We're curious what you think of today's change to the dragon spell casting behavior: *A dragon no longer changes to spell caster behavior when reduced to 1 h.p. Instead, at any health, if it has nothing to do (where it would “wait” as its turn), it will prepare a spell. On the next turn, if the preparation was successful, it will cast the spell.* * Each dragon can only cast a spell once, so after it has cast a spell, it will go back to waiting as normal. If a spell preparation fails, or is disrupted, the dragon’s spell is not used up.*

It would definitely make dragon fights more difficult. I can also see this being a nerf to Elf and Human, due to their play style. Swordsman wants to fight 1 dragon at time. This means that he's likely to separate others using firewall and pits. This means that while he's fighting a 1 dragon in a row, the others will just cast spells at him. And unless he uses scrolls to get there (putting himself at disadvantageous position) and attack, and hit the dragon, he has no way of preventing spells from being cast. Huntress has simmilar story; she wants to isolate dragons behind firewall and shoot them from safe range. This means that ALL dragons will now start throwing spells at her. Again, she can try targeting the one that is preparing spell, but she has low chance of actually disrupting it. This means that she has to defend herself against fireballs and fight extra large dragons (which is especially painfull, as she get's the least offensive bonuses of all characters) AND on top of that it robs her of room to manouver (summoned cratures), which is her primary method of defence. The one who wouldn't suffer too much from this, is a dwarf. He's got worm to help him distract dragons, thus prevent them from casting spells for a while, and even then, it's not a problem. Here's why: Excellent defence of Dwarf (7~9 + 4 + d12) combined with 40% negation of fireballs mean that he doesn't have to worry about fireballs that much. Also, since he's often stuck in the middle of band of enemies, the fireball may actually hit other dragons. Enlarge is also not a big problem, since he get's +2 charge and extra +2/3 for frenzy which means he can overpower the increased defence of dragons, as well as Uppercut, which guarantees minimum of 30/40% chance of hitting, regardless of defence/offence bonuses. Extra summoned creatures can also work in his favour, allowing him to gain easy Feat bonuses from "Massive strikes" (all it takes is hasten charge into crowded position for 2+2/3+7/9 = +11/+14 which is often enough for MS against most creatures.) and also giving that to use against dragons. Dwarf already has the best chance at Heroic Strike Feat (10% compared to 8,(3)% of others) so he doesn't need extra sources of Feats. Since frenzy works on counterattacks and dragons don't die that easily, defending while surrounded by 3 or more reptiles is a viable strat, that only gains from the increased number of enemies. Worth noting is that these enemies will likely not be able to inflict actual damage to him. Now, with that analisys out of the way; I don't really like that change. I'd leave the dragon spell as it is.

I honestly don't like this change either. Humans suffer some in this new update, and elves have have practically been nerfed to uselessness against dragons. > *Originally posted by **[Geraltmustdie234](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13012786)**:* > Swordsman wants to fight 1 dragon at time. This means that he's likely to separate others using firewall and pits. This means that while he's fighting a 1 dragon in a row, the others will just cast spells at him. And unless he uses scrolls to get there (putting himself at disadvantageous position) and attack, and hit the dragon, he has no way of preventing spells from being cast I agree with this, it is a nerf to the swordsman, and not a small one, now that you're having to worry about spells for isolating dragons, you're having to hope for cleaves to occur more often in rooms so that you kill dragons faster and so have to take less hits from fireballs, or get extremely disadvantaged by enlarge. (for example, if you seal off the dragons, they might cast enlarge on a fellow trapped dragon, and then you're forced to hope and pray for a cleave so that you can get rid of the one you're fighting, and go after the dragons that enlarged the trapped dragon.) Cleave is only 20% proc so it is extremely unreliable. Elves have been nerfed the hardest in the new update. Her entire playstyle against dragons is to trap them with flame and shoot at them with her bow. now if she does that, they'll all cast fireballs on her and she has the weakest defences overall AND lower hp than the other characters so we all know how that will end up. (oh and as an extra penalty, she doesn't get shield bonus if she shoots to try to disrupt the dragon spell and misses.) She needs significant rework going forward if she is to be of any use against dragons at all. Dwarves have already proven to be the most reliable dragon fighters (most of the time) as he gets a massive attack bonus when he's surrounded, a small attack bonus when he hunkers (which is roughly 70-80% of the time against dragons) and he has a 40% chance of dodging a fireball or breath on top of his already superior defences. I honestly don't think the trapped dragons enlarging an ally will be much of an issue for him either since he prefers dragons to come to him rather than trapping them with flames or pits, and if they're not trapped, they will probably still be programed to move toward him rather than cast a spell. In summary, I really don't like this update because it severely limits the tactical options you have for slaying dragons, and for us dragonslayers, it means a much lower chance of success against 20+ to 30+ dragons (before the update, those were at least somewhat bearable, if you managed to use elf and flames trap and kill off the dragons in the rooms with 3 dragons or fewer, which is now no longer an option)

