Watcher Challenges

[hi]

Just wanted to lay down some ideas for challenges for The Watcher DLC that were taking up space in my head, which are somewhat similar to the challenges featured on the discord. Here's some I've come up with so far:

(spoilers)

The Prince's Knight: Kill at least six different types of Lizard Long Legs.
Ice King: Kill a Blizzard Lizard.
Shadow: Find every single warp to Daemon.
Climber: Enter Unfortunate Evolution from Badlands.
Follower: Enter Ancient Urban, having only sheltered in rotted regions or in Outer Rim since the third Spinning Top encounter.

Those are my ideas (they're probably pretty bad, aren't they?). What are yours?

[Madisaurus]

Originally posted by hi:

Just wanted to lay down some ideas for challenges for The Watcher DLC that were taking up space in my head, which are somewhat similar to the challenges featured on the discord. Here's some I've come up with so far:

(spoilers)

The Prince's Knight: Kill at least six different types of Lizard Long Legs.
Rot King: Kill a Rot Loach.
Shadow: Find every single warp to Daemon.
Climber: Enter Unfortunate Evolution from Badlands.
Follower: Enter Ancient Urban, having never sheltered since the third Spinning Top encounter.

Those are my ideas (they're probably pretty bad, aren't they?). What are yours?

oh no follower getting sent to rot regions the whole time

[RCMidas]

You could...almost manage Follower in a few places.

You'd need to start in Sunlit Port (third meeting in Chimney Canopy), so you're as close to Spinning Top in Aether Ridge as possible. You'll then be warped to Torrid Desert. Crossing most of that without resting would be agony but...theoretically possible. {Two meetings}

Let's assume you manage it. You'll be warped to Badlands. Here's where it gets interesting. You need to cross that great expanse in the west, with very little time to spare in getting yourself licked or some some puffs. This is also theoretically possible but very unlikely. Now we split into two camps of effort:

A) Somehow reaching Spinning Top in the Badlands. You'll be warped to Shrouded Coast. From here's it's not too bad actually, and you'll be warped to Cold Storage. It's also not too bad here, and you'll be warped to Salination. {Five meetings}

B) I'd suggest instead going to Cold Storage from the Badlands. It's a tricky descent, but not too bad, and you'll be warped to Salination. {Three meetings}

Salination is NASTY. You'll be swimming a lot and will need almost as much time and luck as getting through the Badlands. If you manage it, you'll end up in Shattered Terrace and will need to force-warp your way out to a Rotted Region or Outer Rim. From there, you'll have to make your way to the Throne and warp out at a karma flower bed. {Six meetings if A, four meetings if B}

Now it's entirely a question of where you end up. Ideally, you want the Desolate Tract. That will then take you to Turbulent Pump, which will lead you to Heat Ducts, and then to Stormy Coast. If you got to Stormy Coast after meeting Spinning Top in the Badlands, you can bypass them in favour of entering Daemon and then Shattered Terrace. Otherwise, you'll need to meet them here and then also in Signal Spires, which will drop you off in Shattered Terrace again.

If you don't end up in Desolate Tract or one of the subsequent regions, you'll need to rethink your strategy considerably. Now, I may be mistaken, but I think warping alongside Spinning Top and increasing your Ripple doesn't strain you, which means it's just those two baseline manual warps (or three if you end up in a Rotted Region instead of Outer Rim) which might even be reset by warping alongside Spinning Top.

I will do some devtool-assisted tests and get back to you.

[RCMidas]

OK, so it's not quite as simple as I'd hoped. You'll regularly be sent back to a Rotted Region or Outer Rim, and will need to progress via the Throne each time. I might advise modifying the challenge to allow resting ONLY when in a Rotted Region or the Outer Rim.

[hi]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

OK, so it's not quite as simple as I'd hoped. You'll regularly be sent back to a Rotted Region or Outer Rim, and will need to progress via the Throne each time. I might advise modifying the challenge to allow resting ONLY when in a Rotted Region or the Outer Rim.

ok
but the point is Follower is significantly harder than my other 4 ideas. If you looked at the discord you'd realize there are a lot of challenges involving doing something in one cycle/without resting, such as:
Eating one of Moon's neurons on the starting cycle.
Climbing from the bottom of The Leg to meeting Twelve Beads Among Burning Skies as Artificer.
Ascending after meeting Five Pebbles.
Passing through all 4 vanilla Industrial Complex karma gates.
And, perhaps the most similar, meeting all 6 echoes from the same shelter and then ascending.

