QCF Design Community

The next 4 challenges - same rating scale as last time.

1/5: Disappointing. Needs major changes (to be fun).
2/5: Can be made fun with some minor changes.
3/5: Fun, but not too special (would consider some minor updates).
4/5-5/5: Really nice challenge.


Warlord:

The theme wasn't very appealing. Just a few monsters that are generally annoying for warlord (but not interesting). The sheep horns didn't make sense to me and weren't interesting.

The overall feeling was a standard dungeon run where you just had to play fairly efficiently and plan for extended boss fights.

Didn't learn anything new except to reinforce the following:
- Balanced dagger is really strong for early game resource conservation.
- Dracul is really strong for killing bosses.

There's a hint of something interesting going on with the gods but in the end dracul was just too strong.

2/5


Priest:

A nice one. Feels like a mini-puzzle and even when you have a strategy the early game still requires a bit of thought.

The map layout in respect to glyphs can really make or break a run though (I would guarantee that ENDISWAL is near the start).

4/5

Monk:

Didn't feel very special - you just do what a monk does (with a little more care than usual) and then you win. There seems to be enough monk-friendly monsters that you can pretty much ignore the troublesome ones.

I guess it's hard to do something special here as the monk play-style is so distinctive. If the plan was to make something that feels monk'ey' then it works.

I'm starting to think it was a big mistake to do VGT first. I learnt so much there that it feels like would have been taught by these challenges (in a more manageable dose) and the challenges would have been much tougher (more fun) without the VGT training.

2/5

Paladin:

Completed first time unintentionally on my scouting run (which means I wasn't being particularly careful about resource management early game). I messed up my piety management and accidentally went too low to plantation back after converting imawall for inventory space but it didn't matter. I also only thought to make use of the Paladin's third ability right at the end.

I don't think it should be possible to complete a gold challenge making that many huge mistakes. I got both Byceps and Piercing wand which I'm assuming was just luck (they're not guaranteed). Maybe these (or just piercing wand) should not appear as they kind of trivialise the boss fight (in conjunction).

1/5

Conclusion:

Overall fairly disappointing (with the exception of priest). I think it was a big mistake to do VGT first. I learned a lot from my countless failed VGT runs and the challenges (monk/warlord in particular) feel like very-mini-VGT runs. I think my perspective is probably not so useful and the themes probably come through stronger when they're more of a challenge.

I would definitely try to add an incentive/hint to do the challenges before VGT so others don't make the same mistake.

The final 3 challenges (explorer's guild classes) are likely to be more interesting.
I've not played with those classes much and the first is kind of cool, the second confuses me no end (I almost feel like I know what I'm doing but it's hard and weird) and the third seems really hard to play close to optimally with.
I'll report back when I get round to trying them.

Actually, if my memory serves me right, BYCEPS is a guaranteed spawn in Paladin Gold; I think its part of the intended solution, in combination with all of EM's Boons. ... Not sure on that though, since I always scum for a piercing wand. That thing breaks the challenge pretty easily.
Imo, Paladin Gold appears to be either super hard or pretty easy, depending on the approach; but it doesn't seem to have a middle road.

Piercing wand makes it a joke. I just did a quick reminder run (which was rushed and very poorly played), and I managed to get him down to 136 hp. If I had found the piercing wand or not been rushing (hence missing a couple ridiculously painful and obvious mistakes), I would have won. It isn't particularly hard or interesting.

As for monk, I think it would be more interesting if the boss had less hp and much more damage. So you have to be able to spell cast or just have a ridiculous amount of resists and power. Something like the normal SMM hp (1200 or so?) and 200-250 damage.

Warlord stretches your character, but not in an interesting way. The goat horns are fun and not really interesting sure, but they are necessary. Frankly, the most interesting golds (IMO) are the one that stretches your character class, and what hurts a warlord more than monsters with DP? What if every monster got a level of DP when you leveled up (making you go for higher level kills and hurting the normal warlord strategy), and in turn something else was nerfed?

Ugh. Monk was one of the last ones for me. Perhaps it's just because I don't play them much, but I found it nigh impossible without Taurog or some sort of poison.

Re Byceps in Paladin:

That just means piercing wand is even more broken in that challenge I guess.
I couldn't judge non-piercing wand difficulty from that run but I assume Avatar is right and it could do with a little buff.

Re Warlod:

I was going to suggest death protection on the enemies too. It seems natural for a warlord challenge. I think 'stretches but not in an interesting way' sums it up well.

Re Monk:

I tried monk quite a bit on VGT and think I got a handle on how to play them. You've got to play it like fast regen + resists are the most overpowered things in the game (they are!) and putting them together just gets absurd. You're not a normal character, you're a super-powered high lvl enemy destroying machine.

Your drawback is that it's hard to get out enough dmg to kill all the monsters but that's completely irrelevant because you can lvl so efficiently that you don't need to.
Don't ever waste resources on monsters that you don't need to kill (ie. that you're not getting a big exp boost from). This is especially important for the lvl 8-9 ones… just leave them.

It's OK to use 20+ tiles to kill much higher lvl enemies. It's OK to lvl inefficiently (exp-wise) at the start to save exploration. All you care about is that you take on the boss at a high enough level (usually 8-9) with as much unexplored space as possible.

Probably goes without saying but conversion happy orcs seem to be the only real way to go.
You're hitting things a lot so +dmg is great. Also, (though prob. not that relevant to the challenge) resists don't have diminishing returns in this game (they kind of have the opposite) so extra points (including ENDISWAL) are incredibly powerful.