another problem is that sometimes dragon's starting position cause them to block eachother depending on their turn order. if you get a 7 dragon room and they start enlarging eachother (or worse, themselves) and summoning tough monsters like Mummy Wizard or Wraith sorcerer on turn 1 you're screwed.

I fully agree with openrange, this new update has made it almost impossible to use Elf effectively in the Lair. Before update you could put up firewalls and pick off dragons one by one but now they bolt away out of range. You need an insane anount of firescrolls to have any chance of success. Why the change anyway, in my opinion the original dragon behaviour was fine as it was.

Have to agree with the 4 previous opinions here. Elf is toast against dragons unless you get a dwarf to absorb the fireballs and then switch to elf recasting firewalls if you have enough fire scrolls. Human may succeed as long as he has an insane amount of haste scrolls and practises hit & run tactics. This change makes fighting dragons even less about skill and tactics and more about luck or at least bad luck. The dragon may hit you with a fireball or just summon a beetle or a hag. I see no reason for this change.Unless this is your way to force people with less than 50 fame to buy the dwarf and elf?

I would also have to agree with the opinions of others above me. This change makes the lair fight harder for human too,, as his strategy is cutting off or trapping dragons with firewalls to force a one on one fights with each since his block is far less reliable than the dwarf's. But now, I'd have to be careful not to trap them while blocking them off, because summons (especially mummies or giants) will weaken the human who now has to worry about summoned mummy despair, or summoned giants coming up and getting chances to hit him while he's busy trying to 1v1 a dragon

This change makes fighting Dragon more challenging, but I don't think it's as bad as some think. It will certainly lower the maximal amount of dragon we can kill, and a barrage of nasty spells early on in a full dragon room can become devastating, but that won't happen so often that it's a game breaker. Completely cutting off all dragons even out of breath range doesn't work that often anyway, in which case it's hardly different from before. And if you can do it, then this often gives you an advantage which beats the burst of dragon spells. I just finished off 11 red dragons with only the elf (lvl 8 bow) without huge problems. (Sure it's not a lot of dragons, but who says we need to be able to easily beat 25 of them?) I took more damage than usual but I blame this equally on the lack of flame scrolls, not just on the changed dragon behaviour. In one room with four dragon I sealed myself off, but I still had 3 open tiles in breath range, so the dragons would keep going for that instead of casting their spells. So not different than usual, many breaths could be interrupted, some could be dodged, barely any health loss in total. In the next room with 5 dragons I sealed myself off with only one tile in breacth range which was already occupied. So in the first round 4 dragons prepared spells. Two of them were fireballs, so I guarded and even dodged both. The other two spells were enlargements which ended up costing me a few potions, especially as I also ran out of flame and haste scrolls with three dragons (not at full health though) left in that room. The last room had only two dragons which my elf quickly disposed off even without flame/haste. One thing I would like if this change stays: It would be nice to see which dragons still have a spell to cast. It would in some situations affect my tactics.

I agree that this changes nerfs the human and elf. But we can rebalnce that with other changes. So I have two questions: 1. How does the change affect the current game balance? (Which is what you all have been answering already.) 2. Assuming a constant level of difficulty, do you prefer the gamplay and "feel" that comes with this change? Generally, changes are not liked at first. So it will probably take a few days to get good answers on #2.

By the way, the motivation behind the change was to make the dragons more challenging, especially relative to the other monsters in the game. It makes sense that an intelligent dragon sitting there with nothing to do would cast a spell rather than wait. We are fine with rebalancing the rest of the game accordingly, but we want the dragons to be more worthy opponents.

