Monster balance! (Round 2, starting version 0.801)

[x4000]

Okay, we had a lot of great thoughts about monster balance in the prior thread, but I don't want to have giant threads that get impossible to understand.  I dealt with everything from that thread that I felt like was appropriate to deal with at this time (the landsharks, for instance, I skipped because of the changes to melee weapons and whips potentially making them not an issue). 

In this thread I am ONLY interested in feedback from version 0.801 and onwards.  A lot has changed balance-wise, and I don't want to confuse the discussion with data points from past versions, heh.

Thanks again to everyone for their support and enthusiasm!

[Misery]

I'll start us off here:

Steamships.  These guys may as well be invincible.  You have to get lucky with the level generator, as the only viable way to kill one is to have a spot you can stand on that's above the ship.  If such a spot does not exist, there's no point at all in attacking them.   The biggest reason being that jumping and firing at an angle down at them is mostly undoable.   Angled firing really only works on the ground.  Whips can penetrate, but it takes many, many hits with one to kill the thing.   I cant tell if these guys are MEANT to just be avoided, or not.  That's the only real way to handle them though.  It's possible (though rare) for these guys to appear in places that literally make it impossible to continue through the area if you dont have a whip to slowly poke them with (such as on the side of a big steep slope that you must climb).  Their attack is good though.

EDIT:   Sphinx, increase it's "awareness" range a bit. It's possible to poke these guys with the whip from just outside of that, so they will just sit there and take it.

[Misery]

Another one, the scorpions..... these guys went from "kinda tough" to being one of the nastiest enemies in the game.   The same logic I'd brought up before with them applies:  They're waaaaaaayyyyy too strong to be as common as they are.  Alot of spells simply cant get past that whirling fireball of death that they launch every .2 seconds.   Much too often, the solution with these guys is just to crash through and keep running, because you cant hit them otherwise and it takes ages for them to reach a position where you might be able to do something, due to them firing over and over and over and over.

Previously, it took about 3 or 4 of these in a cave to make the situation really nasty.... now it only takes exactly one.    The only truly reliable strategy I've found for taking these things out without getting hit a ton of times is to use only seekers against them, but this has the downside of making areas with them in it take absolutely forever, particularly since they'll just swat half of the seeker shots out of the air.   They're not all that bad in a surface zone, but caves and buildings can get horrible really fast with them around.

As always, this is on Hero difficulty.   Aside from these guys, the desert region as a whole is pretty well balanced out right now.

[Jerebaldo1]

I feel like clockwork pigeons are out of place tough in comparison to other grassland enemies; the main issue is that they have too little a cooldown on their attack, which leads to large fragmentation pellets everywhere,  and that they are oddly hardy for such little guys.

[nas1m]

For me firewalkers are the main source of frustration at the moment, mainly because their projectiles are neither blocked by walls nor blockable by high caliber spells. As i tend (to try) to make use of the concentration system these "unavoidable" hits really bug me.

To make things worse, they always seem to be able to "see" me and thus start to spam their undodgeable/unblockable projectiles long before i reach them.

PS: +1 on the sparrows as well

[Misery]

For me firewalkers are the main source of frustration at the moment, mainly because their projectiles are neither blocked by walls nor blockable by high caliber spells. As i tend (to try) to make use of the concentration system these "unavoidable" hits really bug me.

To make things worse, they always seem to be able to "see" me and thus start to spam their undodgeable/unblockable projectiles long before i reach them.

PS: +1 on the sparrows as well

Firewalkers are a bit easier to deal with than they seem;  they've got one of those kinda funky patterns that is indeed quite dodgeable, but it just takes a bit of practice.  Even in a crampy vertical area, it's still quite possible to pop these guys without getting hit.   The idea is to throw a couple of shots at them, preferrably slow-moving ones, and then run away;  you want to be moving away from the thing when it pops, which puts you in much better position to dodge the aftermath.    That "aftermath" is usually the only time I ever get hit by these guys, they're actually fairly easy to approach.

I dont usually have too much trouble with them.   For me the nasty desert enemy is the Flame Mummy, those guys are tougher than they look!   Which reminds me:  their fireballs will actually shatter Campfire.  Dunno if they're supposed to do that.

[Billick]

Agreed on the steamships.  Those are 100% auto-skip for me. 

The range on the eels' attack maybe should be toned down a bit.

[Pepisolo]

Oh, just a slight aesthetic thing about those steamships (the blocking dudes?), they should really move around slightly as if they are floating instead of being rigidly fixed in place. It'd look a lot nicer.

[Professor Paul1290]

These two are more for feel than for difficulty balance as I don't think they would affect difficulty much, so it's probably not as important as the above.

