Been a while since one of these showed up, especially since it falls under the second category of the thread title meaning it should happen more often than the third. Never mind. Onto the show.

Today we have something either relatively simple or unnecessarily complicated, which is why there will be two options for both this and the other planned bomber helmet because both will have similar effects.

The first and preferred set of effects are as follows along with basic model references:

4*, Grenadier Cap

• +1 bomb damage
• 5.8 bars normal defense (a little less than HDemo)
• 5 bars element defense
• 1 bar freeze resistance
• 1 bar fire resistance

5*, Bomber Pride

• +1 bomb charge time reduction
• +1 bomb damage
• +1 bomb damage for Blast, Spine Cone, and shard bomb lines (Nitronome, IrontechD, Big Angry, HDecon, Barrage, Deadly Shard, Deadly Crystal, Deadly Dark Matter, Deadly Splinter, Shocking Salt, and Scintillating Sun; all of those lines)
• 6.2 bars normal defense (about the same as MadB)
• 5.5 bars shadow defense (less than MadB)
• 2.5 bars freeze resistance
• 2.5 bars fire resistance

Status resistances are based on the item itself, not having two parts of a set.

The first and most obvious question would be where the liquids this thing comes from. It branches from the 3* SDemo line, Fused Demo; the helmet to be specific. No matching torso. You can either go Heavy Demo or Grenadier Cap, though HDemo can lead to three other branches while Grenadier leads to only one 5* option. Both the 4* and 5* of this line have less defense compared to the normal SDemo lines, even Mad Bomber, but has more status resistance and decent offensive bonuses; especially that second bomb damage bonus, but it only applies to offense bombs. Not Vaporizers or suction, just standard and shard mechanic ones; standard being Blast/Spine Cone and shard being those five shard bomb lines. In case that was not specific enough. The first +1 bomb damage applies to all bombs, the second only applies to the listed ones. In the end you only get +2 bomb damage and +1 bomb charge with all the offensive bonuses active, less defense against damage, and some more status resistance than other lines.

The second set of stats are pretty lame, but having a backup is pretty important in case that mechanic specific bonus is impossible. The 4* is the same but the 5* is different:

• +1 bomb charge time reduction
• +1 bomb damage
• 6.2 bars element defense
• 6.2 bars shadow defense
• 2.5 bars fire resistance
• 2.5 bars freeze resistance

Defenses are slightly higher, normal defense is traded in for shadow, loses the extra bomb damage for offensive bombs, and keeps the status resistances. It would be a decent shadow helmet for bombers to roll around with but lack the even amount of bomb charge people aim for to get that clean +6: +2 from two MadB/VDemo/trinket items with another +2 from the bomb being heated for the maximum effect.

I wonder where this idea came from.

Options.

Like Plague Needle, Vanquisher, HDecon, IrontechD, Bombastic, VSalamander, the normal damage shard bomb, Jelly, Chaos, MadB, Fallen, and Justifier.

Well.

Liquids.

If this is such a big deal, it can have shadow defense instead of element.

Now have one of these.

Oh boy gosh golly gee tiddly winks, something about Brandishes.

Just like with the Sealed line rebalances in this thread, this is just for the charge attack; no touching the basic attack, no changing damage types, or messing with its ability to inflict a status from only the charge. And a little damage nerf. Who said that?

The current charge attack after the initial swing creates a series of five explosions, each of which have a radius of one space, in a linear pattern. All Brandishes have this charge attack. Each one of those five explosions has a good chance to inflict strong (4/4, highest possible rate) shock. Here is a picture of the charge attack taken from the Wiki. It has significant range, area of effect, and damage all in one. Blah blah whining about Brandishes, moving on.

The first change is to push the 5* charge attack explosion size and amount back to its 4* values: instead of a whole one space radius per explosion, only about 0.8, and only four explosions instead of five. Keep your underpants on, you get something to compensate for it: a rebounding effect: when the initial swing hits something the first explosion automatically hits dead center on it (the explosion still does the current 5* damage but only has the 4* size), then rebounds to the closest enemy within 3 (or closer) spaces but loses 20% of its damage, then repeats the rebound (within 3 spaces, closest is hit) losing 20% damage with every rebound (first explosion does 100%, second does 80%, third does 60%, fourth does 40%; stops at this point).

What if the rebound just bounces between the same two enemies? Have a derp example:

O = you
X = open spaces
A, B, C, D, E = enemies

X X X X X X X X E
X X X X X X D X X
O A X X X C X X X
X X X B X X X X X
X X X X X X X X X

Again, this only works if the initial swing hits an enemy. If you swing and only hit air nothing will happen.

Okay, O, as weird as your name is you decided one day to take your Voltedge down to wherever the liquids the enemies are also letters and used the charge attack right on A. The initial swing hits A and the first explosion hits directly on them, taking the full 100% explosion damage (117 on D29 against a neutral target). Then a little behind him to the right, B was standing too close, so the rebounding effect goes from A to B for the second explosion (93.6, ~94 damage on D29 against a neutral target). Then C, who was a little too far from A to get the second explosion, was still too close to B and gets the third explosion (70.2, ~70 damage on D29 against a neutral target). The last explosion goes to D (46.8, ~47 damage on D29 against a neutral target). Nothing happens to E because all four explosions already popped, so you run up to them and cut their face off because you have a sword. The explosions happen where the enemy was when the rebound knew to attack them, meaning it can be dodged by things that can move quickly enough to fly away like Devilites and Wolvers.

One last thing about rebounding. The direction the charge attack is released, in this case eastward, the rebound will only travel within 160 degrees in the direction you were facing; just restrictive enough to stop it from going left or right when it should be going forward at least a little.

This potentially has a lot more range than Voltedge already has (from about ten spaces from initial swing to the fifth explosion in a strictly linear pattern to twelve spaces) but gives it a unique feature while punishing blind charge spamming by forcing the user to actually hit something for the charge effect to work.

This is more of a range than damage nerf.

In the Voltedge rebalance it gives up some damage in exchange for range, but you still have to connect the initial swing to a target to get results. This time is something relatively similar but will still do something even if you swing and hit air. When you use the charge attack it creates explosions, but instead of going in a linear pattern it forms a cone.

You have an explosion diagonal to the direction you are facing on both sides and an explosion in front of you two spaces away. The explosions are still full 5* size but only inflict ~98 damage (D29, neutral target) and still have the current chance and duration of fire. You get these three explosions regardless if anything is hit by the initial swing. Blippy boopy doop narwhal farkle wumpersnitch intrastate pants detectors, careful questioning for implosive hat cleansers gobble gobble turkeys flying around eating your families. If you use the charge in close range because cowardice is for cowards and you are not one, if the initial swing connects on an enemy each of the three explosions is followed by another explosion. The explosions line up away from your knight, not all in the same direction, to form a DAvenger style attack but without the sword lasers flying away too far.

How about a derpagram:

X = open space
Y = you
E = explosion

Initial swing hits nothing
X X X X X
X E X X X
Y X E X X
X E X X X
X X X X X

Initial swing hits an enemy
X X E X X
X E X X X
Y X E E X
X E X X X
X X E X X

The diagonals would be equally distant from your knight, though trying to represent that in letters is not very practical. Ideally they would follow the same angles the current DAvenger charge does. Each explosion does about 83% (5/6; the damage of five linear explosions delegated to the potential six explosions) the current damage but with more area of effect near you.

Remember all that old dusty T4+ stuff everyone forgot about already? You probably want to forget it again, but too late now. It is time to give people a reason to do it. Because the challenge alone is not sufficient.

