot, since you’re competing against the dungeon maker. Your right mouse click attack is also bound to one of the 5 quick action slots so that’s just a wasted slot.
Finally, there are micro transactions for cosmetic items and booster packs like boost your XP, gold or mana, but you also get some free micro transaction currency for progressing through the game, so that’s not bad. Its free with a mere 500 MB download, give it a try.
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