The mosquitos/bugs/whatever the tiny little enemies are called, I'm really not sure about these. They aren't really that much of a threat, but it might be somewhat somewhat annoying to some people to have an enemy that dies easily but you can't hit very well at all with the 8-way aim.
Maybe you could just enlarge their hitboxes. They seem tiny and fragile enough that it wouldn't be too unreasonable that a blast of magic passing near them would fry them outright even if it doesn't necessarily touch them.

I think the same "issue" applies for the little metal spider things (tackle drones? not sure if that's the right enemy). They're not too much of a threat once you get used to them, but the fact that they're hard to hit with the 8-way aim because they're so low may annoy some people a lot. Maybe have them hop a bit while moving so they hop up into "shooting height" or enlarge the hitbox a bit.

[Hunam]

Agree with the clockwork pigeons and that the main issue seems to be fire rate. By the time I evade and counter they have already fired another round that blocks mine. They usually hit me at least once. Not sure hour bad they are suppose to be but I either target them first or avoid em.

I like the idea of enlarging the mosquitoes hit box slightly too. The art is also so small that when I first encountered them I thought fireballs were just spawning in the air. Overall I don't dislike them. I guess they fill the niche real Mosquitos fill. I'm constantly spraying the surrounding area with spells to drop them and failing.

[Misery]

These two are more for feel than for difficulty balance as I don't think they would affect difficulty much, so it's probably not as important as the above.

The mosquitos/bugs/whatever the tiny little enemies are called, I'm really not sure about these. They aren't really that much of a threat, but it might be somewhat somewhat annoying to some people to have an enemy that dies easily but you can't hit very well at all with the 8-way aim.
Maybe you could just enlarge their hitboxes. They seem tiny and fragile enough that it wouldn't be too unreasonable that a blast of magic passing near them would fry them outright even if it doesn't necessarily touch them.

I think the same "issue" applies for the little metal spider things (tackle drones? not sure if that's the right enemy). They're not too much of a threat once you get used to them, but the fact that they're hard to hit with the 8-way aim because they're so low may annoy some people a lot. Maybe have them hop a bit while moving so they hop up into "shooting height" or enlarge the hitbox a bit.

The seeker or homing spells, whatever they're called, are good counters to both the mosquitos and sometimes the various types of leaping spider things.    Also the "cleft" spells are really good for the leaping ones as well. 

The leaping spider types can be annoying, but none of them seem overpowered at least, and they're not super-common.    The mosquitos are REALLY annoying, but their shots are weak and seem to have a very low caliber, and they have next to no health.   A single homing shot will just flatten them.

[Misery]

Another one:  Scout Drones.    These have the same issue that the clockwork avians had, which is that they're just suddenly ON you, with little you can do about it.   Unlike the Avians though, these guys are even worse in outdoor areas, because they have the super-irritating tendancy to drop from above, whereas the avians will always come from the sides.

Also, Mirror Cubes, these guys seem absolutely unhittable..... I really dont know what to do about them, as the only thing that can hit them is certain ammo spells.   Other than that, the ONLY way to defeat these is to stand there, get hit, and fire at them when they hit you.  Nothing else touches them.

Eels:  Way, way too strong.  The layout of most water areas that contain these mean that the only way to even hit them is to get close..... and you absolutely cannot do that or you WILL get hit.  Even from a good angle though, it's hard enough to even damage them, as their attack just shuts down most of your spells entirely, and like the scorpions, they fire it every 2 seconds.  These are at their worst in the swamp areas.   

Crag Spitters:  I'd say, slow down the firing rate on these guys.   They're like the pigeons, except super difficult to hit with anything.   There's alot of situations where the only solution is wasting an ammo spell just because you cant get anywhere near them, and no spells can either move at an angle that will hit them, or break through their attacks.

I forget the name of this one, but it's like a huge robotic.... uh.... snail?   It's the one that has to be beaten with it's own missile.   These guys are incredibly easy to kill.... probably one of the easiest in the game, and I get the impression that they arent supposed to be.  It's really really easy to get their missile to just instantly smack the floor right in front of them, and then they just burst after that one hit.

[Pepisolo]

Also, Mirror Cubes, these guys seem absolutely unhittable..... I really dont know what to do about them, as the only thing that can hit them is certain ammo spells.   Other than that, the ONLY way to defeat these is to stand there, get hit, and fire at them when they hit you.  Nothing else touches them.

My worst nightmare these guys. I actually thought that they might be indestructible. I just run away when they appear.

[Knightlord64]

I think Hungry Ghosts might need a little toning down in boss rooms. While they are easy to evade and dodge, they seem to always come up behind me while I'm fighting the boss and they seem to do quite a bit of damage. This isn't really big problem normally but when the boss is on a platform surrounded by lava, it seems to be hard to deal with them.