[hi]

Just got some fresh ideas for five more challenges:

Attuned: Store 5 Karma Flowers in the same shelter. (Must be done prior to achieving the second ending, and without going to Outer Rim).
Loach Lap: Starting from the top-rightmost shelter near The Surface warp, meet Spinning Top in Desolate Tract, and then return to that same shelter.
Peak: Starting from the rightmost shelter in Stormy Coast, reach Spinning Top in Shattered Terrace in one cycle.
Wrong Way: Without manual warping, usage of Daemon warps, or going through the same warp twice, go from Shattered Terrace to Outer Rim in one cycle.
Trawler: Get the Leviathan in Turbulent Pump stuck on the grate to the left of where he spawns in.

Maybe I should consider putting these challenges up on a discord server...

[RCMidas]

There's difficult and there's trying to go through the whole campaign without resting. The trickiest part will be retaining karma protection so that you don't end up dying and losing your ability, especially after multiple meetings. Fortunately, you can break it up so that you aren't doing it as a one-shot game session too, in that arriving in a Rotted Region will save your progress even without resting.

During my test earlier, I ended up in Infested Wastes. Patience is absolutely the key here, and the hope that enough vultures spawn in to deal with any red centipedes that block your way. Also, pipe-dodging the Terror Long Legs will probably be necessary unless you have SUCH a long cycle that you can afford to try going the long way around.

EDIT: When you say "leftmost shelter in Stormy Coast", you do realise that it's also the closest one to the Signal Spires entrance, yes? If anything, you want the rightmost shelter. Since Signal Spires has no end-of-cycle threat, you can literally take as long as you want once you get there and it's no issue at all. It's just making through Stormy Coast in one cycle that's difficult.

EDIT2: For the 'Wrong Way' challenge, you may want to add the condition "without using the same portal twice", otherwise you can simply keep diving back and forth into and out of Shattered Terrace to force a warp to Outer Rim or a Rotted Region. Equally, disallowing karma flowers from the Throne would make 'Attuned' more challenging, as you can open up all four rooms with a karma flower in each, and simply carry one from elsewhere in Outer Rim there for the fifth.

[hi]

Originally posted by RCMidas:

There's difficult and there's trying to go through the whole campaign without resting. The trickiest part will be retaining karma protection so that you don't end up dying and losing your ability, especially after multiple meetings. Fortunately, you can break it up so that you aren't doing it as a one-shot game session too, in that arriving in a Rotted Region will save your progress even without resting.

During my test earlier, I ended up in Infested Wastes. Patience is absolutely the key here, and the hope that enough vultures spawn in to deal with any red centipedes that block your way. Also, pipe-dodging the Terror Long Legs will probably be necessary unless you have SUCH a long cycle that you can afford to try going the long way around.

EDIT: When you say "leftmost shelter in Stormy Coast", you do realise that it's also the closest one to the Signal Spires entrance, yes? If anything, you want the rightmost shelter. Since Signal Spires has no end-of-cycle threat, you can literally take as long as you want once you get there and it's no issue at all. It's just making through Stormy Coast in one cycle that's difficult.

EDIT2: For the 'Wrong Way' challenge, you may want to add the condition "without using the same portal twice", otherwise you can simply keep diving back and forth into and out of Shattered Terrace to force a warp to Outer Rim or a Rotted Region. Equally, disallowing karma flowers from the Throne would make 'Attuned' more challenging, as you can open up all four rooms with a karma flower in each, and simply carry one from elsewhere in Outer Rim there for the fifth.

edited.
But also, I'm not sure if you realize just how challenging the challenges on the official discord are. All of my ideas, other than Follower, are relatively easy to medium in difficulty.

[RCMidas]

...I haven't mentioned difficulty for anything other than Follower. I appreciate that the Discord challengers are proper 1337 hardcore players, but that's utterly irrelevant to right here and now.

As it stands, most of these challenges feel entirely reasonable. And the updated version of Follower seems like a good "oh yeah, this'll REALLY push me to my limit" challenge. That's not to say you can't retain the original for the truly insane challenger - call it Disciple or something. I know SOMEONE will manage it, because I've been on the internet long enough to know that there's always someone out there crazy and skilled enough to do even the most improbable of things.

For example, last year I gave myself a particular challenge to become especially familiar with Saint. I had to get the Nomad Passage in one cycle, but not passing through the first Karma Gate until after the blizzard had begun. This took...a couple of months to achieve.

