QCF Design Community

Just for fun, I'd thought we'd kvetch about some of the hilariously hard aspects of early beta. Some things were easier, but oh wow were somethings much, much harder.

Bleaty: This guy used to have health similar to any normal boss. Totally unbeatable without CYDSTEP. Made the random dungeons a game of Russian roulette.

Complicated Tasks 5: Oh my god. The Berserkers had tons more health, did more damage, and you had to do this with a Wizard instead of a Sorcerer. Plus, we couldn't prep altars, so you had to scum for Taurog to even have a chance.

Deep Swamp: You had to fight a Naga Monk boss. He had something like 80% resistances, plus the usual weakening. Oh, and there was a quest to beat him purist with a Monk.

Bandits Mark II: After their first revision, Bandits permanently reduced your resistances by 20% per hit. Tomithy Longdall knocked off 80%. Half of Naga City was figuring out how to get past him without taking a hit.

Gods: With a few exceptions, they sucked hard.

And so was Drac's blood curse. Blood curse + Blood Power = invincible fireballing gnome wizard with crappy stats!

Deep Swamp... Now that's something I want to forget. You guys forgot to mention its structure and monsters too. It was like a combo of Ick and Slime Pits monsters where everything was craped into one-space hallways.

For Complicated Tasks V let's not forget the boss had double health and two DPs.

Also, DPs didn't reduce damage. And Platemail didn't exist.

God, the complicated tasks pt. 6 made me start posting.

Horatio had mana burn, so a playable Gaan'Telet run was one where you found Soul Orb, otherwise not so much.

The Getanadafix dungeon spawned all sorts of plants.

Oh man, I forgot about the druid boss spawning barbing bushes. That could create completely unwinnable situations and there was usually nothing you could do about it.

As for the primordial gods, I remember Mystera sucking hard until Mystic Balance was created. Her other boons got upped around that time as well. Her old boon set was just a bunch of crippling curses that cost piety to get, things like gain +1 mana but all monsters gain 15% to both resistances or something like that. Binlor had a bunch of janky stuff that you would maybe want to use once but had nothing worth staying for. Taurog was always average. Having the Cliffstmper Boots removed and its powers distributed amongst the other items helped enormously. Old GG and Dracul were awesome.

And let's not forget the inventory restrictions. Pain-in-the-ass microrules for each class that weren't documented on the Kingdom screen and had to be memorized to plan around. Back then, the Monk was considered low-tier, even with his old starting resistances because, because he carried gear like a wizard.

There was also a dark age when dying in the dungeon meant that your locker prep was lost forever D:

Yes, do you remember the time when there was no locker? Seems like it was only a month or so ago

And there was a time where the boss at Gaan'Telet could kill you at any time at all ^^

The very first Mystera had this self-sustaining combo.

First off, Mystera gave you piety based off numbers of spells cast, not MP spent. With 3 MP Halpmeh this means ridiculously piety gain real fast.

1) Gain more max mana (there weren't any "increasing exponential costs" boons at this point of time, it was a constant number piety -> max mana)

2) Once you reach a certain amount of MP, you could use Refreshment which at that time, refreshed full MP in exchange for healing all monsters.

3) That means you can basically reach a hilarious amount of MP easily, like 30-50 high. My browser constantly crashed doing this because of the memory leaks involved.

Although the old mystic balance and crystal ball were broken. I had a Wizard in DL who's only kills were the bosses.

Also, remember the strength potion PISORF bug? That was AWESOME.