Correction: the shots have an extremely low frequency, but decent amplitude.
It’s similar to the Spirit Dagger, as you can see here:
Lair of Draconis Rework
Seelpit
#102
Lessking
#105
Fair enough, i got one from feargus (as 2nd) and tried using it the rest of the dungeon
but it doesnt feel like its made for samurai (i just cant guarantee hitting stuff from 4 or more tiles away) and in that area its st seems better (granted your enemies are exposed)
On ninja it might work out pretty darn well, but i havent tried it yet
Lessking
#106
Maybe you cant see it very well, but if youre lagging this phase gets quite a bit messed up (easier by a bit, but less predictable)
This phase is general is quite lethal (i died for this screen shot ;_; )
Seelpit
#107
An issue I may have found, or at least something that didn’t seem intentional to me:
when Feargus is fought third, with Limoz fought second, the inherited, opaque green, needle-like shots pierce through armor, for some reason.
Not sure if that’s intentional.
Xaklor
#108
Now I’m seeing why people are having issues with feargus’s orbiting shade phase, especially when feargus inherits blue shots. In the version I made, feargus’s secondary inherited shots would “turn off” after a few seconds, and then come back a few seconds later. for some reason kidd changed that before PT so that they’re active constantly. that was kind of important. those need to be tweaked if kidd is going to insist on having it that way.
DYSTRATIX
#109
I’m gonna go ahead and writeup all my thoughts on the LOD rework here.
I ran the dungeon solo on all 15 classes at least once, trying my best to get a unique ordered run each time. I have not however run the dungeon in any form of larger group so all this feedback should be taken with that in mind.
I really enjoy this rework, I felt it managed to keep me engaged for all of the runs I did in quick succession which is not something many dungeons can do. A big part of this is the inheritance mechanic, especially since I was trying to get a unique run each time. Although in some cases the changes to the fight are small it does make each run different which keeps you from falling too much into a pattern. While some of the inheritances are certainly harder than others none of them ever felt completely unfair which is always a good sign.
For me the most dangerous orders with inheritances are as follows:
-Black, Green during the red fight. The combination of having the extra sick shots while having to dodge the directed pet stasis and minions made this very hard. I honestly think this phase is harder with just black and green and not doing blue after as the blue minions felt easier to me, but i will get to that later. Despite this being the hardest order for red in my opinion I’m not sure how it should be changed, this order is really hard just due to the prevalence of anti healing shots and not the individual fault of either of the inheritances.
-Green, Red, Black, Blue during ivory. I find green to be by far the most dangerous first pick when it comes to ivory, restricting your effective movement space a lot more than any of the other combos do. That in combination with the ivorys dangerous red shots while chasing makes this very hard but still doable. I was contemplating if the slow from blue made this more deadly but the blue orbs felt a lot easier to avoid than the black ones for me.
The easiest inheritance order to me was:
-Green, Black, Blue during Red. I already posted about this so im sure its being fixed but this order lets you be completely safe during minions phase. This is only really doable with blue minions as all other minions will be much more capable at shooting you behind the rock.
Its generally hard to judge an order as the easiest as none of them really make the fight easier than the base fight.
Individual inheritances that I thought could use some tuning regardless of order:
-X, Black, X during Red. I never found it to be any challenge at all to avoid the shots red shoots during the minion phase and I imagine in a group you may not even notice them. I’d recommend maybe having him shoot out 3 shots instead of just one so i cant just walk around the whole arena in a circle without effort as neither of the first or third inheritances for this make it much harder to avoid them.
-Black, X, X during Red. I honestly don’t think this one is that powerful however when compared to the other two first inheritances in the red fight it is by far the most deadly. I think the tornadoes should deal entirely negligible damage as their main punishment for being hit is pet stasis.
-X, X, Green during Black. I thought this one might be a little too much, the sick and pet stasis being prevalent during Blacks spinning minions phase and large minion phase is very punishing. Its still entirely doable, especially with range but i think the minions shots might warrant a small damage decrease with green.
-X, X, Blue during Red. The minions in this one just don’t seem capable of hitting me most of the time, I assume this is because their shot pattern is static instead of aimed but these made the fight seem easier to me than any other minion including the normal ones.
-Black/Red, X, X, X during Ivory. I find the most difficult parts of ivory to be his chase phases when there is not much room to move around, these two starters however give you plenty of room to maneuver during any part of the fight. I’m not sure I would recommend expanding the lava pool size however the miasma might benefit from being one tile further in.
-Final inheritance for ivory. I think the last soul is a little underutilized for this fight, it does make you somewhat weary but it only really does one thing the whole fight. I don’t think it should be too crazy but I would like if the statues had more than one shot pattern.
Non-inheritance tuning:
-Bosses need a few non-inherited armor piercing shots. I did two runthroughs with warrior on this dungeon one with and one without jugg. It should come as no surprise but I was able to absolutely steamroll the thing with jugg. Now I don’t believe the dungeon should be balanced around things like jugg specifically but a lot of things can be face tanked with a knight as well. As a result I feel there should be a few more shots that armor pierce regardless of inheritance because as of right now red inheritance is really the only thing that affects those classes.
-Green shield explosions don’t deal much to high def players. All it really does to a knight standing right on it is sicken them and deal ~70 damage which if feel is much less punishing than it should be. What I would recommend is making the shield explosions on green do moderate armor piercing damage as an extension of the above suggestion.
