DEATH Comes As The End

[Dr. Best]

Is it just my rotten luck, or does Death really like to spawn on the very next road battle when you're trying to recover after a lair boss?

I like wandering mini-bosses like the Collector (and soon the Warlord ) because they substitute a road fight for a surprise boss fight. With Death, you're getting forced into a boss fight after a complete road battle - where you've possibly already spent your combat items and limited use abilities.

Here's an idea to make it feel less like being kicked when you're down:

Let her spawn after half the road fight. She needs to spawn two gravestones to make her mechanics work anyway. After you kill the first 2 enemies, she enters the fight, cuts down the remaining 2 with a cool animation and starts the boss battle!

The first 2 kills are usually dangerous backliners with low hp anyway, which can be taken out fairly quickly, so chances are you'd have all your tools still ready for the boss fight.

What do you guys think?

[RopeDrink]

It's all part of the risk/reward, so yes, good ole rotten luck.

Over the past few runs, I've walked right into Antiquarians, Collector, and Death after lair bosses - and the only thing keeping Shambler out of the equation is light management - but I also account for the possibility that such a thing might happen whenever I choose a Lair.

It has always been possible to stroll right into a mini-boss after a region boss, and I see no reason why it should be removed. It is, after all, a punishing rogue-like - and while the bosses do drop powerful items, they're not all must-have keepers, you only need one head to enter the mountain, and the game even tells you what you're fighting for before the final battle.

It certainly sucks to turn down the opportunity, but really, we're expected to plan and plot our way to the end while making the best of what we find, rather than brute-forcing everything.

As for the "Let her enter a started fight", that cuts down a lot of stalling opportunities.

[Dr. Best]

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

It's all part of the risk/reward, so yes, good ole rotten luck.

Over the past few runs, I've walked right into Antiquarians, Collector, and Death after lair bosses - and the only thing keeping Shambler out of the equation is light management - but I also account for the possibility that such a thing might happen whenever I choose a Lair.

It has always been possible to stroll right into a mini-boss after a region boss, and I see no reason why it should be removed. It is, after all, a punishing rogue-like - and while the bosses do drop powerful items, they're not all must-have keepers, you only need one head to enter the mountain, and the game even tells you what you're fighting for before the final battle.

It certainly sucks to turn down the opportunity, but really, we're expected to plan and plot our way to the end while making the best of what we find, rather than brute-forcing everything.

As for the "Let her enter a started fight", that cuts down a lot of stalling opportunities.

Hey there, and thanks for commenting on this topic!
Can very much relate to the Antiquarian and Collector encounter - also the lack of Shambler encounters, which, despite knowing it's mechanics, I still avoid like the plague because that thing is f***ng dangerous.

I'm very much on board with the punishing rogue-like, and my current goal is to get all my heroes to 5-Memory - so everything here is basically grumbling at a high level.

I do not care if I die due to overconfidence - you can choose a dangerous path in pursuit of skill-points and bite more than you can chew. If you gamble, you may lose - and that's absolutely fine in a game like this.

The thing I find frustrating is getting thrown into that boss battle with my resources spent. This feeling of: You know I would have whopped death's a$$ if I had access to my battlefield medicine to cure that bleed - or my cauterize, maybe those bandages i just used and have another freaking stack clogging my inventory... but no, I happened to use those things as intended ... here's a surprise boss to ruin my day!

As for stalling, that's certainly viable in every easy fight, but not my concern in a "here, have a surprise boss on top of your just finished fight" situation.

[RopeDrink]

As for stalling, that's certainly viable in every easy fight, but not my concern in a "here, have a surprise boss on top of your just finished fight" situation.

Stalling is not exclusive to easy fights, and sustaining your team on resourceless skills before a potential encounter with "Death" will be infinitely more helpful than her randomly leaping into your battle after securing two kills. Such ideas are only beneficial to those who are hoping she appears 'before' you've blown your emergency load (less common than early victories).

The thing I find frustrating is getting thrown into that boss battle with my resources spent.

Of course, but that is of less concern when you beat fights before resources are stretched thin and/or use resourceless skills to top up the team. It's also easier when you consider those encounters 'after' you've built up temporary power - as opposed to, let's say, strolling right into a Regional boss during a very early region at minimal power, forgetting the fact that you may also walk right into a mini-boss straight afterwards - and if that goes sour, you may dig a pretty steep hole for your team very early on (eg. meltdowns, or possibly deaths).

Buttons like I-Science, Divine Grace, Divine Comfort, Deathless, Wyrd Reconstruction (etc) - not to mention various tanking, healing and soothing self-sustainers - can normalize teams near-endlessly within the right circumstances, whereas buttons like Battle Medicine are limited due to the DoT-removal on a lower cooldown or with lower restrictions.

Ironically, I'm typing this mid-way through a cheesy low-level memory farm via 3x Target Healers and 1x Self-Healer (2x off-tanks) - translating to 3 unlimited heals, 1 unlimited stress-heal, 1 limited heal, 1 limited self-sustain - and thanks to the items this run, they are enjoying free heals and regens without using any of those buttons.

Sadly, the closest comparable (so far) was bumping into an Antiquarian during "Urgent Repairs", locking a random hero out of the fight every round. Not as dangerous as Death, but these things do happen.

The old stalling principles which crippled DD1's difficulty are infinitely easier to perform in DD2, and in both games, it was never wise to put all your eggs (responsibilities) into a single basket -- eg. relying purely on old-school Vestal to save the day via old Divine Comfort. That's great, but one stun, one bad initiative roll - or in DD2's case, being a dedicated healer with limited buttons - is not the safest bet.