Thoughts on buffing Andor Drakon

[JellySlayer]

I was thinking about submitting an RFE requesting a buff to Andor Drakon, but my ideas for exactly what it would look like aren't fully fleshed out, so I thought I'd post here first to get some feedback.

Basic idea: My feeling is that Andor is kind of a pushover. If you have appropriate resistances and enough SoCR to resist corruption, you can pretty much always kill him. Getting these items and resistances is really just an extension of the requirements to fight him; you need the Chaos Trinity/ToTRR, you need to be crowned, you need -Para and -Death. The battle itself isn't all that interesting either... he's got a tonne of hit points, but there's little strategy involved. You just need to keep hitting him.

Possible ways to improve him:

-His melee attack is really quite pitiful. An endgame character is likely to have enough PV/DV (60/60 is plenty) to essentially take no damage from his attacks. I'd suggest increasing the potency of his attacks--perhaps making them armor punching even.
-Immunity to paralysis. I think/hope this was already implemented, but otherwise... this seems like a no-brainer.
-Have him teleport occasionally. The AI isn't very smart with its teleport usage. AD will teleport if you stun/confuse him, but otherwise won't. Having him teleport more tactically (either across the level so you're forced to chase him, or just a couple steps away so you have to deal with summons/projectile) might be an interesting twist. Having him teleport frequently would probably be too annoying, but making it a possibility while he's in melee range might be nice.
-Give him the ability to disarm you or destroy equipment. Nasty business there.
-Unique special abilities. This could be anything, really. Maybe divine powers? Bolts of pure energy, inventory cursing/dusting, etc. Ability to remove intrinsics? Other ideas?
-More Chaos plane weirdness. How about having random room effects occasionally kick in? Sometimes the plane will randomly acquire the property (for a short period of time) that the directions are reversed, or that melee defense is increased, or the murder room effect? Other effects?

I'd argue that if his difficulty is increased through these sorts of methods, perhaps his HP could be dropped somewhat. The amount he has is a little unnecessary, IMHO.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I've never fought Andor Drakon because I find ultras boring, so I don't care much either way. But the question is: would he be a pushover also for an unspoiled player, or is he a pushover because highly spoiled players can beat him with his highly scummed chars?

People tend to wish for speed and use lots of speed-boosting items for that fight, so maybe it isn't so easy, is it?

Although as I mentioned I don't have first-person experience on this so I don't have a valuable opinion, I say this because I know that experienced ADOM players tend to err a lot on the side of buffing due to being immensely spoiled and playing with lots of scumming techniques that an average player doesn't use.

[JellySlayer]

I honestly do not believe that it is possible to reach Andor Drakon without being spoiled. I guess someone must've done it at some point, unless the original info about him is all code-dived. But yes, the battle (like Chaos Gate access) pretty much goes two ways--either you kill him fairly easily or you die instantly because you don't have paralysis/death ray resistance.

I've killed him with relatively unscummed, relatively normal speed (~130ish) characters before. He's fast (~200 speed), but his speed isn't really that much of a threat because his damage output is so low. If you have -Para and -Death, you're most at risk of either death by corruption or death by stat drain.

Ultra hopefuls are going to have significantly better-than-average stats and gear as it is...

[kordi82]

I like most of the ideas.

- chaos plane room kicking in.
- having to chase him is even more nasty than having to fight him due to severe corruption.
- no paralysis is a no-brainer. Or at least make it last very shortly.
- I also like disarming - one would have to have more than one source of DR resistance. However, destroying items + disarming + his speed + paralysis is just too much. He could destroy your amulet of DR resistance, disarm you and hit you with a DR basically in one turn or after paralyzing you. Remeber that even with resistance paralysis lasts quite long.
- punching through armor is ok, but with paralysis would be too much... same reasons as above. Imagine him constantly punching through your armor and paralyzing you for few turns. Then disarming and then Death Raying....


My ideas:
- What about him having "pain mirror" ability that he could turn on. What you do to him is done to you. Or reverse - if you boost yourself similar boost is on his side
- what about him being able to change shapes so that you cannot reliably slam him one slayer type. I.e. once he is undead, then he is unlife, then he is humanoid, then he is a ...plant .
- he could have corruption breath like Keriax
- he could turn on and off traits of certain monsters - i.e. once in a while he would acquire doppleganger's ability to dodge missles, or become karmic creature for few turns, then he would be quickling like etc.
- and my favorite idea would be to make him resistant gradually to the type of attacks you inflict upon him.... i.e. you hit him with Acid Ball... next Acid balls will take less dmg. This would add variety as player would have to have a few aces in his sleeve to get rid of him and would not be able to rely on one trick (btw. same way paralysis resistance could work)

Generally I like adding more ChAoS to him as you suggested so there would not be any fool-proof strategy against him and that the player would have to be prepared for everything.

[JellySlayer]

I like most of the ideas.

