New broken strategy

[Nurator]

It seems to be that the game has finally been beaten completely. Rainbowing everything, especially Rat in VGT is done, crazy combos have been found and nerfed, but it has been a long time since we found something severly broken, like the Inifinitemuter or the Punchbag-TT combo.

Maybe there is one edge we havent found yet, something to blow away everything else.... dislexcia, is there something? Can you give a hint towards a direction?^^

[Lujo]

???

Pissorf use / glyph in general is more broken than anything (ease of execution, low in-run stat demands, works against so many things it's safe to assume it works against anything with almost no alteration to how it's applied, you could teach a monkey to beat vicious dungeons with it). Coupled with the Crystal Ball it's quite a bit worse than most stuff that was ever nerfed. The "game is excellently ballanced" part simply doesn't apply to it, litterally, as it's brokeness was sufficiently explored by old beta testers well after the beta was over. Otherwise it wouldn't have survived a week and relies on stuff you can legitimately consider bugs.

If there's anything besides that particular nonsense, there's no real point in discovering it, it can hardly be more broken and more widly applicable than that.

Also, there was quite a bunch of stuff discovered that's quite a bit above the power curve and outside of the domain of traditionally popular approaches which was (possibly) fully explored by me (as far as I know) but never properly documented/popularized due to technical issues that arise from my inability to work around various personalities. As far as discovering stuff, we haven't seen (or advertized) half of it if you compare the actual game to the state of the wiki (even post new blood contributions).

Also, the current main forum content / opinion maker seemed for the most part blissfully happy to rethread old ground for most of her career (not knowing it's old ground), while mostly dismissing stuff that was unexplored, which helped shape the direction newcomers explored so not all that much "new" stuff could be dug up even if it was dug up. And most of the more creative old guard had moved on / kept quiet for quite some time.

EDIT: Oh, and the current popular playing format of DERP isn't too hot for experimentation, either, as people chase statistics or just go for stuff they know works so as not to screw up or get a good time score. So if most semi-veteran folks are playing a derp a day, and most folks who are playing more than a derp a day are just farming money / chasing their first full rainbow, and the general knowledge fund (the wiki) hasn't been properly updated even from before the release let alone in the past year (just filling in the gaps in the old wiki is way insufficient), then not much can happen on the discovery front, can it?

EDIT2: But still, the game was "solved" several times before, too, and the community had the echo/chamber complacency air about it, and then that changed. If it's still played in a year by people who are active now, in 3-4 more playthrought they'll dig up new old stuff. If it's not but it's played by someone else, well, they might dig up different stuff... It's happened before.

[Tinker]

[Lujo]

^ The 11 badge run was something that's been entirely elusive before, but the rat thing is mostly just a flashy example of general runaway knockback nonsense that's been sorta the flavor post-release.

I suppose noone could fault dislekcia for thinking that the he'd devised the rat to work outside of an established meta (and some components are definite curveballs), but kockback/pissorf are basically the most broken thing right now with or without the rat. The only reason the rat is even being discussed is because he's new and I assume Tinker needs something to play with that everyone hasn't allready done to death so that she can feel creative and trailblazing. The rat's problem, though, is that it does what most other classess can easily do (abuse knockback), except with built in limitations which other classess don't have. The results can be flashy and look special because of his mechanics, but the basic beneath it are just plain ole boring OP knockback shennanigans.

What's kinda funny, though, is how if you kill 2 bossess at lvl 1 or shoot up to 10 everyone's gonna think it's somehow special or limited to a particluar race or class or the point, when the fact that you can go through the exact same motions on almost any run with almost anything and get infinite gold without using your brain for 2 seconds doesn't raise any eyebrows in a game that's supposed to be supremely balanced and all that. The fact that you won't kill both bossess in the same click boils down to not bothering to cast a fireall or two, and the fact that you won't shoot 10 levels stright boils down to not having to bother with a self-imposed challenge, and the fact that you're NOT the rat means it's even more strightforward with nothing at all to juggle or make up for. And you'll still do 2 VT bossess with brainless ease any number of times in a row without killing hardly anything else or being challenged in any way... With fewer components all more easy to unlock...

EDIT: Come to think about it both of those are just getting clever with the knockback, but the Dragon at least is a Dragon specific-thing and a very clever spot of an overlooked subdungeon. The Rat thing is just riveting effort/concrete stunt onto general knockback stupidity. The ammount of nonsense that doesn't read as flashy from the end screen is limitless, though, and anyone can do crazy things by fooling around with any components on the board which you don't need (vast majority of them) if you're, say, spamming pissorf. Turns any run into a wide open sandbox with whatever rules you make up for yourself.

