Exclusive Subletting

[q 3]

Another thing they could tamper with is reducing the XP from lower level kills. The assassin from your example should ask himself, do I want to expend resources and get X xp now, or do I want to get less than X effortlessly later?

This would probably make Tikki's Edge and WEYTWUT incredibly overpowered, as their relative impact on XP gain from popcorn would be that much higher.

I could see it working if the reduced XP could overcome the bonus from Tikki Edge / slow. (Tikki Tooki probably needs a rebalance anyway if this is the permanent solution for Crystal Ball.)

E.g., have the "bonus" XP formula for all monster be (n ^ 2) + 1, or more precisely (n * |n|) + 1. (n being monster level - character level.) That's give the following values for n:

n / bonus XP
-3 / -8
-2 / -3
-1 / 0
0 / +1
+1 / +2
+2 / +5
+3 / +10
+4 / +17

Higher level kills are slightly less rewarding than they were before (but more than they are now), low level kills are nearly worthless even with multiple levels of Tikki Edge (and thus both Fighters and TT worshipers are also looking at same level kills as their primary targets). Same level kills are worth +1 bonus XP and are also much more valuable relative to both higher and lower level kills. (I'd put a minimum XP per kill of 1 just to be fair.) (This ends up being a fairly notable nerf to Assassins but as long as they keep their corrosion effect I think that's reasonable.)

Of course, that's assuming that the goal is to encourage same level kills. Personally, I was just fine with the old system, but then I'm an arrogant vet who fell in love with a game that encouraged strategies that were somewhat more sophisticated than "find nearest monster, kill it, and repeat."

(On a slightly related note, you know the real reason why corrosion, burning, and Strength Potions [and to a lesser extent, damage reduction] are so hard to balance? Because they give you the exact same bonus whether you use them at level 1 or level 10 - meaning that they are relatively much more powerful at level 1. I suspect that as long as their benefits are fixed rather than dependent on character level, they are going to be prone to abuse. [Or nerfed to the point of uselessness.])

[Fran]

This is an interesting concept to base some balancing on.
But I'm not sure how the range of possible endgame exp behaves; the way it is now, we have a fixed minimum, but i could imagine that this way, you could really screw up. But I'm too tired to do any maths on that now. Also, makes goblin and yendor pretty useless.
Anyway, going to sleep now.

[Darvin]

You'd probably need several hours of spreadsheeting to find the optimal level-up pattern to maximize your long-term XP gain, as well as patterns that allow for level-up catapults. This would bring a massive amount of complexity and learning curve to the meta-game, which I don't think is a good idea. I think the current scheme of "killing higher-level opponents is better" is just fine, the issue the devs have is that we are expending large amounts of exploration resources near the start of the game to achieve this because you often cannot find suitable higher-level opponents easily.

I believe that the only change the devs need to make is to keep the old XP curve and add a +1 bonus XP to equal-level monsters. If this were done, these would be the following three ways to reach level 2:

kill three level 1 monsters (6 XP)
kill a level 2 and a level 1 monster (6 XP)
kill two level 2 monsters (8 XP)
kill a level 3 monster (9 XP)

Those seem like reasonably balanced options to me.

[franz]

(On a slightly related note, you know the real reason why corrosion, burning, and Strength Potions [and to a lesser extent, damage reduction] are so hard to balance? Because they give you the exact same bonus whether you use them at level 1 or level 10 - meaning that they are relatively much more powerful at level 1. I suspect that as long as their benefits are fixed rather than dependent on character level, they are going to be prone to abuse. [Or nerfed to the point of uselessness.])

This is the real issue with balancing in my opinion, but to be honest I don't feel this game has to be THAT balanced. After all it's a single player game, it's up to the players to decide if their challenge is in overcoming hard obstacles or finding a way arount them. Game breaking combos should be fixed, but that's about it.

