Playing RTC at high difficulty levels

andyboy_uk · Post by **andyboy_uk** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 7:27 pm

Oh MY god. Im playing original DM on difficulty 15 with the original characters. Just got to the worm level. Im getting MULLERED here. Tiggy is already a << master wizard the amount of fireballs shes been chucking about. its MADNESS.. I love it.

Post by **Lunever** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 7:29 pm

Yep - but if you aim for a high score, remember - hit but do not get hit. Incoming damage severely reduces your score, so keep moving.

Post by **Ameena** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 7:48 pm

But, presumably, don't move so much you end up colliding with the walls

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$eoub!!! · Post by **$eoub!!!** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 1:50 am

andyboy_uk wrote:Oh MY god. Im playing original DM on difficulty 15 with the original characters. Just got to the worm level. Im getting MULLERED here. Tiggy is already a << master wizard the amount of fireballs shes been chucking about. its MADNESS.. I love it.

Yep, I tried too

Not only damage are raised but monster speed too !
Well, I don't yet how I will deal with the Giglers ^^
Each step on a wall causes 15 hp damage, each monster kills you in one hit ! That really frightens !

I'm not sure to continue because I wonder how I'll kill Knights with only magic...

andyboy_uk · Post by **andyboy_uk** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:07 am

I think the idea is by the time you get to the knights there you will probably be archmasters anyway. Difficult to build up fighter levels when you cant get touched by anything, already used the alter of rebirth a few times which im totally ashamed of. In fact, I killed wuuf deliberatly right at the start so i could chuck his bones around a bit to build up ninja levels for the others, and darouu has been dead for most of level 3. I met my first worm last night at around 2.15am in the morning and just ran away (off to bed). Its my last day out in singapore tonight so out for a few beers with work, but i have a 14 hr flight coming up so will have another crack at it on the way home to the uk.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:41 am

Two of the knights can be killed, in a boring fasion, with repeated use of the pits at the start I would guess - Luever can say if this is possible or not

andyboy_uk · Post by **andyboy_uk** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 11:50 am

I think Im going to need to level up everyone to a decent fighter level before going too much further.

A

Post by **Lunever** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 11:53 am

Well, in theory they can be killed by making them fall, but it may take a while until they get to the teleporter, and trying to completely kill them that way can take ages. There are 2 other possibilities to deal with them though:

1) Do train a couple of fighter and ninja levels, and do train lots of priest levels by beginning early to constantly brew stat boosting potions and shield spells. With all stats 255 and a thick layer of shields you can fight them, especially in an open place where you can walk backwards in circles, occassionally hitting them between your moves.

2) Easier though is to not kill them - just lure them into those small storage rooms adjacent to the large hall, move out very quickly and close the doors. You won't have killed them, but you will have gotten rid of them. If you have a decent priest level, fear weapons can often drive an animated armour back, which is especially useful if you make a stand at a closing door.

Tougher than the animated armours are the materializers. Make sure you have at least one, or better two vorpal blades at hand. Do not reject stat boosting potions for ideological reasons. Boost up your front characters' wisdom to maximum. There is an invisible monster containment teleporter at the beginning of the eastern part of that level. In theory you could meet a materializer or two before that, but that occured ever only in 1 single game out of dozens to me, most of the times those 2 materializers had already joined tha pack of the other 6 long before I ever entered that level. Now, move in, kill also the single oitu in that corridor, and pull back as soon as you encounter a materialzer. When it's following you, it will be stuck at the monster teleporter. Now you can sidestep 'round the corner, quickly disrupt and very quickly sidestep back behind the corner again. You can optimize this process by abusing the ESC key to pause the game in-between, if you have a nimble keyboard hand, but doing so will kill the game's atmosphere, so I don't recommend it, unless you are utterly desperate. At this pace of speed, do not try to hit the materializers behind the corner twice, for if you do so, they will eventually succeed at blasting you to bits. It is difficult enough to kill them with the above procedure. With wisdom 255 you need to score a dozen hits or so until a materializer will die, without potions each materializer will take an uncountable number of hits before dying. Oh, and most important: COUNT THEIR LOSSES PRECISELY. DO NOT GET CONFUSED ABOUT THEIR NUMBER. DO NOT RELAX UNTIL YOU HAVE KILLED 8 MATERIALIZERS.

