Grimrock

Dr.Disaster wrote:When health finally got low it was either refresh at the crystal there or teleport out

So you are claiming that you didn't use any healing potions but your character's health got so low that you felt the need to restore their health and went to the healing crystal to do so, and if that was on cool down you left the desert to go rest up then came back? I fail to see how that is in any way impressive or proves any point at all. Well, any point that it looks like you are trying to make that is. What it does show me is that wearing heavy armor without the skill isn't really overpowered since you had to stop and get healed up, you just didn't use potions for it. Furthermore, clearing the desert isn't as much of a test of equipment as you think it is, because it is technically possible to clear the desert without being attacked. I say technically possible because it's pretty hard to do that, but not impossible.

All in all, if you are good at square dancing it doesn't really matter too terribly much what armor you wear as your personal skill at avoiding attacks counts as 'evasion' for your entire party. The armor skill really is only all that beneficial for people that face tank the enemies. So if you aren't good at avoiding getting attacked it's not a terrible idea to put points into armor, if you are good at avoiding getting attacked those points are better spent elsewhere.

It's not really that difficult to do barren desert without getting surrounded and without consumables/invisibility, even on solo characters, you just have to keep moving. I admit I haven't tried it with the poor (relative to melee) damage output of throwing weapons though.

I saw the meteor/crystal set being better than light/no armour even without skill as a case of "better items are better". Like how moonblade is overpowered compared to a dagger, or the jewelled sceptre is overpowered compared to the whitewood wand; they're found later. I certainly don't think that the plate set is appreciably better than the mirror set, or that the mirror set is appreciably better than the rogue set. The crystal and meteor sets take much longer to reach compared to those.

Anurias wrote:

Dr.Disaster wrote:When health finally got low it was either refresh at the crystal there or teleport out

So you are claiming that you didn't use any healing potions but your character's health got so low that you felt the need to restore their health and went to the healing crystal to do so, and if that was on cool down you left the desert to go rest up then came back? I fail to see how that is in any way impressive or proves any point at all.

The point for this specific problem (missile/dagger rogue vs. desert) was not how to regain health. It's how to get past the monsters to reach either crystal or teleport at all. At the beginning there is no room to hide or evade in the desert; there are just too many critters around. I tried quite some time to get past the mummy horde by picking the single mummies off first but always ended up surrounded and soon later dead.

Here the drawbacks of missile weapons interfered a lot: rather low single-hit damage and rather high cooldowns. At the same time it took my rogue to fire 2 arrows a skilled thrower can dish out 6 to 8 attacks with 3 to 4 double throws. To be that effective a missile user would need to one-hit-kill every(!) mummy. That's simply not possible and if you can't kill a good bunch fast enough to outmanover the others you end up dead.

After several fails i thought "what the heck, let's give heavy armor a try". The trade-off was 46 Evasion for 75 protection and 100 health but I managed to whack my way thru some packs and reach the other side of the desert on first try.

Anurias wrote:What it does show me is that wearing heavy armor without the skill isn't really overpowered since you had to stop and get healed up, you just didn't use potions for it. Furthermore, clearing the desert isn't as much of a test of equipment as you think it is, because it is technically possible to clear the desert without being attacked. I say technically possible because it's pretty hard to do that, but not impossible.

Having the armor skill or not is of little difference; you need to regenerate health now and then anyway, no matter which way. I agree it is technically possible to evade all attacks in the desert but this requires either "Invisibility" or some good long range firepower like "Meteor Storm". With only a bunch of arrows, a dagger and the Shield spell things looks pretty different.

Anurias wrote:All in all, if you are good at square dancing it doesn't really matter too terribly much what armor you wear as your personal skill at avoiding attacks counts as 'evasion' for your entire party.

That's no problem when you got the room to dance. After my rogue managed to get most of the single mummies cleared there was enough room to dance and dump the crystal set.

Dr.Disaster wrote:The point for this specific problem (missile/dagger rogue vs. desert) was not how to regain health. It's how to get past the monsters to reach either crystal or teleport at all.

Wasn't the topic supposed to be about the effectiveness of armor, not the difference between missile and throwing weapons? Either way you didn't address the topic to begin with though. If it was about armor you didn't show anything originally about the effectiveness of armor and evasion stats. If it was about the missile and throwing weapons your post only talked about you using heavy armor and not needing to use a potion to get to the crystal so you didn't talk about the issue you're now claiming.