First a little debrief of a couple relevant things. Floor length, if you play through casually in the average Arcade floor, only takes about eight to ten minutes. Floors in "T4+" go for around ten to twelve at the same pace; a few more rooms, a couple more dead end hallways, some tedious traps that make you want to punch me for making you suffer and a few other reasons. Now, since floors are not as infinite as they would feel, you eventually get to an end point. What happens in the end? Nothing, your reward is among the several dead ends and what not; and you can never know which one it is until it drops on the floor. Once that happens the party is automatically locked for the rest of the floor and cannot be manually unlocked until the party continues to the next floor. Also, if there are only two dead end boxes remaining, the party will also automatically lock. No warning before it appears, no "oh you can invite your buddies and we can just keep this between us". None of that. Someone goes to an alternate hallway, they open the boxes at the end, the token appears, party is locked. If someone was already loading the floor before the token appeared they would still load in normally and get the token, but anyone who tries to get in as soon as it drops is blocked. That includes if you have one person at the last boxes of the room and someone else waiting and ready to poosh invite on a couple alternate accounts. Because I hate cheaters. If your party gets through the floor but never finds the token, but decides to continue to the next floor anyway, you will not get the token for that floor anyway for giving up. You still got a bunch of heat and a little money from fighting stuff, but the real money and main incentive is behind more annoying tasks than you probably want to take time to do. This is at least 60% designed to reward non-premium players for taking time to enjoy the game and punishing premium players who use elevator passes to rush through a floor as quickly as possible, not simply for being premium. If you are premium and still enjoy playing through a floor you are rewarded for playing the game by playing the game. That probably makes more sense than should be legal.

Okay, now for the fun stuff. This is probably going to sound weird, but the basis of the reward is just 2* weapons. Before you throw those tomatoes and bricks, let me finish: 2* weapons with tradeoffs which give UV-esque bonuses/penalties, but you can still apply UVs to the item and use it to craft items. First of all, there is only one thing you can do with those tokens you can only get one per T4+ floor: one hundred for one T4+ box.

What can the box give you? One of the following weapons:

• Calibur
• Brandish
• Cutter
• Troika
• Spur
• Flourish
• Blaster
• Autogun
• Prismatech Alchemer
• Shadowtech Alchemer
• Magnus (3*)
• Blast Bomb
• Fiery Vaporizer
• Toxic Vaporizer
• Graviton (3*)
• Dark Matter Bomb
• Crystal Bomb
• Splinter Bomb

Whichever of the above listed weapons you get from the T4+ box also has one of the following benefits:

• +1 attack speed
• +1 charge time reduction
• +1 damage (universal)
• +2 damage to [family]

With one of the following penalties:

• -1 attack speed
• -1 charge time reduction
• -1 damage (universal)
• -2 damage to [family]

Yes, you might get a bonus which is completely negatived by its penalty. Just to mess with you. You might get a Calibur with +1 charge and -2 fiend, or a Graviton with +1 damage and -1 charge. These effects do not count as UVs. I repeat, these effects do not count as UVs meaning you can add UVs to these weapons to negate the penalty or improve whatever the UV gives you.

Here are a few preemptively answered questions which are probably stupid compared to your own questions:

• Why are +1 damage and +2 family bonus on the same thing? The family bonus would be overpowered.

The universal damage bonus only applies to the weapon itself, not other weapons you may have equipped, but that bonus still applies to everything you fight. That means you can cut the faces off one enemy from all six families and the damage bonus would apply to all six of those now faceless enemies. If you compare the family bonus, it only does anything against one of those six enemies; only useful one sixth of the time but offers double the bonus against that one enemy. Mathematically the family bonus should be +6, but since that would be ridiculous +2 is enough.

• What if I want a bigger set of effects, like +2 damage with -2 attack speed?

No. You can still put UVs on these weapons, your equipment bonuses still take effect, but those bonuses do not get any bigger.

• Are these tradable? What if I want a specific weapon with a specific set of bonuses, can I still sell it to some other player and maybe even trade it for the item I want?

Yes. These weapons are tradable. They come bound, because the box they originally came from was obtained through untradable tokens, but unbinding is relatively cheap for 2* and 3* weapons.

• Is there an NPC source of all the items with all possible effect combinations to exchange for?

No. If you want a specific weapon with a specific set of effects you have to either get it from a box or hope someone else did and would be willing to trade it. That means you have to interact with other players. I know, horrifying. They might have a personality. They might even want friendship to invite you in future T4+ runs to get more of these weird weapons. Quick, someone call the cops, I might just make you be part of a community. All these emphasized words are not sarcastic at all.

• Okay, so there are weapons, but what about armor? What if I want a Wolver helmet/torso with these weird effects?

No. If you want armor, go craft it. In fact, if we get some of those armor rebalances I blathered on about earlier in the thread, you should have more than enough options to aspire for.

• Why are there no boss token items like Pulsar or Antigua?

Because those are boss token items. Silly. In spite of what you may have heard from clone camp, boss token items are supposed to be "rare" and "special", along with "exclusively available for those who do the boss fights enough times to earn the equipment". And then unbinding came along and derped that up.

If you still have questions after all that you know what to do. Throw the nonbeliever in the pits of h- I mean, post it. Nothing to do with flaming agony for all eternity or any of that silliness.

I was going to write up a thing or two today or tomorrow to cool off from a recent pet thread.

I had a meaty post over there but a Blandaxt headache happened and apparently my name is the most difficult thing to remember even when you can see it multiple times on your screen in bright blue letters on a dark blue background and it never changes no matter how many posts I have and this sentence is rather long. Might just put what I had up on this thread so I can continue where I normally leave loose ends for the original thread to continue, but seeing as people only cared about minor wording it was wasted. No more pet threads for me after this.

This first part is copy-pasted from some other thread. If I cared to link it I would have done so already.

I would start by having them equip as trinkets but you can only have one pet equipped at a time. You can have a pet with a health, resistance, defense, or offense bonus trinket but not two pet trinkets at once. That pins how you equip it.

Then I would start them off with alchemy lines, but starting with 2* and allowing UVs to grant status affiliation. No "herp derp damage/speed/walrus-eating bonus +waffle" nonsense, just status resistances for the pet itself; but if it does get a resistance, it gets a negative value of a different status. The possible resistances would be fire, shock, freeze, and poison. No stun or curse. They can only get single UVs and may not be rolled through Punch. You have to get UVs out of crafting. Also, the star rating is the cap on how many bars of status resistance it may have (2* can only have up to 2 bars of resistance to a status, etc.).

In the original context pets started as 0* and were obtained through tokens.

As for what you use to craft them, mostly materials. A lot of materials. Not just some special material you can only get in the Arcade as a rare drop, I mean hundreds of materials just for a starting 2*. To start an example here to run through these examples, say we want a "healing" Silkwing. You would need, say; one hundred of these, another hundred of these, yet another hundred of these, fifty of these, and ten of these. Yes, costs from 3* and up are also heavily material consuming. Not necessarily the exact same amount and kinds of materials, but more than you would imagine necessary to create something so tiny.

In the original context food for these trinket-pet-things are also crafted through materials and will be explored later in this post.

This is where it gets complicated: what and how they work. Not like I already wrote stuff similar to this topic, but I have given this thought before posting. Introverts be rolling. Anyway, back to our example; "healing" Silkwing. Does it have health and defenses like us? Yurp, but not necessarily as high as ours. At 2* our knights would have around five or six accumulative bars of defense and maybe a couple bars of status resistance, right? Good enough for us? Well these little boogers we drag against their wills around with us get less than half the lower range of defenses when scaled to our equipment star ratings. So if a 2* armor normally has around five bars of accumulative defense (our helmet and torso defenses are averaged while resistances are additive; defenses for the pet are taken from only one source and does not involve averaging as our armor does) the little butterfly-moth-thing only gets about 3 bars of accumulative defense at the most. Since this thing is practically a medic bump it down to only two bars of something simple and safe, normal defense.

