Spiral Knights - A Carnavon haze bomb!

A Carnavon haze bomb!

15 replies [Last post]

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 16:27

Iam-Darkness

Yes, a carnavon haze bomb. You know what that means - it can inflict both fire AND curse! But to compensate for this awesome ability it takes some work to acquire...AND I needed to edit it. I thank you all for your honest criticisms of the bomb and how the concept could be improved, and I will try to apply them.

How it works: Firstly, you need to acquire a fully leveled fiery atomizer and complete the Shadow Lair Fire Storm Citadel. Using the maiden's tear you acquire from doing this, take the atomizer to the Sanctuary alchemy machine. It should be fairly obvious what to do from there...however, several undead parts (as well as dark shards) would be added to the mix. The completed bomb looks like an ash of Agni, but is carnavon brown where the red and yellow is on the agni, has a black metal ring in the middle, and a purple eye where the red light would normally be on the agni.

ORIGINALLY (when posted 2/7/2013), this was how the bomb would work: "As for the actual attack, the chance of inflicting curse is about half as high as the chance for inflicting fire (which is slightly lower than that of the atomizer), and the bomb's radius is the same as the atomizer's. The bomber and his allies are also vulnerable to getting damaged and cursed if they gets hit by the initial blast (though the haze is harmless to knights): finally the bomb deals shadow damage rather than elemental and has a 25% longer charge than the other haze bombs (the fuse is a normal haze bomb fuse length). To sum up - this is a challenging bomb to use, but rewards handsomely with a scarce, very dangerous status effect if you know how to use it!"

NOW, however, I have tweaked the bomb to please the playerbase. The bomb has a 30% longer fuse AND charge than the other haze bombs. When placed, it has a RED radius inside the normal bomb radius: monsters, as well as the bomber, within that radius will take shadow damage and possibly (50%) be badly cursed by the detonation (probably not a good idea to just sit there and haze bomb spam). The haze is a brilliant purple similar to its eye color and can inflict fire on monsters: the fire is barely stronger than that of the atomizer and its damage is NOT reduced once you enter stratum six.

Possible description:
"An unlucky bomb created by combining the soul of a carnavon with a fiery atomizer. It's said that the carnavon is still alive within the bomb, eternally planning to sour the luck of its user"

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 16:33

Blandaxt

I am not sure

i am not sure if its a great idea only because it can also inflict fire. Even though the chances of inflicting fire i low, for the bomb to have 2 abilities eels new. I mean new because no other bomb inflicts 2 statuses in the gae as of yet. So in my opinion, it would not be such a bad bomb, but i think you should remove the part where it inflicts curse on your allies. Feels like it deals direct damage resulting in friendly fire. sense there are no weapons in the game that actually damages other knights directly, so i don't think that is a good direction to go.

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 16:50

Oatmonster

Lick Number 58425

Woo! Enter the most overpowered weapon in the game! Not only can I team kill with it, I can also inflict curse on everybody!

Heck to the no.

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 16:57

Little-Juances

Making it hard to aquire isn't an excuse to make it overpowered. If curse alone isnt enough, it sports 2 statuses!
Completely destroys the other haze bombs (and enemies obvisouly).

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 18:14

Amaki

While trying to work curse into the game some more isn't bad ...

A curse haze bomb would just be insane without some serious drawback. The GF is the only standard we have for player-based attacks, and that has a decent shot at cursing the wielder too. As for enemies, every curse-themed enemy is intentionally difficult and rare (though in practice it hasn't turned out excessively difficult, as anyone who runs Graveyards know).

I should also point out that Carnavons do cause both fire and curse, but not at the same time. The fire status is from their claw attack, the curse from their breath.

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 18:24

Zeddy

@Amaki

That's only on the charge. Just like with FoV, you can curse using the regular attack perfectly without drawbacks.

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 18:34

Little-Juances

But it works on chance. And even if this bomb didnt have 100% chance, mist hits every second so it's pretty much unavoidable.

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 19:17

Nineball-Seraph

@Amaki

You gave me an idea for this. As carnavons curse with one attack, and inflict fire with the other, why not make it so only the initial blast has a chance to curse, maybe a slightly higher chance than a gran faust, say, but limited to the initial blast, and leave the rest of it a mildly weaker AoA as listed above.

Other alternative:
Make it a pure curse bomb, with a very low chance curse, but instead of only causing the status, have it do minimal shadow damage within it's haze at about the same rate as a tick of fire. Damaging to all.