[Alpaca]

Actually since the cycle resets it should be possible to finish the first ending without resting once you get enough karma for the initial gates in the intro?
Not even necessarily one-life since echo warping gives you a save state.
The big issue would be that re-entering a region in the same cycle doesn't reset the timer so you would need to worry about rain when looping back around one of the unavoidable second visits.
If we assume one-life then it should still be possible as long as we can hit every shattered terrace connected region, and maybe even gamble on a flower warp during a short cycle?
The problem is mostly I'm not 100% which portals have to be opened from one side first. And would need a list of those for routing.

Edit: on second thought if we use a seeded play-through this might actually be fairly easy once we know how the seeds work.

[hi]

Originally posted by Alpaca:

Actually since the cycle resets it should be possible to finish the first ending without resting once you get enough karma for the initial gates in the intro?
Not even necessarily one-life since echo warping gives you a save state.
The big issue would be that re-entering a region in the same cycle doesn't reset the timer so you would need to worry about rain when looping back around one of the unavoidable second visits.
If we assume one-life then it should still be possible as long as we can hit every shattered terrace connected region, and maybe even gamble on a flower warp during a short cycle?
The problem is mostly I'm not 100% which portals have to be opened from one side first. And would need a list of those for routing.

Edit: on second thought if we use a seeded play-through this might actually be fairly easy once we know how the seeds work.

I'm pretty sure seeds only affect manual warping.

[Alpaca]

Originally posted by hi:

Originally posted by Alpaca:

Actually since the cycle resets it should be possible to finish the first ending without resting once you get enough karma for the initial gates in the intro?
Not even necessarily one-life since echo warping gives you a save state.
The big issue would be that re-entering a region in the same cycle doesn't reset the timer so you would need to worry about rain when looping back around one of the unavoidable second visits.
If we assume one-life then it should still be possible as long as we can hit every shattered terrace connected region, and maybe even gamble on a flower warp during a short cycle?
The problem is mostly I'm not 100% which portals have to be opened from one side first. And would need a list of those for routing.

Edit: on second thought if we use a seeded play-through this might actually be fairly easy once we know how the seeds work.

I'm pretty sure seeds only affect manual warping.

Well yes but I mean when we understand how to extrapolate the seeds so we can abuse them. Because then you could theoretically just find a seed that lets you warp immediately to the next echo when you hit a dead end or run into the problem I had initially planning this which is for some reason I keep ending up back in salination as a midpoint between the next set of echoes.

[hi]

Originally posted by Alpaca:

Originally posted by hi:

I'm pretty sure seeds only affect manual warping.

Well yes but I mean when we understand how to extrapolate the seeds so we can abuse them. Because then you could theoretically just find a seed that lets you warp immediately to the next echo when you hit a dead end or run into the problem I had initially planning this which is for some reason I keep ending up back in salination as a midpoint between the next set of echoes.

One route I know of is entering Desolate Tract at 4 karma. From there is a chain of echoes that drops you off in Shattered Terrace with 9 karma.

[Alpaca]

Originally posted by hi:

Originally posted by Alpaca:

Well yes but I mean when we understand how to extrapolate the seeds so we can abuse them. Because then you could theoretically just find a seed that lets you warp immediately to the next echo when you hit a dead end or run into the problem I had initially planning this which is for some reason I keep ending up back in salination as a midpoint between the next set of echoes.

One route I know of is entering Desolate Tract at 4 karma. From there is a string of echoes that drop you off in Shattered Terrace with 9 karma.

Farm Arrays(1)>Coral>Wrecks>Desolate(2)>Turbulent(3)>Heat(4)>Stormy(5)>Signal(6)>Back Into Signal>Verdant(7)>Fetid(8)>Back into Fetid>Salination(9)>Terrace win win win
This works right, did I screw up somewhere? You should be able to double dip signal and fetid as long as you don't get short cycles but maybe there's a way to circumvent that? Better than double dipping salination atleast.

[Jevmen]

Pretty sure rot behemoths are unkillable
Loaches take no damage from any source, they dont really have a countable HP at all
The only way to kill them is with singularity bombs since they just flip a switch and internally tell any entity to die, even guardians and their 10.000.000 HP

[>112358<]

Loaches are unkillable? I noticed attempting to kill them with spears or bombs or fireeggs etc in arena may freeze the game