Ick Swamp "Way of the open fist"

[Darvin]

Monk has gone from super-strong to super-weak back to super-strong and now back to weak (though just how weak is entirely dependent on the amount of magic damage present in the level). This is a class prone to excessive over-shoots in terms of its strengths.

[Lujo]

Yeah, but he way way too good before. It's just that too many things have changed in the mean time, and his attack penalty assumed he'd be taking only half damage from everything. I never said "make monk unviable by nerfing him diractly and indirectly in any way imaginable", what I said was "a character who starts out taking 1/2 damage per hit from any threat in the game, and can make it 1/4 easily is so far above the curve that everything else pales in comparison".

And it's true, it's still true, and if they made him back the way he was before I'd still be steamrolling stuff like it wasn't challenging at all, as long as I could fireball Tomithy His penalty might need a rework, the general number of debuff monsters might need a looking at, the overall power level of stuff might still be too high now that resist have been distributed between Monk and Berserker, there is tons and tons of stuff.

The solution isn't "giving monk his 50% resists back" most probably.

[Invain]

I have now completed all other quests and dungeons, including Vicious Gaan-Telet. I still can't beat this one.

In it's current form, the quest is obnoxiously difficult and not much fun to play.

[The Avatar]

What did you beat Vicious Gaan-Telet with?

[Invain]

Vampire, so it might not be the best example.

Still, I'd rather keep trying to beat Gaan-Telet with other classes than make another swamp run as a purist monk.

[Ara]

Don't say that! I find Gaan-Telet way more frustrating than "Way of the open fist 3". You can have a great start, and then at the 6-9th floor, you got animated armors, and everything is thown away. Worse: trying to get a run without a specific floor, like bandits, is ultra time consuming since you also have to avoid animated armors, and 8 floors are taken from a pool of maybe 12. You will probably turn insane before it happens.

At least Ick Swamp can be played way faster!

[Gorgon]

I agree. Even if I loose a thousand times in Ick Swamp, I can try again, and it's not time-consuming. Being defeated in Gaan-Telet costs me an hour!

[The Avatar]

And 300 gold, while Ick costs 0. I can go through a purist run and win in 4-5 tries. Gann-Telet is MUCH HARDER.

[Lujo]

Which is really all because of 2 things from my point of view: a) you have to have Soul Orb b) for some reason they "buffed" AA's.

I've said a whole bunch of times, I've been walking all over that level with contingencies for any situation but the unity player crash AFTER the monk nerfs, with only 2 gods spawning and no advance potions or apothecary and managed to get to fight Horatio exactly once - and that was the only time I was really careless about resources and ended short of killing him. I'd wager I'd have had between 10-15 Gaan'Telet wins untill now with an old orc paladin of either TT or Mysteria, and I'm willing to bet a bunch of other guys could also do it.

And the only one single thing I ever scummed for was Soul Orb. I had maybe 2 obviously failed runs based on other factors (floor, items, glyphs, whatever).

If they NERF the damn AA's, and nerf them real good, and also either remove the mana burn from Horatio (and thus the need to scum/prep Soul Orb), I'm quite willing to try to find the current good strat, hell, even do an annotated run if time allows, but as it is, I'm boycoting that dungeon. Come to think of it I'm sort of boycoting the game as a whole, as I always find better things to do with my time these days whenever I think that AA's are still the way they are (they were ridiculous in anywhere even pre magic damage). I just don't feel like going through Dragon isles with "boss hive" AA's three times, and grinding everything else up.

Were Vicious Halls of Steel fixed in any way yet? That was one thing that got DD to go rather low on my list of daily priorities as well...

[The Avatar]

I don't know what you mean by fixed, but it's pretty easy to win with three classes. (Berserker, Priest, Sorcerer/Assassin, anyone willing to scum for Binlor's magic res)