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Topic: Dungeons

Hi again,

  It seems that most people suggest to camp one site to get xp and stuff.  Then when they get better they find another site and camp it as well.  Thus far camping seems to be about the only thing that works for me.  I'm lvl 21, and it seems like I have 3 options.  Walk around killing hordes of very easy creatures (like mice and snakes), walk around in the graveyard crpyt north of Valour and die most of the time cause I get ganged, or camp a 2 spawn skeleton location. 


Are there places were I can actually walk around and explore without getting ganged by 5 creatures who respawn almost as fast as I kill them?

  I guess what I'm looking for is a bigger dungeon that has a slower respawn rate.  That way I can work my way from the front to back, only running in to 2 or 3 at time, and not really seeing any respawns.  If I decided to work my way back out, then I would be killing stuff again because it would be respawning behind me (as opposed to in the same room as me).

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Re: Dungeons

Well, really, there are not so many places you can "explore." Mainly, if you are in a place, it is to level. Because of this, most things created are simply for camping. If you really want to wonder, you could try the ant cave east of Valour. Though, there are tons of things here, and while they are weak individually, they will most definitely jump you...

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Re: Dungeons

Loth has a point...but if you're going to go to the Ant Cave, I'd suggest bringing 1 or 2 people with you just in case you become swamped.

Zerodyme is a ghost. You don't know he's there until he's cut you. As your hands fall off and your torso splits, the last thing you'll think is, "Oh, fuck! Zerodyme was here!"

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Re: Dungeons

Yeah, the lack of large combat areas has been a problem for a while now; the ant cave was an attempt to get away from the 'small camp area' idea. It's worth a look, though at level 21 it might be too easy. You could try the sewers perhaps.

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Re: Dungeons

Melchior, I would say that the hardest time to level is from 20-100.  There are few items you can use and few places that are suitable.  Just keep trying...

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Re: Dungeons

The sad part about the ant-cave, Zer, is that it doesn't work at all. It is really only good for trying to get certain items. A level 21 hardly would get the experience needed from this area. Yet, at the same time, a level 21 would most likely die very quickly. You say it would be easy, but the monsters get too large in groups, and a level 21 would actually die very quickly. If you want to level, you need to find a place to camp. If you want to collect certain items, same thing, find the place. Sadly, the quest system in this game is lacking, which really hurts the entire leveling system. Hopefully the new version, whenever released, will fix these problems.

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Re: Dungeons

Lothar wrote:

...the new version, whenever released, will fix these problems...

Don't you mean "if released"?

Zerodyme is a ghost. You don't know he's there until he's cut you. As your hands fall off and your torso splits, the last thing you'll think is, "Oh, fuck! Zerodyme was here!"

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Re: Dungeons

Mel, I'm telling you to leave Faldon; but if you want a quest based game check out The Fourth Coming.  There are many different servers with many different attributes.  Also, you might want to take a peak at Ultima Online.  Those two games are based on quest and prize role playing.  I prefer Faldon though, because if I don't feel like playing ten hours I can jump on and level a bit or goof around.  Check them out and let me know what you think.

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Re: Dungeons

Zerodyme, I think "when" is quite reasonable, really.

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Re: Dungeons

But, really Zer. How bloody long has this been talked about. I realize that a game like this doesn't hatch from an egg in a day, but how may years does it take?

Zerodyme is a ghost. You don't know he's there until he's cut you. As your hands fall off and your torso splits, the last thing you'll think is, "Oh, fuck! Zerodyme was here!"

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Re: Dungeons

Well, it's made good progress this past month. That much I can say.
I've worked on it off-and-on before that, and admittedly if I had a full 40 hours a week it would come along about, oh, five to eight times as fast. I worked an actual job this summer, which was probably a mistake considering I didn't even have significant money to show for it. Mechanical engineering takes up a lot of time on weekdays during the year, most of it busywork at the moment though. Bleh.
There's a lot left to do, but the 'low level' is almost to a workable state, at least.

Visibility code is what I've been doing, on Saturday anyway. There are a few twists left to work out, and then it's on to implementing garbage collection. I didn't think I'd need it, but the code is getting complex enough that it could be a benefit, and the visibility code has cyclical references that would be hard to remove, so it'll have to be done. After *that*, I'll be cleaning up the base Entity class, because it still has some (*extremely* confusing and hard to debug) code from back when I was letting multitile entities (like, say, boats) point and move in any direction in 3D, while allowing things to pathfind across them. I'd done that under the premise that when I get to writing a 3D client it'd be a benefit, and it would, but these things have to go gradually, and adding needless complexity to help with planned future features was somewhat foolish on my part.

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Re: Dungeons

Wow...you're getting me excited for its release again...

