This is a lot of information, so I’ll try to format it as beautifully as possible.
Also, from a fanfic/fantasy perspective, the original is far better as it has the perfect balance of basically impossible and not quite actually impossible. I’m simply trying to get it down to the point where actual implementation may become a reality.
lastly, information that’s actually missing will be highlighted green
Part 1 changes, Stronghold of Raulum
- Gilded Marauder: seems a bit too tanky for a normal enemy, the dungeon will still escalate to normal enemies this tanky but for this area i think his def should be reduced to 65-70
- Desecrated Monolith: This bit of information actually surprised me, but there is no reason to actually kill it, alone it simply has a mildly irritating yet not dangerous and easy to dodge attack. the danger comes from trying to kill it, because that’s when it starts spawning effigys and warriors. I have two suggestions for improving this guy 1) make him activate and spawn at regular time intervals like the towers in shatters, or 2) have him behave as a switch, putting up a wall in his room that only goes away when he is killed. also, his self-healing ability is probably too much.
- Raulum the Terminal
- change the speed of Mace Strike and Blade Swipe to 9 or 10
- change stun time of Mace Strike to 2.5-3s, 5s is a long time.
- on phase 2 he will sometimes heal himself of stun and unleash some mace strikes, he should blink once or twice right before he does it as a warning, if for no other reason than to tell you what’s going on the first time you see him
- on phase 3 he ‘goes back to phase 1’ if not pushed into the next phase after 180s. how long do the repeat phase 1 and 2 last? they are tied to his hp, but he doesn’t heal enough to jump all the way back to phase 1 or even phase 2.
- on phase 4, does raulum move? if he doesn’t this phase is fine, if he additionally chases people i think he should summon fewer gilded marauders, 2-3.
- on his final phase, the rage phase, how long does he have the armored effect? having armored on these bosses brings their def to astronomically high numbers, for Raulum it’s probably ok as long as it doesn’t last that long.
Part 2 changes, Niruel’s Keep
- Aether Warlock: for his ‘spellbomb’ it should be given away by a lobbing animation, similar to Dr. Terrible’s green potion, but exploded immediately. this is both to make this dodgeable and feasible, since all projectiles have to have something for them to come from (i think). Alternatively, the Aether Warlock could spawn a cursor-shaped enemy with no hitbox, the cursor could then lazily move about and occasionally explode into many magenta bolts.
- Aer Demon: How is the invisible quieting projectile used? It doesn’t say anywhere how this is used. I assume it’s supposed to be either a quieting field or a quieting fountain kind of effect. I think it’s ok either way I just want to know
- Flux Node: Change speed of flux channel to to 9, and/or remove paralysis. alternatively, make flux channel a very infrequent attack.
- Niruel the Vanguard
- Same thing for his spellbombs as the Aether Warlock
- Rage Phase, in between Archmage-like supernovas when he chases players, his shotgun probably shouldn’t be comprised of actually random projectiles, that would look sloppy. how about dream magic, aether bolts, energy beams, and coriolis strikes in that order?
Part 3 changes, Province of Tyrrius
- Slow immunity is definitely a bit much, especially on the regular enemies here.
- Guardian Templar: reduce def to 80, reduce speed of blades from 20 to 11-12, at speed 20 but range 3 they would be nearly invisible since they would only last for a fraction of a second.
- Hunter Warden: It’s not stated how long it pauses before switching from blue fire to energy pulses. that pause time is critical to the balance of this enemy, it needs to be just long enough for paralysis to wear off in time for the energy pulses or this op little demon will be popping people left and right. I’m thinking just **.**5s longer than paralysis time is enough to get punished by the first wave of pulses but not popped by the whole barrage, assuming that they start running immediately after paralysis wears off. Even with this, he will still probably be the Ice Adept of The Beyond.
- Fettered Captive: his attack pattern is comparable to that of helpless souls and blobombs, but unlike those two, he does not self-destruct after the blue explosion. I think he should do that, and also increase the quiet time from 5s to 7s to urge players to dodge that one explosion. Also reduce speed of the blue explosion from 19 to 10, to match the blobomb’s speed which is fast enough. Lastly, Immunity to all status effects is not good, this includes armor break, curse, and slow. IMO i think that immunity to armor break should never be around, immunity to curse should be used in absence of more common immunities, and immunity to slow should only be used in extremely dire situations, such as boss rages in this dungeon
- Shadow Magus: reduce speed of shadow bolt to 8 or remove armor pierce of shadow bolt.
- Dark Cyclone: reduce lifetime to 5s and/or reduce spawn rate, to avoid getting perpetually attacked by these.
- Tyrruis the Enslaver
- As awesome as a 10s entrance would be, the time required to complete this dungeon is already astronomical. reduce entrance time to 3s, i think that would still give the chilling awe that a 10s entrance would
- Reduce total hp of Tyrruis to 100,000 and scale the hp of phases accordingly, between the 100 def of the monolith and the 80,000 hp of the remnant, this is already a very long fight.
