Arise From Death

[Fran]

Although I can't play the game for 6 months, the updates still sound awesome. I like the existence of crusader challenges, hopefully there will be challenges for the other custom classes as well

[The Avatar]

And monster classes too!

The description of the explorer's guild was removed. Was that intentional?

[Darvin]

Nop, the glyphs have 0 conversion value. If it's on purpose and it seems to be then it's ment to point you towards Spirit Pact. Which then doesn't actually show the +10 you get from it in the prediction bar so it is a bit confusing.

Spirit Pact would probably let you hit a conversion threshold; if you convert all five glyphs and two items that's +70 CP. However, it's highly unlikely you'll be within such a razor margin of victory that a single conversion threshold would make the difference. Consider that the benefits of this pact, even in this extreme "convert everything you find" scenario, are only slightly better than buying a spoon. You're much better off using Scholar's Pact for better power-leveling or using Alchemist's Pact for better control of your level-up thresholds (which break momentum).

I would seriously like the devs to actually explain their rationale for leaving Spirit Pact in its current state. It is so abysmally horrible that I find it completely indefensible. Back when we had the stacking orc there was at least one case where accumulating an extra threshold had a huge benefit, but that's ancient history.

Not at the moment it seems - it's 400 gold and satisfaction of having done it as a reward. And I have, so I'm satisfied.

Hmmm... we will definitely need a reward of some sort. Actually, the Stone Sigil would be thematically more appropriate for the Crusader than the Priest.

[Waldo0]

0.3 is the magic number.

[The Avatar]

What?

Just beat the gold, it was lots of fun. I assume we will be getting another veto slot to, what with another batch of gold class challenges.

I don't know if they'll do item rewards this far into the design phase, with a minimum of 3 items (or six if they hopefully do monster class challenges), but I'm all for it.

I think spirit pact is the best choice for bronze. Convert all glyphs except biceps, buy out shops, and convert all potions and you have a fair amount of CP.

[FDru]

Bronze is simple even if you don't use Pactmaker (which I screwed up on by taking a pact before taking Consensus). It's not hard to get over 100 damage with Crusader if you level up efficiently, like with IMAWAL. I think I beat it at level 6 with no conversions.

Can't figure out Silver at all.

[Darvin]

Interesting puzzle-like mechanic in this gold challenge.

Having played them all, here are my thoughts:

Bronze Challenge - very well rounded and a good challenge
Silver Challenge - good demonstration of the crusader's scarred ability, but much too easy for a silver challenge.
Gold Challenge - creative puzzle mechanic, but laughably easy for a gold challenge. I almost won it on my first try; if I hadn't picked up the alchemist's pact I wouldn't have leveled up one extra time and I'd have won.

Bronze is simple even if you don't use Pactmaker (which I screwed up on by taking a pact before taking Consensus). It's not hard to get over 100 damage with Crusader if you level up efficiently, like with IMAWAL. I think I beat it at level 6 with no conversions.

You don't need Pactmaker for any of these. He's not particularly useful in any circumstance here.

I personally would avoid IMAWAL unless you're about to cash in on a lot of bonus experience. It deprives you of the popcorn you need to fuel your momentum.

Can't figure out Silver at all.

What's to figure out? This boss's damage is pathetic and his only strength is above-average health and that corrosive strike. Just make sure you're adequately leveled and he goes down pretty easy. I barreled through him by brute force without even paying attention to momentum.

[The Avatar]

Hmm... I disagree on Gold. My first two tries I got absolutely screwed by layout, forced to blow all my popcorn so I could've get the 30% momentum you need to break the rats DP's.

Silver was easy and pretty boring. It's easy to make it harder, but I'm unsure of what would make it more interesting.

[Darvin]

Hmm... I disagree on Gold. My first two tries I got absolutely screwed by layout, forced to blow all my popcorn so I could've get the 30% momentum you need to break the rats DP's.

Gold challenges are vicious level; this is not vicious-level, not even close.

I'd agree the layout lends itself to map screws, but an early ENDISWAL or WEYTWUT find will deal with that.

[Lujo]

Gold challenge took me a few tries because I was unsure how exactly to take the DP's off.

Silver however isn't easy or difficult as much as both teaching and missleading at the same time. I suppose you can't really make a different challenge to showcase scarred - scarred just makes a bunch of monsters vanilla, and in that sense you get to see what it allows. It's difficult, however, because you have to take the crusader to an endurance fight and the challenge doesn't seem to really compensate for this in a crusadery way. So scarred makes your opponents vanilla, but your opponents and the boss sort of make you vanilla. Properly managing your resources still helps a ton though. And you learn what you don't care about with crusaders, and what you still have to pay attention to (corrosion, weakening)...

Gold is only easy once you figure it out, and since theres a bunch of ways to try it and a few ways to fail it, not to mention layout bussiness, it's not as easy as you make it sound. Figuring out how to take rats out is also a bit of a conundrum. I think it's simmilar to the priest gold which is a puzzle rather than a dungeon, and works well to showcase the "don't try to build up momentum past a reasonable level".





However, I'd really love to hear the official justification for spirit pact. Won't launch off into any polemics, it's been bugging me since forever. If were missing something big enough to justify it being like this - what are we missing? If complex math shows it would introduce crucial levels of CP into a particular set of runs - it'd tell us something about the system or the CP strat... What's the deal with it?

We the commuinty've been pondering it at various stages, it's one of the few things we can generally agree upon - 5 piety for 10 CP upon conversion sucks major posterior. Different oppinions on why, mine is that the "per conversion" mechanic isn't really supported well enough to warrant picking it up over another boon, pact or at all, while some have said that the killer is to piety to CP ratio.

I never herd of anyone ever using it, so if someone is, could you clue the rest of us into what's it there for?