Recent posts by Ichthyic on Kongregate

Topic: Akaneiro / Power build

seeing red boosts power.

so do a lot of other things.

for those that have limited funds (and without a lot of grinding, or paying real world cash, funds ARE limited), seeing red is not that cash efficient for what you get out of it.

Topic: Elemental Power / Suggestions Thread

One thing I’ve noticed is that when the AI plays an item power up and a magic card, like reversal and medium stone in the same turn, it plays the magic card first, then the item card.

This is the way it SHOULD work.
However, when I the player do the same thing, the order is reversed; I end up playing the item card first, and then the magic card.

this is bad, and should be fixed.

Topic: Elemental Power / Bug report

One thing I’ve noticed is that when the AI plays an item power up and a magic card, like reversal and medium stone in the same turn, it plays the magic card first, then the item card.

This is the way it SHOULD work.

However, when I the player do the same thing, the order is reversed; I end up playing the item card first, and then the magic card.

this is bad, and should be fixed.

Topic: Elemental Power / New Cards - Submit Your Ideas!

cards that act as instants; you can play them DURING combat.

you get 5 seconds to play it, if you have one in your hand.

effects would be weaker versions of magic and item cards; things like slight boost to attack or defense, pierce defense ability, maybe at tier 5 you could have one that randomly changes the color of both cards in the battle, and at tier 7, have a card where you get to choose the color each card in battle is transformed into.

that would add some excitement :)

Topic: Elemental Power / evolving cards

does the card have it’s attack power in yellow numbers?

if so, it’s maxed out.

Topic: Elemental Power / Virus

there is nothing wrong with the plague cards, provided you leave them behaving as is: meaning they only activate if you win the hand. They just need updated text saying that they only activate on a win.

moreover, the only other thing you might do is make it so you can only play one of these cards in your deck. heck, probably just make it so you can only play one tier 7 magic card of any particular type in your deck at a time, and the same with tier 7 items.

that would make it so that the people who want to pay mega bucks won’t have a huge advantage, just a large one :)

Topic: Elemental Power / Bug report

Cards that clear things out of the opponents hand are not working after a loss. Their effect does not trigger even though there is nothing on the card that says it should not. Cards such as Black Death (clears monsters) and those that clear items and magic as well.

“I’ve noted this bug and it is in our list of things to fix.”

ack! no! those cards are already OP.

the only fix that should be made is to the description on the card, not to the behavior of the card!

the card should definitely say “activates on win”, but it shouldn’t activate on loss.

Topic: Elemental Power / Suggestions Thread

make random cards drop from wins vs AI battles.

right now, grinding is very tedious, and having the chance, even if say only 10%, of winning a card after winning would make it more worthwhile.

likewise, rewards for PvP matchups could use some variability.

Topic: Sword & Magic / [Server Maintenance] 2013/04/22 20:00 ~ 21:00 (GMT+9)

bad choices in changes in this last patch. The changes to the economy and skills make this game no longer any fun to play, and I played it for several weeks before.

complete fail. the ONLY good thing was being able to choose pots, and frankly, even that was done half-assed.

Topic: Akaneiro / Power build

so if you picked the hunter as your character, here’s some feedback from experience:

main skills that make surviving easiest:

-meteor rain
-swath of destruction
-chi mend
-medium armor

you actually don’t need ANY other skills to make it through ALL the levels enabled so far.

Once you have a point in each, max your swath and medium armor skills armor first, then chi, then meteor. Cast chi BEFORE attacking a group, simply for the bonus to defense you get from it. It will possibly save your butt if you get a bit of lag or make a slight mistake in your positioning. Turn off autoattack every time you log in. autoattack is the enemy of this build, as it totally takes over your movements during battle. Use autoattack and watch yourself die. I know I did :)

standard attack:

Go collect as many monsters as possible; move just ahead of them so you can lead them to another group. Try to lead them to an area with a bit of room for you to maneuver. Stay just ahead of them and cast meteor storm on yourself as they chase you. lather, rinse, repeat. Profit in huge experience point bonuses as you wipe out groups up to 20 at a time. max upgrade of meteor storm also adds a weak slow function, so at level 20 with max medium armor upgrade, you can just slowly walk ahead of groups and cast meteor continuously on them without fear of them rushing you at all.

If you get surrounded (you really should work hard not to!), break out with swath of destruction. Also useful early on for hit and run on bosses, and actually faster at killing than meteor, once it is upgraded to level 2: wait till boss is in front of you, cast swath towards a point behind him (you’ll move right through him), turn around and hit him from behind with your weapons until he turns around, cast swath… lather rinse repeat. Since swath costs so much less than meteor, and your weapons do so much more damage per tick than anything else, it’s the quickest way to take down a boss. Best to use this on bosses that do not continually summon aid though. For those bosses, meteor is the safer, if slower, bet.

