Complicated Tasks, Pt 6 Help!

[GG Crono]

[ironicmuffin]

[The Avatar]

GG is better, because the mana goes into more heals, and Dracul doesn't let you use HALPMEH.

[Abraxas]

After trying countless times, I'm pretty confident the only real way to do this is by finding GG and halpmeh early on. At least these were the only runs where it felt like I was anywhere close to having a chance. Fighting the snakes with halpmeh is great because it every time you're poisoned gets you some piety with gg, and the spawned snakes make for a great absolution bonus.

Still, I'm still falling just barely short of being able to make it. I've had many times where I'd have been more than able to do it with the old protection rate, and one time where I'm pretty sure I would have been able to clear it if not for the fact that no subdungeon spawned (or well, probably spawned in some unreachable wall), since I was counting on that for some healing between the bosses.

I'm at least finally convinced that it's actually doable, but I still think that with the current balance it's a stupidly hard quest that can only be done with heavy scumming (for gg and halpmeh) and a nice dose of luck to go with it.

[Crawly McCrawlsa]

I'm thinkin it should be REALLY easy with this:

Prep the shield, find halpmeh, GG, and the glyph that swaps you and a monster. (try elf priest for maximum halpmeh use) Just max out as many snakes as you can on the map, use the glyph to teleport outa the crowd. Gain like 200 health buff by level 2. Should let you level catapult to a ridiculous level and gain the 100 piety boon utilizing poison/halpmeh. With all those buffs, it should be pretty easy. GG's healing buffs instead of potions.

The hardest part of this for me was just the first boss of the three. As long as you can beat him, you can fireball the second one in 1 shot. That just leaves the boss who is kind of a sissy without his bodygaurds.

[The Avatar]

Hmm... that actually might work, funny thing. What a creative solution, I never would have thought of that!

[Abraxas]

Ahhhh, finally got it. Just wanted to say thanks for all the help. This really was an incredibly quest for me for some reason.

In the end, the Halpmeh + GG combo wasn't being enough, but I managed to get the edge I needed by bringing a soul orb, which allowed me to kill some higher level wraiths and to use halpmeh against the last boss, which really really helped.

[Lujo]

Oh, it was INSANELY difficult for me to finish it.

I think this needs balance concideradion on a level deeper than "oh, it's doable you just have to figure ot how". Because this mission is deffinitely nowhere near "casual", and puts the game square into "about 2% of human beings on earth could finish it", and that is just based on intelligence, but when you take in factors like determinaton, time, and such, it goes from 2% to 0,0X percentages.

Why so serious?

Because it's one of the more mindboggling situations I've run into in my life, really. And I don't think it was done on purpose. And it's that deep

So, my IQ is stupidly high (if you consider this bragging, it's probably the only high "stat" i've had in my life), and I've had both benefits and problems because of this. I've written a bestselling book in my native language, I put togather an award winning robot for non-rigged robotics convention when i was about 12, I'm university educated and considered by the rest of the faculty to be "that starlingly intelligent twerp".

Gaming is a bit of a hobby of mine, I use it to take my mind off things, and I'm quite partial to turn based games, as my reflexes and hand-eye coordination are quite bad. I could be considered an Alha Centauri megapro, and I could ussually complete difficult runs of Civ 4 in very short times. I've also won the national D&D competition once, after which they refused to let me play as a player again "because it wouldn't be fair". I've been a RPG gamemaster for university educated people for years (sucessfull ones), for the same reason, and that means that i regularly do the work that you need a machine for in computer games, while balancing the moods and attitudes of peole who can choose what to do with their free time, and I do all this for fun.

Oh, and I used to be quite good at MtG, big tournaments good. I quit after i decided it was more fun to design my own drafting set long before the cube format emerged.

The point of all this is not bragging, and I know it can be quite annoying for a number of people, the point is that the following is spoken by the person above:

This quest is not solvable by regular humans, and above average humans who are not hardcore gamers or big fans of the game would find it not worth the time and the effort - and in this case they would be right.

It can, before it is fixed, be used to point a few thing out, namely why it doesn't work. Keep in mind that I'm not sure how the level plays out as I haven't tried it with any other class, as I thought I really need the Can of Whupaz to beat Gaan'Telet.

I beat it with an Orc Priest, with Sensory Stone and Conversion Seal, extra subdungeon (no Patches to avoid mishaps on a Parched run), fireball at start (to avoid wasting exploration space looking for it, as I scum for GG and Halpmeh), Scout Altar for GG scumming, quest item prep (to increse the likelyhood of an agnostic collar appearing, and have more cheap conversion fodder, as well as avoid kegs), small shield from blacksmith, and schadenfruende and fortitude (should've been burn salve, in retrospect) on top of the regular potions.

