Fire ants: new horned chameleons of Qud!
Short summary: now when witchwood is much harder to get, and it makes it almost impossible to fight a group in labyrinths, there's no good counter to fire ants on their level.
They are around Grit Gate, a hell lot of them. The problem is that their fire effect essentially kills the regeneration boosters, and the explosion damage is quite strong by itself (around 15 points for me). Characters at that level have 50-80 hp. When you meet 2-3 ants, it means more than half of HP is gone at once. Also if you use witchwood you cannot dodge their fireballs in ruins and you burn to death.
I've managed to survive them, but only with extreme luck. Many good characters died to them.
It was too easy back when witchwood was abundant though. Now it's VERY hard.
The question is why do they shoot (in fact) a rocket launcher missile and set you on fire after that? They don't give that much XP, they are MUCH more frequent than goatfolk sawers or guys with explosive weapons, and they are all around the quest location where you head almost immediately.
My suggestion is to either reduce the initial damage significally (they throw a fireball, not a grenade, right? why does it deal much more damage than a lazer turret?) or make them much less frequent.
Or give them a bigger cooldown on fire projectiles.
I am not whining, but they are just not worth the reward, and the fact that they ignite you in groups makes them quite hard to dodge (and with the lack of stealth skill it's almost impossible in some cases).
The only good way to deal with them is to level the skill which makes you to learn recipes, then destroy a few instaheal boosters and spend all your limegreen scrap on them. I didn't find a better way to heal. And yeah, it's very expensive this way.
On another note, now when witchwood is not a good combat healing, mutants are pretty much screwed there. You have to either go "mass instaheal" way, it means that you have to put many points in INT and END at once, which makes builds much less flexible.
If there was a healing power for mentals which would remove negative effects like fire or frost, it would be great
.
About "regrowth" or how is it called, with TONS of plants on early levels which do not net XP for kills: it's cheap and at the same time not too rewarding for leveling skill. I'd suggest to reduce the amount of plants, make the skill cost more in mutation points and make plants to give XP for their kills (like turrets do).
And don't reduce the cooldown if you do this please, mutants already have big pauses between "spells", so it's almost impossible to play a "full mage" unless you want to wait a lot, and it's quite boring
.
P.S. My main reason of whining about fire ants is the fact that I've lost three 10-11 lvl characters by going down a stairway and catching a few fireballs in my face without getting a turn
. It's a "fake difficulty" for me, when you can't actually do something in a place where you're supposed to be.
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Topic: Caves of Qud: Now in Open Beta (Read 580181 times)