Bay 12 Games Forum

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1a. I highly doubt that we'll be facing more than D4's version of hellyfish. With the four of us, we should be able to take on an underground monkey or whatever the local mook is without any issue. And how would we need to pass them to get back to the Drop if we encounter them upon arrival? Am I missing something, or are you using non-Euclidean geometry?
1b. Also keep in mind our current sizeable SP supply. We have time.

1a. Assuming you mean Stone Dragon, since that's the tough enemy and hellyfishes are mooks. Yeah, we probably could. It just might be difficult, possibly more so than defeating the Stone Dragon.
1b. Meh. You might be right. I still think that going to Dungeon Level Four wouldn't be worth it, simply due to the fact that enemies are probably just as dangerous as the Great Stone Dragon, and there's more of them. As for how we would need to pass them to get back, look at it this way:
  1: We Drop, and end up in the Drop room.
  2: We walk into the room adjacent to the drop, Room A.
  3: We find strong enemies in Room A and immediately run from this room into the next room, Room B.
  4: For whatever reason, we need to get back to The Drop. As a result of this, we go to one of the rooms adjacent to Room A.
  5: We walk through the doorway into Room A. We need to run past the monsters in order to get to The Drop.
Of course, if we've spent a long time on the DL4, we'd probably be able to defeat them easily. But the idea behind my argument as that we ran into trouble and needed to run.

1a. No, I mean hellyfish, because they are the basic mook and the likeliest thing we would encounter in the entrance room.
1b. Holy carp a lot of subpoints.
1ba. The Stone Dragon was a rare enemy, triggered by activating an obvious trap, and hence doesn't particularly need to be level-appropriate. Besides, it's a unique, once-per-level baddie. I don't feel like making up a power-level-approximation system at this time of night, but let it be noted that we're likely several levels from stone dragons with jetpacks that fire lasers become standard mooks.
1bb. That's not what you described the first time. And yeah...if we run past the monsters rather than away from them, we deserve the rock-and-a-hard-place result.

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1a. Very vague indeed. Your plans seem to rely on its main attack having a major weakness for no reason other than "it looks magicky, and obviously they can't do the stuff we do with our equipment!"
1b. What, tank it until it runs out of SP?
"3". Well, we will just have to not trigger any obvious traps or provoke any minibosses until we find D4's facilities then.

1a. Well, you have a point. But we know practically nothing about DL4. And it looked kind of like a special attack to me.
1b. Yep. Or use the other strategy somebody suggested, where Al tanks while everyone else shoots. Of course, how do we get it to shoot Al? I'm going to try to think up another plan.
4. Meh. We might find something unavoidable, but you do have a point. I still think we should at least attempt to kill the dragon, though.

1a. Not all special-looking attacks are special (BEAM KNIFE GO!), and not all special attacks require SP.
1b. The first relies on it A. relying on SP, B. not hurting Al despite whatever DR we set up, and C. being so stupid as to fire at Al repeatedly until it runs out of SP despite not doing significant damage. The second relies on thw dragon being a total dunce or on something we haven't figured out yet. Personally, I don't want to fight a stone jetpack dragon with laser breath until I've finished the planning stage.
4. We already tried, didn't we? Besides, this is TWoOtA, not FF.

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1. That's the kind of metagaming freeform loves to punish.
2. Agreed. Iff we decide to stick around D3 for whatever reason, I approve of looking for the crabby guy.

1. I can't remember any examples of this style of metagaming being bad off the top of my head, and it seems like it would make sense even without metagaming. Cool Crab might want to stick around to reunite with Cherish and Proxxy, (probably not, since he wandered off in the first place) he might like it here, or he might dislike DL4 for some reason. If I'm right about it being ice-themed, it might be too cold for him. Or it might be unsuitable for some other reason.
Also, crabs like water. He may have wandered into the water. I wonder why this floor has water and DL2 didn't? Maybe the void-y areas were the DL2 equivalent. Or maybe there was a bunch of water, but we didn't find it; there was that one pond.

New numbers time!
1. I still don't think it's worth sticking around DL3 for, not for that kind of chance.
2. If /cc wanted to stick around Cherish and Proxxy, why did he wander off?
3. He could also have wandered some other direction. Like, up to DL 2. Or to the Underside, or even to DL1.

[spoiler]

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1a. Why assume that we will? And how many times have we confronted a threat we couldn't just run away from, anyways?
1b. Um...yes, we will. We have a secret weapon. *pats Cherish on the head*
2. We don't need to be--the jetpack (or whatever) is doing the lifting.
3. You were complaining about complexity, not variety. And as far as that goes...we bloodshaped a headband, we're obviously not restricted to arms and armor.

1a. Well, running past a threat might result in damage, and we would be further damaged if we tried to get back to the drop.
1b. Cherish needs SP. We may need more healing than Cherish has SP before we can find a way to restore SP.
2. Assuming we can make a jetpack.
3. The headband is much simpler than a jetpack. Much, much simpler.

1a. Who said we would be running past, and how would running backwards lead to further damage?
1b. Fair...I doubt it, though. It hasn't been the pattern.
2. You haven't come up with a good reason why we couldn't.
3. So, you're claiming that we are limited to ultra-simple non-weapons, but can make weapons as complex as we like? I guess it's time for me to design a combination rocket launcher/jetpack, then.

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I've been explaining for pages why it wouldn't work.

And I've been explaining for pages how we do have options. We just disagree on this.

Well, do you want me to copy-paste all of my arguments into my response to this point of yours or what?

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To try other tactics, we have to get new places. To get new places, we have to go through the dragon, walls, or other impassable barriers. And moreover, we would have even more tactics to try on the new level.
And I refuse to agree to anything that hasn't been suggested yet.

1. Not necessarily. And if we run past the dragon, we can find new places. It's possible that Cain might be able to help us out, or that defeating him might cause Oric to disable the barrier, allowing us to use magic.
3. Fair enough, I suppose. But somebody might suggest something, and I think we shouldn't dive headfirst into more danger.

1. Didn't you just say that running past enemies was a bad idea?
2. What happened to 2? You hurt its feelings.
3. Yet you want to confront the laser jetpack stone dragon.

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And which way and how far did he go?
And why the heck is Cool Crab so important that you'd risk Al for him? Forget for a moment that Al is a terrible terrible person.

1. Not so far that we won't be able to find him.
2. Because he's cool, and then we'll have half of what we need for the Dark Cathedral, which is something we should try out.

1. And how are you certain of this?
2. I don't remember that, nor do I think that we should worry about the Dark Cathedral until we have an idea how to get both halves of what we need.

But before we try anything, we should really check the Spirit Format thing to see if it can help us with the dragon somehow. Probably not, but we might as well check.

Eh. I suppose it couldn't hurt. Except by consuming an update.

I would start by asking how he knows.
And as to if I'd be ready...heck, how can someone be ready for something like that? I suppose you could inform everyone you know, but with that little time to prepare you couldn't even prepare a nice I'm-dying-soon-anyways party/world-trip/etc.