-Make ivory mirrors stun immune during his black copy phase. I like being able to stun the mirrors as a knight as it feels like i’m having an impact, however I find that stunning them on this phase is a little inconsistent as you cannot stun the black minions during his version of this phase.
-Blue’s pool teleportation phase. The shotgun in this phase is very damaging even if you get hit by just one shot. The main issue for this phase lies in close range classes, when its just blue without inheritance this phase isn’t that bad as sidestepping the shotgun is doable but any of the second inheritances can make it very hard to get close without taking hits due to extra bullets. I find this was mainly an issue for ninja as it lies in the close range but low def category. I recommend making blues aimed shotgun a little weaker for this phase.
Non Balance Issues:
I’ve reported these already but I feel I should list them again.
You can stasis the spawn dragon statues. Pretty self explanatory.
Cloaking at the right time during Feargus’ ram phase breaks his behavior. I was able to replicate this one but it took many attempts, i’m still not entirely sure what the timing for it is.
Final thoughts:
Although most of this post was me talking about things that I think should be changed I do believe this is one of the coolest reworks to date. The inheritance system makes this much more enjoyable and It no longer feels like a slog to solo. As I mentioned as the start all this feedback was from a solo perspective so it may need some extra thought put into it on the group side. Even if everything remained unchanged come prod I still believe it is pretty well balanced and entirely doable just with a few standout things. Running through on every class I can say for the most part its pretty balanced for everything, obviously some classes will have a much easier time (paladin) but I don’t believe it is too hard for any single class.
Ecookied
#110
Not sure if this was intentional or said already or a big deal, but @Kiddforce the dragons at spawn of the Lod are able to be stasised.
Yasmule
#112
I had 2 complaints that I would like to see fixed, after 2 Black-Green-Blue-Red ninja soloes (max leg pet). First attempt had DC from red 10 secs after minion spawn, 2nd attempt was fine. Maybe a simple high mem crash.
- Blue swimming phase should be tweaked. He disappears very quickly and doesn’t give time to shoot, I would like to see movement pattern/visuals to predict which pool he will pop up from, so the short range player can be waiting next to him. Alternately let him stay up longer to give my slow brain some time to figure out an attack plan that doesn’t involve eating bullets.
- Green orbiting shields do not allow the short/mid range (low defense) player a fighting chance to attack from the outside. The bullets aren’t too dangerous, and inside the ring is okay, but there’s no way to get inside without getting hit. I like to see options that don’t involve me getting hit. Some kind of stutter so they don’t shoot simultaneously, or intermittent phase reset where they move and give me a second to safely put a shot of damage in?
Black 1st was insane but possible, Red with black, green, blue buffs was also insane but possible. Ivory was good.
Yasmule
#114
While it’s easy to see the dot moving off to some other pool, it isn’t helpful for getting close because of how fast he is. A pattern would allow you to predict 2 hops in advance to be ready and waiting, or slower movement/longer phases would allow slower players to walk up easier.
Lessking
#115
so this can happen twice in a single run, then would it be possible the whole dungeon order can just be laid out by Ivory?
Though i havent had Ivory decide my first opponent yet (had 6 forced opponents until now)
And are the white rates increased on testing, that celestial is my 3rd lod white and i think i havent done 25 as of yet (ive only gotten two lod white on prod : / )
Kiddforce
#116
It can only happen 2 times since we wanted to provide players with some choice, and because the last dragon can’t be randomized due to there being no choice the Altar can only choose the second and third opponent though getting it twice in a row is a rare case.
Rates are not final currently but they aren’t by any means meant to be high, they are what I’d call realistic, so sorry for that.
Lessking
#117
Np i honestly would love it on prod, its just that a guildie of mine is fairly against it (removing the one part in realm where stratagy is easy to apply) and it annoyed me because i wanted to try the/my hardest version (PBGR) on both knight and sorcerer (as opposed to samurai on which i did most). As followed the knight’s run got screwed over and i couldnt be arsed to do another one. The sorc one succeeded though : D)
tomorrow ill write an ‘ín-depth’ review from my perspective on things
in short i like it, but there are some point that could use tweaks (both buffs and nerfs)
And the rates dont bother me much, while i would still get excited over event whites (or ones im actively looking for) getting a celestial or two less wouldnt really matter. Since it isnt essential to play samurai or ninja and it gave me a ‘early acces’ on it in testing over my guildies, which is worth more tor me tbh
Alsalman
#119
Every time i go to the 2nd dragon the game dc’s me, it feels like something is running in the background that’s causing that.
Nevov
#120
Are we sure about doing this? Seems to be trolling us to add randomness into the order when we’ve otherwise got control over our path. Will it not just cause annoyance?
Like how Craig/RNG used to control what portal we could go into in the Court, but complaints & unpopularity saw that removed.
For key-opens especially, since you might organise based on doing order X, and when given order Y it makes the team unviable and the whole run fails: “thanks Deca(!)” “hate this” “omg Dercar” blah blah.
Toastrz
#122
The goal is to avoid total stagnation of the choice element. Even if we get all of the inheritance possibilities into equally balanced states to ensure there is no clear best option, people will likely eventually settle into a preferred order and stick with that one as much as possible. The altar forcibly selecting a dragon is decently rare (in all of my testing I never saw it auto-choose twice in a row), but will hopefully be enough to throw an occasional curveball and ensure that people still need to be adaptable.