Originally Posted by
sytar6
Do you not need to get that message about the cat's spirit rising up and plunging pathetically to have ruined your kitty karma?
It's based on a perception check. I think happens pretty much all the time if Pe >20. Regardless of whether you fail the check or not, your kitty karmic is ruined.
Originally Posted by
sytar6
Second question: Does nobody have an issue with the pacing of the game?
Your perception here is pretty much accurate. It depends a little bit on character--squishy characters with low starting To and PV like thieves, mindcrafters, non-BUGWIL casters are very likely to find the beginning of the game very tricky and will die very frequently, and will find the game gets steadily (or, in the cast of power casters, quickly) much easier. Personally, I feel that the difficulty of the game decreases dramatically as soon as you find a stable supply of morgia. Doubling or tripling your HP is a real game-changer for most characters. I don't notice a particular hump around the DH/AF quest, myself, although, I normally sidetrack at that point to do the Griffyard, Pyramid, and Darkforge raid if I can. I almost always do DH if I can--as long as I've got a wand of monster detection and a wand of teleport, I'm fairly confident I can get through (having 110 or more speed helps too). If there's a bad tension room or one that I can't avoid, then I'll grudgingly do the forest. With dual shields and coward, it's not so bad, and it's downright easy with invis or darkness. Just tedious. You may find things slowing down a bit as you progress with your troll, since the leveling rate is going to start to hurt in the late teens, and other classes/races will surpass you. There's also the ever present danger of a ghost lord killing you in 1 hit.
There's a difficulty spike around the ToEF, although it depends a lot on how much time you've spend grinding and how lucky you've been with resources. Some characters, it's a cakewalk. If you've had bad luck with weapons, it can be a bit of a gong show. I normally consider the game won once I'm passed the ToEF, although the cat lord and Archmage can still kill high level PCs if you aren't careful. Or if you have really bad luck and hit a threat room of emperor liches or great black wyrms or something. But overall, yeah, the post-ToEF game is much, much easier. Your character is strong, you have a lot of resources at your disposal, you've got sources of invisibility, speed enhancements, and controlled teleportation. Also, you don't spend a lot of time on each level--in the endgame, unless you're clearing a vault or temple, your goal is normally to simply find the stairs ASAP and descend. It just isn't worth looking around because the experience from random mobs isn't worth it compared to big scores like the cat lord and the Archmage.
I blame it partly on the way danger levels work. At DL 50, it draws from a random pool of monsters ranging from rat to emperor lich, but there's only maybe 5-10 monsters in the pool that are actually dangerous, so the chances of running into many strong monsters even at high DL is pretty low. If it heavily weighted stronger monsters as you increase in depth, I think that would increase the challenge. Nerfing darkness and invisibility would help too... and maybe a couple more uber-monsters would be nice. I'm still waiting for the wall-walking ghost vortex that adds 1000 years of aging when it blasts you.
Although all that said, I've had the odd character--again, typically one with bad luck with gear, lowish stats, or poor class abilities like a druid--to have a really difficult time in the endgame.
Last edited by JellySlayer; 05-01-2012 at 03:28 AM.
Hoping to win with every class, doomed. Archer, Barbarian, Bard, Beastfighter, Druid, Elementalist, Farmer, Fighter, Monk, and ULE Priest down.