Agbaar's Academy is bad

[Trehek]

I fought my way through these puzzles and I have to say I felt they were pretty frustrating and I think they should be tweaked. The signs need to be updated to better hint at what needs to be used. I mean, these are early puzzles meant to teach mechanics!

* The fireball tricks 1 tutorial required that I use the stack ending damage to win. If I did attack+fireball instead of fireball+attack at the end, I lost. This isn't explained until tricks 2, so it shouldn't be there!

*The hint on the advanced petrification is way too vague! Victory hinges not only on proper use of petrify, but also on the obscure facts that A) The spellcasts spend less mana in that puzzle, and B) That I'm able to hit the iron man first instead of exchanging blows with him. Why does this happen?! It's not explained by this time. Only rules for fights with Slowed are.

Also, after I finished all of the Agbaar's Academy puzzles, no completion tick appeared on the category. Only on the individual puzzles.

[Gakato]

Actually the Agbaar's Academy is quite awesome, it shows you how the things work without telling you explicitely, you have to watch closely and calculate your expected outcome to adapt it with the actual one. So the hints on the signs will push you in the right direction without spoiling everything.

So fireball tricks part 1: The puzzle is not about the burning ticking off damage, but about stacking burning (and regeneration). I guess you haven't realized what the burning stacks are doing for you. The meat man has in your described scenario 23 hp left and 2 burning stacks. So attacking it first will leave him with 11 hp (23-10(atk)- 2(burn stacks)). You can't get rid of these 11 hp anymore even if you were able to let the burning tick off as the fireball does only 8+(1burning) damage, i.e. you are 2 damage short. If you cast instead the fireball first, it will do 8+2(burning) = 10 damage and applies even another stack of burning resulting in victory as in total you deal 4 damage more to your foe.

Advanced petrifying
A) Ok the IMAWAL is 2 mana cheaper than usual but well why is it a problem (in a real dungeon you just uncover some tiles to regen that 2 mana).
B) You are not hitting the iron man without exchanging blows. Guess you mean the use of PISORF? That's a glyph and not a normal attack, burndayraz is exactly the same.

For the completion mark I agree, this is not obvious why there isn't one, but it should be. There are more puzzles in Agbaars Academy, but half of them are unlocked with other classes. In total it consists of 10 scenarios.

[Trehek]

I did the puzzles again, and I guess you're right, and I seem to have missed that my HP replenished against the iron man, so it's a fair exchange. I still think the mana thing is a problem. How can I think and come up with a solution when I don't see the right numbers? Not enough mana, no ability to regen. That's what I thought.

I still don't like it.

[Gakato]

Leveling up causes your hp and mana to refill. That's why you had full hp. The numbers are also correct inside of that puzzle. IMAWAL costs 3 mana (in a regular dungeon 5 mana), but I think that's not what you are talking about. The important thing is if you cast it on an enemy it will cost 3 mana, if you instead use it on an empty tile it will create a wall and give you 2 mana back (i.e. effectively costing 1 mana as long as you have enough mana to initially cast it), as it says in the description of that glyph.

But of course the puzzles are all optional, though some may have some nice rewards. If they are too hard you can also find solutions in the wiki or on youtube.

[Wok]

Originally posted by Gakato:

So fireball tricks part 1: The puzzle is not about the burning ticking off damage, but about stacking burning (and regeneration). I guess you haven't realized what the burning stacks are doing for you. The meat man has in your described scenario 23 hp left and 2 burning stacks. So attacking it first will leave him with 11 hp (23-10(atk)- 2(burn stacks)). You can't get rid of these 11 hp anymore even if you were able to let the burning tick off as the fireball does only 8+(1burning) damage, i.e. you are 2 damage short. If you cast instead the fireball first, it will do 8+2(burning) = 10 damage and applies even another stack of burning resulting in victory as in total you deal 4 damage more to your foe.

Wow. I had been stuck for so long on this puzzle!

[gabfdg]

Years later, but I'd like to approve. Advanced petrifying is even worse, requiring you to convert a glyph after 5 levels in which glyphs were not convertible; and even in that specific level, one glyph can be converted while the other cannot.

[Icedfate]

welp, you did a massive necromhere. .

but then
i somewhat agree. i mean, all the puzzles are challenging, as they should be, but agbaar's academy are supposed to be "tutorial" puzzles, meant to teach obscure game mechanics, but they don't "teach" you as much as they "force you to learn it" . .by figuring them out for yourself.
and then the lessons learned don't really stick and i never find a situation in a regular dungeon where what i learned solving these pizzles actually helped. . .

one of the most irritating things is that there are so few online guides for this game.
i can't find a single reference to the tinkerer challenges. like, literally nobody has done a guide for the tinkerer challenges.
i did tinkerer bronze and silver and am completely stumped on the gold one. there's not enough resources on the map to level up . there's zero shops, so they took away the main thing that the character is good at, literally nullifying their main class feature, and there's also a "??" in the middle of the map that's seemingly impossible to get to, because it is surrounded by 3 layers of wall on every side, but you only get 2 transmition scrolls, so you can get rid of 2 of the walls, but then you fall short , unable to get to whatever that thing is.

