Anachronism missions...... worse than before?

[Dizzard]

Sea worms aren't really native to the abandoned towns are they? 

It's no wonder I suck at anachronism missions.

I assume they weren't as obviously they're supposed to be in the ocean, but they damage me when I hit them....

[Penumbra]

Sea worms aren't really native to the abandoned towns are they?

Abandoned Towns and the Ocean are from the same time period, even though they are not the same zone. This means their monsters are shared for Anachronism missions.

[Dizzard]

Sea worms aren't really native to the abandoned towns are they?

Abandoned Towns and the Ocean are from the same time period, even though they are not the same zone. This means their monsters are shared for Anachronism missions.

I thought the ocean was from the prehistoric period, way way before the abandoned towns period.

[Penumbra]

From the patch notes:

"Fix The Anachronism" missions: Fixed a bug where a monster from the same time period but not "native" to that particular region type would not be counted in the "remaining monsters to kill" total but would also not cause mission failure if killed. They now count as native in both cases (though killing a native no longer causes failure, as noted above).
An example of that abandoned-town regions are from the same time period as ocean shallows (not ocean, though), so a sea worm is actually "native" in an abandoned-town anachronism mission.
Thanks to Kemeno for the report.

This is just something I remember, because, well, I just do. I don't know which game mechanic is supposed to teach the player that these two terrain types are from the same time zone.

[Misery]

FYI -- I'm not happy with the damage reflection mechanic either.  It's on my list to make it so that when you attack the wrong kind of monster, instead a second monster spawns.  That's a lot less damaging while still getting the point across.

That's awesome! I know I've had needed monsters on the other side of Skelebots and whatnot in narrow corridors. Being able to kill a few, at the expense of extra monsters sounds great!.

Well, the intent would actually be that you couldn't damage the non-anachronistic monster.  But now that you mention it, making it so that you could damage them but then two new monsters pop out somewhere at random would perhaps be more flexible.  Perhaps too much so?

What if it's only when they die? Then, you get no feed back on the partial hits, so missing a little is not penalized. Then, when you kill the wrong type of enemy, 2 pop out somewhere else.

If it were based on the number of hits, then large spells would summon fewer monsters, and Ocean Worms could create dozens and dozens of monsters.

Well, the original idea was:

- When a non-anachronistic enemy WOULD die, they instead stay at 1 health and a new random enemy pops directly out of them where they are (could be anachronistic or not).

But it sounds like the new idea could be:

- When a non-anachronistic enemy is killed, two random enemies pop out somewhere random in the level (could be anachronistic or not).

As long as the player is made aware of it somehow, this sounds like a great idea.  So a missed shot, or even a wrong kill, doesnt GUARANTEE you get smashed with heavy damage, but instead creates the POTENTIAL for it...... yeah, that sounds like a good idea indeed.

It'd also make the "stupid dust storm stuck in pile of robots" scenario less completely irritating.

As for WHERE to spawn the things, either in view of the enemy that got shot wrong, or in some random place, hmm...... not sure what to say on that one.

[nanostrike]

Simple solution (if it doesn't work like this already): Apply the standard damage resist to these attacks. At tier five, I think that's an 80% reduction.

At the very least, THIS.  I had an Explosive Esper get killed by a Rock Throw that bounced off of a robot.  It's explosion hit about 5 native monsters and insta-gibbed my character.  Not fun.

However...as a means of showing a character that they shouldn't attack a "Native" monster, you should have the attacks bounce off of them (Like piercing attacks do on Skelebot Grunts) in addition to the damage.




Also, some sort of "Monster Encyclopedia" where you could look at the different monsters and see what time period they're from, resistances, some background on them, ect...would be really nice and add to the game's lore.

Heck, an encyclopedia about the different time periods that you fill in as you get further into the game would be awesome.  And no, I'm not talking about the "Clues" system which, IMO, works terrible.

In fact, this could be the answer to your "Bonuses for killing monstes" thing: Give the player lore entries about the monster and the monster's time period after killing so many of them.  It'd be giving a reward without making it required grinding.