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Post by Gando on Jun 17, 2011 18:58:17 GMT -5
Talk about making life rough for archers and mages.
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Post by random on Jun 20, 2011 12:15:29 GMT -5
Indeed, you've hit the nail on the head. I do amuse myself sometimes imagining a kraken haggling with a shopkeeper over the price of a brass lantern.
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Post by random on Jun 27, 2011 13:04:57 GMT -5
Okay, I'm ready to retract my suggestion about essence fusing. I don't know enough about the mechanics to suggest a reason -- I'm sure you can help here -- but my dragon is much more effective now than my previous ones in earlier versions of Portralis, especially now that I have a Mature Prismatic (at level 45) with some kickass essences. With one point in Inner Elemental Mastery, 10 in Blast of Sunlight, 20 in Paragon (half damages, double magic) and the rest spread around, with 8 to spare right now, I still have to be careful sometimes but, on the whole, I'm doing about as well as I would with a good non-essence monster build. I can't vouch for any other essence monsters (though I'm curious about trying one of the non-corporeal builds, ghosts and planar phantoms and the like.) But, at least for dragons, doubling essences seems to be a path to overpowering. (Just as a side note -- a mature dragon is actually more powerful than any of the drakes for a player, at least until a reliance on summoning becomes a more viable build. I'd suggest that if drakes are going to be higher level, they should have stats and the like at least equivalent to mature dragons. Or you could just introduce Ancient Dragons for us to aspire to. I'd be cool with that instead ) One question: do (non-player) monsters now have piercing powers over and above the "Pierces your resistance" abilities of certain (nightmarish, iirc) monsters in previous versions. The reason I ask is I have 100% immunity to light, but a boss mature gold dragon manages to hurt me with its Blast of Sunlight breath weapon. Which, if I'm understanding things correctly, it shouldn't. I certainly do no damage when I employ the same weapon against light-immune creatures without using Inner Elemental Mastery.)
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Post by Variaz on Jun 27, 2011 14:14:15 GMT -5
It's no surprise that dragons ranks amongst the most powerful essence monsters. The Prismatic Dragon is especially good, because six immunities is really nice to have! The reason drakes are higher levels is because of their summon spell. Which involves summoning Mature Dragons. Now, imagine if in addition to a powerful summon like that, they had equal or better stats than the Mature Dragons! I like the drakes the way they are. Since they are not "true" dragons, their role is to scout and find adventurers, then summon their greater cousins for the kill. So while their lesser stats might be annoying for dragon players, for everyone else, it's a relief! Of course, Ancient Dragons will return, and in fact, are going to be the next tier of dragons, and the first non-nightmare CR4 enemies. Expect them to be REALLY tough! They will make you seriously consider running away. But as a Monster player, you will love 'em! If you get tired of dragons, here's some other good essence monster choices : Ghosts(G): Immunities: Cold, Poison, Darkness, Radio and Physical. Darkness immunity + Physical immunity is a very powerful combo. In addition, ghosts can pass through walls. The higher level ghosts also allow you to use the Warp element, which can be fun. And remember Planar Phantom's ability to blink when hit? Well, you get it too! So while ghosts don't have as much raw power as dragons, they have lots of quirk that makes them a very good choice. Elemental/Spirit(E): Not as strong as dragons or ghosts early on, but still a very good choice(especially the Wind one, with 90% physical resist). Later on, you get some incorporeal beings(though they don't have all the immunities of ghosts), some dual types, and the elementals keeps getting bigger and better. However, at level 53, you get to evolve into a Lesser Four Elemental, with very good stats, great melee and magic attacks, and many resistance and immunities. In fact, the best of all elementals. So immunity to Fire, Earth, Water and Wind, and 90% Physical resistance. 50% Electricity, 50% Acid, 75% Poison. Good stuff. Bird(B): This is a fun family, in that they start off rather weak, but gain tremendous boost between the tiers. The Crows and War Eagles are nothing special. Normal melee enemies with only Physical attacks, no resistances, weak stats, and the only good thing is that they get early Flying and are fast. But be patient, and get them to level 21, and you now get Firestorm and Thunderstorm eagles. Now, all their stats are good, they get some elemental melee and magic attacks, are even faster, and gain immunity to their respective element and 75% Wind resistance. Quite a nice buff. But when you finally reach level 50, you can finally evolve in the mighty Phoenix of Solar Flames. Very high hp, strength and mind(in fact, their mind is higher than mature dragons!), you get to make fire fields over a large radius. Now THAT is great! Fire, Light and Wind immunities. The only drawbacks are Cold and Water weaknesses, but unless you're in a water or ice dungeon, this isn't a big issue. Note that their ability to revive unless killed by cold or water isn't available to Monster players, as this would be overpowered. Sphere(*): The oddball of the monster families, so to speak. At level 20, the glowing sphere, and all other spheres from that point, have the powerful "75% guaranteed block magic" counter. Meaning that any magic attacks have 75% chance of having no effect. Even if you get unlucky, they have very, very high magic defense as well. Want more? How about dexterity and mind as high or better than dragons? Oh, and an evasion nearly on par with their magic defense? Have fun with the oddball. Just avoid melee at all cost. They are WEAK to Physical attacks! And have the lowest hp in the game. Most other essence races should be playable as well, they all have their quirks that makes them fun, though for the most part, they don't really compete with dragons in terms of overall power, if pure power is what you're looking for. But all races should be at least playable. There are two races you should currently avoid: Ants(a) and Bats(b). Bats are the worse, they are weak and have nothing past level 1. Yes, they're that bad. Ants are slightly less worse, but don't go past level 4 in terms of evolutions. And you get a very generic melee monster, with no quirks whatsoever. The only good thing about those races is the bragging rights and ego boost you get if you beat a Nightmare as one!
