Alruine; Please rework this Ab!

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Too much time wasted chasing the damn thing!

I legit avoid doing any work with this ab, its just too annoying when it escapes.


1 Qual Counter. Ugh, Why?

Reduces when bad, (high chance)
Reduces when good. ( normal chance )

So you have to stay in the common/center of neutrality, to avoid the counter going down.. that alone is annoying as hell especially considering once you research everything, you get a passive higher success rate, and only way to get the weapon is to research everything.


Teleports everywhere, larger the facility, the worse it is to chase!

(Yes I understand ignoring it is an option, but that should not be the option every time.)

So instead of making it teleport everywhere, when its engaged by agents instead of teleporting away let it just do a smaller amount of AOE damage and increase its HP pool, after a few seconds, Large telegraph then it does its massive room kill, then teleports.

Chasing this ab is extremely boring and tedious; I actually am to the point I purposely let out other Abs so they just kill it for me.

Its a Tier 4 Ab, this thing should be dangerous, instead its a joke.

* Alruine teleports and immediatly beings wind up insta-kill AOE attack.
* by the time anyone can get to it and begin attacking, (Especially if it does the 2 petal short windup!!!!) its already time to run away.
* Due to large facility sizes this is a huge problem.

* Option 2 Ignore it
* Option 3 Let other abs out to fight it then suppress the queller.
* Option 4 Leave 1-2 Agents all over the facility and do mini attacks to chip its HP away down. (Probably best strat since it may take longer than full facility tank and spank, there is simply too much downtime and waiting) but this also takes forever since you have to select all those that are not equipped with "White" weapons. because, immune. Setup just takes as long as selecting everyone and waiting to ambush.

Creating other unique ways to instead of suppress with weapons but convince an ab to return to its chamber could be a new viable way to deal with them.

I really don't like this ab. I never die to it, I just, hate, chasing, what SHOULD be chasing me.

*Sometimes AOE windup insta-kill attack has no PETAL (Pe-Tail ) telegraphic, bug? )

* Its also possible to "Tank" her with Knight of Despairs Blessing, as long as you have a red weapon. you can send 1 unit out to solo it.

[Grim Purrr~urut]

That is why it is WAW threat level.
Plus it only damages once, when teleporting, with not very high white type damage. Most lvl4+ agents in HE or WAW armor resistant to white would survive.
Apple is much more annoying, when breaching.

[Koleda]

Originally posted by Grim Purrr~urut:

Apple is much more annoying, when breaching.

Imagine having Apple breaching and all the corridors are filled with her thorns, then suddenly Whitenight is on Q counter 1

But fr @ OP I feel ya, while Alriune is personally my favorite, I would be lying if the mechanics were a bit annoying sometimes, but almost all WAW is made to be that chaotic

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Grim Purrr~urut:

That is why it is WAW threat level.
Plus it only damages once, when teleporting, with not very high white type damage. Most lvl4+ agents in HE or WAW armor resistant to white would survive.
Apple is much more annoying, when breaching.

Does not feel like a WaW level threat, you can just ignore it and it literally wont kill anyone important as long as youre paying attention, which if youre at the WaW stage you should already know this.

If we had the ability to assign control groups this would not be a problem really, but because we can't its more of an annoyance since you have to organize through everyone that does not deal white damage and station them through everywhere and chip away at alriunes health.

Its honestly easy, just, too annoying, and tedious, game play should be rewarding without tedium.

Originally posted by Koi:

I would be lying if the mechanics were a bit annoying sometimes, but almost all WAW is made to be that chaotic

Thats the thing, it does not feel chaotic, its ANNOYING. That's a separate entity than chaotic. It might be chaotic for your brain-dead cabbage clerks but for me, as a player, this Ab is just a pest;

Chaos means there is a lot going on and you can easily lose control of the situation with very minimal error; I can literally send 1 person to autonomously suppress it if they have a high enough damage weapon and white resists.

1 Person.

One.

ONE.

Thats not chaos. Thats a joke.

[A-dude no.1]

Honestly the button is the worst one of them all.

[Grim Xzag]

Originally posted by A-dude no.1:

Honestly the button is the worst one of them all.

That's your fault if you can't avoid a simple obstacle in the mess that is your facility. The button is not really the worst one, far from it, it is the player that makes it the worst due to the ways they play the game. Not taking time and mindlessly clicking on containment rooms is the pray this abnormality feeds on. However, I do feel like the button should work way different then how it worked in the old version of the game.

