FreshOldMage

joined 8 months ago
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Just lost my perfect score warrior, AMA in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

True, I'm very much on board with balance changes that remove or rework content, but that is not everybody's cup of tea. Maybe I'll make a fork of Shattered on day to try out these things :)

I would think the mage would be, next to hunter, best suited for Fragile. Duelist tears.

I was thinking that it locks mage out of all non-staff weapons. Battlemage does not mind, but warlock loses a lot of options. They're probably both overall fine though. And right, duelist would lose an entire talent and some of their class identity, that is non-ideal.

Just lost my perfect score warrior, AMA in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I don't think it is quite the same, huntress is more defined by the bow, with the plant/dew interaction being kind of a secondary mechanic. I actually think she is the easiest class to do 9 challenges with, as you get a scaling ranged option for free. Regrowing grass is still extremely useful, and even warden gets some relevant utility by seeing through tall grass for trickshots. To hinder the other classes similarly to warrior, It'd have to be more like

  • Mage: Remove scaling from wands
  • Rogue/Cleric: Remove scaling from rings and artefacts
  • Huntress: Remove ranged weapons and tall grass
  • Duelist: Remove scaling from weapons

I don't think it is the warrior that needs to be changed, I'd rather see the challenges reworked. Badder Bosses and Hostile Champions are designed really well by adding challenge to the environment, instead of removing options from the player. Barren Lands, and Faith Is My Armor completely remove options (planting seeds, putting upgrades into armor), so those I'd replace. The other challenges seem fine to me. Some ideas for what could replace them:

  • Curses: Curses are more common on weapons and armor (or even all are cursed?). Scroll of Remove Curse only weakens the curse on weapons/armor, another one is needed to fully remove it. Talisman trinket is disabled.
  • Hostile Lands: A small percentage of tall grass and all naturally spawning plants are randomly replaced by vine lashers. These don't drop seeds when defeated. Could use the same logic as for the wandmaker quest to ensure there is still a safe path from floor entry to exit.
  • Fragile: Equipment is destroyed upon unequipping (might be too harsh on mage?). Thrown weapons have lowered durability. Wands are destroyed on zero charges.
Just lost my perfect score warrior, AMA in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I think I'll switch to duelist for a breath of fresh air, weapon abilities might open up some other strategy than "pray for haste and a reach weapon".

Warrior definitely is the least interesting to play, but aside from challenges I don't think he is too weak. Being able to upgrade armor early and carry that +1 throughout the game always feels quite impactful.

11
Just lost my perfect score warrior, AMA (lemmy.world)
 

This really felt like the run that was going to get a Warrior with all 9 challenges and maximum score to the surface. Had a Ring of Haste from Sewers and a Blazing Spear +2 from Ghost quest, bought Ethereal Chains from the Sewer merchant, transmuted the Wandmaker Wand to Blastwave. Still had the Sewer and Caves Ankhs in case anything goes wrong. Fully mapped all floors, did all quests, sacrificial fires, and animated statues up until this point. And then during the second Dwarf King phase a ghoul steps into an unexpected tile, and I get attacked by the Warlock, ruining the score... Run is still winnable of course, but what is the point.

I have to say, Warrior feels terrible to play at high challenge compared to the others. Faith Is My Armor invalidates the main class mechanic, one entire subclass, and a couple of the shared talents. Wish it would either get reworked or replaced with something that affects the classes more evenly.

50
Perfect Score Run (lemmy.world)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
6 comments fedilink
 

After playing for maximum score on 6 challenges forever, I finally bit the bullet and went for a 9 challenge perfect score run. This general strategy got me there in surprisingly few tries:

  • Pick Huntress for the spirit bow. The combination of no armor and almost no healing means we can't afford to melee past sewers. Later we pick Sniper for extra vision and armor piercing bow, Warden is sadly gutted due to the Barren Lands challenge.
  • Fish for a Ring of Haste as much as possible (always pick rings from crystal chest and pick the chest room behind crystal doors; transmute other rings).
  • All upgrade scrolls go into the Ring of Haste.
  • Once we've got haste up and running, kiting is the name of the game. Use vision (Rejuvenating Steps and Heightened Senses talents are amazing) and trick shots to deal with ranged threats.
  • All healing potions go into energy, we'll use alchemy to get past Tengu, and the King of Dwarves. Keep an Elixir of Feather Fall around to safely do pit rooms.
  • Skip sacrificial altars for the ascent, and save 3-4 Scrolls of Magic Mapping for the ascent as well. We'll turn them into Scrolls of Foresight and comb every regular floor for full exploration score.

Potions of Shrouding Fog trivialize Tengu, who is otherwise a huge obstacle for a 9 challenge run. The new bombs also feel great, they do decent damage and have good utility. I used a couple of them to beat down the final phase of the dwarf king. Finally, once you make it all the way down to Yog he actually falls wuite easily to the bow 🙂 One thing I didn't think of was to pick up the darts from the shops, and craft some blinding darts - they'd have saved me a lot of headache against scorpios and warlocks.

I will say that 9 challenges is a lot less fun than 6 challenges, so I'll probably go back to that. Barren Lands in particular feels like it makes the game less interesting, disabling plants entirely just removes so many tools from the player.

Final inventory