Major source of "Not fun!" (Instadeath)

[Mánagarmr]

I cursed out loud at this and ragequit the game. Not kidding. I'm literally fed up to death with this. Can we please fix this somehow? It's just not fun anywhere. There is no way you can defend against it, suddenly you just blow up out of nowhere in the middle of combat with 0% chance of avoiding it.

I have no idea what those shrapnels are supposed to add to the game. Environmental hazard? Sure, but please make it something that doesn't drop a tactical nuke on your head out of nowhere.

[Misery]

I cursed out loud at this and ragequit the game. Not kidding. I'm literally fed up to death with this. Can we please fix this somehow? It's just not fun anywhere. There is no way you can defend against it, suddenly you just blow up out of nowhere in the middle of combat with 0% chance of avoiding it.

I have no idea what those shrapnels are supposed to add to the game. Environmental hazard? Sure, but please make it something that doesn't drop a tactical nuke on your head out of nowhere.

Best thing to do is take a spell like Luminous Arc or Ice Cross, to pop those things before you get close to them.  Fire at them and jump back.   Even if you dont see any barrels..... fire ANYWAY.  They can be hidden behind other objects.

Treat them like Stinging Nettles, in that they are EVERYWHERE.   Unlike the plants though, these explode.

I've honestly never had a problem with them.  The trick really is just being very careful when they're around; and in the Junkyard, you can safely assume that they WILL be there.

[x4000]

It also depends on what spells you are using.  If the spell doesn't cleave through background objects (which most spells don't), then you're at no risk of setting these off even if you don't see them.  Same deal with enemies: almost no enemies (actually literally none that I can think of at the moment) damage background objects.

It's one of those "adapt to your environment" type of things.  If you use a spell that does major AOE damage to the background while standing in the middle of a bunch of propane tanks, you're going to be caught in the middle of multiple explosions.  Just using a slightly different spell completely avoids the issue, and these only seed in the junkyard flats to begin with.

[Mánagarmr]

They were hidden behind an urban crawler that I was fighting and it was crawling with other creeps around it. I was using leafy whip due to my +40% earth enchant. Boom, out of nowhere, instadeath.

I know that you can avoid these by not using a background damaging spell, but does a new player know this? Also, do they have to be instant death if you make that mistake? I wouldn't mind if they were like other traps and just damaged you substantially. But this instant nuke is, tbh, unfair.

I'm not arguing their existance. Just their singular ability to instantly blow you to kingdom come without any forewarning what so ever. I may have been in the beta for ages, and I even knew about these barrels, but had forgotten. A new player have no chance of knowing this.

Simply turning them from "Blow it up and you're dead" to "blow it up and you're in dire straits and need to run" would make a world of a difference. For reference, my max health is around 700 or so, so I wasn't exactly running a squishy either.

[Gemzo]

I'm going to chip in and say my first death ever was to this (I wonder if these explode? Oh. Well screw that). It wasn't really fun and I never really went back to the junkyard again. The prospect of being instakilled is iffy to begin with, but attach it to a very common background object and you certainly won't see me anywhere near that place, no matter how "simple" it is to avoid.

Also it might be more fun if they were more useful against the enemies as well...

[Mánagarmr]

Wow...ragefest in my OP. Oh well, that's what happens when you post just after a ragequit. But yeah, I can't really see their fun-factor when it's a potential instadeath every step of the way. Dangerous hazard like spike traps, nettles and whatnot, absolutely! Just not "KABLOOIE! Instadeath."

[TechSY730]

I think that the number of explosive items allowed to be near each other in combination with making explosive items more obvious (which includes not allowing them to be drawn behind other background entities) is needed. An individual mossy, explosive barrel, while it will still hurt, won't insta kill characters of any sort of reasonable HP build (or at least, I don't think they can, after their damage nerf). How many barrels were set off to get that sort of damage?

[Jerebaldo1]

Yeah this does worry me as well; it being way out of step with the intent of having death be a series of mistakes...

Edit: I think TechSY nailed the root cause: barrel-stack behind background objects being a permittable "nightmare case" at the moment

[Mánagarmr]

How many barrels were set off to get that sort of damage?

I wish I knew. They were hidden behind an Urban Crawler so I never saw them. Just instantly went splat at the same time as the Crawler did. Also, I tend to avoid these types of areas, due to said barrels, so I don't know how much damage each barrel does.

[x4000]

Yeah, the mossy barrels aren't intended to insta-kill anyone.  However, they put off a fair bit of shrapnel and it depends on how close you are to the epicenter of them.  I suppose we could just lower that a lot, and then the proximity of the barrels (which we really can't easily control) would matter a lot less.

[Mánagarmr]

Just to make this a bit more sensible for voting and whatever, I'm making a Mantis suggestion to have barrels looked over.

[Ulrox]

My 2 cents.

I dont mind having 500 damage things around as long as they are dodgeable and easially spotted. Otherwise it does suck out the fun a lot. I dont know about these mossy barrels though. Never encountered them (and if I did, I never died because of them, but I dont use weapons that hit the background)

[tigersfan]

Keith fixed this. All should be well.

[zebramatt]

I'm not against there being "under the LV-426 cooling tower" situations but there has to be a warning first - unexpected death from wrong weapon usage is bad bad.

Then again, I'm not against toning down the damage either.

As you were! 

[Mánagarmr]

Since Keith put in a fix for this for next release, I'll personally make sure to test the "new" barrels. I don't want them to go all toothless either.