This is to clarify that these trinket-pet-things are not supposed to be anything remotely similar to a tank. They have significantly low health and defenses compared to our knights and do not have the option to equip health trinkets as we do.

So the 2* has two bars of normal defense, big deal. You can just revive it whenever, right? You know by now every time I end a question with "right" it is being used as a rhetorical question or in sarcasm, so of course not. Actually, before making people hate me more than they already do because of the way I tend to word things, the little bug needs a health value or something. You already have a stamina system that counts down as the little nugget does stuff, but that would create an ammo system. Do you use its stamina here or there? If you created pets that can actually fight on their own, maybe, but remember the AI is not necessarily intelligent enough to aim with all creatures we would be enslaving for personal amusement. Unless you plan on raising a T3 rocket turret. Same idea with defenses, half at the most of the related armor value: in this case only one at H1. Well liquids. You know what? Our health from armor is additive like status resistances, so instead of splitting where it fits make it scale to the armor as is. That means only one to five health throughout the ranks, but remember: you are not supposed to be using it for combat. Everyone else might think "herp Wolver do the fighting stuff derp", but I am too stubborn to accept that outside of the whole engineering stuff where it would be too wimpy to work without you using support items to buff it; most of these people just want their doggy to eat people, I want it to focus on creating things that you have to actively manage or it all falls apart. If your precious little snuggle buddy is defeated in combat it has to wait out a thirty minute real time countdown, all of which must be served while logged in, and comes back from the metaphorical grave with zero stamina because you are an awful parent and must nurse it back to health. More on stamina and feeding below.

In the original context 'stamina' was consumed with every action the pet does and is replenished by feeding it. Different pets had different stamina pools. If stamina is zero the pet will become completely unusable until it has at least one.

This seems to be one of the major factors in the whole thread. Going to use Wakfu as a reference for a bit, but it will go away after this paragraph. Over there feeding pets is how they gain experience. For us, not that this is normal for what item type they are, heat is experience. That means they gain heat like normal equipment. They also gain a little more defense and health (+~1 bar defense at H10 compared to H1, gains one max health on top of its normal amount at H5) by leveling with heat, but upgrading through crafting is still better if you really want to increase that health and defense. It also increases whatever effect the pet does. More on that in the next paragraph, but before that we need to go over stamina and feeding. With your system stamina is depleted with every single action, but that comes down to whoever has the most materials farmed wins because they can stuff their pet to keep its stamina as high as possible forever. Over in that other game, the feeding system wants you to feed it at least once every three days (it counts to the exact second with great accuracy and has a timer on its menu) but no more often than once every eight hours (with the same accurate timing). Feeding it less often than once every three days or more often than once every eight hours would deplete its health/stamina by one. Dying would also hurt the pet, but since death is already punished we can leave that part out. Since I am not stupid enough to simply take everything in the other game and plop it down here on our laps, this is my version: all pets have ten maximum stamina and must be fed within the same time frame as earlier, but every stamina lost makes the pet lose 10% all defensive values and 5% efficacy of whatever the pet does. That means if it has only five of ten stamina it will only have half its normal health and defenses, including status resistances (only applies to positive resistances; status vulnerabilities are not affected by being increased or decreased) but every accepted feeding restores one stamina if it does not have full stamina. If it has full stamina it will not have more than the maximum for your good behavior. As for where food comes from, expect more on that tomorrow when my eyeballs have rested a little.

I forgot to mention in Wakfu pets have twenty 'stamina' but you absolutely have to be premium to access the means to restore pet health and feeding in Wakfu does not restore pet health whatsoever. In Dofus, the prequel game to Wakfu, there is a service where you can leave pets to feed your pet regularly over time for you but you have to pay by the hour to have the pet in there. Seeing as the version we have here restores pet health from feeding and getting food is not difficult as long as you have materials, which will be further detailed later, neither of those systems are brought over.

Last thing for tonight before I go to bed and have more strange dreams hopefully not involving ballerinas: a pet mechanic example, the Silkwing; or at least one of them. I have several ideas. The less naughty ones are relevant here. Normally people would say, "oh look medic bug thing it are give the heals and we is win forever snorting everything at once", but this is nothing like that. As the (slave) owner of this particular Silkwing, the "healing" one to be specific, it retrieves all hearts within its view (eight space radius for the little booger) and holds onto them in its little bug pockets. They have to be your hearts, meaning you have not used them yet and have dropped from an enemy or a heart box. They will not retrieve health from heart pads. If you are damaged it will run/fly up to you and deploy as much hearts into you as it can. If you had full health one moment but the butterfly-moth has ten pips worth of hearts stored up, and you lose one full bar, it will fly right into your face and vomit one heart from its pants into your face. It will follow you around until it finds hearts somewhere nearby when it will try to fly over to it and grab it for you. Remember, Silkwings have no attack ability, meaning it will fly right into a pit of death just to get one measly heart for you. It still has liquids low defenses and health even at 5* (~7.5 bars normal defense and 5 health at 5* H10 where its defenses and health are at their max) so pay attention to it. Again, the healing ability from this little bug does not come out of thin air, it gets that health from hearts it picked up which you could have picked up yourself to retrieve the health. If it dies in battle all stored hearts are destroyed and it undergoes the countdown to revival as all pets would face. Say you came into the Clockworks with your Silkwing buddy, the same one as throughout this post, but it only has 5/10 stamina. What happens to it? First of all, its defenses (and status resistance) and health are cut in half. Say you went all out balls to the wall and made it 5*H10 so it has around 7.5 bars normal defense, 5 health, and over the past several floors it collected exactly ten pips worth of hearts for you. Since its stamina is only half, it now has around 3.75 bars of normal defense, 3 health (0.5 rounded up to 1), but still holding ten pips worth of hearts (or so you think). Fine, its defense is lower, Fine, its health is lower. But what did you do to its health bank, you evil villain of vileness? Remember that efficacy lose mentioned earlier? Loses 5% per stamina missing, meaning 5% * -5 efficacy equals -25% efficacy. See these ten pips worth of health you worked 'hard' to collect? Now it only counts as 8 hearts (7.5 rounded up) because you are a horrible master. I mean owner.

Another thing real quick. Throughout alchemy ranks the ability of a pet has limits. The same Silkwing for example has a limit on how many hearts it can hold depending on its star rating: at 2* it can only hold up to five pips worth of hearts, at 3* it can hold up to seven, at 4* it can hold up to ten, and at 5* it can hold up to 15. It never uses your hearts to heal itself even if it only has half a bar of health left but fifteen hearts waiting to be used and if it dies all those hearts will break. You should feel bad about yourself, breaking all those young and innocent hearts. Think of their families.

HIGHLIGHTED-BOLDED-FANCY-FONT-ALL-CAPS-LINE-OF-SEPARATION

After going through that again I was watching for the reason behind a complaint in the other thread over inappropriate content. The only "bad" phrase was "it will fly right into your face and vomit one heart from its pants into your face". If that offends you in any way I recommend seeing someone about your oversensitivity. I also want to know why you are not questioning that a butterfly-moth-thing is wearing pants with pockets.

Blah blah read this before continuing blah.

