In Skilltree Saga, you grind auto-battles in a couple different areas. Enemies drop loot/gold and give experience for you to get stronger between grinds. The "roguelike elements" aren't really present at all - if you die, you keep all your gold only losing the loot you picked up. You use experience to purchase/upgrade various skills, some of which were pretty interesting and useful.

I've used the word grind a couple times now because that's the word that best describes this game - a highly repetitive grind. And it very quickly becomes a grind. For instance, when I got far enough in the first area the game prompted me saying I was now powerful enough to check out the second area. I was only able to get through the first couple enemies there, and had to go back to the first area and grind for quite a while.

There are three areas: one with 30 levels, the next with 60, and the final with 100. You have to upgrade your character to where they can complete each of these in one run. One word: grind... and not the enjoyable kind.