It was still insanely difficult, and i managed it by a hair on the third try. It took all I've had, in game, or IRL resources (mind, composure, gaming expirience). Not to mention money grind. I've beaten Dragon Isles, Avatar, Vicious Blah Blah, Vicious Animated Armour one (last 2 repeatedly, for taxidermy), but I was going to do the vicious ones after I've done everything else. But I feel like I had to scum dungeons which are supposed to be harder in order to unlock stuff I need to beat this one.

Hell, Gaan'Telet was supposed to be impossible, but if I had another way to unlock Whupaz I would've beaten THAT a lot easier than this. And I'm the smartest, most resourcefull person most people I know have ever seen, and I hang out with CEO's and minor geniouses. As fun, no scratch that, the grind involved was NOT fun, but as challenging as it was, as gratifying as finally doing it was, you can't expect people to put this much effort into a game. People require less effort for having succesfull wars, marketing campaigns, building skyscrapers or simply feeding a family.

Now, since you've taken the "everything can be done with every class" aspect out of the core concept, you have to make sure that everything is at least doable. Slime Pits is another offender, but at least it has been made such on purpose and is probably easier to "fix". Or at least the causes of the insane difficulty for the Monk quest are obvious (it was probably made during the "Monks are imba" phase, and monks were nerfed into the ground later)

For constructive tips or suggestions here:

- The main problem is that there are too many things you "have" to scum for in the dungeon itself. Halpmeh, GG (if that's really the only route, it seems to me), a way to avoid obstacles (and the layout prevents either Wheytwhut or Endiswall to be foolproof), Burndayraz, Mana Boosters, dmg items... By the time you find all you need, and there is an optimal sequence (which is unfortunately the ONLY sequence), there is little to no guarantee there would be enough exploration left.

- The main "theme" of the dungeon IS making the player waste exploration space (trolls, snakes, layout), but it's taken way too far. With the snakes being as fat as they are (seriously, I't obvious that they need the HP for the spawn gimmick to come into play, but that much damage and poison on top?), Goblins having first strike, Wraiths having mana burn, (the only thing missing is berserking animated armors). It's almost impossible to conserve any serious amount of exploration space, because...

- It's stupidly difficult to kill anything above your level without crippling yourself. In a dungeon where a GG run is neccessary for absolution, this goes beyond unfair into praying teritory - because of the sequence thing, and the following fact: mana burn/poison are a big obstacle to actually killing things above your level if you havent revealled almost all of the enemies, and thus most of the map (which defeats the resource conserving reasons behing bonus xp). On a parched run, with halpmeh, GG and Fortitude potion being the only obvious solutions for curing poison, and burn salve and GG being the only solutions to mana burn, the obstacles pile up quite fast.

- A failed run costs a lot of money. Sure some guys have ground inordinary amounts of money, but most people won't, and without being a slave to the taxidermist (EG exloring actualy content, instead of having to do specific runs), 400+ gold per failed run (assuming you transmuted the sensory stone) is more than a non bet on boss, non taxidermist run brings in. Might be OK for hardcore gamers, it's far more than any sane person would be able to grind for, especially if said run can be ruined by so many factors. People tolerate that sort of thing in WoW because that program is not so much a game (seriously, the "mechanics" of it do not surpass the complexity of "wack a mole"), but an expensive chatroom with a colourfull and immersive interface. Lacking the "social network" aspect that mmorpgs, and even moba's (which are more simmilar to DD at core) have, the grind in the beta started to become really putting off.

I could probably find a few more comments, but this should be enough. I really like this game, and I really don't like to brag, but I felt that you should know exactly what is required to get to the Witch lvl3 atm.

[Crawly McCrawlsa]

I'm pretty sure it took me less than 10 tries to beat this. And I didn't even use the GG hp boost exploit. I got taurog early, didn't use halpmeh. With the bonus damage to undead, and a decent number of wraiths, you can level catapult really easily with some damage boost items. I believe I picked up the viper amulet from a shop, making the snakes a piece of cake with my taurog enhanced stats. I ended up beating the boss with my absolute final hit, so it was as close as it could possibly get... But I did manage it in under 10. No alchemist or elite items at the time either.

[The Avatar]

Yeah, same here. I beat it in less than 10 tries.