All (all) pets have the same health when comparing the same star rating and heat level. All. They are only reiterated to remind everyone that no one gets special treatment on health.
__________________________________________________________________

"Silkwing (health)"

Ever came to a bunch of heart boxes and already have full health, but you think you might take a few punches later on? This little flying butterfly-moth thing may take a trinket slot, but in exchange for what could be a bunch of health or a meaty weapon bonus it sees those wasting hearts and stores them for when you lose health. Its detection radius, meaning how far away from itself it will notice hearts it can retrieve, comes in handy in higher ranks but can also be a penalty; remember, Silkwings have no means of defending themselves. If it gets out of your reach and happens to attract attention its only hope is to find its way back to you before getting cut into delicious and crunchy pieces. What? Silkwings are a delicacy.

• 2*:
  • 2~3 bars normal defense (H1~H10)
  • 1 health (2 health at H5+)
  • stores up to 5 pips/bars worth of hearts (hearts may only be collected from your drops; if you use them the pet will not obtain them; heart pads are not valid sources of hearts for the pet to store)
  • detects and gathers hearts within a 4 space radius of itself (if more hearts are detected while retrieving a previously detected source of hearts, the second source is prioritized as the next waypoint; when no hearts are detected it follows the owner)
• 3*:
  • 3~4 bars normal defense
  • 2 health (3 at H5+)
  • stores up to 7 pips/bars worth of hearts
  • detects and gathers hearts within a 5 space radius of itself
• 4*:
  • 4~4.5 bars normal defense and 2~3 bars of shadow defense
  • 3 health (4 at H5+)
  • stores up to 10 pips/bars worth of hearts
  • detects and gathers hearts within a 6.5 space radius of itself
• 5*:
  • 4~4.5 bars normal defense and 5~6 bars of shadow defense
  • 4 health (5 at H5+)
  • stores up to 15 pips/bars worth of hearts
  • detects and gathers hearts within an 8 space radius of itself

When hearts which you could walk over and use immediately, the kind that drop from boxes and sometimes enemies when defeated, are detected by this pet it will fly over and retrieve them for you. The hearts are then stored on the pet with a counter which appears somewhere in the HUD while in the Clockworks with this particular pet active (other pets with similar storage abilities will have their counter in the same area; this counter only appears with a relevant pet active) but does not display to other team members.

Actually, that counter or whatever the pet has going on that needs something in the HUD also has the pet health display on the right side of your screen. Unless you have your inventory or loadouts open at the same time it would not clutter the screen significantly. It can be shrunk down so the bars are smaller and the counter is smaller than the energy symbol which appears on our party health stuff around the top left.

This section was written November 21, 2012. The mechanic overview for the Silkwing pet was added on November 23, 2012.
__________________________________________________________________

"Gremlin"

This is the only time one of these little boogers is going to be able to attack, but not without you; more specifically not without your bomb.

Gremlins are well known for one thing. No, not furries. Science. Unlike the other families, though fiends are questionably close, gremlins not only have an order but a kingdom. They build war machines. They have two melee, one healing, one bomber, and one range-esque type of enemy in regular areas. If you have the expansion you get to fight gremlin ninjas and siege units. If the behavior designs involved more teamwork abilities, like Thwackers being able to use their mallet-wrench-things to dent areas of the floor creating pitfalls for knights to fall in, they would probably be the most difficult family to fight against. One of these days I might go back into my T4+ stuff and add new abilities for all the existing enemies. If I did gremlins would definitely be first to add stuff to.

Anyway, the gremlin pet is basically a kid gremlin. Big surprise. It follows you around because you ensla- I mean kidna- I mean liberated from the Crimson Order. Why should you care? It was originally taught to become a demolitionist, but since it thinks of you as its bomber daddy it learns from you; but the fun does not stop there. Not even close. The little fluffy guy may not have the ability to make or use bombs on its own, but if you as its mast- I mean own- I mean best friend, if you drop a bomb it will pick it up (but with most features significantly reduced because it lacks the bombing abilities knights have) and hold onto it until it decides to attack something, in which case it will run up to it and place the bomb then run back to you like the little baby it literally is. Regardless of high its star rating it can only hold one bomb at a time ever.

Back to the reduced abilities and bomb retrieval before getting into specifics. It picks up the bomb once you place it by running onto it and grabbing it, meaning it did not detonate yet. It has to pick up the bomb before the fuse ends or it will be unable to retrieve it. Normally it follows you around like the Silkwing does, but in this case it only runs around on its own to plop a bomb in its fuzzy little hands near an enemy then immediately runs back to you. When it does deploy a bomb for you, which only happens when an enemy is within certain circumstances (the pet gets close enough to any enemy within a certain radius length or you attack something within a certain distance, varies by rank) the bomb it places is not the same as the one you gave it. Its damage, blast radius, and any secondary effects (knockback, statuses, etc.) are reduced depending on the star rating on the pet. The bomb still works the same, just reduced size and damage. And status if it has one. And knockback. Understand? It does not simply take a bomb from you and run out to deploy it in full effect. I know a lot of people pretend to read through some of these posts and think they have all the details perfected in their juicy little noggins. What did I mean by 'juicy'? What do you mean, cannibalism?

• 2*:
  • 1~1.5 bars of normal defense, 1~1.5 bars element defense
  • 1 health (2 at H5)
  • retrieves a bomb set by the user and redeploys to a target; enemy detection radius of 2 spaces on its own or 4 if the user attacks the target
  • the redeployed bomb has 20% the damage and blast radius, and 30% the status rate and knockback of the original bomb
• 3*:
  • 1.5~2 bars of normal defense, 1.5~2 bars of element defense
  • 2 health (3 at H5+)
  • retrieves a bomb set by the user and redeploys to a target; enemy detection radius of 3 spaces on its own or 5 if the user attacks the target
  • the redeployed bomb has 30% the damage and blast radius, and 35% the status rate and knockback of the original bomb
• 4*:
  • 3~3.75 bars of normal defense, 3~3.75 bars of element defense
  • 3 health (4 at H5+)
  • retrieves a bomb set by the user and redeploys to a target; enemy detection radius of 4 spaces on its own or 6 if the user attacks the target
  • the redeployed bomb has 40% the damage and blast radius, and 40% the status rate and knockback of the original bomb
• 5*:
  • 4~5.25 bars of normal defense, 5~6.25 bars of element defense
  • 4 health (5 at H5)
  • retrieves a bomb set by the user and redeploys to a target; enemy detection radius of 5 spaces on its own or 7 if the user attacks the target
  • the redeployed bomb has 50% the damage and blast radius, and 45% the status rate and knockback of the original bomb

To clarify again: the bomb does not come out of thin air, you have to take the time to prepare one and only up to one bomb for it to carry. It will not hold more than one bomb at a time under any circumstances. The redeployable bomb never has more than half the features of the original bomb in any way except for the fuse time which stays the same for the redeployed bomb as the original. If you are not a bomber this pet will do nothing useful for you in combat since it will follow you around all the time unless it gets a bomb from you (bombs from other knights are not retrievable) and risk being killed, in which case you have to take the time and materials to nurse it back to health.

This section was written on November 23, 2012.
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"Scuttlebot"

Ever found yourself forever alone in the Clockworks trying to get more minerals on your back, but not willing to risk the back pain?