Dr.Disaster wrote:After several fails i thought "what the heck, let's give heavy armor a try". The trade-off was 46 Evasion for 75 protection and 100 health but I managed to whack my way thru some packs and reach the other side of the desert on first try.

This would have been better to say in that other post if you wanted to express the effectiveness of armor over evasion and show that the armor skill was irrelevant as the protection power of the armor outweighed the loss of evasion. You are actually stating how the increased protection was helpful despite the loss of evasion you suffered for using it.

Dr.Disaster wrote:I agree it is technically possible to evade all attacks in the desert but this requires either "Invisibility" or some good long range firepower like "Meteor Storm". With only a bunch of arrows, a dagger and the Shield spell things looks pretty different.

I do the desert without using invisibility or forcefield and I don't leave until I've cleared it and don't use the healing crystal... I also don't rely on just arrows or a dagger... What you choose to fight with does indeed make a difference and some things are far more effective than others. It also depends on what things complement the way you fight. Some people are better at getting up in melee range and blowing attacks then getting away before getting hit only to step back in and do it again, while others are better at kiting and just keeping things at a distance. So of course things look different with different tactics, your tactics help determine what things you want to put your skill points into.

Anurias wrote:All in all, if you are good at square dancing it doesn't really matter too terribly much what armor you wear as your personal skill at avoiding attacks counts as 'evasion' for your entire party.

This wasn't directed at the desert, this was just a general statement covering the entirety of the game. However, you do have a decent amount of room to square dance in the desert if you keep good awareness of where the mummies are. Your presence draws them into your direction so you can lure them to one corner and then move to an area that isn't as crowded to get more room to maneuver. My first time through the desert I panicked at the overwhelming number of mummies and put myself into situations that had me pretty well pinned. In my more recent playthroughs I don't panic and find that I can better coordinate where the mummies are grouping up and wear them down to more and more manageable numbers.

Anurias wrote:

Dr.Disaster wrote:The point for this specific problem (missile/dagger rogue vs. desert) was not how to regain health. It's how to get past the monsters to reach either crystal or teleport at all.

Wasn't the topic supposed to be about the effectiveness of armor, not the difference between missile and throwing weapons? Either way you didn't address the topic to begin with though. If it was about armor you didn't show anything originally about the effectiveness of armor and evasion stats.

Didn't I?

Dr.Disaster wrote:After several fails i thought "what the heck, let's give heavy armor a try". The trade-off was 46 Evasion for 75 protection and 100 health but I managed to whack my way thru some packs and reach the other side of the desert on first try.

I think i just did

Anurias wrote:This would have been better to say in that other post if you wanted to express the effectiveness of armor over evasion and show that the armor skill was irrelevant as the protection power of the armor outweighed the loss of evasion. You are actually stating how the increased protection was helpful despite the loss of evasion you suffered for using it.

"Helpful" is a bit of an understatement.

Anurias wrote:In my more recent playthroughs I don't panic and find that I can better coordinate where the mummies are grouping up and wear them down to more and more manageable numbers.

There are a lot of ways to "wear them down". Usually the faster the better. Imagine a way that takes 2-3 attacks or 5-9 seconds per mummy.

Dr.Disaster wrote:Out of arguments and reverting to insults again? Seems your logic blows up faster then you can build it.

Pot/Kettle. You misunderstood satire from two different posters, I called you out on it since I was the second poster you did this to, and you tried to insult me in the process. Instead of admitting your folly you did what you always do: insult, harass, and derail the topic to defend your idiocy. If I insult you back that is hardly me running out of arguments and reverting to insults. You never offer an argument only ridicule; only this time it was hilarious because in your attempt to ridicule you were too stupid to realize satire, twice in a row.

Dr.Disaster wrote:My solo insectiod throwing barb wore nothing but light armor the entire game and cleared the whole desert without a healing pot. Now if the rest of your party was dead the whole time while your thrower cleared the desert you might be playing in my league but are the chances this did happend anything beside zilch?

So you just argued against yourself. Your earlier statement was that Heavy Armor is over-powered because you were able to clear the desert without ever using a heal pot. Now you said you did the same thing with Light Armor, thus defeating the argument that clearing the desert with Heavy Armor makes it over-powered. You literally just provided a count-argument to yourself, walking face first in to the wall of nonsense you constructed, all because your online ego is more important to you than things like intellectual thought and consistency.