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Post by Variaz on Jun 27, 2011 14:15:38 GMT -5
One question: do (non-player) monsters now have piercing powers over and above the "Pierces your resistance" abilities of certain (nightmarish, iirc) monsters in previous versions. The reason I ask is I have 100% immunity to light, but a boss mature gold dragon manages to hurt me with its Blast of Sunlight breath weapon. Which, if I'm understanding things correctly, it shouldn't. I certainly do no damage when I employ the same weapon against light-immune creatures without using Inner Elemental Mastery.) No, they shouldn't. Immunity to Light should have protected you. Did you check if it's really 100% that you have? For example, though prismatic dragons should have 100%, if you were using the Orb of Death Light as a light source, that would give you -25% Light resist...
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Post by random on Jun 30, 2011 14:06:37 GMT -5
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. Yes, I verified my resistance was at 100%. In fact, since I was already wielding a mature gold dragon essence with 15% resistance to Light and none of my other essences gave me a penalty (in anything, for that matter), my resistance was technically at 115%. This was a boss with 3 elite powers (double damage both ways, 1/2 damage suffered), if that helps. Thanks for the suggestions. I want to try for a phoenix, but I'll wait until the bug has been fixed (also, just a suggestion -- maybe make the fields either dissipate or be invisible after a few turns for a player. It's really aggravating to try to move around and find things under those fields. That's fine for enemies, since the game is supposed to be aggravating, but it'd certainly diminish my motivation to play one.) I tried the spheres, though, with no physical attack, no hp bonus from constitution and no innate powers, it's gonna be hard getting up to a level where I can evolve. But that's part of the challenge, I suppose. I look forward to ancient dragons. Even as non-players, the drakes are a bit underpowered for their level IMHO. By the time most players are encountering them, they're perfectly capable of Jumping or even just phasing away until the summons dissipates, assuming they don't just find a corridor and cast Trees to prevent summoning. That last works for me most of the time since a mature prismatic can go toe-to-toe with a drake pretty easily, so I just surround myself with trees and whack until dead.
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Post by Variaz on Jun 30, 2011 16:14:39 GMT -5
Are you sure fields are actually hiding anything? They are floor grids after all, and so any monsters or objects should normally have priority over fields since they are floor grids, and so they are actually under things. Also, fields actually replaces any other floor grids. So if you make a fire field on a patch of grass, it replaces the grass. When fields dissipate when an enemy takes damage from it, it replaces it with a plain floor, no matter what was originally there.
As for making fields dissipate after a while, this wouldn't be much good, since the point of fields is to place them, then lure enemies inside them. Invisible fields would just be even MORE confusing! As for playing as a Phoenix, if it annoys you, you should be able to use 'K' to turn off the fields ability when you don't need it.
Drakes were probably more dangerous in 0.4 when summoning made monsters appear right next to you. But I still like them the way they are right now. Drakes can cost you a few deaths if you aren't expecting their summons. Of course, if you know they can do it, as you said, you can easily jump/phase/grow trees and prevent or wear off their summon, then go for the kill when they're out of mana. Then it's pretty much a standard CR2 enemy. A little stronger than a young dragon, but not that much, and definitely underwhelming compared to the mature dragons. So no, they aren't that great for Monster players, unless you like using summoned creatures. (I know summoning is bad right now, but that's because monster vs monster is still incomplete and buggy. So it's more of a technical issue here...)