Anyway, the annoying abnormalities that people say are the Express Train to Hell, WhiteNight, Alriune, Silent Orchestra, Snow White's Apple, Big Bird, Melting Love (?), Army In Black (?), Meat Lantern, Queen Bee, and probably others in similar categories as the ones stated here.

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

I just don't like Alriune because it forces me to waste my time.

Thats what Im trying to explain about it, Its not, hard, and its easy to deal with, but I don't like dealing with it because I feel like im wasting my time in doing so.

Its the equiv of trying to get your dog back in its pen when they get out, its obnoxious and think you're trying to play with them, but really you just want to get them back in so you can get back to what you were doing; THATS what this feels like.

Teleportation is a cheap difficulty gimmick, similarly to other ordeals like the crimson jesters, its an artificial difficulty in my opinion.

(Oh ill just teleport away arbitrarily and start releasing your Aleph level containment abs before your level 5 justice agents can get to me and kill me even though they are just in the next room! ) The fact that they do this, is perfectly fine; however the fact that they teleport without warning SO DAMN FAR AWAY is NOT, but the idea is really neat, because a low level ordeal actually scaling with the expansion of your facility, and agents is a brilliant way to keep the player from getting bored, but I think there needs to be a limit to how many rooms they can teleport away too.

I don't really mind it when the complete food relocate, as they dont release abs.


Literally how I deal with Alriune is set a couple of my level 5 agents with high white resists to suppress it from the team menu when you click the abnormality, (they will chase it autonomously till you issue a command) then I go afk.

Thats literally how I deal with it. It needs a rework.

[Grim Xzag]

The commonality between every WAW in the current game is that they can travel the entire facility pretty well and/or obtain a very noticeable clerk death count.

So if you were to rework it to fit in with the majority, how would you go about this? Remember it also must fit its lore as well.

[Richarad]

Honestly when it comes to abnormalities that are a pain to chase, WAW-level ones often take the cake there. I mean, look at Dreaming Current.
I could imagine it being improved by, say, making Alriune consistently only use its AOE at full petals instead of occasionally at two, one, or even NONE on occasion (although this may be a bug). Not only that, it should just stay in one corridor for a bit longer in general, imo (apple stays in a corridor much longer than alriune, for example). A lot of the fast WAW abs are predictable to some degree (wolf and red mark where they're going, as an example) and the slower ones can often teleport to make up for their slowness (but give plenty of time to attack them in most cases, such as the three "magical girls"). Alriune tends to just teleport semi quickly around, making it difficult to keep up with at times. You could set up to make this easier, as OP stated, but with how easily Alriune can escape, you can easily end up spending the majority of the work day taking the thing out over and over simply due to how long it can take to do so.

So imo it should either
A) stay in one corridor for longer before teleporting as usual
B) escape less, in some fashion

Because, yeah, having a more irritable suppression happen too often can just become annoying for the player and not at all fun. Simply not working on it isn't even an option in a lot of cases (ie if you have WhiteNight or Plague Doctor, or simply before you do the core suppressions required to protect the area Alriune is in, OR just being in late-game or doing a few particular core suppressions where department protection no longer applies...or another abnormality or ordeal just keeps letting the thing out lol).

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Grim Xzag:

The commonality between every WAW in the current game is that they can travel the entire facility pretty well and/or obtain a very noticeable clerk death count.

So if you were to rework it to fit in with the majority, how would you go about this? Remember it also must fit its lore as well.

Asking the right questions here!

I suggested making Alriune continuously deal sanity damage to anyone in the room while still doing its "3 petal on the tail telegraph, with its wind up AOE sanity hit that insta kills) with it and to increase its HP pool. Currently I feel its HP pool is weak due to its "Cat and mouse" engagement,

But to make it more up front engagement like, you would need to increase the HP since it would be teleporting around less frequently.

Once Alriune is dealt at least 25-30% of its HP it deals a small amount of room AOE damage and instantly teleports if it hasn't already done its huge AOE wind up insta-kill move, therefore it becomes less of a "cat and mouse" and its dangerous to approach it in any situation due to the continuous sanity drain coupled with the mini-AOE or insta kill wind up, which means you either deal 30% hp damage and you suffer the smaller AOE, or you dont deal 30% and it does the insta-kill wind up,

This would make the teleport encounter rate essentially 3-5 which would significantly reduce the "port everywhere" and "make you chase me forever" engagement to be more dangerous but still not as straight forward.