- chaos plane room kicking in.
- having to chase him is even more nasty than having to fight him due to severe corruption.
- no paralysis is a no-brainer. Or at least make it last very shortly.
- I also like disarming - one would have to have more than one source of DR resistance. However, destroying items + disarming + his speed + paralysis is just too much. He could destroy your amulet of DR resistance, disarm you and hit you with a DR basically in one turn or after paralyzing you. Remeber that even with resistance paralysis lasts quite long.
- punching through armor is ok, but with paralysis would be too much... same reasons as above. Imagine him constantly punching through your armor and paralyzing you for few turns. Then disarming and then Death Raying....

Well, -Death can be provided by multiple artifacts. AMW is very good for Andor since it gives -Death and -SeeI anyway... Crown of Chaos also provides -Death, and you need that. Amulet of raw steel is another. Paralysis resist is more of an issue, since only a very few items give it, and none of the guaranteed artifacts are among them. Item destruction might make it a little too luck-based I suppose. Though maybe giving -Para to the Medal or Crown of Chaos could be an interesting tradeoff.

- what about him being able to change shapes so that you cannot reliably slam him one slayer type. I.e. once he is undead, then he is unlife, then he is humanoid, then he is a ...plant .
- he could have corruption breath like Keriax
- he could turn on and off traits of certain monsters - i.e. once in a while he would acquire doppleganger's ability to dodge missles, or become karmic creature for few turns, then he would be quickling like etc.

I like these. Might be best to combine them even. Give him four or five forms (normal, dragon, beast, grue, lich...) with different abilities and weaknesses. Dragon/Wyrm one could do corrupting bolts, say, and another might be karmic or missile resistant.

[_Ln_]

Corruption breath is a nice idea to use the unique feature of ChAoS PlAnE to change itself. Currently, as soon as you hit him with a PoCC, corruption ceases to be a big problem (unless you are really low on corruption removal).

What I would also like from this line of thought is a more generic feature for phasing monsters - you are still able to hit creatures in walls with both melee and missile attacks despite them being in walls. I've been meaning to post an RFE about that. Now this supposedly can make the fight more dangerous, as the environment may shift to include AD in a wall and you will have to clear summons around you to lure him out and be able to damage. Of course you may still use ball spells.

Speaking about ball spells - why not add him the ability to cast all elemental ball spells? These are obviously undodgeable, can destroy equipment and will make currently more or less unused rings of elemental mastery more of a interesting choice. We'll have to provide either damage or aggro immunity for his minions though (otherwise they will attack him).

EDIT: We'll need to cut out ToTRR elemental immunities for this to work which is probably fine though.

Switching abilities is also a good thing. Preferably a set of abilities could be turned on to increase the random factor (for example, become karmic and doppelganger at the same time).

Other stuff may include:
- Copying himself (a la Baal from Diablo 2). We already have this for EG.
- Momentaliry disabling teleport control and teleporting the PC (I don't think he does that now even without the first step).

I've never fought Andor Drakon because I find ultras boring, so I don't care much either way. But the question is: would he be a pushover also for an unspoiled player, or is he a pushover because highly spoiled players can beat him with his highly scummed chars?

People tend to wish for speed and use lots of speed-boosting items for that fight, so maybe it isn't so easy, is it?

Although as I mentioned I don't have first-person experience on this so I don't have a valuable opinion, I say this because I know that experienced ADOM players tend to err a lot on the side of buffing due to being immensely spoiled and playing with lots of scumming techniques that an average player doesn't use.

Did a quick search around my wins on servers. Does this char look too scummed? Can't evaluate what stats were before they were drained (I guess somewhat higher), but this looks to be done in ~64k turns (which means she was scummed but not extensively).

[Stingray1]

Sorry, I haven't read any posts, will later, but just a quick thing.

He probably has been buffed since pre7, I know I lost to him at least once after pre7. So he is perhaps not such a pushover anymore.

Anyway, isn't the consensus that endgame characters should beat anything and not really die.

[grobblewobble]

-His melee attack is really quite pitiful. An endgame character is likely to have enough PV/DV (60/60 is plenty) to essentially take no damage from his attacks. I'd suggest increasing the potency of his attacks--perhaps making them armor punching even.

Yes, his melee attack could be upped. Maybe he should score more criticals?

-Immunity to paralysis. I think/hope this was already implemented

I don't think it is, not yet.

-Unique special abilities. This could be anything, really. Maybe divine powers? Bolts of pure energy, inventory cursing/dusting, etc. Ability to remove intrinsics? Other ideas?

I think the ability to curse the PC like witches seems appropriate?

A strong healing spell maybe?

I'd argue that if his difficulty is increased through these sorts of methods, perhaps his HP could be dropped somewhat.

He has like 10k hitpoints now, doesn't he?

[JellySlayer]

Yes, he has 10k, IIRC.

[Carter]

I honestly do not believe that it is possible to reach Andor Drakon without being spoiled. I guess someone must've done it at some point, unless the original info about him is all code-dived. But yes, the battle (like Chaos Gate access) pretty much goes two ways--either you kill him fairly easily or you die instantly because you don't have paralysis/death ray resistance.

the first win was a ULE but it followed the OCG ending which was around for years prior so there wasn't too much of a jump.