Damage and scaling of explosive trap items (Bear traps/barrels)

[Misery]

Related mantis link:   http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=8466


Mostly, I'm making a topic to A: get it noticed, and B: see if anyone else has any input on this one.    I use bear traps alot on various types of ground foes (and even sometimes on aerial enemies that get low to the ground, like eagles or worms), and while they're pretty useful, the Explosive version and the Mossy Barrels currently just arent.

Instead of retyping all this though, just gonna copy-paste what I put in the mantis thingy:

"Specifically, explosive bear traps, and the Mossy Barrels.

Mostly, these dont actually seem to scale with the continent tier; they do decent damage against tier 1 enemies, but on any higher tier, they do very little.

Testing these on continent tier 3, against Raptors, which are weak to fire, I dropped an explosive bear trap, and two mossy barrels; Raptor crashes into it, everything explodes, and the thing took at most 1/10th damage, if even that.

The Mossy Barrels in particular perhaps could also do with a damage boost; it's not easy to get these things in large numbers, and they take a bit more setup than the bear traps, requiring being used in tandem with an explosive bear trap, or being hit with a spell after being dropped. Since they're difficult to get AND quite difficult to use, it seems like they should be doing pretty massive damage; perhaps boost these to make them more desirable?"

Also, the difficulty I'm at is Master Hero, and I'm on the first continent, though with an "expert" start so it's the one where Lava Flats and Deep areas start showing.


I'd had this thought a number of times before, but I wanted to experiment with these a bit before I made a Mantis issue or forum topic on it.   Did that, so here it is.

[Nethris]

Does the mossy barrel item drop the same barrel as are seen in Skelebot Junkyards?  Haven't really played with the items, but this is making me wonder if the barrels in junkyards are less lethal to enemies at higher tiers as well.  Would almost make sense to have them scale to current tier and have the player have the usual protection against that, but that might have odd effects if they scaled to area tier rather than continent tier with respect to ability to kill off the player.  That may be appropriate though.

[Misery]

Does the mossy barrel item drop the same barrel as are seen in Skelebot Junkyards?  Haven't really played with the items, but this is making me wonder if the barrels in junkyards are less lethal to enemies at higher tiers as well.  Would almost make sense to have them scale to current tier and have the player have the usual protection against that, but that might have odd effects if they scaled to area tier rather than continent tier with respect to ability to kill off the player.  That may be appropriate though.

It LOOKS the same, I have no idea if it's stats/behavior are quite the same.   I think the junkyard ones have a larger explosion radius?  I could be remembering that wrong.

[GhostMatter]

No for mossy barrels! At least scale the damage for enemies and reduce it for players!

See here. Insta-death is not cool

[Misery]

No for mossy barrels! At least scale the damage for enemies and reduce it for players!

See here. Insta-death is not cool

Aye, that too.

Mostly what I was referring to though was the barrels dropped by the player, specifically, not the ones that appear naturally in the junkyard.


But yeah, those ones in the junkyard HURT, dont they?   I think the problem is that sometimes it's not so obvious that they are there.... the game sometimes seems to draw them behind other things like trash bags and whatnot.

If it helps, for that area, try using Luminance Arc's distance to pop the metal containers as opposed to any other spell; probably the safest way to break anything in that area.

[LayZboy]

When I dropped barrells in the towns, the NPC all go mad and try blowing it up which is pretty funny the first time you see it.