ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Is super cheesy. Can we set friendly NPCs to not give xp and loot?

As an alternative, maybe a friendly NPC (without water breathing) could simply refuse to switch places when that lands him into water?

Maybe just make it so that if they are in water they will Phase Door or Teleport to try and get out.

if you just forbid drowning them insane will become even more grindy, random and impossible. at least it's what insane-adepts are using as an argument. so apparently higher difficulties should be adjusted accordingly to remove huge fraction of randomness from them and only after that clutches such as drowning could be removed.

Suslik wrote:if you just forbid drowning them insane will become even more grindy, random and impossible. at least it's what insane-adepts are using as an argument. so apparently higher difficulties should be adjusted accordingly to remove huge fraction of randomness from them and only after that clutches such as drowning could be removed.

It's an exploit and it's used on normal too. I watched that 30 minute master run someone posted and the first thing they did was drown everyone in Sun Wall.

See here.

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=41419

I understand not wanting to make harder difficulties impossible but if they're only currently possible due to exploits then fixing those exploits will highlight the issue. As long as we tie our hands with 'but the game would be impossible on NM and Insane if we fix that bug/exploit' then we're giving into complacency.

as I said that's what insane-adepts usually pose as a counterargument. I play nm and never drown townsfolk so that's fine to me just to fix the exploit altogether, though not everyone will be particularly happy with this.

edge2054 wrote:I understand not wanting to make harder difficulties impossible but if they're only currently possible due to exploits then fixing those exploits will highlight the issue. As long as we tie our hands with 'but the game would be impossible on NM and Insane if we fix that bug/exploit' then we're giving into complacency.

I'm just going to quote this at people whenever they bring up that ridiculous "argument".

That said, ideally the same build where all of these cheesy exploits are removed, melee should be given a serious boost. And by "serious" I don't mean one free level of weapon mastery that boosts your starting bump damage from 15 to 20 when spells are already doing >100 damage right out of the gate, I mean something DRASTIC to make up for how insanely vulnerable they are compared to ranged. 100 extra starting life would not be overkill; I don't even know if it would be enough.

donkatsu wrote: That said, ideally the same build where all of these cheesy exploits are removed, melee should be given a serious boost. And by "serious" I don't mean one free level of weapon mastery that boosts your starting bump damage from 15 to 20 when spells are already doing >100 damage right out of the gate, I mean something DRASTIC to make up for how insanely vulnerable they are compared to ranged. 100 extra starting life would not be overkill; I don't even know if it would be enough.

Man 100% agree with you. I see no reason why starter melee should always be weaker in all terms than ranged. Why not give melees 3x more hp and 30-50 bonus damage instead of 5-15? Midgame and lategame are relatively fine(relatively), start is what should be buffed for melees.

Also my god knows how old proposal about giving everyone at least some infusion/rune choice from the start. Damn gonna make a thread.

Armor is one way melee could be buffed. The armor and defense values on non-egod items is really pitiful early game, especially when you factor in armor hardiness.

The hit point gap between casters and non-casters could definitely be bigger too.

Any increase to damage though really needs to be done in a way that enemies aren't hitting harder. I'm not sure if the Iron weapon buff affected monsters but it feels like I'm getting hit a lot harder by skeletons lately.

:shrugs:

As of 1.2.2 it seems to me that Insane is quite playable without NPC drowning.

Maybe this proposal should get consideration now that the early Insane meatgrinder has been nerfed?