> *Originally posted by **[RogueSword](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13012688)**:* > We're curious what you think of today's change to the dragon spell casting behavior: > > *A dragon no longer changes to spell caster behavior when reduced to 1 h.p. Instead, at any health, if it has nothing to do (where it would “wait” as its turn), it will prepare a spell. On the next turn, if the preparation was successful, it will cast the spell.* > * > Each dragon can only cast a spell once, so after it has cast a spell, it will go back to waiting as normal. If a spell preparation fails, or is disrupted, the dragon’s spell is not used up.* > > While I agree with the observations of the others, I think it may not be as bad as it seems. A similar comparison would be a multi-caster room (some beyond reach), resulting in many spells cast in following turns. One major downside (or upside, depending on your perspective) to the change, is that each Dragon ever only casts ***once***. That's a big deal. Also, the Elf's flat 67% Dodge chance in Evade mode might play out in her favour against multiple Fireballs, making her more survivable than the Human (who, unless has a really good Shield) would likely eat more Fireballs this way (that goodness he has 1HP more!) In any case, I just came from a bout in Campaign against 3 Greens. The map had a pit in the centre, and the Elf started by Flaming the path to the right, leaving the left open for the Dragons. 2 turns in (and a dead Dragon), before the Flame on the right expires, one Dragon got too close, and she closed off the path to her left - fully Firewalling herself in. Lo and behold, the remaining Dragons (with Breath ready) moved instead of wait - almost in anticipation that the Flame to the right would expire. Is this an intentional change? It is a single run, so I'm unsure if it is repeatable.

I feel like this change might be surprising for new players. Using flame scrolls to block off enemies or guarantee a press is a tried-and-tested strategy for any difficult room, but then they'll get into a dragon room and place down a wall of fire and get three fireballs to the face. Fireballs are already more dangerous than enlarging or summoning, which can be dealt with by stacking attack bonuses. Pretty much the only thing you can do to improve your chances against a fireball hit is to guard. With the old system it was sometimes worth using an elf to evade fireballs, on the off chance that the bow counter would hit and stop further spellcasting. (Speaking of which, why can't you counter a fireball with melee?) Outside of the lair, there are usually much better alternatives. One interesting consequence of the change is it may sometimes become advantageous for the player to lead a 1-health dragon back and forth next to a pit rather than risking dragon breath. In [this](https://i.imgur.com/cTbXfai.png) example, the elf jumps back and forth between the two bottom corners to keep the dragon at the top-right tiles until a worm appears. That example brings up two apparent bugs: 1) After each dragon move the text "Red Dragon waits" appears, and 2) by my understanding of dragon pathfinding, the dragon should choose a random path from the top right corner to the bottom left, so that particular loop shouldn't be possible. *(Edit to respond to this:)* > *Originally posted by **[shift244](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13013339)**:* > Also, the Elf's flat 67% Dodge chance in Evade mode might play out in her favour against multiple Fireballs, making her more survivable than the Human (who, unless has a really good Shield) would likely eat more Fireballs this way (that goodness he has 1HP more!) But the dwarf far outperforms both the elf (5/8=62.5%) and human in not getting hit by fireballs: the combination of shield bonus, a d12 die, +4 hunker, 3hp and 40% resilience makes him better than both. (Also, resilience works against breath.)

> *Originally posted by **[unekdoud](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13013397)**:* > I feel like this change might be surprising for new players. Using flame scrolls to block off enemies or guarantee a press is a tried-and-tested strategy for any difficult room, but then they'll get into a dragon room and place down a wall of fire and get three fireballs to the face. I don't think that's a real concern. They just learn how Dragons work. And I'd say Press doesn't even matter here; by the time a player has leveled the human to the point he gets Press, they should be familiar with Dragon behaviour anyway. > Fireballs are already more dangerous than enlarging or summoning, which can be dealt with by stacking attack bonuses. Pretty much the only thing you can do to improve your chances against a fireball hit is to guard. In a Dragon room I find Fireballs less problematic than Enlarging, especially when many spells come in a single turn. With Fireballs you can guard to have a decent chance to avoid them. Plus they might hit other draongs (Dwarf/Human) or trigger a Counter from the Elf, so even if you lose some health, you might even get something out of it. Having some enlarged Dragons easily costs you more health when you need extra turns to kill them. With Summonings I am usually not overly concerned. Might even fail due to Dragons moving on the summoning spot, and most summonings are not a real thread. It'll be just rare occurrences like suddenly haing a Mummy WIzard and Wraith Sorcerer in an already crowded Dragon room. > One interesting consequence of the change is it may sometimes become advantageous for the player to lead a 1-health dragon back and forth next to a pit rather than risking dragon breath. In [this](https://i.imgur.com/cTbXfai.png) example, the elf jumps back and forth between the two bottom corners to keep the dragon at the top-right tiles until a worm appears. Not quite sure how that is related to the change (aside from some bugs with weird Dragon movement right now). Wouldn't the dragon have done the same in the old system? Besides, it's not even guaranteed to work. After you jump to the left spot, I think the dragon has a 50:50 chance moving left or right, and it it moves right, then you can still lead it on, but might have to risk getting a Worm near yourself. (And if you wanna take that risk anyway, then there better options where you can regularly shoot the dragon without ever coming into breath range.) > *(Edit to respond to this:)* > > *Originally posted by **[shift244](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13013339)**:* > > Also, the Elf's flat 67% Dodge chance in Evade mode might play out in her favour against multiple Fireballs, making her more survivable than the Human (who, unless has a really good Shield) would likely eat more Fireballs this way (that goodness he has 1HP more!) > > But the dwarf far outperforms both the elf (5/8=62.5%) and human in not getting hit by fireballs: the combination of shield bonus, a d12 die, +4 hunker, 3hp and 40% resilience makes him better than both. (Also, resilience works against breath.) I don't think that was meant as a "the elf is better than the dwarf in resisting fireballs", but simply that the elf is also pretty good in evading them, better than the human anyway. The dwarf usually doesn't have to deal with multiple fireballs anyway, it's more an issue for Human/Elf who are more likely to cut multiple dragons off right from the start, leading to a barrage of spells. Now that I fought a couple more dragons, I even start to like the change. Before I found Human and Elf overall better against Dragons than the Dwarf, now the Dwarf might have closed the gap somewhat. (Although I still prefer Elf and Human in most Dragon rooms.)