okay, i lied.
i did find one thing online, saying that the challenge is super RNG depemdent and you have to kill that "foyter" guy over and over and hope the random items he drops are good items and if they aren't, you may as well just restsrt the challenge over and over until you get good RNG. .
i dunno. i guess that is what roguelikes are about, he randomness, but the best roguelikes are the ones where when you fail, you know it was your fault and not just because the RNG screwed you over. ..

i mean, sometimes i start a challenge and i'll be completely boxed in by walls on all sodes with narrow passages and level 5+ momsters in every passage and no items nearby and i'll be stuck, having to start over before i even got a chance to do anything and i don't mind having to redo it, but it costs kingdom gold every time for the preparations, unless i go for the purist badge and yeah, i guess i just suck at the game, because the "hard" dungeons kick my butt even with every preparation i put on

and now i digressed.
this was supposed to be about the agbaar puzzles.

i think the main thing that annoys me about the agbaar puzzles is that you don't even get any reward at all for completing them. zilch.
at least the god altar puzzles reward you with 100 coins for doing them

[Cress]

These puzzles were my favourite thing in the game, I wish the made more. It's NOT a tutorial, it's a puzzle. They can't tell you the solution to a puzzle, that defeats the purpose.

Not being able to read/problem-solve/learn mechanics is really a you-problem.

[Icedfate]

well, duh, if they are going to tell me the solution, then yeah, i may as well not even do it.
of course i want to solve the puzzle myself. but these are presented as tutorials. it says descriptions like "learn about this god's powers" or "learn to do mid battle level ups" or something, but then they include hidden game mechanics and it's VERY specific how they expect you to solve these puzzles. they don't give any room for any varied approaches. you have to do it exactly the way they envisioned and they fine tune it so you have just barely enough resources to do it.

i solved every one, but i did not enjoy most of them.

if the hidden techniques weren't so "hidden" or maybe they give better hints or something, i dunno.

i prefer to do just regular dungeon runs, but those puzzle packs taunt me with the prizes they give for completing the whole set.

but then again, maybe i just suck at this game. i struggle with the "hard" dungeons that have 2 bosses in them and there's an ever harder version if the dungeons that i don't have the patience to grind it out.
i have played this game on and off for over a decade. every time i come back, i start over, spend 60 hours at it and then i remember why i quit last time, then 4 years later, i forget and i'm like, wow, this game is fun, why did i quit? and then i play another 60 hours and i'm like. . oh yeah, that's why. . .

look, it's a great game, well designed, but hard as balls and yeah, no i get tired of banging my head against the wall sometimes

[Cress]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

well, duh, if they are going to tell me the solution, then yeah, i may as well not even do it.
of course i want to solve the puzzle myself. but these are presentedmas tutorials. it says descriptions like "learn about this god's powers" or "learn to do mid battle level ups" or something, but then they include hidden game mechanics andmit's VERY specific how they expect you to solve these puzzles. they don't give any room for any varied approaches. you have to do it exactly the way they envisioned and they fine tune it so you have just barely enough resources to do it.

i solved every one, but i did not enjoy most of them.

but then again, maybe imjust suck at this game. i struggle with the "hard" dungeons that have 2 bosses in them and there's an ever harder version if the dungeons that i don't have the patience to grind it out.
i have played this game on and off for over a decade. every time i come back, i start over, spend 60 hours at it and then i remember why i quit last time, then 4 years later, i forget and i'm like, wow, this game is fun, why did i quit? and then i play another 60 hours and i'm like. . oh yeah, that's why. . .

look, it's a great game, well designed, but hard as balls and yeah, no i get tired of banging my head against the wall sometimes

Again, they are not presented as a tutorial of any sorts other than the one labelled "tutorials" which is exactly what it says it is. Why would something be labelled "tutorials" when the entire thing is meant to be a tutorial? Your logic makes no sense.

Regardless, your notions about it were wrong, that is not their purpose, so now you know. The fact you didn't like them is fair enough, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

[Icedfate]

maybe it because it's called "Academy" and the descriptions say "learn to do such and such"?
so yeah, i thought they were a little side gimmick meant to teach you advanced techniques and obscure mechanics to use in the "main game", which is the classic dungeon runs and really, i never found a way to integrate the stuff i "learned" while solving them

[Noble Nobbler]

I agree 100% with the OP

[danramarch]

I also agree with the OP a bit. A lot of the later game seems to really hinge on really knowing all the status effects and how to use them effectively and the Academy doesn't really teach you that well.

[Barbe-bleue]

I finished the puzzle "Slowing pt 2", but I'm still a little frustrated, because one question obsesses me: How am I supposed to know that each opponent, once killed, drops a Mana Potion?

Does this also happen in "normal" dungeons? So far, I've only been fighting in Hobbler's Hold, Den of Danger & Venture Cave. I don't think I noticed that opponents left items (potions or others) after their deaths.

How to anticipate if the applied rules are ignored?

---

If I refer to this information[www.qcfdesign.com], there are 10 Agbaar's Academy puzzles. However, I only have 5 (all solved). Where are the other 5?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3094016372

[Davrick]

The remainder will show up as you progress through the game. Don't worry about them, they'll appear when the time is right.

[Barbe-bleue]

Thanks Davrick! I was wondering if I had missed a shortcut that could display the last 5 puzzles.