Same goes for other stats - sure, with low-level characters every incoming hit will be lethal - but you can allow yourself to get hit occassionally with a chance to survive by boosting dex up to maximum. If you are attacked, most, albeit not all hits will miss. Of course, those hitting home will still be absolutely lethal.

Early starting to boost wisdom will be your energy perpedo mobile - more wisdom means faster Mana regeneration, faster Mana regeneration means being able to cast more spells, casting more spells will result in earlier levelling up in the spellcasting classes, which will give you more skill and Mana to make wisdom potions...

Of course, maximum Mana regeneration will kill you, without any help from Chaos' minions, if you don't boost vitality along.

If you follow the advice with the wisdom potions to become skilled enough as a priest to have the ressources for dex potions, and engage archmaster monsters toe-to-toe you can't really harm them, unless you boost strength too.

So all in all, yes, at first I used dungeon mechanic traps and fireballs a lot too against archmaster monsters (although I did not use rookie characters), but later I switched my strategy to a potion-based approach (although the brewing procedure can be a pain in the butt without those handy aura-spells from DM2).

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 1:01 pm

You need to kill one of the knights though to get the key...I embarrassingly can't rememebr if you have to jkill the second, but seem to recall no, and so yeah, I've used the trapping i nthe small room trick too

Post by **Ameena** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 3:07 pm

Repeated use? Surely you can only drop each Knight down a pit once? How would they get back up again? lol

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 3:39 pm

teleporter

Post by **Ameena** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 4:01 pm

I did that stupid thing of reading Page One of the thread, forgetting there was a Page Two, and replying to the last post of the first page instead, lol. Yeah I didn't think of the teleporter...probably wouldn't have thought that it works on mobs as well as players.

Sabreman · Post by **Sabreman** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:06 pm

Tiggy is a female?

Post by **Ameena** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:09 pm

Lol. You think "Tiggy" is a male name?
Apparently Wuuf is meant to be female, but I don't know of anyone who's ever thought that he is.

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 8:07 pm

Let's not go OT with more discussions about Tiggy's gender. No, the real off-topic is to discuss how crazy people are who think she could ever have possibly been male. Look at that hair. And the name. Bloke? I think not!

Sabreman · Post by **Sabreman** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 9:39 pm

I'm... stunned. I just always thought it was a little man like Boris (Boris is a man, right?).

Funnily enough at the moment I'm doing a RTC run with Tiggy solo, which I always liked the challenge of in the original game - taking the weakest character through DM and Chaos and molding them into a fearsome killing machine by the end.

Scrambling back to the topic though, I preume you change the difficulty by altering the txt file via the editor?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 9:43 pm

As was stated in the original thread this was split from, it is changed via the config file

andyboy_uk · Post by **andyboy_uk** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 6:05 pm

Sorry. Thread Hijacking, didnt mean to

A

doomguard · Post by **doomguard** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 5:34 pm

how can i set the difficulty-level?

Post by **Ameena** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 5:36 pm

Change it in the Config file...it's there somewhere

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Post by **Lunever** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 7:15 pm

Yes, you can INCREASE the difficulty in the config file. However, so far George does not allow players who'd like to DECREASE the difficulty to do so. That is, if you reimport veteran characters and would like to have things like game speed as in a normal game with low-level characters, you just can't do it. I still vote for being alllowed to do so at the expense of score.

Post by **Lunever** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 4:41 pm

Killing Dru-Tan was difficult today, not because at increased difficulty every poison bolt from him was immediately lethal, but because falling down the 2 levels along with the earth key in order to get into his lair was immediately deadly.
Please limit pitfall damage increase due to difficulty to 998 points of total damage.

Kain · Post by **Kain** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 3:10 am

This spiked my interest so I took Boris solo at level 15 and double monsters.

Worm level and Boris is at level 2 archmaster priest and level 3 archmaster wizard.

Just wondering... do melee weapons ever become useful at level 15? I'm doing only about 1-2 damage with a decent str boost and saber. With no melee, double the standard number of knights are going to pretty much impossible for poor Boris to handle alone. I may have to go back up and enlist a couple more from level 1.

Post by **Lunever** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:44 pm

Well, with boosted strength AND decent fighter levels I usually do at least as much damage with melee weapons as with spells, even at maximum difficulty.