> *Originally posted by **[Artydent](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13013488)**:* > > One interesting consequence of the change is it may sometimes become advantageous for the player to lead a 1-health dragon back and forth next to a pit rather than risking dragon breath. In [this](https://i.imgur.com/cTbXfai.png) example, the elf jumps back and forth between the two bottom corners to keep the dragon at the top-right tiles until a worm appears. > > Not quite sure how that is related to the change (aside from some bugs with weird Dragon movement right now). Wouldn't the dragon have done the same in the old system? Besides, it's not even guaranteed to work. After you jump to the left spot, I think the dragon has a 50:50 chance moving left or right, and it it moves right, then you can still lead it on, but might have to risk getting a Worm near yourself. (And if you wanna take that risk anyway, then there better options where you can regularly shoot the dragon without ever coming into breath range.) That's why I called it an "apparent bug": in my testing the dragon was caught in that two-move loop for over 100 turns while I waited for the worm. I don't remember what the old system was already, but if that dragon followed spellcaster behavior when out of range then it would cast fireballs instead of moving.

> *Originally posted by **[unekdoud](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13013504)**:* > That's why I called it an "apparent bug": in my testing the dragon was caught in that two-move loop for over 100 turns while I waited for the worm. I don't remember what the old system was already, but if that dragon followed spellcaster behavior when out of range then it would cast fireballs instead of moving. Even in the old system, the Dragon had just one spell and after casting it would try to move in for breath attacks. I assume you are saying that the Dragon in your image hadn't cast its spell yet? That is likely a bug then. I also have encountered and reported a bug where a Dragon would not use its spell but instead make a double-move forth and back (essentially doing nothing at all) each turn.

> *Originally posted by **[Artydent](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13013588)**:* > > *Originally posted by **[unekdoud](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13013504)**:* > > That's why I called it an "apparent bug": in my testing the dragon was caught in that two-move loop for over 100 turns while I waited for the worm. I don't remember what the old system was already, but if that dragon followed spellcaster behavior when out of range then it would cast fireballs instead of moving. > > Even in the old system, the Dragon had just one spell and after casting it would try to move in for breath attacks. I assume you are saying that the Dragon in your image hadn't cast its spell yet? That is likely a bug then. I also have encountered and reported a bug where a Dragon would not use its spell but instead make a double-move forth and back (essentially doing nothing at all) each turn. In that image, the dragon already used its spell for self-enlargement, so chasing the player is the correct behavior.

One difference i havent seen mentioned is that 1 hp dragons will now melee attack instead of preparing a spell. this is a significant nerf to any offensive approach to killing dragons, as that free turn after reducing dragon from 2 hp to 1 hp made a huge difference to both human and dwarf. Perhaps it is just my perspective, but i didnt feel 20 dragons needed to be any more challenging.

I, for one, also feel that making the dragons even more challenging was unnecessary. If it isn't broken, there is no need to fix it. From looking at the top scores in fame of the kongregate players of all time, it looks like we don't even have 20 people who have gotten to 100 fame yet. That's purely on Kongregate's side though. It does look like there are around 30-40 who have managed to reach 100 fame from other sources, but it is tough enough as it is, especially with luck in getting gear and scrolls. Now we have the dragons acting all out buggy with ignoring damage and continuing to cast spells, moving around extra steps, attacking in close combat, generally completely cheating the system.