Also whenever anyone "including the clerks" Dies to the AOE insta kill, the sanity drain will become stronger, meaning if you dont deal with it it eventually becomes too strong to deal with; That is what makes me feel like would make this a dangerous WaW level threat.


If I can set a couple level 5 agents on autonomous suppression and go AFK and return 90% of the time of it being dealt with, then its not a WaW level threat IMO.

[Richarad]

Originally posted by Whisper:

Also whenever anyone "including the clerks" Dies to the AOE insta kill, the sanity drain will become stronger, meaning if you dont deal with it it eventually becomes too strong to deal with; That is what makes me feel like would make this a dangerous WaW level threat.

I don't know about a build-up like that (dealing more damage with more deaths) with the clerks unless it has some sort of limit; and even then I wonder if it'd be reaching ALEPH levels instead.
In a lot of cases though, that sort of progression and inability to ignore it already exists in the form of abnormalities like Heroic Monk and Army in Black, if you (the general "you") happen to have them as well as Alriune :p

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Richarad:

Originally posted by Whisper:

Also whenever anyone "including the clerks" Dies to the AOE insta kill, the sanity drain will become stronger, meaning if you dont deal with it it eventually becomes too strong to deal with; That is what makes me feel like would make this a dangerous WaW level threat.

I don't know about a build-up like that (dealing more damage with more deaths) with the clerks unless it has some sort of limit; and even then I wonder if it'd be reaching ALEPH levels instead.
In a lot of cases though, that sort of progression and inability to ignore it already exists in the form of abnormalities like Heroic Monk and Army in Black, if you (the general "you") happen to have them as well as Alriune :p

The "Increase" would only affect the constant sanity drain, not the AOE insta-kill (Which would be pointless anyway, it will insta-kill regardless) or the Mini AoE damage while you are attacking it.

A cap would be likely mandatory for the reason you pointed out, but the idea here is you "Cannot" ignore a WaW level threat or above.

So example is ever .5 seconds it deals 3-4 sanity damage (6-8 per sec) it will increase it to something like 3.1 - 4.1 every .45 seconds. Increasing the frequency and the output. (Because Rodolph already has an ability similar to the constant sanity drain and hes only a HE level.

This would probably cap at 5/6 - 7/8 per .25 second (roughly 24-32 sanity damage per second at max, agents with high white resists will be mandatory if you let all of your clerks die to let it get to that point)

HOWEVER, if the insta-kill is not to be made straight up an insta-kill then it will "CC" your agents and continuously deal damage to them till its broken off by other agents or the duration is up, which will punish players for not respecting the threat of the Ab.

[Richarad]

Originally posted by Whisper:

Originally posted by Richarad:

I don't know about a build-up like that (dealing more damage with more deaths) with the clerks unless it has some sort of limit; and even then I wonder if it'd be reaching ALEPH levels instead.
In a lot of cases though, that sort of progression and inability to ignore it already exists in the form of abnormalities like Heroic Monk and Army in Black, if you (the general "you") happen to have them as well as Alriune :p

The "Increase" would only affect the constant sanity drain, not the AOE insta-kill (Which would be pointless anyway, it will insta-kill regardless) or the Mini AoE damage while you are attacking it.

A cap would be likely mandatory for the reason you pointed out, but the idea here is you "Cannot" ignore a WaW level threat or above.

So example is ever .5 seconds it deals 3-4 sanity damage (6-8 per sec) it will increase it to something like 3.1 - 4.1 every .45 seconds. Increasing the frequency and the output. (Because Rodolph already has an ability similar to the constant sanity drain and hes only a HE level.

This would probably cap at 5/6 - 7/8 per .25 second (roughly 24-32 sanity damage per second at max, agents with high white resists will be mandatory if you let all of your clerks die to let it get to that point)

HOWEVER, if the insta-kill is not to be made straight up an insta-kill then it will "CC" your agents and continuously deal damage to them till its broken off by other agents or the duration is up, which will punish players for not respecting the threat of the Ab.

Correct me if I'm wrong -- I double checked the wiki as well just in case but can't exactly just pull in alriune in game whenever I want in order to test this -- Alriune doesn't do facility or even department-wide sanity damage, so you could theoretically stay in the main rooms to ignore it still since it doesn't warp into those. And as someone else stated before, it'd petal attack TECHNICALLY isn't insta-kill regardless like you say. It's labeled as "instadeath" on the wiki due to the fact that the petal attack, when reducing sanity, will "instakill" if the person's sanity is reduced to 0 (since sp kinda applies like hp for that attack specifically, kinda like with the scarecrow); it's not guaranteed to drain all your sanity instantly or anything to actually kill like that.

