Acid Jelly Disintegrate

[shaneymac1331]

So, this isn't a "oh my god, these enemies need to be deleted" kind of thread. I'd like a discussion on how to balance a move which I feel is, in it's current form, slightly over powered- Disintegrate.

I think the ability is definitely worthy of being in the game- it creates a pressure in battle that not many other enemies in the game do. You start counting how many times you get to attack and calculate if you can hurry up and focus fire that gelatinous block down before an item disapears. Because of that, I actually enjoy the ability.

However, I think you can create that same feeling, maintain the games difficulty and it be balanced to not overly demotivate a player. You've built a game that intices you to work on unlocking items to add them to the world, making decisions on map movement (maybe to reach a night market), quests for gold over chaos, sometimes gearing one character over another- all of these are decisions that make a sacrifice for something else and then it can just be eliminated in one fight with no recourse, it feels slightly counter to the adventure the game builds. I think the steal mechanic is GREAT- they steal something, you better kill them QUICK before they run with your stuff- genius. But you can still get it back.

I've thought of a couple different ideas to balance the ability and would love any other input or ideas that anybody has.

- You could add a "retrieve" move to any player who has had an item taken by a jelly, requiring perfect roll 2x lucks, and they fight through the gelatin to retrieve the item. If they choose to not, THEN it's disintegrated at end of battle (Jelly can only hold one item at a time). This basically removes a character from the fight, forces you to balance keeping the jelly alive while fighting any other villains. This means that Jelly encounters should almost always be 3 enemies at a time.

- You could have more than one piece of equipment affected at a time to increase the impact during battle, but make it available again after battle. A much higher probability of death becomes the driver then.

- It could take one item for the battle and add a debilitating ailment until the fight is over.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

[Cap'n Darwin]

The nice part about the disintegrate is it is against any equipment you have and not immediately taking out your weapon or best armor. You should be stocking up on items as you go to have some backups, but also as fine targets for this effect. I don't even think about these guys anymore after the realization that you should hang on to all the junk you pick up. On the game, avoid them. The only fight you have to do is the Hidden cottage.

[gamerdrew]

Agree, 2 person party was doing really well and we got totally wrecked by the acid jelly in the forgotten cellar and then in the Kings Maze. Went from making good game progress to pretty much game over. The tricky part is that there aren't many towns that sell bows so it was very hard to re-equip the hunter. I'm even OK with death mark but I feel Acid is very OP. I get you can learn to not sell much of what you find as backup but it still seems a bit out of place.

[ColeTrain33]

I bought a sugary drink from a night merchant one time, and saved it for the Forgotten Cellar fight with the Acid Jelly, waited for him to pop his ability, burnt my focus to attack, as soon as I was debuffed and poisoned, I popped the Drink and cleansed, then finished him off. Acid is really good, the only way we've been able to work around it is to use focus and burn them asap. These aren't really a problem until you get to medium or higher difficulties in my opinion. On easy, they're nicely balanced.

[Insanity Engine]

We ran into two acid jellies. Once in forgotten cellar, once in king's maze. Fogotten cellar basically destroyed every item on our scholar, but we were able to re-equip him fairly easily. The one in the king's maze we finished the combat before it destroyed anything, so... I don't think it's a big deal? It's kind of a classic RPG monster, and brings about a sense of horror when encountered that I really just enjoy. The game is meant to be brutal, you're meant to prepare for the absolute worst as best you can. Jellies are slow, they're honestly meant to be killed before they attack it seems. Getting your entire team double poisoned is just as potentially dungeon-run ending.

I'm okay with the acid jellies as is.

[Inkh인수]

I've only been playing for a while on 2 player, but it seems the game has a system in place.

Each mob has a " Potential Loss " calculated.
Whether it's
Lose your gold
Lose your equipment
Poison
Curse

In general, I've never see the game throw two of these at us at the same time. Which makes it possible to focus fire on the " Potential Loss " mob.

For instance, we've never had two acid jellies, or two thiefy mobs. I've had two ghosts at one point. But it always seems as if you can opt to focus fire on the one thing that really does a terrible permanent loss.

The Forgotten Cellar .. I think just take off good equipment and put on bad equipment and kill it that way. It'll cost more HP, but it'll cost less good equipment.

[Grizzledorf]

keep in mind panax removes acid. it seems to not destroy equipment when it is first cast on you so when its your next turn you can use panax. hoarding panax early on seems to be just as important as hoarding godsbeard.

[Legend]

Our first encounter with the Acid Jelly was pretty annoying (lost some good items fighting it in the cellar). The next time we ran into them in the maze, we just burned them down first each fight and they never got to attack.

What was far more annoying was the rogue wave we encountered when sailing the ship around. We had one character with +gold% that was picking up all our gold for the bonus and had our entire fortune instantly wiped out. Obviously, we did not know such an event even existed until it happened, much like the Acid Jelly, and now try to prepare better for it (though I wish they'd improve the UI for transferring money between characters so you don't have to hit the button for EACH INDIVIDUAL COIN you move).