But you can only carry one chunk at a t-

Quiet, you. Well with this little robotic...spider...?..thing, you can bring more minerals with you for some glowy-metally-chunky fun. What was that? Nothing fun about any of that? Well, you silly little...I am going to kill your fami-

Anyway, the Scuttlebot has one major ability which actually covers multiple: it can carry certain objects for you, including another mineral chunk* or a key. You can place a key or mineral, not both at the same time, on its metallic back for it to carry as a sla- I mean, personal little buddy. Why would anyone not want to do that all the time? Well, my naive friend/enemy/whatever the liquids you are, the poor little robot loses movement speed while carrying your stuff. You probably should have asked for a stronger model, but since the factory already closed down due to gremlin raids it looks like you have to deal with what you have. You can still kick it if you want. Your legs are too scrawny to do any real damage to it. To place a mineral/key on the Scuttlebot you must first be carrying one. If you have both a mineral on your back and a key above your noggin the key takes priority. Basically, you interact with the pet by interacting/using the attack command (right click and Z by default) while next to and facing it. If the Scuttlebot is killed the mineral or key drops where it died. If you interact with the Scuttlebot while it is holding something you will grab whatever you put on its back if you are able to grab it (not shielding or already holding a key/statue if you are trying to take a key off the Scuttlebot).

* Mineral size is reduced to minumum while the Scuttlebot is carrying it. If you give it a 2 or 4 size mineral it will only count as a 1 size when the floor is cleared. You can take the mineral off it and carry it yourself, but that would switch any mineral on your back to go back on the Scuttlebot. You can also have the Scuttlebot drop the mineral. See stores for details, ask your parents before playing with allegedly tamed homicidal robots, batteries not included or necessary.

To make it less unfair, unlike their incompetent relatives built by gremlin hands, our versions of these little boogers have different movement speeds; they can be up to standard knight speed to keep up with you normally. The Silkwing and gremlin from before? Not quite as fast to make sure you pace yourself. And because their movement speed is never hindered by owner abuse. Their running speed starts slow in the early ranks, but later on it becomes more comparable.

• 2*:
  • 0.5~1 bar of normal defense, 1.5~2 bars of element defense
  • 1 health (2 health at H5+)
  • base movement speed of 60% (compared to a standard knight), lowered to 40% while carrying a mineral or key
• 3*:
  • 1.25~1.75 bars of normal defense, 1.75~2.25 bars of element defense
  • 2 health (3 health at H5+)
  • base movement speed of 70%, lowered to 45% while carrying a mineral or key
• 4*:
  • 2.25~3 bars of normal defense, 3.75~4.5 bars of element defense
  • 3 health (4 health at H5+)
  • base movement speed of 80%, lowered to 50% while carrying a mineral or key
• 5*:
  • 3~4.25 bars of normal defense, 6~7.25 bars of element defense
  • 4 health (5 health at H5+)
  • base movement speed of 100%, lowered to 60% while carrying a mineral or key

Since this Scuttlebot skipped murdering class regularly it lacks any combat abilities such as sneezing boolits in the faces of its enemies and... Anyway, it just follows you around all the time like a lost puppy with no means of defending itself or fighting back, but if it dies at least whatever it was carrying drops on the floor so you can just pick it up yourself you lazy-

This was at least slightly inspired by this. Maybe a little.

This section was also written on November 23, 2012.
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"Chromalisk"

Originally this one was going to be after Kat and whatever jelly thing, but two words made this function take priority: vial crafting.

The first part of this circus is the ability to carry vials. Starting at 2* it can only carry up to three vials at a time but that increases with star rank, though it can never hold more than three of the same kind of vial at once. It can also only hold up to four different kinds of vials at all star ranks, except at 2* it can only hold three vials making the fourth slot pointless so you can mentally ignore that if you want. Physically you have to punch kittens until their bones splinter and blo-

While your adorable little derp-eyed lizard is holding vials for you in its...intestines...certain combinations will cause it to plop out a different vial by "crafting" them together. It can only combine vials from the same tier (meaning no T3 fire vials with T1 freeze vials) and has a cooldown on "crafting" for ten seconds upon doing so. It can only "craft" using the vials in its inventory/vial-holding-things, still being from the same tier (though it can hold vials from different tiers) using the following "recipes":

• 1 fire vial + 1 freeze vial = 1 remedy
• 1 shock vial + 1 poison vial = 1 remedy
• 1 stun vial + 1 sleep vial = 1 remedy
• 1 fire vial + 1 shock vial + 1 freeze vial + 1 remedy = 1 curse vial
• 2 T1 pills = 1 T2 pill
• 2 T2 pills = 1 T3 pill
• 3 {status} vials + 1 remedy = 1 {status} vial of the next tier (not possible using T3 vials)

Yesterday I was thinking about whether pills should be craftable from other vials, like one of each status or a bunch of curse and remedies at once, but that would turn this pet into a drug dispenser. Insert garbage vials, get health. Not happening. Punk.

How do you manage vials between yourself and the lizard? It has its own vial inventory like we do. You can only take, give, and move vials while the lizard is next to you. If it runs off to derp land or dies you will not be able to do anything to its vial inventory other than look at it and cry over the health pills you left on it. It can also only hold and craft using vials of a certain tier if its star rating is equal or higher than that of the vial. That means if you have a 2* or 3* lizard and you want it to play with T3 vials they are going to sit in its inventory and do nothing. They might laugh behind your back but nothing more. If you keep health pills on the lizard it will not use them to heal itself. You can click and drag vials off the little booger while near it within a range which increases with star rating, but those dropped vials drop near the pet. Not you. The vials do not teleport to your feet. It can hold up to three of the same kind of vial and may not hold more than three of the same vial at once, same as our knights are disallowed. The lizard lacks the ability to become "invisible" as our enemies do, but it still helps you with vials. Be more appreciative.

• 2*:
  • 1.5~2 bars of normal defense, 0.5~1 bars of pierce defense
  • 1 health (2 at H5+)
  • can hold up to 3 different kinds of vials
  • can hold up to 3 vials in total
  • may only drop held vials within 1 space of the owner
  • can only craft with, create, and hold T1 vials
• 3*:
  • 2~2.5 bars of normal defense, 1~1.5 bars of pierce defense
  • 2 health (3 at H5+)
  • can hold up to 3 different kinds of vials
  • can hold up to 6 vials in total
  • may only drop held vials within 1.5 spaces of the owner
  • can craft with, create, and hold T1 and T2 vials
• 4*:
  • 3.5~4.25 bars of normal defense, 2.5~3.25 bars of pierce defense
  • 3 health (4 at H5+)
  • can hold up to 4 different kinds of vials
  • can hold up to 8 vials in total
  • may only drop held vials within 2 spaces of the owner
  • can only craft with, create, and hold T1 and T2 vials; may hold T3 vials
• 5*:
  • 5~5.75 bars of normal defense, 4~4.75 bars of pierce defense
  • 4 health (5 at H5+)
  • can hold up to 4 different kinds of vials
  • can hold up to 12 vials in total
  • may only drop held vials within 3 spaces of the owner
  • can craft with, create, and hold all kinds of vials

The lizard will not pick up vials on its own. You have to manually move vials from yourself over to its vial inventory. Just like the rest of the runts of the litter, it lacks any attacking ability of its own. The gremlin was an exception. Kind of. Without you giving it a bomb it has no attacking ability, but since bombers are an endangered species they get something nice for once. There might be something for gunners at some point.

This section was written on November 25, 2012.
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"Jelly"
Estimated time of content arrival: January 19, 2013
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Others are in progress

All that engineering stuff before it is my version of combat "pets" while that newer stuff is just pets without quotes. The plan right now is to make at least one kind of pet for each family so the food variety is useful, each of which is basically an active effect trinket as opposed to some extra health or weapon specialist bonus most people use without creating the same stupid nonsense people pretend to cook up but deliver raw.

Those are mainly for people between having all the UVs they can fit in their nostrils and people with little to no bonuses on their equipment. They kind of have some nice UVs, but nothing spectacular or perfect. Originally I was going to make it go up to +2 for one of the three weapon effects and -2 for another specific one, like if you got +2 damage you would always get -2 attack speed or if you got +2 charge you got -2 damage, but that seemed too straightforward. Too solid. Solids.