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 19:22

Oatmonster

Lick Number 58425

Great, so now it's easier to team kill with it and it almost completely outclasses the ash.

Thu, 02/07/2013 - 19:30

Nineball-Seraph

Just an idea.

Balancing it with ash will be harder, but the only thing I could think of would be drastically reducing it's fire strength.

Fri, 02/08/2013 - 06:54

#10

Iam-Darkness

I like the feedback...

And I thank you all for it! Now that I think about it, having it always inflict curse would be a little overpowered, so I am going to go with the suggestion made by Nineball-Seraph's idea - namely only the initial blast would inflict curse (a haze that inflicted curse would be a little overboard in retrospect...) and that the fire would not be as powerful as that of either the ash of agni or the atomizer (somewhere between the atomizer and the firey vaporizer mk. 2). Does that sound better? And yes the initial blast can curse the bomber without threatening his buds ;)

Fri, 02/08/2013 - 07:01

#11

Infernoburner

inferno ain't sure.

I don't want a ban stick-like bomb players can just get trough Sanctuary.
Curse and that's it, please. No team/self-killing. Give it a very long fuse and charge to make up for it being a curse bomb.

Fri, 02/08/2013 - 08:10

#12

Nineball-Seraph

How is it ban-stick..?

If it was just pure curse, I don't think it would work out very well. You'd probably have to spend a lot of time laying bombs because of a low proc rate on the curse, as that's the only way to allow for curse in this game, apparently. Also, curse does very little to protect you, and is unreliable due to the fact that most mobs attack pretty inconsistently except for maybe mechas. It would be like if gran faust could curse on every hit, but did no damage outside of the curse itself. Haze bombs already have longish charge times and fuses, I think it'd be balanced with the small as heck radius of the initial blast.

If you would compare this thing to AoA in PvE, it'd be harder to use this one, (with my "curse on blast, fire haze" idea) because AoA's fire damage is already fairly high and effective vs most mobs. Whereas curse is useless against most of the "harder" shadow-resistant mobs, and would primarily be useful against turrets, due to the nature of how curse works. Curse SEEMS overpowered, but in reality, is usually pretty risky and useless against AI enemies. It'd be like using a weaker ash, but with the occasional bonus prize of curse.

In PvP, this balances itself, but in a different manner. Most people in lockdown are pretty aware of how to deal with haze bomb spammers, and just pull out a gun and back away. Since the window to curse them with is so small, Imma guess that you won't be cursing people 95% of the time, instead dealing out mild fire statuses. Curse is better at disabling people in LD than killing them, as most strikers with immediately run back to base to heal when cursed. It's a skill-based risk-reward. You're giving up most of the damage ability of ash for the chance to curse if you can place your bombs correctly. It'd be more supportive than ash, and arguably weaker than shiver or voltaic because of the unreliable cursing rate.

I wouldn't be against a reduced haze radius on this bomb, though. Suicide curse is debatable, as you can avoid it if you stay away from the bombs.

Fri, 02/08/2013 - 08:36

#13

Infernoburner

@Nineball

You don't know about the ban stick's functions, do you? 1 swing next to a player and half of his health is lost, he dies, or goes into Sonic mode (1 health bar is left instead of dying, that's sonic mode). I'm fine with a curse bomb, but not with that it could team-kill or act kamikaze.

Fri, 02/08/2013 - 18:03

#14

Doctorspacebar

I suggested a Curse Bomb in this thread. It's called the Odious Orb and, while causing a Guaranteed Minor Curse on the user, could cause Curse and Shadow Damage on its blast, and always affects the bomb at the very least. (I've also got some other fun bombs in there. Check 'em out if you're interested.)

Sat, 02/09/2013 - 08:04

#15

Nineball-Seraph

@Inferno

Um, okay. I did wind up dropping the idea for the bomb that would damage teammates with it's haze. Like I said, the self-curse stuff is debatable, it's not necessary to balance the bomb. Do you have any opinions about the rest of the bomb?

@Doctorspacebar
Shameless advertising is shameless advertising... Not sure how those ideas would work relative to this bomb. I guess I see how you could use a minor curse as a forced cool-down timer, but you could just as easily extend the fuse or charge times and achieve the same effect. Especially since curse is random, and making it always affect a particular weapon under specific circumstances might require effort or some game-breaking coding on the dev's part. Assuming it's possible, though, a lot of that just hinges on how all the rest of the features of the bomb add up.

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A Carnavon haze bomb!