Explain this to me.

[SageAcrin]

I would like to see Ghouls get Gnaw at a much lower level than they currently do, get more accuracy, and lose the current form of rot. (Or just heavily nerf the current form of Rot.)

More consistent threat. Necromancer-made Ghouls can disease the heck out of enemies once in a while, but the average enemy Defense is way too high for it to matter as a real advantage-usually Ghouls are just a waste of space meatshield due to their horrible accuracy.

Enemy Ghouls, meanwhile, sometimes will just run into a 10 Defense build for various reasons(mages for instance) and maul them hard. And the duration goes up based on how much higher their level is than yours, IIRC. It's a weird threat because someone can run a fairly low defense build and still usually get missed by them. It's usually just a small amount of builds that are at risk, or when a Ghoul happens to be a Rare/Elite and has gotten Combat Accuracy bonuses...

[greycat]

Combination of bad luck and not having short range escapes/magical Wilds or other status curing like Providence/enough healing to deal with the heavy disease load, really.

Skeleton. No infusions. No healing except Reassemble, which was obviously on cooldown. No Water of Life "turn diseases into healing" thing, or whatever it is that Wyrmics get.

I'm just saying that, usually it's safe enough

I play on Roguelike, though. "Usually" safe isn't good enough.

[SageAcrin]

Oh, sure, if you want to say it's a bad place to ever go on Roguelike, I respect that.

It's safe enough if you're about to enter High Peak and go back to it, I don't think there's any real risk there-if you can't deal with randomized boss undead, High Peak will probably kill you. Otherwise, though...

[bricks]

It's an excessively difficult encounter with a trivial choice (risk a barely dangerous "curse" or fight multiple bosses simultaneously) and a largely pointless in-game reward, the only motivation being bragging rights and the unlock. Oh, and the best way to approach it is to completely abuse the level scaling. Seems to be like it should be reevaluated.

I genuinely miss the easy (easy to find and easy to complete) unlocks. Gather some items, get a new class. Encounter (and get steamrolled by) an assassin lord, get a new class. The Solipsist unlock sounds really, really badly designed, though I haven't experienced it first-hand.

[SageAcrin]

Solipist will be fine once Yeeks get the guaranteed appearance, I feel. (Which is in the SVN)

The unlock isn't that obscure and what you need to do is not that difficult, but the randomized appearance was offputting.

[wobbly]

It's doable at lvl 15 with some classes, my thaloren bulwark completed it with not much hassle. I recommend a staff of greater warding ( 3 darkness wards for Celia, 3 physicals for the coffins). A throat-seeking sling & ammo of amnesia is also useful. Someway to see her early (I had sumertide+champion helm+frost treads), someway to move quick (I had feathersteel + rush, a movement infusion would be better), a cure magic wild (I didn't, enough shields & regen infusions does the trick too). She's much less dangerous stunned, dazed, silenced or preferably dead. I suspect a beserker would be easier. Your biggest problem is if she blinds you.

[Frumple]

Celia herself is largely a non-issue; she's notably easier to kill and less overall dangerous than most of what will come out of the coffins. It's all the other things in there, potentially complicating things, and possibly a bad roll from C's minion calling dice, not C herself.

As for a potential easement... maybe limit the coffin chassis selection to low tier undead? Degen skeletons, basic ghouls, maybe plain vampires and/or plain wights. If they're not already using the rare template, they probably should be. For extra points, limit their class selection to the game's initial unlockables. Beef up the celia fight a little bit (throw in some bone giants, maybe, to give 'er a bit of a meatshield?) and the quest would probably be less of a crapshoot on whether it's going to kill you or not.

E: And then there'd be room in the hyper late game to have a full-power (only elite chassis, farportal boss generation) graveyard encounter on par or beyond the amatathon fight. Bonus!

[wobbly]

As for a potential easement... maybe limit the coffin chassis selection to low tier undead? Degen skeletons, basic ghouls, maybe plain vampires and/or plain wights. If they're not already using the rare template, they probably should be. For extra points, limit their class selection to the game's initial unlockables. Beef up the celia fight a little bit (throw in some bone giants, maybe, to give 'er a bit of a meatshield?) and the quest would probably be less of a crapshoot on whether it's going to kill you or not.

I'd be for this in terms of fun & thematics as well. Currently each coffin is a long one-on-one resource heavy fight. Worse with a summoner where you watch 100 weak summons slowly chip away at a bone giant bulwark. Best strategy is fight then rest. Not only does it get a little tedious by the 3rd or 4th coffin, it also messes with the illusion of the game. You have a loud noisy battle with 1 undead king, followed by a snooze in a dangerous mausoleum. The necromancer & her minions all wait while this is going on. Most of her servants are more powerful then she is too, she seems to control a whole council of vampire lords!

Fun-wise the most interesting way to do the level is likely suicide. Go straight for Celia & let the coffins open all at once. Would be good to see this more do-able.