Extreme East Spoiler and Discussion Thread

[General_Milky]

Continuing to cruise so triple post.

Cursed Soil
Difficulty: 4
Fun: 4



Endless Horde
Difficulty: 3
Fun: 3



Blighted Overgrowth
Difficulty: 3-4
Fun: 3



Spoiled Meat
Difficulty: 3-5
Fun: 2


Lastly, East.

[General_Milky]

QUADRA POST. And last one for a while because I peeked at some of the Vicious ones and I'm not going to be blowing through those. Nooooo way. Hoo boy. They're rude as hell. Well, I've cleared all Investigations outside of them, so may as well say which ones I liked and which I didn't.

Bloody Twilight
Difficulty: 3
Fun: 3



Call from Beyond

Difficulty: 2
Fun: 2



Tempered Steel

Difficulty: 4
Fun: 4



Unstoppable Fury

Difficulty: 4
Fun: 3



Vicious time... This is going to be rough.

[The Avatar]

Woah, I stop paying attention for a day and this much text is dropped. Really though, thanks General Milky. And I broke your streak. This sort of feedback is invaluable in rebalancing and rewriting curious challenges, and it's fun to see what you like v. what you didn't. I appreciate that nothing has been given a one on fun so far, and I'll take a 3.1 average on my first try all things considered. Also, expect many of the challenges you gave a 2 to be readjusted in some fashion (I'm shooting for all 3+'s!), although likely not all of them.

Most of these aren't worth responding directly to, since generally it would just be me saying "I'm glad you think that's cool too!" or "Yeah, I agree that one is sort of campy/boring/easy". That being said, there are a few things you missed and a few I'd like to question you about further, so I'll respond to those:

Northern Desert

The Slime Pit

Shifting Passages

Grimm's Grotto and Rock Garden

Also, good luck with the vicious ones. I suspect you may need the difficulty scale to go beyond 5, as those were designed as one off challenges as opposed to reasonable and fun alternatives.

[General_Milky]

I'm here again. Nice update, the Grimm's Grotto investigation pleases me, ND investigation is certainly better now, and the bug fixes are nice. I even managed to beat Frigid Plains- sorry, BATTLEFIELD right this time, and it still wasn't easy, no way no how! Seems there's a few new bugs introduced though, namely an oversight on some dungeon completion borders (doing everything is Gold. Doing everything EXCEPT one is rainbow.) and the most worrying of all, Troll's reshroud ability doesn't work anymore.

I didn't do any vicious Investigations. Well, except Vicious Steel, the others ended in failure. They defy the way I was looking at them earlier, so I don't think I'll be rating them or anything like that. They're basically just VGT-level versions of themselves, so of course they're super rough, and of course they're not just doable with "any" build. They're all pretty intense and kind of fun, though, in that cruel way where you throw your best strategies as them just to watch how they totally nueter them and kill you (No Assassin cheese on Dragon Isles anymore!) but special shoutouts go to Naga City and its new arena. About time the non-alpha bosses got some spotlight on them! Also shoutouts to BlahBlah for being probably the single strongest boss in the game as far as raw numbers to resources go. Vicious Horatio's looking tough with that 5000 health and those resists, but he's set in a dungeon with tons of resources, tons of ways to get around it, lowish damage, and the powers of all the gods can be used against him. BlahBlah's sitting in a standard size dungeon, with standard resources and items, hits like a truck and takes incredible abuse back, with limited god selection, no free items, and little blackspace to use against him. Then he revives and starts an entire second round again. BlahBlah's the real top badass IMO, at least from what I've seen. Still not began chipping at Heretic Gold, and only made it to tower 7 of Curious VGT.

Enough about those. I wanted to talk Troll and items. Troll's incredible. By far my favorite monster class to play, Vampire's the only one that comes even close. It's a very, very interesting class to play, AND it's actually really strong. A lot of the monster classes are strong in their own right, but Troll stands out in that it's fairly straight forward to play (no weird strats needed to get them off the ground) yet somehow manages to be unique and monster class-y even still. The death protection mechanic is what really makes it, this game of balancing how many squares til the next DP, how many until you can take a hit, and how to juggle glyphs into all of this is neat and it's frankly been pretty fun taking it through older dungeons to reclaim my rainbows. I honestly like it far better than Heretic, who isn't lame in the slightest itself.

Items this time are fantastic, especially the Vicious rewards which are even better than the North. 9 locker slots just isn't feeling like it's enough. Frostflame Crown is awesome and has crazy potential, the shadow heart is obviously incredible and can entirely change the game just by having it, and while Fido's not that remarkable I could still see it being fun on a Monk. Serpentine Shield is awesome too, but that necklace thing Heretic Silver unlocks is too situational for me to have picked it up a single time yet. Other than that, Frozen Scale's the only other item I think I've found, and while it's nothing anyone should locker, it's a real nice lucky find in the moment. North's had more interesting subdungeon items (Lord soul is amazing, and that mana orb thing is really neat) but the serpent shield and the vicious rewards of the Extreme East are real good, and open up new strategies and playstyles just by being there. Overall, this update has been incredible and it's a damn shame not too many people seem to be playing it. DD is old, really old by this point, so it makes sense most of its audience has moved on, but the game itself's never been quite this busy and alive.