Keep in mind, however, that the game isn't balanced in favor of the Monster race, so a level 46 monster isn't necessarely stronger than a level 35 one. Not fun if you're a Monster player, but the game is made with the normale races and classes in mind. (I DO consider the Monster race, mind you, but not in terms of progressive evolutions and balance between the different kinds) Drakes are made to serve a different purpose than mature dragons. Mature Dragon summoning, I think, it still a little too strong for depth 35, so that's why it starts at depth 46.
I also do not want the game to be filled with linear and generic evolutions, where depth 46 is always better and has no drawbacks compared to lower depths. In fact, the whole point of revamping the monster level system was to give lower depth monsters a chance to shine at the same level as higher depths ones. At depth 23, the Young Dragon is a strong enemy. At depth 46, you are more likely to encounter a Drake, which has slightly higher stats multipliers, but is still CR2. It will be higher level, obviously, so more powerful. But if you were to meet a level 46 Young Dragon(and it's possible), it would be almost as strong as it's Drake counterpart, only slightly weaker due to stats multipliers, but not that much. In fact, the Young Dragon has more hp than the Drake, at equal levels, especially the Prismatic kind. So this means that at the same level and same CR, the two monsters are still different, one being a little stronger, the other having more hp(and more resistances for the prismatic kind).
It even makes the Monster race more fun this way, in my opinion. While a higher depth monster might have better stats, the lower one may have a niche that the higher level doesn't, making it worth considering. You even have the "Small but Deadly" ability to take advantage of lower depth levels!
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Post by hairybolox on Jul 4, 2011 9:38:25 GMT -5
Out of interest how hard would it be to provide the Monster race with some "built in" lockpicking skill? This would mean chests would be useable rather than being useless items littering the dungeon floor.... Of course the skill would need to be linked to a combination of Int/Wis/Dex/Mind stats of the monster concerned and would mean monsters would come up against Nightmares if misfortune items were used as per regular characters ;-)
Just a thought....
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Post by Variaz on Jul 5, 2011 13:29:48 GMT -5
Not sure, it would have to be included in another ability of the Monster race I guess...
Ideally, Lockpicking should be a skill, not an ability, but the problem is that it's a skill that in the long term, isn't worth a huge investment. Sure, you get a little more stuff, but it doesn't make up for losing hundred of points worth of weapon/ranged/magic skills, and Defense/Agility/Magic Defense.
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Post by hairybolox on Jul 6, 2011 3:17:26 GMT -5
But surely it's only not worth the investment because the rewards are rubbish.... most of the stuff even at higher levels are trash even the top level chests don't give out better stuff than you'd get in the dungeon If the rewards were "very good" then it might make sense putting more points in it..... Misery items are pretty good.
The main reason I asked for the monster race to have some form of lockpicking ability is so they can use misery items & can go toe to toe with nightmares......
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Post by Variaz on Jul 6, 2011 10:28:33 GMT -5
If you just want to fight Nightmares, just find a red item out of an elite or boss monster, and carry it. You don't have to wield it, just carrying it will give you Misfortune. Then wait until a Nightmare appears, and you can fight it.
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Post by random on Jul 15, 2011 12:09:05 GMT -5
I know I've been harping on the Monster class lately, but that's the one I've most enjoyed playing with my limited free time lately. So here goes my next suggestion -- allow Monsters to change their Innate Elemental Mastery element when they evolve so as to better reflect their new incarnation. I find myself unwilling to add points to that unless I know for a fact that my evolutions will be linear (i.e. from baby green to noxious drake or something) because some of the higher-level evolutions have access to a range of elements that a lower-level one might not. So the ability to reset the element seems fair -- if my cold imp wants to evolve into a radio imp, it makes sense that the radio imp is no longer obsessed with the chill.
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Post by Variaz on Jul 16, 2011 21:30:11 GMT -5
To be honest, a free "reincarnation" would probably be fair as far as evolution is concerned. Since you cannot unevolve anyway, it seems like it would be fair.
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Post by random on Jul 18, 2011 11:20:00 GMT -5
That makes sense. The investment in 'v' powers resets already, so it seems logical that all of them would reset. An elite skeleton with 20 points in Paragon Elder Monster wouldn't necessarily automatically evolve into an elite lich, and a lesser vampire warrior with high martial arts would make more sense evolving into a vampire witch if s/he could train spellcrafting to the same level instead.
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