Is preparing cheating ?

[Nurator]

I always thought that preparations were the main kind of progress after your kingdom is maxed out. I mean, you enter your first vicious dungeon, fail it a couple of times and then take the trophy (the preppable item) into your locker to remind you that you did it.

And now you can use this achievement to overcome the more difficult dungeons and so on until your locker is full with high end gear and your done

[Zazzlegut]

So, here's a different angle.

I think prepping is essential for those of us who just don't have the time to play DD often enough to get really good at it. I do the Daily and if I'm lucky I get to try one or two other dungeons in a week. That's not nearly enough time to master the intricacies needed to pull off the feats that some of you folks can do.

To be honest, if I couldn't prep stuff I would have quit playing DD relatively soon after I started. I'm sure there is a significant segment of the overall DD market who are in this boat. As a casual player the preps are needed for the game to be sporting.

For those who I consider the pro's, prep-free is likely the only way you guys could compare your abilities against each other.

Having said all that, it would be interesting if some of the Dailies were forced prep-free and had specific targets like "you have to win AND have the highest piety gain". Then the leaderboard for each Daily would be a true competition.

[Lujo]

There's a facet of preparation that's rarely ever mentioned and that is that it lets you explore things. It's rarely ever mentioned because not everyone plays with infinite locker space, but this is my first post in a long while and I'm not looking to get myself banned again right away.

But a lot of stuff is fun to prep not because it's strong but because it shores up certain combinations or makes them fun. Stuff Astral is really good at is, doing runs for the art - preps let you do that sort of thing. I like stuff which brings out the inherent power in races folks rarely ever get to (in large part due to cemented lockers). Martyr Wraps on monks and stuff like that. Most progress-killers like the old trisword were removed but there are things which are just plainly there to be above the curve by default and when you pick something like that up just to get through a pqi or a flaming run it rarely ever feels good. Those things can also work against your development as a player. But you can still use them to get past something, you don't have to lean on them too hard. If you're farming money and your flaming dungeon is stuck somewhere you don't feel like playing, you can use them to just run through it.

Important thing - having fun if that's what you're after, getting badges, gold, completion with no fun if that's what you're after, proving a point if that's what you're after, or just exploring interactions if that's what you're after ^^

*Some preps or prep combinations ARE cheating, there's no way to call them anything else, mind you. The only question is whether you want to challenge yourself or just get something over with, or even just spam that crystal ball and yell "look ma, no brains!" for any satisfaction that might bring.

Oh, and I haven't done any purist vt... for the challenge. I've contemplated it, decided against it.

[berpdreyfuss]

[Lujo]

True, true, but it's was rarely talked about in general. A lot of stuff is "common knowledge" simply because whoever latched onto it had what it took to latch onto it in the locker, and a lot of stuff which isn't common knowlege or is considered obscure and will be hotly contested is often that way because the stuff that leads you to it can't elbow it's way into lockers. Lots of stuff like pqi's gets regularly skipped simply because an item which makes a combo interesting and quite viable is never at hand. On the other hand things get pegged as "best ever" simply because the item which plays nicely with it is easier to squeeze into a locker. Dwarves, halflings and goblins suffer hard from this, and you really don't know how much you don't know until you see it. How you get to see it is non-disclosable in any public forums on the web that I know of, though.

I decided against the challenge because I'm rusty so it would take me a while to simply get my footwork back, and the last time I was active many months of dedicated playing with a goal amounted to a whole lot of nothing. I could also picture what I'd end up doing, thought about what it would end up looking like, and decided to let you guys have fun instead. Last time I posted hundreds of runs of all shapes and colors the thread had thousands of views but I was still informed at one point that there's no interest in such a thing. What kind of challenge would it be if someone went and posted a hundred odd runs in it? I'd put in a bunch of time just to end up spoiling the fun and be a huge douche.

In case anyone thinks this is just empty bragging, check the very nice entry in the EDIT: "master tier" list (btw thank you guys for that). That description says a lot more when you stop and think about it. Wouldn't want that spelled out, for the same reason I didn't want to meddle in the challenge.