Something like that. Been kicking around some ideas for both the Kat and jelly pet, it eventually got distracted with a Chromalisk that does stuff with vials. While writing that sentence I had a few more thoughts on all three of them and might write one or two today. Maybe even all three. Might bump into other things for a few laughs.

Anyone else in the mood for some shenanigans? I got some of this and that.

Everything with multiple sections needs an overview here, right? No. I do it because if I immediately jump into a big topic people are going to be lost. For those who were elsewhere the past few days, in a couple threads I mention lack of balance among the families. Beasts are too easy. Lumbers are a little too easy. Things like that. Since this topic includes all families, meaning every individual kind of enemy in each family, each post will have a lot of stuff for only one family. And there are six families. For each tier. Actually, T1 is fine where it is. Focus on T2 and T3. So for this big thing of stuff we are going to rebalance all six families in two tiers for three to ten or so enemies per family. That sure sounds like fun.

In the index and the baby index which will be at the bottom of this post the families are listed in alphabetical order but are not necessarily written in that order. I plan to start with gremlins instead of beast. If you have ideas for rebalancing something like an ability for a specific kind of enemy, speak up. I promise stupid ideas will only be slightly beaten to death. Just a little. Maybe cut off a pinky finger or slap your leg until it goes numb for a couple hours. We can do that later.

Before I shut up with this part I should make one thing clear: this is not part of the T4 stuff. All of this is intended for the existing Clockworks and enemies we already have. None of my weird T4 enemies or abilities are involved with this. However this content can be used instead of the T4 stuff as it has similar ideas. Sort of. They could also all be combined into a giant mess of homicide.

• Beast
• Construct
• Fiend
• Gremlin
• Slime/Jelly
• Undead

Update Comments:

Fiends are up. Why are you reading this when you should be reading about my crazy ideas on making the only threatening family even more difficult?

December 23, 2012

Beep boop, son. Beep. Boop.

You know how the gremlin stuff involved a lot of teamwork bonus sharing? Expect more of that. Why? Think about it; if us knights are better at offense than defense, why not have the enemies be backwards? Give them a bunch of defense to counter our offense. What was that? Why not give them offense instead? Devilites. Now make their attacks prepare and fire twice as fast. How does that sound?

• Gun Puppy
  • T2
  • T3
• Lumber
  • T2
  • T3
• Mecha Knight
  • T2
  • T3
• Retrode
  • T2
  • T3
• Scuttlebot
  • T2
  • T3

Gun Puppy

T2

Robot dog turrets. Not just one kind, but three: flamethrowing, rocket snorting, and boolits. Since those first two are alright where they currently are we will be focusing on the one that shoots boolits. What kind of crazy things does this turret do? Shoots three boolits in a cone. And nothing else. Is that enough? Think of all those times you opened one of those extra rooms to a turret setup in T2 and you were in the middle of a dozen turrets each firing three pointy dots all at once. I think their attack part is covered. What about defense? What easily counters a turret? Guns. What do guns do? Shoot boolits. Looks like guns and the turrets have something in common. You know what else counters turrets? Getting in close melee range with a sword and beating the liquids out of it. How many people do that instead of spamming Brandish/Sealed charge attacks? People who are not cowards. That thing in your hand is a sword, not a pixie wand. If you want to wear a frilly tutu and frolic around in tights do that elsewhere.

• "Pack Protection": a Gun Puppy emits a radiating signal (goes out in all directions like an expanding bomb blast radius) up to three cells away and gains +10% element defense (or +1 bar, since defense is apparently additive) per turret; those turrets can then do the same and 'connect' to other turrets; maximum of +30%/+3 bars element defense and +3% max health per turret (only applies to the bullet turrets, does not 'connect' with flamethrowing or rocket firing turrets);once a connected turret is killed its contribution to the bonus is removed for all other connected turrets
• the Gun Puppy can use a similar radial knockback ability of T2+ Menders (pushes knights within 2 spaces of the turret 3 spaces away) but does not heal; 30 second cooldown
• the Gun Puppy can use a charge attack which fires a beam (1 space wide) which lasts three seconds and travels infinitely in one direction or until it hits an impassible object (walls, raised gates, anything which may not be walked on/through), cooldown of 30 seconds, may not use other attacks or move/spin while using this attack

T3

What else can we do with turrets. Oh, I know:

• if two Gun Puppies are at least five spaces away from any untravellable area/object (walls, indestructible blocks, edge of the map, spawn spots for pots/enemies) and are within five spaces of each other they can form an impassable wall between them which is only destroyed once one of the Gun Puppies is destroyed; may not be within three spaces of another connected pair of Gun Puppies, only bullet Gun Puppies may create walls (no flamethrowing or rocket firing ones)
• a Gun Puppy may disable itself (does not attack) to double the attack speed of another Gun Puppy within five spaces
• a Gun Puppy may activate a shield around itself (1.5 space radius) which destroys projectiles (gun bullets, Sealed/Brandish line charge projectiles; does not protect other enemies) which attempt to attack from the outside but has no effect on what goes on inside itself; lasts 10 seconds, cooldown of 30 seconds, may not be using within three spaces of another shielding Gun Puppy
• any of the T2 abilities above

Lumber

T2

These stupid things. For whatever reason, when I was new to the game and did T1 runs with random people, they would stand right in front of these things and get smacked on the head while I would be at their backs carving my initials. They would then complain about getting hit and how I failed to help them by taking the hit for them even though their only attack has area of effect and would have hurt us both. Genius faec.

• the Lumber, after having already attacked, can swing its arm in the complete opposite direction of where its first swing went; it does not have to use this second attack and will only do so if a knight is behind them
• the Lumber can 'take root', making it completely immobile, gain +50%/+5 bars element and shadow damage, but unable to turn; it can stay in this state for up to ten seconds (it can exit this state at any point) and may still attack while rooted
• the Lumber can summon a squirrel (only once) which will run to a knight (~150% average knight speed), jump on them, and randomly change which direction the knight is facing; the squirrel can be knocked off by any attack on the knight (similar to thawing freeze) with two hits (if the knight with a squirrel on their head uses a bomb the blast will count as a hit if the explosion includes the knight in its area of effect) or will retreat after ten seconds; the squirrel does not force the knight to move, it only affects which direction the knight is facing, only one squirrel may attack the same knight at a time

That last one was inspired by a tree based enemy in Wakfu which can summon a spider that gets in the way of players, attacks, and inflicts a damage penalty. The second ability was inspired by the same tree enemies but does not include healing itself for ~20% of its max health.

T3

How can I top what T2 Lumbers just got? By building on it:

• when the Lumber uses its second-backlash attack it has 120% the area of effect and damage of the first attack
• when the Lumber takes root it becomes completely immobile, gains +50%/+5 bars element and shadow defense, is unable to turn (it can exit this state at any point), may attack only using the existing single swing, and can use a single root to attempt to 'knot' the feet of a moving knight within five spaces once the Lumber has taken root; the trapped player is unable to move but has full turning, attacking, and shielding abilities and will only remain trapped for up to three seconds at a time; the Lumber may only knot a knight once every fifteen seconds
• the Lumber can summon the same squirrel as the T2 version, but it also inflicts an offense penalty to the knight it attacks (-3 universal damage, -1 universal attack speed for 10 seconds); only one of this kind of penalty may apply to the same knight at a time

Crazy trees. Tree robots.

Mecha Knight

T2

You know, there was a thread in general not too long ago about what people think the most difficult enemies are. Apparently these shield bearing robots are worse than Devilites. Why? Because they shield against idiotic Brandish/Sealed charge spam? Try using the basic swing pattern of any heavy sword, or the basic swing pattern of any sword except Winmillion. As long as you can shield before they slash you back these barrelheads are easy enough.