We just released some fixes to the dragon behavior bugs. Please submit Feedback from the room if you see them do something you know they shouldn't.

> *Originally posted by **[RogueSword](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13014037)**:* > We just released some fixes to the dragon behavior bugs. Please submit Feedback from the room if you see them do something you know they shouldn't. Looks good. Apparently the pathfinding I mentioned above is also fixed, since I just tested it in a room with the same pits rotated 60° clockwise and the corner-to-corner path was randomized correctly.

The problem I have with the system is that it's hard to know when a dragon is going to cast a spell, and hard to keep track of which dragons have cast (even if we add a way to check, it will still be a pain.) So here's something we're thinking about: Dragon Mages. Normal dragons do not have spell casting ability. However, once unlocked, one of every 4 dragons will be a Dragon Mage. Dragon Mages would have a purple glow so they are easy to distinguish. They would behave like spell casters, except that, if cornered, they will melee attack rather than prepare spell. They have normal dragon breath, but will not move solely to do a breath attack. What do you think?

> *Originally posted by **[RogueSword](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13014768)**:* > The problem I have with the system is that it's hard to know when a dragon is going to cast a spell, and hard to keep track of which dragons have cast (even if we add a way to check, it will still be a pain.) > > So here's something we're thinking about: Dragon Mages. > > Normal dragons do not have spell casting ability. However, once unlocked, one of every 4 dragons will be a Dragon Mage. > > Dragon Mages would have a purple glow so they are easy to distinguish. They would behave like spell casters, except that, if cornered, they will melee attack rather than prepare spell. They have normal dragon breath, but will not move solely to do a breath attack. > > What do you think? I was about to suggest the exact same thing... yes, the current dragons are extremely counterintuitive and do no fit the simplicity of the rest of the game. I can see this working.

You are envisioning these dragon mages casting multiple spells like a normal spell caster while still with 3 hp and high armor? Mages in general are a hugely random game element in a probability based game. Mages range from deadly to irrelevent depending on what they cast. Generally the player can attempt to counter that randomness by killing the mages before they can cast. Killing the 'dragon mage(s)' before they cast will be simply impossible in many rooms, so I would imagine overall results would become more random. I don't have any ideas on how the increased randomness might be balanced out. More randomness might be a good or bad thing depending on how you enjoy games. For this game, only career mode is forgiving of losses, so my prediction is more randomness = less happiness overall.

My first thought about the Dragon mages was that it would make it a lot more challenging, more so than the current "early cast" mechanic, because you have a mage that you likely can't kill for some time and that keeps casting. After thinking about it, that might not be as bad as it initially feels. In regular rooms, strong mages that you can't prevent from casting a few times, often make those rooms a lot "harder", but I think that our feelings about strong mages are a bit skewed because of the issue's relative nature. Mages often feel so annyoing in regular rooms because you usually want them to finish those without any or with just a single health loss, but a strong mage - if you can't easily deal with it - strongly reduces the chance for that, essentially doubling your expected health loss or worse. In dragon rooms however, you expect some bigger health loss anyway, and getting some from the mage (from fireball, or indirectly from wasting turns to kill something enlarged or a bad summon) doesn't have the same relative impact. Besides, often you can't completely block the dragons off anyway, and whether a dragon breathes at you every second turn or casts a spell every second turn might not make a big difference. On the contrary, many spells aren't so bad anyway, so a mage might even mean a reduced pressure on you. Occasionally they even work in your favour, e.g. when a fireball hits enemies, or you get a weak summon that (almost) guarantees you a Feat mode. On the other hand, some unlucky spell choices early on might also make things a lot tougher. Overall, having an actual dragon mage in the room would inrease the variance of the outcome, but I don't think it'd significantly increase the average difficulty. Well, I guess we would have to actually test this to be sure. Btw, how random do you plan this to be? > *Originally posted by **[RogueSword](/forums/979845/topics/1796853?page=1#13014768)**:* > However, once unlocked, one of every 4 dragons will be a Dragon Mage. More like "every dragon has a 25% chance of being a mage"? Or more deterministic like "when populating the lair, every fourth dragon will be a mage"? So basically, could we expect to occasionally even have many dragon mages in a room or rather a guarantee of at most two mages per room? Edit: Having a room with 7 dragons, 4 of them being mages, might be a real horror scenario. Having only 1-2 mages in a room don't seem so bad.