Use chi mend to make sure you are at full health after and before every battle (for the def boost after you upgrade it once), but ALWAYS leave enough energy to cast swath. Swath is much more effective at keeping you alive than chi mend is!
Don’t let your health fall below half before you swath, or at least run, away from enemies. Don’t rely on chi to save you if you’re anywhere near a group of enemies and your health is below half. Again, PREVENTING enemies hitting you is the key here. Even with decent armor, you’re simply too squishy to survive long being hit by more than 3 enemies at a time during “overrun” modes, or even the one before that.

The upgrade of swath will burn your enemies as well as knock them back, and does about 75% of the damage of a meteor storm, at about half the cost in eneregy. You can use swath alone to start killing weaker groups once it is upgraded, and if you have also upgraded medium armor, and have a couple of energy regen items, you can cast it near continuously. Think of yourself like a jet fighter plane, swooping through your slower enemies before they can react. Make sure you plan your swath attacks so you end up past the enemy groups, so you can either turn right around and swath again as they start to chase you, or be able to move away if need be. If you can concentrate your enemies on a narrow, straight path, you’ll destroy them quickly. Swath will also save you from lag. If it looks like you are lagging, or the enemies are not in the correct positions on the screen, swath away as many times as you can. If you don’t kill them, at least you should be in a safer position.

Attacking things with your weapons is actually your least safe option (though it does by far and away the most dps), and should only be used when you are one on one or simply have no other option. With this in mind, focus on equipment that boosts your defense and power stats, and don’t worry about raw damage or specials as much. Skill is the least important stat to try and boost with this build, power is foremost, with defense right behind it. Boosting your medium armor skill does WAY more to boost your energy regen than the moderate boost skill you will find on items, though those still help a bit. If it’s a choice between an item that boosts energy regen, and an item that boost skill stat, choose energy regen (I think the minor boost is 3pts per tick, and the moderate 4, so it’s not a huge deal either way).

level ups should be about 2:1 power vs fortitude up through about level 12, then switch to 3:1. You still get a decent power boost even from choosing fortitude, but you get poor def boost when choosing power, so a few levels of fort is good. Plus, you want to have to cast chi mend as few times as possible to boost your health up and get a decent boost to def, and a few levels of fort will help that tremendously. I’d say you can safely switch that to 3:1 power vs fort from the start if you are comfortable keeping yourself out of harm’s way. I’m a bit on the clumsy side myself, so prefer to keep my defense score a tad higher. Also helps when a group of enemies spawns right on top of you.

In your first ability panel, make swath the top attack, so you can use the right mouse button with it (just rt-click on the ground where you want to end up with your swath attack – not where you want to start it), then put meteor 2 and chi 3 and just keep your fingers on those keys so you can cast them at will.

In your second ability panel, if you decide to try out rain of blows make that your top attack (for right button use). Frankly, I maxed it out and was not impressed at all. The hit box for it seems inordinately small and hard to predict, and it does less damage than meteor storm while being much less “safe”; with meteor you can move away while casting, with rain you have to stand there and hope everyone gets and stays stunned. Otherwise, put seeing red as your top, and again put chi mend on 3, so you can cast it in an emergency without having to tab back to your first ability panel. Seeing red is a nice boost, but you don’t NEED it so long as you manage your attacks as I have already noted. If you have the extra cash to boost it, and don’t mind tab-switching panels, go for it. Personally, I prefer just to buy the puppy spirit booster (the cheapest one and lasts 30 mins) and just stick to the first attack panel. If you want even more choice, try swath 1, seeing red 2, and chi mend 3 for your third ability panel.

make sure you always leave enough energy to cast swath at least once, at all times, and you shouldn’t really have any difficulties… unless you get lagged while surrounded :)

weapons…

I found the best weapons are simply the ones that boost stats the highest. Jade or Garnet preferably, then ruby, then amethyst. I did not find the ones with even moderate chance to stun or steal health or freeze or whatever to be very useful (I would pick one with an extra ability if it also had the right stat boosts of course), though the particle animations are attractive. Blast makes your enemies scatter unpredictably. When you focus on weps that just boost stats, another bonus is you don’t need to worry about replacing them with ones that are higher level constantly. I used a level 5 jade scythe until I hit level 16, for example. It also means there is little need to spend money on boosting weapon skills, though if you have the cash, it’s helpful to take down bosses faster if you upgrade your dual wep skills a bit.

Those who went with more of a weapons-based power build are encouraged to post their experiences, if anybody did.

Topic: Elemental Power / Starter Tips

the cards themselves show how and when they evolve (look at the description text when you click on one).

there is information on what class it will evolve to next, as well as how many points (max) the current form can be upgraded before it will evolve.