Last edited by Zerodyme Kyupura (January 22nd, 2007 12:59 AM)

Zerodyme is a ghost. You don't know he's there until he's cut you. As your hands fall off and your torso splits, the last thing you'll think is, "Oh, fuck! Zerodyme was here!"

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Re: Dungeons

Don't get too excited. Even when the low level is operational, there's still much work before it's an actual game.

Though I admit higher level code is far more straightforward, and above that more fun to do..

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Re: Dungeons

Ah sounds sweet. So if I read right your making the server be able to support a 3d client when made?

Dont look down here, my message is up there.

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Re: Dungeons

Man.. when you are in Ant Hill.. Drop a FoP and just macro Nova.. then have a Greed macro bot that also hits enter.. or what ever the pick up button was I forget.. you'll level in.. maybe.. too long to even count.. so good luck on that.. but its the ONLY way to afk level these days.. Well.. Atleast it is the method all the cool people use.

Last edited by Fireborn (January 22nd, 2007 2:49 PM)

I don't question my sexuality, my sexuality questions me.
Self Gratification is God's greatest gift to man.

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Re: Dungeons

FB, are you lonely? You seem lonely... *pays attention to FB*

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Re: Dungeons

Lothar wrote:

FB, are you lonely? You seem lonely... *pays attention to FB*

Nonsense. Fireborn is never lonely. He runs a brothel. Proprietors of brothels are never lonely.

Or, if that doesn't suit:

Fireborn is a Klein bottle. He is a non-orientable surface. He does not exist in his true form in three dimensions. Therefore, he does not need love or attention.

It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

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Re: Dungeons

Possibly... but you know it is true.

I don't question my sexuality, my sexuality questions me.
Self Gratification is God's greatest gift to man.

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Re: Dungeons

Zammbi, that's not exactly right -- the server could support any kind of client it wanted. I was saying I had removed
some features that would have been nice to have when I did do a 3D client, because they made things too hard to manage.

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Re: Dungeons

What do you know.. Progress... I might come back actually if this keeps up yikes

Destroyer of Worlds

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Re: Dungeons

Oh sorry I read to quickly of your post heh. If you could say... what is the % of the coding is done for the whole game? (Just coding)

Dont look down here, my message is up there.

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Re: Dungeons

Zammbi, saying a percentage of completeness would just be a guess. There are so many ways to measure it, time, completed functions, lines of code... The only one that would mean a thing to you is time. Lines of code is really not something you would know before finishing, and even with good planning, function-count could be wrong. Time could vary based on his life, based on unexpected troubles in code, and many other things. Really, I would say just don't get your hopes up until he is ready to do some sort of beta...Or at least until he says he has something that somewhat represents a game.

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Re: Dungeons

I know that, all I just wanted was a guess. But who knows he could give a exact date when finished tongue No one else knows so doesn't hurt to ask...

Dont look down here, my message is up there.

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Re: Dungeons

Lothar wrote:

The sad part about the ant-cave, Zer, is that it doesn't work at all. It is really only good for trying to get certain items. A level 21 hardly would get the experience needed from this area. Yet, at the same time, a level 21 would most likely die very quickly. You say it would be easy, but the monsters get too large in groups, and a level 21 would actually die very quickly. If you want to level, you need to find a place to camp. If you want to collect certain items, same thing, find the place. Sadly, the quest system in this game is lacking, which really hurts the entire leveling system. Hopefully the new version, whenever released, will fix these problems.

I'm not terribly upset about the lack of quests.  I like just wandering around and seeing what I can find.  About the Ant Hill... I tried it again after getting a few lvls and some better equipment, and I was mopping up the swarms without too much trouble.  Then I ran into a creature that had a name above it (still an ant looking thing though), and it killed me in about 2 seconds. 

  I think the biggest problem I have with the dungeons is putting creatures of vastly different difficulties in the same areas.  The cemetary has the same problem (named creatures are way tougher), as does the place you drop down in next to Wuville (the slimes and... headless things weren't too tough, I walked a little further and the ninja turtles destroyed me).  I now know which rooms I can go into, but I had to learn that by dying multiple times, then walking for the next 5-10 min to get back to where I was. 

  I think it would work better if you'd have a gradation of difficulty as you get further from the entrance, or have some obvious "barrier" such as a stairwell to seperate out the difficult areas.  Having a bunch of moderate enemies in a room, and the next adjacent room have guys that can kill you in 2 hits doesn't work well in my opinion.  Well... I take that back, having rooms with tougher guys is fine as long as those areas are a small percentage of the dungeon and not right next to the entrance. 

  I think this is a great game (I've had a fix for this type of game for a long while!), and it's been put together pretty well.  However, I think the creature distribution could be a little more forgiving.

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Re: Dungeons

I agree with you. But its the way everything was setup, really there was no planing. And maps like the ant hill and wuville sewers were created with a random map generator.

Dont look down here, my message is up there.