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Frankly I'd preffer if the whole bussines got adjusted for the rest of the actual game it's in, so that beating vicious dungeons is an actual achievement the way it used to be. The dungeons/rare situations where it doesn't just lolstomp effortlessly are still plenty tricky or at least rewarding in a genuine way.

[Tinker]

[William]

This thread is scary.

[Lujo]

^ @Tinker:

Meh, calm down, I got wordy because the "ZOMG RAT KILLED 2 BOSSESS AT ONCE MIGHT NEED A NERF" is quite rich coming from you, because you did the same thing with a fighter, and if anything picking a particular goal to demonstrate how silly knockback nonsense is is just a flourish. Nothing broken about either the rat or the fighter, but knockback (and especially pissorf knockback) is deeply, utterly stupid. Except when you were being told so, at length, there was nothing wrong with it and it wasn't particularly powerful. But since you were busy obsessing over fireballs and your leet skills with an entry level race, and needed to justify all that to yourself I suppose, pissorf had to be meh and fireballs had to be better, etc, etc. And you'd have been even more amazed DURING all these hours you played if you didn't tunel vision on stuff and chase whatever excuse to makes yourself look... whatever you imagine you're making yourself up to be. I've seen you pull clever stuff, I've seen you make clever conclusions and combine stuff better than most but there's too much narrow minded ego in your play and you're missing stuff left and right.

We don't need a dev coming to know there's plenty of unexplored space, trickshots and achievements left in the game, there is and I know because I've dug up a bunch noone's ever mentioned for a significantly longer period of time than has passed since release onwards. I assume it's the same with plenty of other people. Or a dev can come, blame me for making people feel uncomfortable, and tell you that himself in words which leave uncomfortable things diplomatically unsaid.

Everything revolving around low-level spellcasting and the ease with which it trivializes many legit challenges is a bit stifling in terms of what feels like an achevement and what doesn't, though. Would be even mroe achievemnty stuff around if it didn't. Knocback, also, problematic mechanic, too bad we sucked at testing it...

[Nurator]

Oh my^^ What have I done

Lujo, if you are as cocky as you want as to believe, then please share one of your strategies you dug out without ever telling anyone

I would be really interested in that!

[Lujo]

Wouldn't make any sense until everyone and their granmother is fully aware of this (not my vid, but the implications of what I'm doing in it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R92GgP2HvPg

It's a vid I made a while back. However, once this is someone's default way of handling anything, they can pretty much invent their own trickshots. As long is it is what it is anything less broken is simply not as broken, and anything more broken simply takes (usually a lot) more effort.

What I do know is that there's a ton of stuff that doesn't get any respect and remains widely obscure but certainly shouldn't be, so various questions can get their threads set up by poeple wondering "what is the deal with X", someone else telling them "meh, that's meh, just use Y", and the person/someone else goes and figures out what the deal with X was anyway, then apply it to other stuff etc. Advice is still being given in the race/class/god format (what is the best class/race for X), and so is power sorting, which is all a load of crock. It means that the community is still at the stage where you can't really brag (or even talk) about stuff because you're using established "power builds" (sometimes known as "only thig that works"), bit of a misconception by default, you can only really brag about established milestones and established achievements. While at the same time alternatives to these power builds are plentiful and often just as strong or completelly different with their own pros and cons. There's still a lot to "solve" and standardize (publicaly), let alone really break, and the way things look it'll take quite a while.

Which is rather good, tbh, yeah, I'm calling a lot of people with a lot of hours and nice numbers and flashy moves a bunch of noobs, but if I'm right (and I am), all that means is that those people STILL have a ton to see in DD and plenty of reasons to play it for a long time It's one of those "only a penitent man will pass" things, I sure know I turned out to be a noob many times after the game made me think there wasn't a way for me to be one anymore. Had fun discovering/ learning to appreciate new stuff most of those times.

[Zazzlegut]

This thread is pretty interesting. Just wondering if there is another thread, or should we start one, with a list of challenges to shoot for...including restrictions.
Example: Must complete dungeon X with race Y and class Z with the following restrictions....

Really, I'm just looking for examples of what the good players consider real challenges. I'm not at that level, myself, but it sounds like a good way to learn.

@Lujo what kind of real challenges would you include in that list?