I note that a lot of the information about specific cards is now outdated because of updates to the game, but the basic premise of spending your gold only on bronze packs is decent advice. Though, i would recommend buying just ONE silver pack when you reach the second map in the campaign, unless you were really really lucky with drops or your initial deck. also, I would recommend not saving your runes for any special deals any more, as it’s likely all the special deals will involve kreds and not runes. use your runes to buy a gold pack, as you will likely get much more powerful, leveled cards after the new updates. Makes it a lot easier to survive the higher levels of the campaign. keep spending your gold on bronze packs as soon as you think you have some decent upgradeable cards though.

…oh, also: if you have magic cards that enforce win on even/odd, utilize your upgrades on your most important cards to take advantage of that. have an “even” magic card and want to help make sure your Lord of Hell gets to win his bout? if he’s got an odd power rating, DON’T use a green card to upgrade him, use a blue or red instead. this will likely only add one point to your attack value, but it will then change it from odd to even.

’s

Topic: Elemental Power / Suggestions Thread

the even/odd magic card should have ZERO effect if the cards in the battle are the opposite.

IOW, even magic cards should have no effect of both cards played are odd, and vice versa.

It’s just inane the way it works now.

Topic: Akaneiro / Bug Reports

Like Laconfire, I am noticing odd behavior after the last update, where sometimes my framerate will drop to next to nothing, all the creatures and my character will fail to update position correctly, and I typically will die. Then, occasionally, my character will speed up to near hypersonic speed, running like a madman.

something wrong there.

Topic: Akaneiro / Some player feedback

nope, those experiencing lag… it has nothing to do with how new or how powerful your comp is. I have a top of the line desktop with fine graphics card (Nvidia 560 ti) installed in it, tons of ram, etc.

game still has periods where framerate drops to next to nothing, updating creature positions and my own shows extreme lag (often leading to death), etc. if it were your comp specs, changing the detail settings would have a noticeable effect, but it does not, at all.

it’s not an issue of optimizing your computer, or running few programs, etc. it’s a conflict between specific video drivers and this particular game. Instead, I would recommend trying to see if alternate drivers (newer or older) fix the problem.

I do notice a huge and random swing in position information and framerates after the last update that was not there before, and this being the case without having changed a single thing on my system. So, yes, there IS something about this game that disagrees with my particular setup. Things that not only do i not notice with other games on Kong, or otherwise, but also not before the last update.

for those that claim “no lag”, have you actually run something like Fraps on it while playing?

Topic: Esgrima 2 / Need a good guardian skills build

those who I’ve spoken with who take it to level 50 say to focus on aoe attacks (so you at least can speed along getting yourself to the boss you want to tank) and damage reduction passives, and health boost passives.

evidently the active blocking buff doesn’t work correctly, but the passive one does.

be prepared to have some patience, as you are a living meatsack. you will never do a lot of single target damage, but you will have a TON of hitpoints. you will be valued against bosses that do huge amounts of damage.

have patience is the main thing.

:)

Topic: Esgrima 2 / Bug: warehouse stops working

Yesterday all of a sudden my warehouse would no longer let me remove items that I put in it, and on refresh those items would end up back in my pack as if I had never placed them there.

turns out… I have 3 characters, and if their shops are all completely full of items, the warehouse stops working (obvious bug). If I proceed to remove just one item from a shop on any character, then log out and back in again, the warehouse again functions normally.

anyway, pointing out a nasty bug and a workaround for anyone like me who has run into it.

Topic: Akaneiro / Suggestions and Ideas

Suggestion:

The game is far too grindy atm; one way to help this out would be to make EVERYTHING about 50% cheaper. I really can’t think of a single thing that isn’t way overpriced based on the amount of income generated by grinding a map at level.

Topic: Akaneiro / Bug Reports

Once I got to the third area, no chests were visible any more. They are there… they’re all just completely invisible. I have to run around casting meteor everywhere to find them.

Topic: Akaneiro / Bug Reports

looks like meteor rain II does exactly the same damage as meteor rain I, but costs more energy?

Topic: Akaneiro / Suggestions and Ideas

^^ I think that’s what they’re working on already with the forge.

Topic: Akaneiro / List of Useful Skills

does swath of destruction break you out of mobs?

Answered my own question:

yes it does, and blows back whoever you hit head on pretty far, unless it’s a boss. You can use it on slow bosses to just keep dashing through them while they turn, and they simply can’t hit you. Also useful to dash out of aoe effects. Overall a skill worth buying.

Topic: Akaneiro / Cunning Character Guide

will swath break you out when you are surrounded?

Topic: Outernauts / Bug Reports

beat all missions at the gladiator’s arena, did not get a top hat.

is it that it is bugged, or is the description in the quest to get the top hat wrong?

Topic: Outernauts / FIX LAG

seems very unlikely, given it’s a flash game, and flash is the same for both IE and firefox.

Topic: Outernauts / FIX LAG

DEVS:

Please seriously look into fixing the lag that appears after playing for about 20 mins.

everyone is reporting this, it’s a serious play issue, as you lose your bonus energy on refresh.

fix this first, before anything else, please.

thanks