Items, Items, and more Items!

[q 3]

I'm still in favor of returning Trisword to something resembling its original incarnation: 20-ish base damage but it only works when your inventory is otherwise empty. (If possible, it could even be classified as a "huge" item that takes up 3+ inventory slots.) To be sure, back when there was nothing worth prepping that was a massively unbalanced; however, in the current game, prepping it would mean giving up the benefit of a Blacksmith prep, an Alchemist prep, and all potion preps, not to mention Patches, Fireball Magnet, class glyphs, and most GG and Taurog shenanigans. That seems like a pretty fair trade-off to me, and it would also make it an interesting but not overwhelming shop item.

[Blovski]

Hm, agree that Trisword, Crystal Ball and Whupaz (and to an extent Dragon Shield as well) are maybe too good but I think they have a place as crutch items. The main issue with Trisword and Crystal Ball is that a prepped one is waay better than a found one.

Maybe if a prepped one cut your starting take-in gold that'd solve that problem. I kind of think a direct nerf to the item hurts its in-dungeon-found-use, which would be a shame because they both work fine as that.

[Lujo]

Hm, agree that Trisword, Crystal Ball and Whupaz (and to an extent Dragon Shield as well) are maybe too good but I think they have a place as crutch items. The main issue with Trisword and Crystal Ball is that a prepped one is waay better than a found one.

Maybe if a prepped one cut your starting take-in gold that'd solve that problem. I kind of think a direct nerf to the item hurts its in-dungeon-found-use, which would be a shame because they both work fine as that.

Well, despite all the talk and theory, the simple thruth is that there is too much gold to throw around and CB and TS are the rare in-dungeon gold sinks, with too good effects. Ludicrously boosting their activation cost would bring them right down, or at least limit their use untill you've killed one boss an so on and so forth.

And the "better as preps" argument is totaly valid, except if you don't prep, say, CB you can prep an entire different strat, find the CB in a shop and end up mostly ingnoring your prepped plan and just winning with CP (especially if you run into a B2P). I just had a purist wizard run in magma mines that played like a regular level untill I walked into a CB in a shop, picked it up right away and the walked into a B2P. Bam - spike a lvl 7 at lvl 3, spike a lvl 9, spike one boss, spike another boss, pick up Mysterea, spam something while I explore, convert TT, spike the last boss. Dwarf wizard, saved conversions for last without having a clue about MYsterea being around - so no synergy, and no sense of even having to try to optimize for B2P use... Blew health potions on the spikes, too...

The only thing CB is worse than as a purchase is a prepped CB. I'd make it cost 5 gold in the shop, and the effect cost 15. It'd still be too good most likely, but at least that argument would be dead. Or 10/10, or whatever... OR completely free from shops but unconvertable and unshrinkable.

And as for the Trisword, again - better than what? I actually hate prepping it because it's so cheap to buy, and cost efficent that I preffer not blowing an item prep on it, and gulping the potions at more than 1 per spike is inefficent. It should certanly be unshrinkable, it's allready breaking the inventory management scheme in several ways...

[Lujo]

And to break off from the textwall with a different issue (my post count is allready off the scale, and this is at the top ATM anyway).

Why isn't anyone mentioning what I like to think of as "the stupid potion kit"? Part of why the Tri-Sword is better as a prep then a purchase is because of the unholy trinity of STR, Dodge and Reflex potions. And they can still be used by anyone to skip the first bunch of levels, or get a spiking edge, even without the Trisword. They also incur no piety hits, and don't count for parched.

STR - Gives 15+ damage if used as soon as you walk into a dungeon. More for rogues and Tri-Sword users.

Dodge - Is autoprep for me along with Whoopaz, and I mostly use it to administer a "free" whoopaz hit, but if used early helps you spike glass cannons, especially in conjunction with STR.

Reflex - I don't prep much, because I avoid the whole set as an early game run breaker. It's arguably the worse on it's own, but does give first strike out of nowhere, and if used with Dodge is another free hit.


These 3, when picked up, are integral to "serious" Tri-Sword abuse. Shouldn't anything be done about them?

[Blovski]

Absolutely - I think at the least you shouldn't be able to use potions much more powerful than the Health and Mana ones and still get parched (same applies to Schadenfreude).

[The Avatar]

The one thing with that is it will make Complicated tasks 6 much harder (unless you find B2P).

As for the tri-sword, I have a weird yet interesting idea. What if it provided +3 damage, and could be separated (one sword at a time), for maybe 3-5 gold. Each individual one gives +3, while the tri-sword gives 1 per sword (except alone, then +3). So you either have the tri-sword (+3 damage, 1 slot), the bi-sword and sword 1, they should probably name each individual one (+5 damage, two inventory slots), or sword 1, sword 2, and sword 3 (+9, three slots). What do you think/does that make any sense?

As for the crystal ball, I think it would be best to limit the charges to two per level maybe, so it wouldn't be so unfair early game, but would be good late game. Perhaps too good late game.

[paplaukes]

Just to put this into perspective - I had to look the CB up elsewhere. I don't have it unlocked, nor the 3 monster classes, even though I "finished" the game. And I don't find tri-sword all that awesome - the gold is plenty, the real trade-off to me is that you destroy the potions. I save the majority of them for boss fights, so to me tri-sword, looks like a more expensive fine sword where you get to destroy two potions and pay gold for it, except it gets better for boss fights if you lug it around that long. Something to keep in mind when you're arguing it should be nerfed further.

[The Avatar]

If you think it's bad, you're not using it right. Trust me, if used correctly, or most efficiently, it is INCREDIBLY overpowered.

[Naoya]

The trick with Trisword is that you choose one potiontype that youre gonna discard for it. For example, Warlords don't really need their Healthpotions due to Cydstepp - so they can chug every healthpotion they find and get a huge increase in damage for basically free. The loss of these potions usually is offset by the benefits, since the higher dmg allows you both easier leveling and better bossfighting if used right.
If used right, its just plain broken.

[The Avatar]

If you choose health potions and then turn them into reflex+quicksilver, which you use to power level it's even better.