Dr.Disaster wrote:The point for this specific problem (missile/dagger rogue vs. desert) was not how to regain health. It's how to get past the monsters to reach either crystal or teleport at all. At the beginning there is no room to hide or evade in the desert; there are just too many critters around. I tried quite some time to get past the mummy horde by picking the single mummies off first but always ended up surrounded and soon later dead.

Sounds like you aren't as good a gamer as you pretend to be when trying to win forum arguments. I defeated the desert using the "square dance" method (by the way, love that phrase Anurias) very early in the game. I actually ended up in the desert accidentally way early on. I was looking for the +% gain pendant and misread an online hint that suggested it was in the desert. I wanted to rush to the first pendant early on to take full advantage and ended up in the damn desert killing everything thinking it would be the final reward. Of course, once I killed everything I got the Meteor plate and re-visited the web to find out that the Pendant is really inside the underwater vault.

The desert is beatable in the beginning of the game using square dance tactics and virtually no armor and low grade weapons. It was after this that I used the Pendant to go pharm the Herder's Den. There's nothing difficult about clearing the desert with any party setup or weapon/armor combination; especially after the tactics used to beat the final boss in Grimrock 1. That Rubiks Cube of death rolling at you in a room with pits and spawns makes the Barren Desert a damn cake-walk.

And like Anurias pointed out, bragging about "not using any heal potions" when in reality you used heal crystals coupled with running away to "hide and heal" is absurd. It doesn't prove you can clear an area without healing, it just proves that you would rather make things harder on yourself in an effort to act as though you accomplished something that, in reality, is highly self-defeating.

Azel vs Dr. Disaster: The Rematch!

minmay wrote:It's not really that difficult to do barren desert without getting surrounded and without consumables/invisibility, even on solo characters, you just have to keep moving. I admit I haven't tried it with the poor (relative to melee) damage output of throwing weapons though.

Exactly. Especially after mastering the tactics required to take down LoG's satanic Rubik's Cube.

So we got a bit derailed due to a statement about over-powered items in the game. In my opinion, the only thing that could be considered "over-powered" might be the Scythe. But it's based on chance anyway which can't be abused in the game with any sort of "buff" so it doesn't really qualify. Other than that, a Heavy Weapon + Rage Potion is essentially a one-click kill, but there is still skill involved in implementing that combination which goes against the fundamentals of being "over-powered."

Azel wrote:

Dr.Disaster wrote:Out of arguments and reverting to insults again? Seems your logic blows up faster then you can build it.

Pot/Kettle. You misunderstood satire from two different posters, I called you out on it since I was the second poster you did this to, and you tried to insult me in the process. Instead of admitting your folly you did what you always do: insult, harass, and derail the topic to defend your idiocy. If I insult you back that is hardly me running out of arguments and reverting to insults. You never offer an argument only ridicule; only this time it was hilarious because in your attempt to ridicule you were too stupid to realize satire, twice in a row.

It's always funny how you imagine your own bad behavior onto others. I did insult you here? How? By pointing out that what you call "satire" is none due to lack of sense, something crucial for satire?

Azel wrote:

Dr.Disaster wrote:My solo insectiod throwing barb wore nothing but light armor the entire game and cleared the whole desert without a healing pot. Now if the rest of your party was dead the whole time while your thrower cleared the desert you might be playing in my league but are the chances this did happend anything beside zilch?

So you just argued against yourself. Your earlier statement was that Heavy Armor is over-powered because you were able to clear the desert without ever using a heal pot. Now you said you did the same thing with Light Armor, thus defeating the argument that clearing the desert with Heavy Armor makes it over-powered. You literally just provided a count-argument to yourself, walking face first in to the wall of nonsense you constructed, all because your online ego is more important to you than things like intellectual thought and consistency.

You still seem to have trouble with your attention span, especial in distinguishing characters and numbers. A missile using rogue is not a thrower barb or vis versa. Also 1 character per party is not the same as 4 characters per party.

Azel wrote:The desert is beatable in the beginning of the game using square dance tactics and virtually no armor and low grade weapons.

Well then record us a video about square dancing mummies in the desert naked with sticks and torches.

Soaponarope wrote:Azel vs Dr. Disaster: The Rematch!

There was a match? Got it lit?