Good times, just one thing

[Shneekey]

So, been really enjoying this demo so far. Except... one thing.

Those Amalgoms that do damage to pyre directly if you don't have anyone on the floor. It forces you to either play bottom or play solidly on all floors. Because otherwise you're going to take too much pyre damage every turn while they march up to you.

This... is very limiting in options. Because frankly, it's going to be very difficult to be strong on all floors. And that's just on C1. Imagine what C25 is going to look like. Those things will just straight up murder you with no counterplay other than 'play bottom and pray'.

I can deal with everything else, but those guys range from being a nuisance that hampers scores to being a run-killer on the final fight, not because you aren't powerful, but because you aren't everywhere at once.

[letir]

Yes, those birds way too tanky for damage that they can inflict on the core.

[tookerdoter]

the only part i don't like is that 2 of them spawn with seraph and trigger the effect after combat is over, so if seraph wipes your lower floors during relentless you end up taking the 'empty floor' damage every time he moves up a floor

it feels kind of dumb that you ALWAYS take a 10-20 health hit every time you don't stop him on the bottom floor

overall i'm fine with the challenge of being forced to populate floors and not abandon half the train, but it makes it a lot harder to keep your pyre health up when you have to keep >20 health in reserve to avoid dying before he even gets to the pyre

[Gabriot]

On the contrary, it doesn't shut down anything, it's just incentivizes you not to try and just stack a single floor of allies on the top floor like always was the case in monster train 1. There are 3 floors there to be used, and the player should be encouraged to actually play on multiple floors, and these enemies do a great job of that. You can still stack a single floor if you wish, but you better be willing to pay the price of the pyre, or have other ways such as spells to manipulate which floor either the enemy or your allies end up on.

You just need bodies on the floor, you don't need to kill the enemy necessarily until they are up to the 3rd floor. There are plenty of ways to build giant self sustaining tanks in mt2, you should either be doing this, or if you don't, know that you'll pay the price when an enemy like this presents a threat you didn't properly respect.

[Shneekey]

Originally posted by Gabriot:

On the contrary, it doesn't shut down anything, it's just incentivizes you not to try and just stack a single floor of allies on the top floor like always was the case in monster train 1. There are 3 floors there to be used, and the player should be encouraged to actually play on multiple floors, and these enemies do a great job of that. You can still stack a single floor if you wish, but you better be willing to pay the price of the pyre, or have other ways such as spells to manipulate which floor either the enemy or your allies end up on.

You just need bodies on the floor, you don't need to kill the enemy necessarily until they are up to the 3rd floor. There are plenty of ways to build giant self sustaining tanks in mt2, you should either be doing this, or if you don't, know that you'll pay the price when an enemy like this presents a threat you didn't properly respect.

So what, find a heckin' chonker, toss on a couple of Largestones, dupe it a bunch, and pray? Don't think that's going to work at higher Covenant levels, man.

I don't mind playing on all floors if I'm given the resources to do so. Problem is, I usually don't get them. There's no way to do sustain in the demo yet, unless you want to divert Valor stacks to your bottom two floors, which means a weaker primary floor. So either you take a ton of unavoidable pyre damage, or you risk losing to a boss.

The worst part are the two guys that accompany the boss. That's 20 pyre health you can literally do nothing about unless you set up bottom floor, because in relentless, boss is going to clear your bottom two floors, which means you don't have any units left and thus take pyre damage. Unless you happen to have some way to take out two 400 health guys behind a boss round one.

[chuckberts]

Not trying to defend the poor enemy design, but don't forget there is a silence room. With the current low covenant it isn't required, but I suspect we will be using that to mitigate problems on our weaker/ignored floors later on.

[ShinryuEXE]

Originally posted by Shneekey:

So what, find a heckin' chonker, toss on a couple of Largestones, dupe it a bunch, and pray? Don't think that's going to work at higher Covenant levels, man.

I don't mind playing on all floors if I'm given the resources to do so. Problem is, I usually don't get them. There's no way to do sustain in the demo yet, unless you want to divert Valor stacks to your bottom two floors, which means a weaker primary floor. So either you take a ton of unavoidable pyre damage, or you risk losing to a boss.

The worst part are the two guys that accompany the boss. That's 20 pyre health you can literally do nothing about unless you set up bottom floor, because in relentless, boss is going to clear your bottom two floors, which means you don't have any units left and thus take pyre damage. Unless you happen to have some way to take out two 400 health guys behind a boss round one.

This is exactly what Gabriot was talking about in regards to pushing players away from 'single floor, top floor always' like in Monster Train 1.

You don't have to set up on top floor. You don't even have to do a single floor setup.
You can make bottom floor be your main floor and set it up to kill bosses and make mid and top just be cleanup floors. Or there are ways to make bottom floor strong enough to just wipe the waves completely.
And yes, it's entirely viable to 'divert valor stacks away from your primary floor' if that's what you find is needed to keep your bot and mid floors alive. Or again, you can opt to not make top floor your primary floor.

Like, there's a variety of options. I mean you're even in a clan that has multiple Ascend cards to bump the Amalgams up past your empty floors if you really want.

If you're in the mindset of only playing Monster Train 2 in exactly the way you played Monster Train 1, then yeah, you're gonna run into problems. Monster Train 2 has a lot of things intentionally designed to address the design failings of MT1, and I think it's a much better game for it.