[The Avatar]

[The Tapir]

I was liking the east up until FFFF part 2. After being able to do Errand Boy part 2 and 3 on my first attempts at each I still can't figure out how to properly approach Phantom Citadel. The first boss phase 1 is by and large easy, but just getting to a decent level to fight him and the naga guards takes far too many resources for my approach. Shadowsires suck, being more or less forced to take platemail for frostbite sucks, and having the map split in half means finding appropriate targets in the lower levels without wasting blackspace sucks. I just want to play with trolls and not being able to progress past the second quest for them is frustrating.

[The Avatar]

I would prep something other than platemail. It'll *really* make PC a lot easier. While Frostbite is a ton more manageable with platemail, the shadowsires and swampsouls (but mostly shadowsires) make it more of a curse than a blessing. Think of it this way: Platemail makes frostblades fightable but still leaves no good options for clearing Frostbite (you must take either curse, corrosion, or unstable damage). Your better off mostly avoiding frostblades and then just using shadowsires' first strike to clear Frostbite when necessary. After all, the 50% magic res and DP on them made them awful targets for Half-Dragons anyways (and you really only need to fight the level 10 one--the level 6s can be pushed into the walls as soon as you can tank 1 shot).

With that in mind, I'd probably prep Dwarven Gauntlets or Yendor (or you can try Dragon Shield, but I don't recommend it as much). JJ isn't a bad god pick for extra health (being able to tank shots from form 2 is necessary, unlike form 1), but neither is Drac for lifesteal, blood pools, and resists. Then again, you can also use EM (exp and liberal slowing for first strike, hen convert), TT (reflexes and a little poison, then convert), and Binlor (briefly, then desecrate) The first boss can be a sink for you largest burn resources. The level 10s and second boss supply their own regen space via LEMISI and lack the multiplier in the top floor. A level up catapult should be easily enough for the swampsoul and shadowsire (whose damage increase can be avoided via LEMISI). A little more burn can be used for frostblade and regen fighting works well on the fireweaver. Then sink whatever you have left into the second boss. As for the final form, just save all the top floor blackspace you can and she takes care of herself. This can be done through liberal use of the subdungeon blackspace (especially the massive form 2 subdungeon). Hope that helps!

[Gakato]

Just started to explore eastwards, having done the old 5 badges crusader run quite easily (thanks platemail) and the cool boy quest. Then started exploring further and did the friged battlefield purist quest. As I read something here about reviving nagas, I aimed for killing both of them in short succession. So I wittled both of them down, then killed the memory of the east (the one with death protections) and afterwards fireballed the memory of the south to death. This was on my first try as a purist transmuter, which was actually not supposed to be a real run, though as I discovered that i had Binlor spawned I though I could also give it a try. Though I'm pretty sure I ran into a bug and as it was the first run I'm not sure about the intended behaviour:
both bosses needed just one more hit/fireball
1. killed the memory of the east physically
2. killed the memory of the south magically
3. winning dungeon sound plays, as well as popup "WTF is happening? somehow this can be stopped?" and memory of east revives, no reward and no highlighted stair case
4. hitting a few times memory of east, memory of south stays dead, running out of resources
5. wanted to run away, though the sign says "Win", as such winning the dungeon

not sure what the buggy step is, 3 or 5?

Up to that point, I very much like the east, the quests are also awesome as they continue to challenge the players, I also liked the cool guy (at most 10 monster killed) quest, though it was a bit painful to track those killed monsters. (An indicator in the quest/badge page would be awesome, like 5/10 would be sweet)
The frigid battlefield is definitely harder than the dungeon before, as it was quite hard to get rid of the frostburn, but that may also be partly thanks to the prepped platemail.

The curious badge is something I love! It gives a good reason to revisit all the old dungeons and spices things up! Hobbler's Hold was quite a surprise, which I just stumbled barely through on the first run.

The new trait tutoring is also really nice for a teaching, the puzzles weren't too hard, though 2-3 of them had me stumped for a bit and I wondered if they somehow got broken, though in the end I was able to beat all of them. I think in one puzzle I even had a health potion left over.

Another thing that would be nice to have is to allow the PQI to also go for the new dungeons. Though as the PQI flag messes up the normal quests, maybe the new dungeons could only be allowed when all new quests are finished, i.e. only a PQI flag may be available for the dungeon.

Nevertheless, I'm very impressed with the quality of the additions. I think they are very well thought through and add seemingless to the base game. Big Kudos to everybody involved!

[General_Milky]

The frostblades in PC can still be fought reasonably easily without platemail, the fireweavers have Retaliate Fireball which is perfect for getting rid of large buildups of frostbite. Maybe not from level 8's or 9's, but you kind of don't want to mess with those anyway.

[The Tapir]