About my previous posts, I want to make myself clear: those weren't suggestions on how to fix the game, I was merely pointing out how to sway the focus from exploration to combat. As long as high level monsters give bonus XP (or to be more accurate, as long as investing resources on high level kills is more rewarding than investing the same amount on lower level ones) exploration will still be the better option, and as long as lower level monster's XP is constant over time leaving monsters alive until they can be killed without expending any kind of resource will still be better than killing them earlier. Those are facts, and my question still stands: do the devs envision a game that requires, rewards or punishes that kind of behaviours?

That said, I like the game as it is, I also prefer

a game that encouraged strategies that were somewhat more sophisticated than "find nearest monster, kill it, and repeat"

[q 3]

I think the current scheme of "killing higher-level opponents is better" is just fine, the issue the devs have is that we are expending large amounts of exploration resources near the start of the game to achieve this because you often cannot find suitable higher-level opponents easily.

That's a very good point. One of the most serious balance issues here, one that directly contributed to over-exploring, is the huge disparities between different monster types. As Lujo has complained, many of the monsters in dungeons are there for the sole purpose of being ignored (unless you're an Assassin). Whether the devs intended it to be like this or not, there's literally no reason to fight Goo Blobs when you could be fighting Gorgons instead.

This dynamic gets to be quite ridiculous in the vicious dungeons. Take, for example, the Library:

On the one hand, you have Doom Armors (Death Protection + Berserk), Djinn (extra HP and Counter Fireball), Succubi (weakening, plus death gaze but who cares because thanks to the weakening they're nearly untouchable), Steel Golems (reduce resist and they have phys resist), Thralls (extra HP, mana burn, poison, and undead), and Cultists (weak but worth no XP; when killed, turn into Zombies which have lots of HP and are worth substantially less XP).

On the other hand, you have Goats and Imps, both of which are just begging to be slaughtered for bonus XP.

The main reason why I would fully explore the Library before doing much fighting is that spending tons of resources fighting Doom Armors or taking permanent hits to my stats fighting Succubi is an objectively worse strategy in every respect than looking for a high level Goat or Imp that I can kill relatively easily.

If you want players to stop exploring for those (relatively) easy high level kills, balancing the monster loadout would be the most direct way to remove that incentive. Whether that means removing Goats and Imps, or whether it means making Doom Armors and Succubi less game-ending to fight, depends on whether you want the dungeon to actually be beatable or not. But as long as both categories of monster are in a dungeon, the harder monsters are necessarily going to be little more than scenery.

[The Avatar]

That's the problem with weakening and corrosion monsters. As long as they exist they WILL be untouchable. I like Darvin's suggestion, but the +1 exp becomes almost obsolete once you're a high enough level. But then again people will ignore the bonus when they can find a killable level 4 goat.

[Darvin]

If you want players to stop exploring for those (relatively) easy high level kills, balancing the monster loadout would be the most direct way to remove that incentive.

I'd agree with this. Some variation in monster strength is fine, but there are quite a lot of outliers that aren't even close in terms of power. A 5th level animated armor is a tougher opponent than many 9th level monsters, and that's a problem because the difference in strength between a level 5 and a level 9 is roughly double.

I like Darvin's suggestion, but the +1 exp becomes almost obsolete once you're a high enough level

This is mostly aimed at the start of the game, which seems to be what the devs are concerned about.

[The Avatar]

True, but people will still mindlessly maim high level goats at level 1 if they can. So I suppose we need to buff and nerf various monsters. I'm going to start a thread on it.

[Joist]

I found a new subdungeon (or at least one I hadn't seen before).

You get a little area of plants and a vamp.


Kill the vamp and you get a small item that looks like a scroll, you can read it.


All the plants you can one shot and none of them have any negative effects. When you kill one it appears in the area up the top of the screen. I think you are meant to hit the plants in the right order to complete the recipes. I did two but have no idea if they worked. I didn't get any items, I may have got a buff though because I wasn't paying attention to stats.

edit: I stumbled across it again and was more careful this time.

Health Broth = +5 Max Health

Magi Soup = +1 Max Mana

Strength Syrup = +1 Base Attack

Caramel Conversions = +20 Conversion Points

Cake of Attack Bonus = +5% Attack Bonus

[The Avatar]

Cool! What region were you in? Currently max mana definitely seems like the best choice.