[verserixic]

Originally posted by chuckberts:

Not trying to defend the poor enemy design, but don't forget there is a silence room. With the current low covenant it isn't required, but I suspect we will be using that to mitigate problems on our weaker/ignored floors later on.

I had forgotten! That's excellent tech especially for Fel who likes being on the second floor so their valor armor triggers before the enemies can hit.

[chanakochan]

In the official FAQ, about the deployment phase:

"We added this to more fully support multi-floor strategies and to enhance Monster Train’s focus on unit synergy."

In MT1, the main problem with a multi-floor strategy is that, drawing your banner units in the wrong order can be hugely crippling. This issue has been squarely addressed in MT2; there is no longer any good reason why you should (generally) leave your floors empty. And there are easy reasons why you should populate them, starting with capacity limits and the lowered 6-unit limit.

[chanakochan]

The worst part are the two guys that accompany the boss. That's 20 pyre health you can literally do nothing about unless you set up bottom floor, because in relentless, boss is going to clear your bottom two floors, which means you don't have any units left and thus take pyre damage. Unless you happen to have some way to take out two 400 health guys behind a boss round one.

If you are that bent on setting up exclusively on 3F, the easiest way to deal with those is to Ascend the boss, which will instantly kill his retainers. You do have Ascend cards, don't you?

BTW, we who play on 1F, we do have ways to deal with backliners of course.

[Frenzy85]

Originally posted by Shneekey:

So, been really enjoying this demo so far. Except... one thing.

Those Amalgoms that do damage to pyre directly if you don't have anyone on the floor. It forces you to either play bottom or play solidly on all floors. Because otherwise you're going to take too much pyre damage every turn while they march up to you.

This... is very limiting in options. Because frankly, it's going to be very difficult to be strong on all floors. And that's just on C1. Imagine what C25 is going to look like. Those things will just straight up murder you with no counterplay other than 'play bottom and pray'.

I can deal with everything else, but those guys range from being a nuisance that hampers scores to being a run-killer on the final fight, not because you aren't powerful, but because you aren't everywhere at once.

It's not much different than Scourge spawners. While they don't directly deal damage to Pyre, the trash draw and flame usage to get rid of them can sometimes be more disruptive than direct Pyre damage.

You learn to deal with them one way or another.

As others have mentioned, there are more options to deal with them in MT2, ranging from silence to the easier multi-floor setup due to Deployment Phase.
But even without them, we dealt with similar annoying mechanics in MT1. It's part of what makes the runs a fun puzzle to solve, rather than just create the biggest stat-stick on top floor.

[Shneekey]

Originally posted by Frenzy85:

Originally posted by Shneekey:

So, been really enjoying this demo so far. Except... one thing.

Those Amalgoms that do damage to pyre directly if you don't have anyone on the floor. It forces you to either play bottom or play solidly on all floors. Because otherwise you're going to take too much pyre damage every turn while they march up to you.

This... is very limiting in options. Because frankly, it's going to be very difficult to be strong on all floors. And that's just on C1. Imagine what C25 is going to look like. Those things will just straight up murder you with no counterplay other than 'play bottom and pray'.

I can deal with everything else, but those guys range from being a nuisance that hampers scores to being a run-killer on the final fight, not because you aren't powerful, but because you aren't everywhere at once.

It's not much different than Scourge spawners. While they don't directly deal damage to Pyre, the trash draw and flame usage to get rid of them can sometimes be more disruptive than direct Pyre damage.

You learn to deal with them one way or another.

As others have mentioned, there are more options to deal with them in MT2, ranging from silence to the easier multi-floor setup due to Deployment Phase.
But even without them, we dealt with similar annoying mechanics in MT1. It's part of what makes the runs a fun puzzle to solve, rather than just create the biggest stat-stick on top floor.

Scourge spawners don't have 400+ HP. You can usually take them down with a ping. Put a +10 Damage into one of the starter pings and you're good to go. These guys are a lot nastier to deal with. Scourges can be paid off, and there's a relic to make them free as well. Those are simple solutions.

Silence only works on one floor, there's three floors in total (although only two you have to worry about, I suppose).

The other problem is when your units spawn in with Melee Weakness 3, they tend to not last very long. These guys that do pyre damage when there's no one on the floor also do respectable damage, so you need to build a heckin' chonker for the floors. I just did a run that died to them, went to three different shops, not a single Largestone or even a +20 HP buff. I did pick up a 'take half damage' buff and put that on someone with decent health and duped him, but they didn't last very long.

If they didn't have 400+ health, I could deal with them. If they didn't accompany the boss that quadruples damage your guys take, I could deal with them. If I could actually get the tools necessary to build guys capable of surviving, I could deal with it. Heck, if I could even get offered a silence room I might manage. However, as they stand, they seem to be significantly overtuned.

[Frenzy85]

Yes, they're different, and therefore require different solutions.
For example, as someone previously mentioned, a body blocker works for the new units, but not for Scourge spawners.

But they are similar in that it forces you to not only build a scaler on top floor and call it a day. Most things that make MT difficult are of a similar nature. They, in some way, prevent you from going all-in on only pure scaling.