changing foe elemental weaknesses and resistances

[Ryme]

Edit: Changes complete. Read farther down for more details...

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Just a word of warning that foe elemental weaknesses and resistances may be changing quite a bit over the next few days or couple of weeks. We're trying to do some things to make those things have a little more coherence and consistency, and also maybe distribute some imbalances (psychic resistances in NCI, I'm looking at you ....).

In the meantime, assume much of what you've memorized about various foe elemental facts may be changing.

[Strlikecrazy]

In the meantime, assume much of what you've memorized about various foe elemental facts may be changing.

Not too hard to live with, think there are 3 foes i cross that are good against fire. So not much change for my brain to handle!

[Ryme]

I never know how detailed I should get, but the weakest foes will almost all get at least one strong elemental weakness, and will rarely have resistances. As they progress in toughness, they'll gradually pick up some resistances, and have lower weaknesses, until the toughest have few or no weaknesses and one or even several strong resistances. There's also going to be a system that provides a much stronger tie between said resistances (often but not always linked with elemental damage dealt) and the particular weaknesses.

Up until now it's been essentially random, and often overlooked. As of now I've made tweaks for foes ranging from weakest through the zion's quest, more or less, but they might not all be finalized. May be a few days or even longer before I get through the rest of the mainstream quests.

[Muhandes]

Would appreciate a word when this is done so spading can commence. Thanks.

[Ryme]

Will do.

IotM has me sidetracked, so it'll probably be a few more days. Also, I've got a couple of things at the lower levels I feel like I need to adjust, so even the changes that have been made aren't quite set in stone.

[Kurg]

So you *did*change something already? While checking out the new combat items, I did notice thugs seemed to be fire vulnerable, for example - which felt a bit weird.

[Ryme]

Yep, I've made some changes:

As of now I've made tweaks for foes ranging from weakest through the zion's quest, more or less, but they might not all be finalized. May be a few days or even longer before I get through the rest of the mainstream quests.

[Ryme]

Pretty sure I'm content with everything under level 11, which means the Robot Hive + R-R-Ranch are done, but the Santarium, NCI, and on up are not.

[Ryme]

Okay, changes complete. Just to reiterate what I said in the middle of the thread:

The weakest foes will almost all get at least one strong elemental weakness, and will rarely have resistances. As they progress in toughness, they'll gradually pick up some resistances, and have lower weaknesses, until the toughest have few or no weaknesses and one or even several strong resistances.

That is as advertised. We've worked a lot of foe weaknesses in, a feature that had been previously badly overlooked. On the other hand we did add more resistances than before, but some of the greatest imbalances (for instance, a tendency to be heavy-handed with psychic resistance) is now addressed. In general both resistances and weaknesses are pretty well distributed all over the place, as well as within each zone, while a few zones tend to specialize.

There's a strong correlation between resistance and weaknesses, but I'll leave that up to the spades to work out, and I'll note a few robots are a little funny, because robots with psychic weaknesses didn't make any sense. There's a kind of weak correlation between resistance and foe damage elements -- not sure whether it's strong enough to be useful or weak enough to be confusing, so I won't say any more about that.

Hopefully, collectively, these changes provide better balance and a little more satisfaction.

[Ryme]

I've definitely thought about it for psions, who are more limited in their range. Elementals have a pretty broad set of options already, so it's probably less useful for them. Obviously naturalists don't have any element to resort to, and might benefit from having something flexible permed.

[TeKRunneR]

Okay, so I've been trying to spellsling this run, and the new resistances are making that a bit annoying. Not that I don't like variety, or that these resistances don't make narrative sense in general, but I find it quite tiring to have to remember which foes require lightning bolt, and which ones require firestorm. Not that this didn't happen before, but from what I've seen many more enemies have resistances now. The KoL system where all enemies in a zone are pretty much of the same element might seem dull, but I think I found that more enjoyable, gameplay-wise.

Not that I mind *that* much personally, I just won't spellsling until I write myself a GM script that autoselects lightning bolt / firestorm against relevant enemies...

[Ryme]

I sympathize a bit, Tek, though I still think overall this is better than it was. For one thing, the distribution is more balanced, whereas before it was pretty erratic and definitely unbalanced toward psychic resistance, particularly in the later levels of retcon.

Also, for as many resistances as I've added, I've also put in two or three times as many weaknesses, so it's quite useful. That does require a bit of memorization if you want to be efficient, or if you're really cutting is close on fights, but if you're going with blind luck or just guessing the odds are greatly in your favor you'll come out ahead more than you might have previously.

I'll certainly admit in KoL I tend to rely on knowledge that some zones are heavily weighted to one element, though I'm not sure if that's a "good" thing for gameplay, even if it's convenient for the player. While most zones have a pretty wide distribution, we've got a couple of (non-quest) zones that I set up to be mostly weighted to two pairs: Resist A/Weak B and Resist B/Weak C. Of course this is a total jerk move on my part because there's still no magic answer -- half the foes are weak to the thing the other half resist, so you still need two elements to be efficient. Future zones, particularly non-quest, are likely to do that pairing a lot, with maybe very rare exceptions for foes that are all one element.