Rogue-Like and Rogue-Lites

Well yeah lets start a thread about these kinds of games.
What games are you favorite? How did you start? Any cool memories from one of your runs? What kind of builds do you go for? Anything else that should be said?

I stole the /vg/ pastebins for those who dont know what this is.
FAQ
What should I play

Also here is a very useful database

The links above refer to "Rogue-Likes" which are based on the original DOS-Game Rogue but in the last years a new genre of games with similiar elements came up. Those are referred to as Rogue-Lites, I think. They got randomization and permadeath but apart from that there is nothing in common and theyre not always dungeon crawlers. They can be platformers, strategy games, just about anything, really. Lets talk about those too.
steam/tagged/rogue-lites

Alright. To get this thread rolling I'm gonna talk a bit about my experiences with these games.
I started with roguelites at first and played games like Risk of Rain and Binding of Isaac so I looked up more and learnt about the actual original roguelike ascii games. Finding a classic roguelike game for beginners wasn't that easy because most of them are hard as fuck but then I discovered Dungeon Crawler Stone Soup and even tho its still hard it was the easiest to get into. But after a while it got a bit monotonous to me. It had no music and no lore to dig into so I looked for a different one and found ToME which was perfect to me. It had a huge community, an incredible nice dev, awesome music and a shitload of lore.
Thats it for me I guess. I hope this thread isn't too boring

I used to play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Cataclysm DDA and Elona+, when I used to regular /vg/. I also still play One Way Heroics, though not much anymore since I can't afford the new DLC update.

Personally, what I like about ASCII games are that it leaves everything to your imagination. One of my most favorite runs on DDA was making an extremely high-leveled, high stat character after playing him for about 3 months real time - I managed to kill horrors at Amigara Fault, did a few temple runs ala Indiana Jones, raided military and science labs, and was generally unkillable. I finally decided to go out in a blaze of glory by finding a slime pit, and trying to close it up to prevent it from spreading (since afaik, it's the ONLY thing in DDA from that time that could literally take over the world if left unchecked.)

I dropped a TNT in the hole - nothing. Tried filling the holes with dirt and shovel, nothing. I was even going to try to move a truck or car over it, but I was already too restless from other efforts in closing it and tried something else - diving into the hole and see what the deepest I could get into. Armed with SMGs, Shotguns, Grenades, cybernetic upgrades, and a week's worth of food and water, I dove in there to fight and wade through literally hundereds of slimes.

Now, there's one thing different about slimes from DDA compared to other games - if you kill one, 3 smaller ones take its place. Normally, this doesn't mean much, but in a game where fatigue and ammo are a generally real threat, you can see what happens when you multiply hundreds of slimes threefold.

Around the third day, I finally got overwhelmed and decided to try one more attempt to close the hole with a suicide mission, so I armed about 3 C4, dropped half a dozen grenades and just started reading a book. I wish I could have witnessed that explosion, because the game automatically leaves the current session as soon as your character dies, but I'm sure it was enough power to level the houses and buildings around the pit by a one mile range.

I have pictures to show, but it's on my other laptop buried somewhere in my closet, so I'll try posting those up sometime.

Like I said earlier, I also played Elona+ a LOT, and I documented my status over in a thread of its own.

Some of my best gaming experiences have been with rogue-likes, they're a wonderful genre; I only wish they were more popular.

A great find - if I weren't a High Elf Paladin who worshipped The Shining One.

Seriously, why couldn't I have found this on my Vampire Assassin playthroughs...?

8 days later