[CF-Devel] Drain

[Mark Wedel]

David Hurst wrote:
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      It wasn't to long ago that I got my first taste of drain! I tell you I went
     
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      straight out and bought a strange ring. =). Those things take of )(*& loads
     
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      of points and very quickly. I think that is half the reason we have them so
     
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      defended against. You can literally go from good to bad in a few seconds
     
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      with one of those. I am actually intending on adding life stealing and grace
     
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      stealing to the drain attack_type (specifically for devourers). I think we
     
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      really need to review drain and depletion, especially now that it is in the
     
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      shadow of PR! Grim reapers are everywhere and without a ring you are lost, I
     
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      think it is alittle over the top, like a dragon was before PR, if we could
     
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      make the PR reduce the % points drained it might be alittle better? But I
     
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      seriously lost 3 levels when I got attacked by one and I was too busy
     
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      attacking demons!
     
     
 drain resistance currently reduces proportionally.  If you are 90% resistance
to drain, you would only lose 10% the experience as if you were not resistant to
drain at all.

 Depletion has never struct me as a big deal.  Sure, you need to go out and buy
a potion of life (was restoration), but other than that, it is mostly a
nuisance.  I don't know how you would deal with depletion and PR - you can't
drain a fraction of a stat.

 I think the problem is really the grim reapers are probably too common.  As
said with my acid message, those monsters should be rare.

 I think the commonality is directly related to ease of immunity.  IF map makers
perceive that most everyone will be immune to the monster, they don't seem much
issue tossing in a bunch of those.  I think if the ring of life did not exist,
there would be a lot less grim reapers out there (strange ring has been around
for a long time, but that is a very hard ring to find - much harder than say the
ring of life and not as good as the ring of life).  Even when I'm not worrying
about drain, I'll probably have a ring of life on simply for the regen
properties.

 But I think the point remains - if you got into that same situation again (grim
reaper and demons around), I think you would probably change your strategy -
your not going to keep bashing on the demons and let the grim reaper bash on
you.  You'll retreat, equip appropriate items/spells, take out the grim reaper,
and then proceed to the demons.

 What makes them put fear into your heart is because they are so nasty.  If they
just drained a tenth of a level, once again, you probably wouldn't care about
them much.

 But I'll repeat again - these nasty monsters add some interest to the game, but
they must be used sparingly.