• while the Mecha is shielding, each projectile which hits its shield increases its movement speed by +10% per projectile (up to +80% movement speed at a time), each movement speed bonus (every +10%) lasts 15 seconds
• when the Mecha is defeated it drops it shield which can be retrieved by a gremlin who wears it as a hat and grants them +20%/+2 bars pierce defense until they are defeated, the shield will not drop again, no more than one shield-hat may be active per gremlin
• "Overdrive": the Mecha takes 3 seconds to rev its engines and runs at 200% movement speed but is unable to turn, attack, or shield for 5 seconds; cooldown of 30 seconds, immune to knockback while in effect

Exhaust pipes come out of their backs. Does no one else want to see them do something crazy?

T3

I keep playing my best cards in T2 without thinking of stuff for T3. More repeats:

• while the Mecha is shielding, each projectile which hits its shield increases its movement speed by +10% and attack speed by +5% (up to +80% movement speed, +40% attack speed at a time), each activation of this effect lasting 15 seconds
• when the Mecha is defeated it drops it shield which can be retrieved by a gremlin who wears it as a hat and grants them +30%/+3 bars pierce defense until they are defeated, the shield will not drop again, no more than one shield-hat may be active per gremlin
• "Balls to the wall (this is a pilot phrase, not an innuendo)": the Mecha takes 3 seconds to charge a dash where it runs at 250% movement speed but is unable to turn, attack, or shield for 5 seconds; cooldown of 30 seconds, immune to knockback while in effect, if the Mecha is affiliated with a status it has a high chance to inflict that status to any knight whom it dashes through/into

Retrode

T2

Zombie g- Robots? This is weird. When I first saw these things I thought they were zombie robots or made of recycled parts. Some crazy gremlin was sitting in their lab one late night, stared in a big box of random metal pieces, and welded them together. Retrode was born.

• the Retrode can mark a knight by successfully landing a melee attack on the target, the mark prevents that knight from picking up vials for fifteen seconds; up to two knights may be marked with this ability at a time
• the Retrode can mark a knight by successfully landing a melee attack on the target, the mark gives a penalty of -2 sword damage, -2 gun attack speed, or -2 bomb charge time reduction randomly for 20 seconds; up to two knights may be marked with this ability at a time
• a Retrode may consume another Retrode to add its current health to itself and gain +20% damage and attack speed for the rest of its life; up to four Retrodes may be consumed by a single Retrode
• once the Retrode is killed it sets a "Retrode armor fragment", which may be activated by a construct by walking over it (unlike the Mecha version, gremlins may not retrieve it) which gives -10% movement speed, +15% damage, and +20%/+2 bars of element and shadow defense

I wonder what would happen if you took a bunch of Retrodes and combined them into a really big robot. Would it be Retrozoid? Megarode?

T3

I think I may be having too much fun with this. Quick, someone call the fun police.

• the Retrode can mark a knight by successfully hitting the target with its beam attack, the mark prevents that knight from using sword and gun charge attacks and slows bomb fuses by 30% for fifteen seconds
• the Retrode can dismantle itself to become "Retrode scrap", which can be picked up by gremlins and constructs and used on either to gain +30%/+3 bars of defense for shadow (if the wearer is a construct) or pierce (if the wearer is a gremlin) until the wearer dies; up to two "Retrode scrap" per character
• any of the T2 Retrode abilities above

Recycling is good for the planet. Of Cradle. Where us knights are murdering the natives for our own gain.

Scuttlebot

T2

These little robots are pretty humble. They relate to Knockers in the gremlin family, acting as cannon fodder and getting in the way while being able to cough up some boolits in our faces when they get close. You know what that means. Time to wear pants. That has nothing to do with anything.

• a gremlin may ride on the Scuttlebot; all attacks on the mounted gremlin are redirected to the Scuttlebot who will take only 70% of the incoming damage, but the gremlin-Scuttlebot pair will only move at 60% speed
• the Scuttlebot may collapse onto the floor, deactivated, and become 75% immune to all damage and statuses, 75% resistant to knockback, but unable to move or attack at all (it basically becomes a rock) and will remain in this state for exactly ten seconds, after which it will remain immobile and unresponsive for two seconds but lose the defenses it had from deactivating before returning to normal behavior
• a gremlin Demo may place a bomb on the Scuttlebot (two second preparation, the two must be standing next to each other) which will chase a knight and attempt to kamikaze (deals 300% normal Demo bomb damage in a 2 space radius)

What the li- I did it again. Gave all the good stuff to T2.

T3

Lowered some of the T2 stuff, better versions for T3:

• a gremlin may ride on a Scuttlebot, all damage taken is redirected to the Scuttlebot who will only take 70% of the damage (the other 30% is not dealt to the gremlin or Scuttlebot, it disappears because one is sitting on the other and science happens) but the gremlin-Scuttlebot pair will only move at 70% speed
• the Scuttlebot may collapse on the floor, deactivated, and become 90% immune to all damage and statuses, 80% resistant to knockback, but unable to move or attack at all and will remain in this state for exactly ten seconds, after which it will remain immobile and unresponsive for two seconds but lose the defenses it previously gained before returning to normal behavior
• a gremlin Demo may place a bomb on the Scuttlebot (two second preparation, the two must be standing next to each other) which will chase a knight and attempt to kamikaze (deals 350% normal Demo bomb damage in a 2 space radius, the Scuttlebot gains +25% movement speed while this ability is in effect)

Crazy robots. With fluffy bunny-people riding them around. And becoming rocks. Scuttlebots are supposed to be robot replications of Chromalisks, right? I should have done something with invisibility. Nurp. That would get in the way later when I do beast family.

December 26, 2012

Additions and changes are made in this text.

Subtractions are moved below:

• when the Mecha dies it drops "Mecha armor fragment" which gives the first construct or gremlin who steps on it +15%/+1.5 bars element defense for 30 seconds or until the enemy dies (up to +60%/+6 bars element defense at a time); the defense bonus item will not drop again, the object may be walked over and will not block movement, projectile paths, or explosion radii
• when the Mecha dies it drops "Mecha armor fragment" which gives the first construct or gremlin who steps on it +20%/+2 bars element defense for 30 seconds or until the wearer dies (up to +80%/+8 bars element defense at a time); the defense item will not drop again, the object may be walked over and will not block movement, projectile paths, or explosion radii

Multiplications a- Wait a solid, that makes no sense.

But they were debating whether they wanted to be trees or robots, so a compromise was made. The parents were not pleased.

A boss Lumber? I remember trying to get other people to make threads for that many times. Hope to see that happen.

For the squirrel shenanigan on Lumbers it was definitely aimed at promoting bombers. With guns and swords you can still try to fight or just wait it out, since you can run away, but with bombs you lose nothing from being spun around randomly. Tactical advantage. Tactical demolitionists. Intelligence is rewarded. Players learn to play smarter and not spammier. All thanks to squirrels.

Spinning Lumbers would be hilarious. I can imagine a Lumber raising its massive arm to squish a tiny T1 knight, then suddenly wearing a pink ballerina tutu and spinning under a spotlight then collapsing on its face after.

Funny thing about Mechas and their shields. You know how Brandish line charge attacks make explosions? You obviously know this, but some people think that automatically means the explosions are treated like mini-bombs by the AI. It knows. It treats them like projectiles. You know what would be really evil to add to that shield projectile absorption thing? Any combo attack (using more than one round in a gun clip, potential multiple impacts from sword projectiles), as long as at least one of the projectiles hits the shield, all the other projectiles also count as having hit their shield. Imagine four Brandish spammers against even one of these things. If I ever make a game that will probably be somewhere in the mix. A huge bowl full of cookie dough and crazily pumped up robots of death.