Finally, and this is just a tip I just found out about, but evidently Alriune only starts its petal countdown (unless it's bugging, as we've both mentioned happens sometimes >_>; ) when a target is in the room it warps to. It also then only teleports after its pulled off that big petal move OR if no one enters the room for a really long time. So if it teleports to an empty room and you're sending a suppression squad, maybe keep some execution bullets ready for any clerks heading towards that room? It might give ya a bit more time to reach the cursed thing if no one goes in there too early to start its countdown, who knows. The timer for it to leave due to no one entering the room also evidently resets once your squad is in there since it starts creating its petals instead, so if you get lucky with it, you'd have a ton of time to do a lot of potential damage.

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Richarad:

Originally posted by Whisper:

The "Increase" would only affect the constant sanity drain, not the AOE insta-kill (Which would be pointless anyway, it will insta-kill regardless) or the Mini AoE damage while you are attacking it.

A cap would be likely mandatory for the reason you pointed out, but the idea here is you "Cannot" ignore a WaW level threat or above.

So example is ever .5 seconds it deals 3-4 sanity damage (6-8 per sec) it will increase it to something like 3.1 - 4.1 every .45 seconds. Increasing the frequency and the output. (Because Rodolph already has an ability similar to the constant sanity drain and hes only a HE level.

This would probably cap at 5/6 - 7/8 per .25 second (roughly 24-32 sanity damage per second at max, agents with high white resists will be mandatory if you let all of your clerks die to let it get to that point)

HOWEVER, if the insta-kill is not to be made straight up an insta-kill then it will "CC" your agents and continuously deal damage to them till its broken off by other agents or the duration is up, which will punish players for not respecting the threat of the Ab.

Correct me if I'm wrong -- I double checked the wiki as well just in case but can't exactly just pull in alriune in game whenever I want in order to test this -- Alriune doesn't do facility or even department-wide sanity damage, so you could theoretically stay in the main rooms to ignore it still since it doesn't warp into those. And as someone else stated before, it'd petal attack TECHNICALLY isn't insta-kill regardless like you say. It's labeled as "instadeath" on the wiki due to the fact that the petal attack, when reducing sanity, will "instakill" if the person's sanity is reduced to 0 (since sp kinda applies like hp for that attack specifically, kinda like with the scarecrow); it's not guaranteed to drain all your sanity instantly or anything to actually kill like that.

Finally, and this is just a tip I just found out about, but evidently Alriune only starts its petal countdown (unless it's bugging, as we've both mentioned happens sometimes >_>; ) when a target is in the room it warps to. It also then only teleports after its pulled off that big petal move OR if no one enters the room for a really long time. So if it teleports to an empty room and you're sending a suppression squad, maybe keep some execution bullets ready for any clerks heading towards that room? It might give ya a bit more time to reach the cursed thing if no one goes in there too early to start its countdown, who knows. The timer for it to leave due to no one entering the room also evidently resets once your squad is in there since it starts creating its petals instead, so if you get lucky with it, you'd have a ton of time to do a lot of potential damage.

I think anyone that has had their facility graced with this Ab has had it escape enough times to understand it fairly well.

No it only deals damage to people in the room with it when it does its insta-kill, which as you pointed out only kills if their sanity drops to 0, but it can be resisted, which is why I usually ignore it and send a few level 5 agents after it with high resists and/or Despair Knight Blessing then go afk or tab lol.


I just think this ab could be done better if the teleport was less frequently, and the latter mentioned changes to make it more dangerous.

I don't find this ab that difficult to do, my level 1 agents with basic red weapons could kill it because the only issue you have it just knowing when to pull them out of the room, the initial engagement sanity loss will never do anything.

You know if level 1 agents can deal with this thing, it isn't a WaW level threat, the continuous drain on sanity would see to it that youd need at least level 3-5 with white resists to deal with it, which is what Im saying and a lot of people seem to sort of agree, if not neutral to the idea, I've yet to see one person say "Git Gud" (and I know the next comment will be someone say "Git Gud" because meme culture.

[Folex]

I don't know if you know this, but Alriune used to teleport only within the department it was in, and it was changed to teleport facility-wide in version 0.3.1.0...

[DemonchanSama (Lilyia)]

Originally posted by Folex:

I don't know if you know this, but Alriune used to teleport only within the department it was in, and it was changed to teleport facility-wide in version 0.3.1.0...

Yes I am aware its been changed. I appreciate you trying to spread information.