- Reduce speed of darkness bolt to 9 and speed of orange star to 9
- Reduce paralysis duration or orange star from 5s to 1-1.5s, being paralyzed for that long during most phases will guarantee death, anyone who gets hit by a single one might as well nexus, and the player toll will be obscene.
- ‘barely visible blurry radiance’, as long as that is merely poetic language at work it’s fine, as long as there isn’t so many that dodging is impossible or that they don’t increase in speed.
- remove armor break effect of White Orb or reduce it to 1s, there’s a lot of projectiles going around.
- phase 4 the summoning, I think that it would be much simpler and much less confusing if the monolith was simply invincible while the remnant is alive.
- Reduce speed of silver shield to 10 and silver ram to 9
- Final Monolith phase, cycle through previous phases in a set order as opposed to random, or stop and do nothing for 2-3s in between phases while changing randomly.
- loot changes, change from dropping 2-3 manas to a life and a generous (though still random) distribution of multiple def and atk pots.
Part 4, Citadel of Oryx
these stat changes are made under the assumption that there are only 2-3 enemies per room, if there are more then further nerfs are in order
- Elite Armor Guard: reduce def to 85, reduce speed of oryx slash to 7, speed of dark orb to 10
- The Hollow, same immunity changes as Fettered Captive. Reduce speed of Black Blade to 10
- Elite Henchman of Oyrx: Reduce hp to 15,000, reduce speed of black shield to 8 and armor break duration to 1-2s
- Dark Acolyte: Reduce damage of white pulse to 150, remove healing effect of white pulse or make it equal to the damage dealt, like ruthven.
OYRX THE MAD GOD, SCOURGE OF THE COSMOS
- Sprite is cool and all, but he actually got skinnier. XD also signature shield is missing, but this is a purely aesthetic change
- drop hp to 200,000, possibly even lower
- reduce weak of white orb to 4-5s
- reduce pet stasis duration of energy boomerang to 7-10s
- reduce speed of dark shield to 6
- actuall set the damage of energy bolt, probably somewhere around 160, reduce speed to 11-12
- reduce slow duration of green star to 4s
- reduce speed of fire bolt to 8
- reduce speed of red blast to 5
- reduce speed of blade of darkness to 13, damage to 160. also stacking of blind and darkness means very little
- reduce speed of nova bolt to 8
- reverse the stats of magenta and red spinner for thematic consistency. (the elite henchman’s red star confuses, but oryx’s does not, that’s why)
- reduce speed of power bolt to 12
- reduce duration of all massive star effects by 50%, speed of each by 6
- reduce speed of shield to 12
- invisible shot is redundant really, if you touch him you’ll pop from all the OTHER shots
- remove buffing option, even with this changes it’ll still be insanely difficult on normal
- armored o3 is even tankier than an avatar, he should never have that effect up
- phase 2 just summon 2 elite henchmen
- orbital phase, don’t summon more elite henchmen, enough is going on as it is
- invisible projectile of black orbital is redundant again, no one is going to want to touch it. also no particle trail for lag reasons
- orbital phase remove the occasional lunging forward, no one likes it when feargus does it and just because oryx is the one doing it doesn’t mean that it’s ok
- final part of orbital phase an actual number of how many projectiles is missing, but there should be fewer coming from oryx than I’m imagining from what is written
- mini chase is fine assuming dodging is actually doable as you say it would be, although the result of that would be far fewer projectiles than you might think
- eye of the void invisible projectile is also redundant
- I’m assuming the ‘Inquisition’ shotgun phase is O2’s attack pattern but using the corresponding projectile from this oryx while he remains stationary. but it doesn’t say if he stays put. if he chases or moves while doing this he should not summon the 2 acolytes.
- ‘moar shotguns’ phase oryx should just be invulnerable the whole time, so that players focus on the crystals
- moar shotguns phase is complicated enough with just the inquisition shotgun overlayed with the crytals. re-introducing phase 1 is over the top
- sentry crystals should not summon more elite henchman upon death, enough is going on already
- doom bringer phase: I’m not actually sure what’s going on in this phase
- the end, i would say never immune to paralysis and always to stun, or have some kind of INDICATOR showing which one he isn’t immune to
- i also think that phase 4 chase stacked with the giant star gun and infinite range AoE is enough for rage
- death phase with all those projectiles seems extremely unnecessary and pretty annoying, also summoning even more minions upon death is too much
- oryx should have a liberal smattering of life pots all around, and a very high drop rate of tops
I have to go now, so I’ll put my suggestions for balancing the items later, but this is what i’ve got so far. Most of what I’ve said is reducing speed of projectiles, which seems to be a thematic constant throughout this dungeon. some projectiles may need to have their speeds reduced even further than what I’ve said, most shots in the Shatters don’t actually move very fast but they still kill people anyway.
I would like to say that Puffagod has done an excellent job on the behaviors of the enemies, so balancing the dungeon is mostly a matter of tweaking numbers. I would also strongly urge anyone who has simply glanced over this or skimmed it to go back and re-read the entire thing, there’s a lot there but that’s what makes it awesome.