Maybe a combination of pierce and shadow defense for gremlins that pick up a Mecha corpse. With some status resistances? Freeze? Whatever theme the Mecha was? When I was writing that I was thinking that knights could force a gremlin to take it so the buff is consumed before something that can be threatening gets it, so you have to think a little more, but with all this other stuff going on it might get too crazy.

Overdrive is for situations where a Trojan would charge but more focused on a fleeing target than whatever stands still for two seconds. A lot of people like to spam Pulsars/Brandishes/Avengers mindlessly, so after the Mecha eats up those projectiles in its shield for +80% movement speed and +40% attack speed, then they can boost for double that 180% movement speed and get right in the face of the spammer. Oh hi Mark, how is your death. Do Mechas ever run away from knights? If they did they could also use the dash to fly out of the fray. I wonder how a fully charged shield combined with the dash would work against a Graviton suction. Would it fly out or would there be friction?

Mechas are pretty well set with their weapons. They can already do some funky stuff with their sword, and now their shield has a whole new deck of cards. They can also dash. A robot with defense is now very threatening against spammy obnoxious bunnies that roll around and ooze projectiles from their nostrils.

Disable? Is that the one where it prevents vial use or retrieval? Or the sword and gun charge prevention and bomb fuse slowing? That sounds really threatening now that I type that again. Threatening to sword and gun charge reliant people. Bomb fuse loss is still bad, but not as bad as what the other weapons get; just another reason to go for a tactical advantage instead of risking the loss. If you meant the second one, having it guaranteed to happen seems overpowered. You know what? That should be a status. Disable. Unlike the other statuses but similar to curse, it never shows up as a stratum theme, but it can be inflicted by Retrodes and maybe some special enemies. So if we give Retrodes this status and make it possible from the face laser, and it guarantees affliction if it successfully hits you, that would mean...people have to play smarter and not spammier. I was about to say only let it inflict the status 50% of the time but having it guaranteed to happen actually sounds great. Oh, and making the scrap give a defense which the enemy is already neutral to making you want to use a normal damage weapon; now normal damage weapons are more important. I am on a roll with this section of stuff. Building bridges out of chewed gum. Walking on those bridges without shoes on. I hope the gum dries before I do that.

You mean like a spin attack but with lasers? Oh, I know. When a Retrode does the cannibal thing and eats at least two other Retrodes, its laser fires wider (~2 spaces) and fires further (+~2 spaces). It also has more health, damage, and attack speed. Thought you would ignore those few Retrodes and rush? Now it meets you before you get to the elevator and you trapped yourself in a locked battlement room with it and a few more Retrodes. Now you have to fight it. Robot zombies are weird. Anyway, a new attack. For the weird robot zombies. Solids. I want to make their melee attack faster or give them some kind of alternative ranged attack but I feel tapped out for now. How about it can charge its face laser attack so it bounces off surfaces and knights and deals more damage with every ricochet? Not random bouncing like Alchemers, I mean it goes by the angles and everything. That would get complicated pretty fast but would make for a great light show.

Skuttlkaze (derp) explosion radii would be around 3 spaces and it would detonate as soon as it gets around one or two spaces of a knight. The detonation does not have to wait for a fuse or any delay, it just runs up to you and explodes. I feel like it should do more damage or instead of killing the Scuttlebot it puts it in disabled mode when the bomb detonates and it sits there for ten seconds. That way it can be loaded up again and sent to blow us up some more.

You have as much idea of what is going to come next as I do right now. Before writing these I think about what kind of weird stuff I could give random enemies, like a unicorn horn for Trojans, then that somehow becomes stuff for the other enemies in the same family. Then I sit down and smash my face on the keyboard and post it. It sounds less painful than it is.

A lot of people seem to be using alternate accounts these days. Like Hex and his eleven dwarves.

With turrets having the beam go infinitely is still stopped by walls and indestructible blocks. It only attacks when a knight alerts it by coming within five or six spaces and it forgets about you in about ten. Unless someone near it coincidentally aims it towards you way off in the distance but without anything blocking its laser that would be too hilarious of a situation to pass up on. I should have mentioned for the defense stacking it loses gained bonuses when a connected turret dies, so if you have three linked and all sharing a +30%/+3 bars element defense bonus then someone comes along and snorts up one of them the bonus drops to +20%/+2 bars. The shield only lasts ten seconds and only affects projectiles (does not include anything which is not a projectile, like sword basic swings and bomb explosions, and knights can enter the shield and will be able to attack with their projectiles to damage the turret from inside the bubble). Having their defense buff counter the damage type they are weak to makes players either focus on taking down turrets first to stop them from linking or bringing a variety of weapons.

Having Lumbers spin would be silly. The doctor already mentioned it. Turning while rooted is alright for T3 but then they may as well always be rooted. Maybe have them turn slightly slower than their normal slow turning, not that anyone would notice the difference. The squirrel or whatever inhabitant squats in/on the Lumber at night acts as interference and can severely mess with whoever it jumps on. It limits knight offense and contributes to enemy defense.

Are Mecha shields breakable right now? The armor is to give constructs better defenses against their greatest weakness but can be wasted on a stray gremlin if players can manipulate its placement instead of spamming wildly. The dash for both tiers increases movement speed based on what it already has, not what our knights have. They move slower than we do normally. Mechas in T3 already create projectiles/bombs when they use their spinning charge attack.

I blanked on Retrode. That same habit of burning out early then picking up leftovers. Same reason I did gremlins first. I had a bunch of stuff for them stacked up with a little bow on top.

Scuttlebots already have liquid low health. If people can push the deactivated lumps around they would at least be able to escape a corner. I got nothing for where Demos and Scuttlebots appear together. No idea. Wonder why. I think I remember having Scorchers with Scuttlebots, but never Demo and Scuttlebot together. Looks like no shipping between those two.

I used to have the same problem with Steam. Have you tried just going to the main Steam site, logging in there, and having it remember you? When you go back to log into these foorims through Steam when it gets to the Steam login part it just says your Steam name with a login button. Except that would mean having some random compootur remember your Steam. Liquids. Do you do that already on your main compitterpatter?

If the infinite laser comes up as too much of a problem they can lower its range. If enemies start difficult and become easier players will think the need for difficulty constantly requested by the players was at first more than satisfied, meaning players feel like Three Rings has been listening to them. They can also cap its range before doing any of this if they want. What if the turret linking gives a reduced amount of defense, capping at like +40%/+4 bars, but heals around 1% health every couple seconds per linked turret? Specialized weapons usually deal around 40% more than neutral so element weapons would still be practical, but normal would be just as good with a maxed turret network.

It can be something different. Like a robot spider. Just something relatively small, normally lives in trees, and can jump on our heads and flop us around. It can even be a made up thing. A bird with four legs. An owl with chainsaw eyeballs. A bird with owls for eyes.

We can completely take out armor fragments for Mechas. I thought of it for Retrodes first but wanted to have the option. Its projectile absorbing shield is a huge advantage against gunners alone. Killing them with guns is still entirely possible, but for the average derp unless spamming Pulsar works it must be overpowered.

I had a few things in mind for zombies when I was thinking of Retrodes but I wanted to keep them distinctly separate.

I saw it, but getting cornered is a lot more likely when we get locked in a room with 3~7 Scuttlebots and our knights do not have the ability to transform into jets to fly away. Scuttlebots also move faster than those blue things, attack us, and have low health.