Hi everyone I'm new to the game and new to these boards!
Got a quick question regarding the Death Knights.
When you kill them and they drop armour it is claimed to be cursed. What would actually happen if I decked out my team in cursed armour?
Does it make any difference at all. If so what exactly?
Also I'm finding Scorpions hard to kill. Whats the best way to kill them? Surely theres some method that are the most quick and efficent.
Final question, do lightning bolts actually make a difference? I've never seen a monster die when hit by a lightning bolt, not even a mummy. Whats going on? Are they a hoax?
Lets see who the real Dungeon Master is out there ! It sure isn't me! LOL
Thanks for your time!
Cursed armour doesn't seem to make a difference, well, come to that, any armour doesn't seem to make a difference either. I usually don't wear any at all so can free up the capacity for useful stuff like food and flasks.
Scorpions can be a pain, but if you get them behind an iron door, you can shoot poison through. I find that a good sword is the best, like the 'thrust' option. If you get cornered use a poison cloud to get them to back off. They hate poison.
Yes lightning bolts are practically useless, especially when compared to fireballs. They use more mana and hit less hard so I can't see the point in firing them unless they come out of a storm ring etc. It must have been a tough mummy....
Its funny you should say that PaulH regarding the armour making no difference, I have a friend who is well into DM and he told me you might as well walk around the Dungeon naked for all the good armour does.
Naturally I thought he was jesting and he'd get a kick out of a newbie being gullible and wandering around and being killed easily through lack of armour!
So maybe he was serious after all.
And maybe the mummy wasn't so tough, if lighning bolts are useless it didn't need to be tough!
Cheers for the help!
Armour does make a difference, and cursed armour does make a difference
It's all about probability - the better the armour, and knights drop some of the better ones, the better your protection factor. In game mechanics the better this factor, the less damage you are liekly to have done to you
Stand beside a golem with armour, and without...you will spot the difference in a few hits
Similarly, cursed items lower your luck - a hidden internal characteristic that afflicts the chances of things happening from hittign to castign spells. Once again, its all probability - so while cursed armour might make it slightly more likely your character gets hit, the armour bonus means you will have slightly less chance of taking damage...
And of course, especially with high stats and levels, you might find you have good chances of not being hit anyway, so you might want to drop the armour for the capacity bonus...
scorpions - they have good armour and fire resistance, but aren't unconquerable. The best thing about then is their lack of concentration! If you get behind them, they tend to wander off...just a pity they are fast and encountered in corridors! But really, medium speed attacks like hacks, melees and trying to keep moving is the best idea, sinee their posion is so powerful anti-ven potions are good idea...as are a few healing potions at the ready! the backing off methods of paul's are good too
lightning - yes, it does less damage, and even less to groups (it only does maximum damage to one out of a party, the rest receive much less explosion damage) - that said, it isn't affected by anti-fire, and lots of later creatures have that
in blalance, with the extra mana and less damage, personally i have never used it as a viable alternative to fireballs : )
poison..yes, now there's a viable alternative! (except to mummies and skeletons).
the bets use of a poison cloud is with a freeze effect, or by trapping the critter in a dead end
Poison cloud is very useful for getting rid of monsters that are in the way - in chaos strikes back I used one on a dragon at the base of some stairs, and it kept moving in and out allowing me to hack it to death without moving or taking any damage.
Knights don't seem to be very much susceptible to poison - getting them under doors and simultaneously attacking them seems the best idea. If you are in an open area avoid direct combat and try the "hit and run" technique.
Scorpions are quick - but Ful Ir (Fireball) still serves the best if your party has enough mana. Unfortunately they tend to never walk alone... ;o)
I remember many years ago doing the 'golem' test, albeit in a very limited way, and only found a negligible difference between damage recieved when stark naked and a full armour of darc. Infact I recieved the biggest whack wearing the armour. I must have been unlucky
So I repeated the test... er but no golems or nights left in this game, so I found a very willing scorpion. i have always been scepticle about the claims of armour and their associated values
With Stamm, wearing full armour of darc, he sustained an average hit of 39. Not wearing, 75, so a reduction of 48%. Against a pain rat, wearing av. hit was 29, not 45, reduction of 35%.
Using Gothmog and armour of lite: scorpion, with 51, without 71, reduction 27%. Rat, with 29, without 43, reduction 32%
So yes, armour makes a difference though a small one. Certainly not enough to warrant carrying around 30kgs of extra steel each. If the values of the armour are relative to each other then there are some very useless pieces out there! BTW the hardest hit I recieved was 120 with full armour of darc from a scorpion. It seems that minimum hits get lower, as I recorded an 8 and an 11. The characters were super characters with maxed out stats.
As I generally only take one or two characters in a new game I need that carrying capacity, and if i do wear clothes it will be flaimbains, cloaks, elven boots etc. So the way I play, armour does not play a role. And who takes hits off golems anyway?!!![/i]
Just out of interest, did you also record the amount of times you were being hit as a percentage of the attacks done to you with and without armour?
I've only noticed it when casting shields, but power shields (so large armour value i would assume) goelms and knights struck less, as well as with less damage
Agreed, its all probablilities, but i still think 35% avareage ain't to be sneezed at! : )
Unfortunatley I didn't, but it was very similar: well possibly skewed in favour of the armour. It was only a quick experiment, I may well retry it. If anybody else wants to add some stats, ie mean damage, number of hits etc with armours, noting person characteristics that would be great! We could evalutate a global percentage reduction for each armour set.
Maybe we could share the work - one person doing hit evaluations with say ten different kinds of armour and ten different creatures - hundred hits from each. That should be a good base for a statistic. Otherwise you can test a very long time on your own if you want to do it all. I'd also suggest taking CSBwin (same version) and keeping logfiles for finding out errors or keeping track of inconsistencies.
One problem I have realised is that the types of armour do not have a set value throughout their pieces ie the breastplates have a value much larger than a helm or foot plate. Recording many hits, as PitD suggested, will eventually average out for each armour suit. With a smaller number of hits, as I did above, a lot of the hits may have been directed on the breastplate, who knows? We could use CSB edit and make a reference set of armour with all pieces set at 255 or whatever.
Hmm. Yes to find out what parts are attacked is hard - so we would need a standardized test version to check, otherwise the results would be useless since we could never know for sure what was attacked. Or can that be built in a version (like the CSBwin 3.0++ version being able to display XP points increments and more...)?
So let's get to the point, who would be willing to take a part in these tests once we have defined a unified modus? I've raised one hand already ;o)
Well of course I'll join in the experiment! Anyone else got time to be whacked a 100 times by a golem?
PitD, I have just about completed my update of Tower, there were quite a few mistakes in the 1st (the ones you pointed out, and I found buttons on doors that had keys lol!) i have also created a nice Balrog which is roaming around... I'll get a copy up before long
Glad to hear that. I have to recover some sanity after playing Conflux II but I won't forget about it ;o)
For the hit testing maybe we should create/make a list along the lines:
Armour value used (unified protection): aaa
Monster having fun with the character: bbb
Total attacks by creature: ccc
Hits taken: ddd (from ccc), percentage
Total damage taken: eee
Average damage taken from all attacks: fff
Average damage taken from successful attacks only: ggg
and the same with different.
and the same without armour.
and for other creatures.
and the combinations.
It sure isn't me! LOL
